Happy New Year! Here are some ideas concerning New Year’s Resolutions:
“My New Year’s resolution, says Jim Gaffigan: I will be less laz.” “Now there are more overweight people in America than average-weight people, Jay Leno said. So overweight people are now average. Which means you’ve met your New Year’s resolution.” My New Year’s resolution is to be less prefect. Also, remember: A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other. My name is Fredrick Arthur Robinson. I was named, kind of, for my two grandfathers. My maternal grandfather was Ferdinand, but my parents thought Ferdinand was too old-fashioned a name, and since my grandfather went by Fred, they decided to call me Fredrick. My paternal grandfather was named Arthur. We had absolutely no choice in the name we were given, to state the obvious. I remember that I went through a brief period in my adolescence when I didn't like my name very much. My friends called me Fred, but my family called me Fredrick, except when I was in trouble. Then I was Fredrick Arthur Robinson! At one point I thought it might be nice to change my “goes by” name to Rick, but that didn't last very long. I thought there might be a David here this morning, so I looked up the meaning of the name David, and it means beloved. James means supplanter—it comes from the original Hebrew word Jacob. Lori means Laurel. Elizabeth: God is my oath. Abraham: Father of many. Stephen: Wreath or Crown Everybody's name means something. My wife Linda's name means “pretty.” She certainly lives up to her name! My name means peaceful ruler. I'm not a ruler, but I hope as the leader of this parish that I do lead it in a peaceful way. Names are very important in our Judeo Christian tradition. When Abram was led by God into a new land, God gave him a new name—Abraham. When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, Moses asked God what his name was. God said his name is I am that I am. God told Moses, "Tell the Hebrew people that I Am sent you." From then on, God's name was considered to be so holy that it could never be uttered. Thus, when reading the Hebrew text of what we call our Old Testament aloud, when Jews come to the name for God they substitute a different word for him, rather than to say his name aloud. That tradition is followed in our own English text from the Old Testament today. If you look at the Old Testament reading in your bulletins, you will notice the word LORD is spelled in all capital letters. That means that in the Hebrew text God's name appears. That name we believe is pronounced Yahweh, but no one really knows for sure because it was never uttered aloud. Instead of printing Yahweh, the New Revised Standard Version substitutes the word LORD, and signifies the substitution by printing the word LORD in all capital letters. Why did they treat the name of God in such a fashion? It was thought that to know a being's name was to have some control over the one named. Thus, when God gave Adam the job of naming all of the animals in creation, he was giving Adam power over the animals. In trying to sell you something, the sales person wants to know your name right away, and he or she uses your name not once but probably several times. Using your name draws you in and so it does indeed give the salesperson a bit of control. At any rate, the Hebrew people believed that a name contained something of the essence of a person's being. They had an almost magical understanding of knowing someone's name. It would be totally inappropriate to believe that one had some kind of control over the being of Almighty God. Thus, his name was never said aloud. Therefore, when a person underwent a change in being, it was significant that the person be given a new name. Abram became Abraham; Jacob became Israel; in the New Testament Saul became Paul. In the early Church, when a person was baptized that person was given a new name, signifying a change in the person’s being. On the eighth day after Jesus's birth, he was circumcised and given the name Jesus. It means Savior. Not only is his name known, but it is also utterable, and he could be seen and touched. He is in the weakness of human flesh. Through Jesus, Almighty God indeed has become familiar to those who know him. The best way to know God is to know Jesus. In fact, since Jesus entered this world he is the only way to the Father. As his name reveals, Jesus is the Savior and it is only through him that humanity can be saved. St. Luke proclaims, "There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." St. Paul, in his Letter to the Philippians, elaborates: "God has highly exalted Jesus 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 under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." In knowing the name Jesus, however, we certainly do not have any power or control over him. In fact, it’s just the opposite. When we utter the name Jesus we proclaim that he has power over us, that he is our Lord and Savior, that it is he through whom we dare approach God as Father. And yet, we realize that there is power in his name, just as the apostles realized in the New Testament, and so we pray in his name, we heal in his name, we preach in his name. One resolution we should all make this day is to be more thankful for the grace given us through Jesus, our Savior and Lord.
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Unless, as the song goes, your true love gives you gifts on each of the twelve days of Christmas, most likely your gift-giving took place seven days ago, Christmas Day, the day of the Nativity of our Lord. Through gifts we often are given precious memories by our friends, memories that will last well beyond the twelve days of Christmas.
Gift giving at Christmas hasn’t always been universally accepted. The Puritans forbade the observance of Christmas and everything associated with it. And while Charles Dickens helped to popularize the giving of gifts at Christmas, others have tried to dampen the practice because of its obvious materialistic dangers. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, thought it best not to give gifts, but to sit still and think about truth and purity until her friends were all the better for it. Can you imagine the reaction of your family and friends if you had told them that instead of giving gifts this year you meditated on their behalf? It’s a nice gesture, but it wouldn’t have the impact of a nice, tangible gift. As we find ourselves on the First Sunday after Christmas Day, it’s good to reflect on the meaning of that event that brought all of our celebrations about. The Gospel that’s read on this day is the first 18 verses of the Gospel according to St. John, and its placement on this day is precisely for the purpose of reflection on the meaning of Christ’s birth. These verses have come to be known as the Prologue of John. John is seeking to answer the question, “Who is Jesus?” Before we examine what John says, I’d like for you to imagine what you would say if someone who knows absolutely nothing about Jesus were to ask you who he is. How would you respond? Some might say Jesus is the Son of God. I watched a television program in which Jesus was referred to by one of the characters as the Great Communicator. Some folks would say that Jesus was a great teacher or a great moral leader. Some would say he’s the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy concerning the awaited Messiah. The apostle and evangelist St. John, in beginning his account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, says he is the Word. Being familiar with the Hebrew scriptures, John starts his account of the Gospel in the same way that the book of Genesis starts: “In the beginning.” But John’s story of Jesus actually begins before creation, when nothing existed but God himself. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So, when John says, “In the beginning was the Word,” he’s speaking of much more than a mere utterance of speech; he’s speaking of God himself. John’s using a concept of the Word that was familiar to both the Jews and the Greeks of his time. For the Jew, a word was something in itself; it was an event, an action, and it had power. Genesis proclaims, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” Each part of creation came to be through God’s uttering a word. Words had a life of their own. When Isaac gave to Jacob his words of blessing, even when they were to the wrong person, the person not intended by Isaac to receive his blessing, they couldn’t be taken back. The event had happened through the utterance of words. The prophet Jeremiah records God’s words: “Is not my word like fire, and, says the Lord, like a hammer which breaks the rocks in pieces?” By around 100 B.C., because the name of God—Yahweh—was considered too holy to be said, whenever the scriptures were read in public, when the reader came to the name of God, he would substitute “Word” for Yahweh, and that practice was in use at the time John wrote his account of the Gospel. In calling the Word God, John is not doing anything surprising to the Jew of his day. Likewise, for the Greek, logos, which is the Greek word for word, means reason. It suggests the order that characterizes creation, and ultimately, it is the mind of God. And so, to the Greeks, for John to call logos God is no surprise. What is a surprise to both Jew and Greek is what John goes on to say, for he says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” This Jesus, who was born as a baby in Bethlehem, at a particular time in history, existed from before all time, and is God himself. We hear a lot about keeping the true meaning of Christmas, and this is what Christmas really means: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God taking flesh in a particular human being at a particular time in history has at least two profound theological implications. First, it means that God is intimately acquainted with human nature, from the inside. He knows what it is to be hungry, to be anxious, to be rejected, to be tempted. The incarnation shows us the extent of God’s love for us and the fact that there’s nothing that we experience that is beyond his compassion, his concern, his forgiveness. Jesus wasn’t born in a church and reared in a protected, insulated environment. He chose and continues to choose to be involved in every aspect of human life—our relationships, our businesses, the tough decisions we have to make. God isn’t aloof from life, but is intimately involved. And second, the incarnation gives to the Church the model for faith. We’re called not simply to think good thoughts, not just to say our prayers, as good as these things are, but to live out our faith in our deeds. And so we build hospitals to care for the sick, schools to educate the young. We hand out lunches to the hungry, build homes to help the poor break out of the cycle of poverty, provide counseling to troubled youth. Wherever there’s a human need, there’s the Church, incarnating our belief that God is intimately involved with our every need. That is the meaning of Christmas. So keep giving gifts at Christmas as tangible signs of your love for your family and friends, but don’t let it stop there. Let us make giving a way of life, modeling ourselves after the self-giving love of God, who became flesh and dwelt among us. The greens have been hung. The frontal has been changed. Flowers of red and white bloom from cold stone and dark wood.
And yet we wait. Advent may begin in the dark, with the thundering voice of John the Baptist ringing in our ears; but it ends in the light, with glad tidings lifting our hearts. Can you feel it? Anticipatory smiles are on our faces. Good humor is already tugging at our lips. We know what is coming in just a few short hours. The music, the cookies, the shrieks and squeals of delight (at least in my house): the gift of Christmas is about to be opened — because the baby is coming. He’s almost here; but this morning on the last Sunday of Advent, his mother is still in labor — though not as we might expect. For with the words “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” the pain of childbearing begins to fade, the sin of Eve begins to be redeemed, the curse itself begins to lift. Because Mary — our Mother, God’s Mother — bowed her head and with her whole being said, “May it be to me according to thy word.” Her “yes” was the beginning of it all, the beginning of the rebirth of everything — man, woman, child, bird, beast, rocks, trees — everything reborn in the birth of the Virgin’s Son. Mary couldn’t have known what would happen the day Gabriel appeared. She may have been sweeping the floor or doing dishes when suddenly an angel spoke. And he addressed her as one would a queen: “Hail! Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” And Mary, that righteous woman, fell on her knees, afraid — in awe — of what was about to be revealed. Her spirit was troubled. What could this greeting mean? And so she was silent. She waited, and she watched, and the peace of God which passes all understanding filled her heart and settled her mind and stilled her body. Because Mary knew God. She knew him. She knew that the Holy One of Israel Is Who He Is and Will Be Who He Will Be, never changing and always surprising us. And so it was that she believed that this Word she had been given was Good News. God is on the move. Messiah is coming. He is drawing near to save his people; but he comes not as a conquering king, approaching only as close to his servants as he could stand. He comes as a King who, setting aside his crown and taking off his royal robes, humbles himself until even the smallest, weakest child can behold him and know without a shadow of a doubt that this God-Man is Love. As the Apostle John put it so poignantly, the Word that was born of God before creation began, through whom all was made — He was born of Mary. God tabernacled among us, trading his glory and power for the helpless fragility of a baby in his mother’s womb. And Mary loved him for it, loved him as her God and as her very own Son. How could she stay silent any longer? “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed. The Almighty has done great things for me. And holy is his name!” The Blessed Virgin waits. Mother and child are about to meet. It is the quiet of the morning before the dawn of the last night — and we wait with her. Joyful. Expectant. Bearing Christ in our own way and in our own time. Praying with his Mother, our Mother, that the Child born in a manger might reign in our hearts — not just at Christmas, but always. AMEN. Christmas is a time when memories are made. For me, many of those memories have
to do with the Church. For as far back as I can remember, the bulk of my Christmases have been spent in church. Before I was a priest, I was in church choirs. Christmas for church choirs is a very busy and time-consuming holy day. For example, our parish choir sang for our four o’clock mass and now for our 11 o’clock mass, with rehearsals prior to the services. That was my experience, too, as I was growing up. So many of my Christmas memories are tied up with the music of Christmas. It’s so beautiful and heart-warming. The Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah is a favorite, especially “For Unto us a Child is Born” and, of course, the “Hallelujah Chorus.” But the music that’s most beloved are Christmas carols. Many of us learned those carols at an early age and we look forward to coming to church and singing them each year. Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without that beautiful tradition. When I was young I knew all the words to the carols, but I didn’t catch the subtleties that are so important to me today. Take for instance “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” written by Philips Brooks in 1868. Three years earlier he had traveled to the Holy Land and had seen Bethlehem and the place where it’s believed Jesus was born. When he returned to his home in Philadelphia the memory of Bethlehem stayed with him and inspired him to write his now famous hymn. As in so many of the hymns of the Church, there are at least two levels of meaning in the hymn. The first is literal and the second figurative. “Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light” recalls not only the dark streets of Bethlehem in the first century, but also the dark streets of Philadelphia in the 19 th century. How dark those streets were, as in every city in the United States at that time. The Civil War had only ended three years before. So many had been killed, the economy was in a shambles, places where the war had been fought were still having trouble getting back to normal. But he also knew that if his hymn happened to survive the test of time, those words would speak to every age. Those dark streets of Bethlehem are not so much a place as they are a condition of the soul. Those dark streets speak of a sense of isolation from God and one another and even from oneself; the dark streets are the wounds each one of us has that have left their scars, some still not even healed. Those dark streets speak of grudges still being held, consciences nagged by secret sins, selfishness and greed in the midst of hunger and want. Those dark streets are in New York and London and Moscow and Kyiv and Champaign, and every place where human beings are found, because those dark streets are in the human heart. It is into those dark streets that Jesus, the everlasting Light, wants to shine. Just as that Light shone on the streets of Bethlehem, so he continues to shine in our day, “where meek souls will receive him.” I see that Light in the lives of the people of this parish and I’m inspired by your witness. The famous preacher, Fred Craddock, who died in 2015, tells the story of a missionary sent to preach the Gospel in India toward the end of World War II. After many months the time came for him to return home for a furlough. His church wired money for him to book passage on a steamer; but when he got to the port city, he discovered that a boatload of Jews had just been allowed to land temporarily. These were the days when European Jews were sailing all over the world, literally looking for a place to live. These particular Jews were now staying in attics and warehouses and basements all over that port city. It happened to be Christmas, and on Christmas morning, this missionary went to one of the attics where scores of Jews were staying. He walked in and said, “Merry Christmas.” The people looked at him as if he were crazy and responded, “We’re Jews.” “I know that,” said the missionary. “What would you like for Christmas?” In utter amazement, the Jews responded, “Why, we’d like pastries, good pastries, like the ones we used to have in Germany.” So the missionary went out and used the money for his ticket home to buy pastries for all the Jews he could find staying in the port. Of course, then he had to wire home asking for more money to book his passage back to the States. As you might expect, his superiors wired back asking what had happened to the money they’d already sent. He wired that he had used it to buy Christmas pastries for some Jews. His superiors wired back, “Why did you do that? They don’t even believe in Jesus.” He wired in return: “Yes, but I do.” The dark streets in that very dark time had a Light shine in them that night, for Jesus Christ came to that little community of Jews through that missionary. Each one of us is called to bring the Light to those in our families, our workplaces, our clubs, our schools. The people with whom we associate may not be Christian, but we are, and that means that Jesus can be present wherever we happen to be. O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel. “Who are you?” they asked. “Who are you? The Messiah? Elijah? Tell us. We must know.” In the Greek text of our gospel lesson today, the urgency in the priests’ and levites’ voices is unmistakable. A man has come, from the wilderness, from who knows where, and he is preaching, proclaiming a message that sounds different than anything the Jewish people in those days could remember hearing. This man in his hair shirt and his leather belt, beard unkempt and voice blasting, sounded like a prophet — but a prophet from another time and another place. He spoke like Moses. He spoke like Elijah. “Who are you?” they asked him. “We must know. Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
And John said: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” St. John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, knew who he was. And who he wasn’t. He knew it was his role, his purpose to step out in front of the Messiah, proclaiming that his advent was at hand. And then he would fade away, his job done. Which is what happened. Imprisoned by an angry king, John was killed. Beheaded. John once said that “I must decrease, so that he, so that Christ, can increase.” And that happened. Literally. John the Baptist has always been a formidable figure, defying easy categorization, offending just about everyone. Like the season of Advent, in which he features so prominently, this last prophet of the Old Covenant straddles two worlds and two times at once. It’s really no wonder he’s grouchy. All jokes aside, his intensity, though off-putting, is right on the mark. St. John the Baptist understands like no one else did or does what was about to happen not simply in Judea during the 1st century AD but in all places and for all times. God himself was coming, coming to save his people, to save his creation. “Make straight the way of the LORD.” On this third Sunday in Advent, we cannot forget that imperative. The voice of the one crying out in the wilderness won’t let us. His words echo throughout our music and in our liturgy. Even the collect for today is on John’s side: “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; for we are sorely hindered by our sins.” But what does that mean? As we’ve heard this week and last, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And hundreds, thousands of people from the whole Judean countryside and all of Jerusalem came running and were baptized, confessing their sins — a scene that never seems to make it onto any Advent calendars. Perhaps because such a spectacle can’t really be called festive. If there’s anything more discomfiting than talking about John the Baptist, it’s that s-word, “sin,” which if we were to poll most people would be one of the topics that is strictly off-the-table for holiday gatherings. Sin is not the stuff of polite conversation. And yet we keep hearing about it. John the Baptist keeps talking about it — for a reason. He knows what is at stake. He knows that it is for our good, for the well-being of our souls, to reckon with the fact we still need rescuing, because Sin — with a capital “S” — is still among us. And by that I don’t mean that we’re all terrible people who should do more to feel bad about how bad we are. Sin isn’t just about the misdeed, the white lie, the one-too-many drinks. Sin is a power. An adversary we’ve all met, whether in the tragedy of a loved one’s death or in the never-ending medical bills that accompany chronic illness or in the sudden rush of irrational anger or the surge of irrepressible fear that plague us when we’re driving to work or failing to sleep at night. That is Sin. It is alienation from God. It is a negating force that works its way through families, cities, and nations, breaking and brawling until we’re afraid that everything will go to ruin. We shouldn’t be surprised that our culture’s Christmas season has become so long and so extravagant — because Sin and all that accompanies it is so clearly visible: on TV, online, on our phones. We never seem to get a break from bad news. And we are all desperate for relief. We are all hungry for love. We are all longing for good news. And we don’t want those things to be a nostalgia-fueled dream we live for a few months out of the year. We want to possess the reality. Which we already do. The LORD has done great things for us, and we are glad indeed. In the paradox of our life in Christ, which is the paradox Advent puts on full display, we are reminded in no uncertain terms that happiness is not found under a Christmas tree. Happiness, true happiness, is found at the foot of the cross. And that, contradictory as it sounds, is the Gospel, the good news, the cry of victory, that still applies to us. For we are sorely hindered by the sorrow and the sickness in our world and in our hearts; and yet there is One who is not. There is One who has triumphed over all the forces of darkness, who willingly, actively accepted the worst the world could give so that he might deliver his beloved from Sin and Death and clothe her with the garlands and the jewels of holiness. From slavery to salvation. Christ would do, he does do the same for us, coming daily, hourly, moment-by-moment to strengthen and transform his bride. And that is not just a hope. Not just a figment of our imagination. That’s real. It’s our reality. Someone who loves us, who knows us, who promised not to leave us, is working for our good at all times. He is there, even now knocking on the door of our hearts, saying “The LORD has sent me to bring good news to you.” Christ has come. His Advent is at hand, and he has been sent by the Father to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, to comfort all who mourn — and not just that, but to build us up and send us out, so that the ruined might raise up the ruins and the devastated build back the former devastations, until paradise begins to take hold now. But how? And where? And why? Those are Advent questions, the questions that characterize a Christian life, which is one of learning to see Christ and then walking straight toward him. That posture, that watchfulness and wakefulness, will change us, will make us the kind of people who look for the light in every eye, for the good in everything, who thereby find Jesus and follow him wherever he might take us. As St. John the Baptist prays, so do we: That we might become less and less and Christ become more and more. For He alone is our Hope. He alone is our Love. He alone is our Joy. “May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.” AMEN. Gazing out over the walls of Jerusalem, you would have thought that all was well. The King in those days, Hezekiah, had recovered, miraculously, from a terrible illness. And, on top of that, he had stopped Babylon, that insatiable empire, from destroying the last vestige of Solomon’s once-glorious kingdom. There was peace in Judea. Peace in a world at war. The end they all feared — from the kids playing ball to the elders sitting in the gate — had not come. Yet. “Hear the Word of the LORD of hosts,” the Prophet Isaiah said. “The day is coming, O King, when all that is in your house will be taken to Babylon. Even your own children will be taken there and serve in its courts.” And Hezekiah, thinking that there would be peace and security in his day, said, “The Word of the Lord that you have spoken is good.”
When the Prophet Isaiah recorded the exchange I’ve just mentioned, when he wrote that familiar cry in today’s OT lesson, Jerusalem was on the edge of disaster. The tension was palpable. Smoke rose from ruined cities to the North and to the East and to the South. Everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before Babylon came knocking on Jerusalem’s door. It didn’t matter what Hezekiah thought he heard. The time for intervention was up and the time Jerusalem’s reckoning was at hand. There was little they could do but wait. There was little they could do but lament the failure of their leaders and regret the idolatry, the faithlessness that had brought them to this point. And there was little they could do but hope — for it was at that time that God said, “I am coming.” During the season of Advent, we, too, walk that fine line between despair and hope, between the already and the not yet, between darkness of Sin and the light of salvation. During the season of Advent, we, too, feel that holy dissatisfaction with a world that is so out-of-step with the pain all around us. During the season of Advent, we, too, are the people of Israel, who wait for a miracle. Who wait for Someone to come and save us. But during this season of Advent in particular, that feeling is stronger than it has been in years — because we can’t forget that we need saving. Smoke rises from almost every corner of the globe. The poor are oppressed. The widow and the orphan go hungry. And the last vestige of virtue and civility, the foundation of our society, is crumbling away. Has crumbled away. To quote a Chinese curse I’m sure you’ve all heard, We live in interesting times. And we would like very much to have it any other way. But the strength of our wishing doesn’t accomplish much. Like the people of Jerusalem, we watch as the end of something — whether the precarious post-Cold War peace, or the power and prestige of our own nation, or the blessings of modernity that we’ve long taken for granted — begins to wither away. Everyone knows we’re close to something dark and dangerous. And it doesn’t matter how much Christmas music is piped into every grocery store in town, we can’t drown out the silent scream of a people who can no longer see the humanity in each other for the fear and anger in their eyes. Possessed by worry, hardened by hate, we all, every one of us — yes, us here, too — are in danger of losing our way, of losing our life, not to a literal physical death but to unreality. To non-being. To evil. Babylon is still among us, prowling around like a hungry lion, longing to devour the people of God. She knows we are weak. She knows we are vulnerable. But that is precisely where our strength lies. We never could live life on our own. We never could fight our battles like the last survivor in a sea of enemies. We never could find recovery or reach the good without Someone else’s help. And we never needed to. The battle is over. The strife is ended. Although we so often live like war is raging around us, it is in fact finished. Darkness once covered our eyes, ice enclosed our hearts, and we did not know it. We lived as though asleep, asleep to the glory and the grandeur and the grace that is all around us. And yet Someone has been fighting on our behalf. Someone has been laboring for us, never ceasing to seek out and save the lost. No matter what condition we might be in. Our Savior doesn’t wait. He doesn’t wait until all is well to make his Advent among us. He doesn’t wait until we are fit for his presence. He comes. He comes now. And that is the beginning of the Gospel. The voice of one is crying in the desert: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” He is on the way. When our leaders have failed us, when doom is imminent, when all hope seems lost, God speaks — to our hearts. “Comfort, comfort my people.” Undeterred by the ruin, unafraid of the flames, unashamed of our faithlessness, Christ comes. Gaze fixed, heart sure, hands steady. He comes with might. He rules with strength. He would stretch out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that every one might come within the reach of his saving embrace. Our Lord would gather us up, each one of us, with the tenderness of a shepherd with a lamb, with the tenderness of a mother with her newborn child. He gathers up the lame and the leper, the weak and the wounded and loves us back to life again. His Advent is at hand. Not only at the end of time when he comes to judge the quick and the dead; not only in the manger where the one through whom all was made makes all things new, as he cries for his mother; but now. He comes now — into the wilderness of our hearts. He would raise the valleys and lower the mountains and dwell with those who need him, who have seen in their own selves their need for a Savior, and who are looking for him — only to find he’s been there all along. As the psalmist said, God’s salvation is near to those who fear him — on our lips and in our hearts, speaking peace to a people who can hear that we are all poor in spirit, dry and dead without the living water of Christ to cleanse us and nourish us and lift our gaze once more toward the world where Christ is all in all, where his footsteps are there for us to follow. “Comfort, comfort my people, says the LORD. I AM coming.” AMEN. We have come to this marvelous season called Advent. Here in the church, the signs of Advent are unmistakable. The liturgical color is a rich purple, the flower arrangements are more subdued, we began with the Decalogue and a prayer of confession, the hymns and other music speak about expectantly awaiting the coming of Christ, and, of course, the Advent wreath is in place with only one candle lighted on this first Sunday.
Advent is a first cousin of Lent; it's penitential but not as penitential as Lent. Unlike Lent, it has no prescribed fast days, but abstinence is encouraged, especially on the Fridays of Advent. It follows the ancient custom of providing the Church with a season of penitence before the celebration of a great feast, in this case, the Feast of Christmas. The biggest difference between Advent and Lent, however, is that Lent is not controversial, but Advent is. And it all has to do with how Christmas is celebrated. In our culture, we are now fully in the Christmas season. Shops and malls, neighborhoods, many homes, even of Christians, are decked out with Christmas trees, beautiful lights, and all other kinds of decorations. Christmas programming and advertising are ubiquitous on the television and radio. Such will be the case through the 25th of December, and then all of it will disappear and Christmas music will be heard no more until next year. The only place you currently don't see Christmas decorations and hear Christmas carols playing in the background is the Church. If you weren't accustomed to the tradition of Advent and came into the church for worship on any Sunday of the season, you might even be irritated that this is the one place where the birth of Christ is not being observed! You might even be a little indignant! "What kind of a church is this?!" you might exclaim. Even some Episcopalians think that the penitential emphasis of Advent is inappropriate and they refer to this traditional understanding as Sadvent, whereas they would observe Gladvent! The fact of the matter is that the Church is obviously not going to change the culture in which we live so that everybody observes Advent, and Christmas begins on the 25th of December and ends on the Feast of the Epiphany, 6 January. Likewise, the culture is not going to change how the Church observes Advent. And we are a part of the Church as well as a part of the culture, so during this period before the 25th of December we Episcopalians lead a kind of split-personality, schizophrenic life. And I think that's probably the best we can do. Yes, if we tried hard enough, we really could decide that we’re not going to participate in any Christmas activities between now and the 25th of December. We could choose not to accept any party invitations and we could refuse to give gifts or accept gifts until the appointed time. When people wish us a Merry Christmas during Advent we could give them a disapproving look and wish them a blessed Advent. Another way of dealing with the incongruity of this time of year is simply to accept the fact that worship in the Church emphasizes something entirely different from what's going on elsewhere and that we just forget about the meaning of the Advent season in the rest of our lives. I don't recommend either of these approaches during the season of Advent. The better choice is truly to be schizophrenic about the season! We can engage in what the culture does at this time of year, but also incorporate the things of Advent into our daily lives. Advent devotionals at meal times are a wonderful way to do that, using an Advent wreath, which is also a visible sign of the season. Heed St. Paul's warning, incorporated into today’s Collect, "to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light." Think about making a sacramental confession, or at least take time to confess your sins in the privacy of your own home. What works of darkness are still a part of your life? Confess those works of darkness, ask for God's forgiveness, and replace them with the things of faith. This Advent write a letter or send a card to someone who is lonely; incorporate more prayer into the midst of your day, not long periods of prayer but short prayers of thanksgiving, calling to mind that Jesus is present in your life and you in his. Finally, when Christmas really does come, keep it for a whole 12 days. Make your family celebration of the Christmas season truly a joyful proclamation of the incarnation. Do you believe Jesus is coming today? He may! He tells us, “Watch, therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning---lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.” Enter into the mystery of Advent, and you and I will be ready when he comes. Several years ago I sent my then First Assistant Priest, Fr. Charleston Wilson, who is now the Rector of my former parish, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I wanted him to go because it enriches one’s ministry in countless ways. I have been blessed to go several times, taking a group of pilgrims each time.
When Fr. Charleston got back, he told me that a question he asked a Hasidic Jew was whether they have Jews from the Reform tradition of Judaism in Israel. Hasidic Jews are orthodox Jews to the Nth degree. The Hasidic Jew’s dismissive reply was, “Reform Jews are of no consequence. You know, they’re kind of like Episcopalians in the Christian faith. They don’t believe anything.” Of course, he didn’t know he was talking to an Episcopalian. What an inaccurate picture of Episcopalians he had! Or did he? I cringe inside when someone calls us “Catholic Lite.” “Lite” is good when referring to calories; when speaking of our faith it’s a terrible indictment. This is the last Sunday of the Church Year. On this day, the year comes to a dramatic close as we celebrate Christ as King. King of what? King of Christians? King of heaven? King of creation?—King of all that is or ever will be, King of the universe. King of kings and Lord of lords. I can’t ever hear that verse from Revelation without thinking of Handel’s immortal setting of that text: King of kings and Lord of lords. The designation of Christ as King is a curious one for us Americans. Our picture of kings is not altogether flattering. One might even say that we have an innate distrust of kings. While we enjoy watching the royal family in England, a monarchy in America is unthinkable. Thomas Jefferson said of monarchy, “There’s not a single crowned head in Europe whose talents or merits would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the people of any parish in America.” Jefferson was speaking of Episcopalians, by the way! Mark Twain expressed American distrust of monarchy even more concisely in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: “All kings is mostly rapscallions.” But the real problem lies not in the concept of kingship, but in the inability of most kings to be what a king should be. To quote another famous American, William Penn, “Kings…should imitate God; their mercy should be above all their works.” God is the model for kings, and Christ is King of kings. In the today’s Gospel we have a vision of Christ coming in glory at the end of time. He’s seated on a glorious throne, surrounded by throngs of angels, and all people from throughout the ages, from every nation on earth, are gathered before him. It’s Judgment Day. He separates them into two groups, the sheep and the goats, the sheep destined for heaven, and the goats destined for everlasting punishment. Every time we say the Nicene Creed, we say Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. Yet this picture of the King Jesus as a stern judge, actually sending some people to eternal punishment is unsettling. We want the Jesus who’s merciful, infinitely loving and forgiving. This picture of Jesus shows a point of no return, that what we do here on earth matters eternally. What’s the criterion for deciding whether one is a sheep or a goat? The showing of mercy to those who come to us in need. Not only that, Jesus tells us that in showing mercy to the needy we’re actually showing mercy to him; and in withholding mercy to the needy, we withhold mercy to him. Even as you feed the least of the hungry, give drink to the least of the thirsty, visit the lowliest of prisoners, you’ve done it to Jesus. It seems so simple. Our eternal destiny rests on such a simple thing. We’ve experienced mercy ourselves—our sins have been forgiven through the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross. St. Paul states that “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We have accepted him as Savior and Lord. Now we must live our lives with mercy as our prime directive. Our lives are to show the love of Christ, and as we show that love of Christ we actually meet him. St. Francis of Assisi was riding his horse on his way home one day. Struggling with God and the call on his life, yet still enjoying the benefits of being a rich man’s son, he felt his horse shy under him. He looked up to see the most feared sight in the 12th century world—a leper. Fighting down his fear and loathing, Francis dismounted, went to the leper, and put some money in his hand. Then, impelled by what he regarded as the unseen power of Christ, he took the leper’s hand and kissed it, putting his lips to the leper’s rotting flesh. The leper took hold of him and gave him the kiss of peace in return. Francis reciprocated, then got back on his horse and rode home. From that day he began to visit the lepers, bringing them gifts and kissing their hands. In his will, Francis wrote, “The Lord led me among them, and I showed mercy to them, and when I left them, what had seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness of body and soul. As this Christian Year comes to a close, we do well to reflect on what we mean when we call Christ King. Let this part of the Episcopal Church, the only part that we can really influence, be known for our great faithfulness, our devotion to following our Lord Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords, our generosity to the mission of Christ in this place, and our devotion to serving the poor. When I was a child we sang a song in Sunday School that went like this: “Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning, burning, burning. Give me oil in my lamp, I pray. Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning, burning, burning, keep me burning to the break of day.”
That song refers to the parable of the wise and foolish maidens, which we just heard in today’s Gospel. Weddings in the days when Jesus walked the earth lasted an entire week. All regular activities were suspended. Religious obligations were dispensed with by law. It was to be a celebration from start to finish. The highlight of the week was when the bridegroom went to the home of the bride and took her in procession to his home. No one knew when he would come. It was always at night, and he’d try to arrive after the bride and her ten bridesmaids had gone to sleep. So the groom would make his surprise arrival, wake up the ladies in the middle of the night, and they’d make their way to the bridegroom’s house, lighting the way with their lamps. Once they had arrived, they would go into the house and have more partying. The doors would be closed and barred so that beggars and thieves couldn’t get in. Wouldn’t it have been fun to attend a wedding like that?! Jesus was comparing life with him with a wedding. He’s the bridegroom; the Church is the bride. We’re the ones who are at the celebration. Is Jesus implying that if you’re a part of the Church life is one big party? I don’t think that’s his point. I do believe that he’s saying that no matter what’s going on in your life, if you’re living in him and with him you’ll have a kind of joy that cannot be extinguished. Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Robert Louis Stevenson had it right when he said, “To miss the joy is to miss all.” That applies whether we’re talking about experiencing the birth of your first child, or a baptism, or the first day of school, or, of course, a wedding; whether we’re speaking of a serious illness, or losing a job, or experiencing the failure of a marriage. It applies even when we go through the valley of the shadow of death. No matter what, good or bad, happy or sad, Jesus wants to be present with us and in us to give us greater understanding, to guide us, to comfort and console us. As is his custom, though, Jesus puts a twist into the parable that’s uncomfortable. When the bridegroom arrives, unexpectedly, five of the bridesmaids’ lamps have gone out because they didn’t bring extra oil. They try to borrow some from the wise maidens who had prepared, but they don’t have enough for themselves and for others. So the five foolish maidens go out to buy more oil. By the time they arrive at the groom’s house the door has been shut and barred and they can’t get in. You may be a part of the Church, a believer in Christ, a part of the wedding party, yet find yourself outside, wanting to get in but unable to do so. Tennyson, in “The Idylls of the King,” captures this moment in life poignantly: Late, late, so late! And dark the night and chill! Late, late, so late! But we can enter still. Too late, too late! Ye cannot enter now. No light had we: for this we do repent; And learning this, the bridegroom will relent. Too late, too late! Ye cannot enter now. No light: So late! And dark and chill the night! Too late, too late! Ye cannot enter now. Have we not heard the bridegroom is so sweet? O let us in, tho’ late, to kiss his feet! No, no, too late! Ye cannot enter now. Our faith is that Jesus will come again, at the end of time, to judge the living and the dead. But that’s not the only time Jesus will come. He comes at unexpected times as well. He wants to be with us in our day to day activities. He wants to be able to help us through the crises of our life. Yet for him to be able to do that, we must prepare a place for him in our hearts. As Phillips Brooks said, “Where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.” In other words, we need oil in our lamps for the light of Christ to burn within us. If we’re going to be prepared for him when he comes again in glory, we need to be prepared for him in the ordinary and extraordinary times in our lives. How do we prepare? Receive Holy Communion. Read, mark, and learn Holy Scripture. Regularly examine your life and make your confession. Give generously of your time, talent, and treasure for God’s work. These things are oil for our lamps and prepare us for the coming of the Bridegroom. The whole point of the parable is that it’s not yet too late for us. Will you be prepared when the Bridegroom comes? When he does, we want to be able to sing Hosanna at that time. Remember how the song ends? “Sing, Hosanna, sing, Hosanna, sing Hosanna to the King of kings. Sing, Hosanna, sing Hosanna, sing Hosanna to the King.” Just as the days are getting shorter and the air is getting cooler, our world grows darker, human feeling grows colder, and people from every tribe, tongue, and nation brace themselves for whatever it is that will happen next.
At this time of year, we close our doors. Pull our blinds against the chill of autumn. The temptation is to do the same with our hearts. When history is unfolding at such a break-neck pace, how could we not? Humans are wired for survival. We excel at detecting threats. And now, they’re everywhere we look. After all, the war in the Gaza Strip, the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Myanmar, the battles stretching across Africa — they’re not simply overseas. Each one is playing out in our back pockets. And so it is that it’s that much more important, that much more providential that today, now, at the turn of the seasons, when the harvest is over and the plants have died, when sunlight is scarce and the winds of change drive us indoors, that the Church flips on the lights and cries with one voice, “Salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb.” Much as we might believe that what we see is all there is; much as we might fear that evil will triumph even if good wins, the reality of our life, of our world, of all history is summed up in the shout of the saints. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who have come before us, who stand even now in the throne room of God — and they will not let us forget the truth. The saints, our brothers and sisters in Christ, are people throughout the centuries who have shown us what it means to live a life totally devoted to Christ. The saints saw Empires rise and Empires fall. Some fought against heresy. Others fought against demons. But they all weathered the same catastrophes, the same hatreds, the same fears as we do today. Gathered at the tombs of the martyrs, the early Christians would meditate on their witness and come to believe that they, too, could persevere, even amidst great suffering. “If they can do it, so can I.” And so it has gone from person to person, saint to saint from the earliest days of the church until now. Whether a martyr of third century Rome or a wealthy merchant’s son of 12th century Italy or an expatriate nun in 20th century Paris, the diverse and different people of God speak as though with one voice. “Salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb.” These are the words the saints must cry, the witness they must give, the good news that bursts forth from them because they know with their whole being that the One who makes the hills to dance, who brings rain on the righteous and the unrighteous, who names the stars and knows each sparrow as it falls — He is the one to whom the worst has already happened and been repaired (St. Julian of Norwich), and he is beside us every step of the way . Salvation belongs to him. It is in God’s nature to save, to heal, to love past the point of death itself. In God alone is our hope — and we see that embodied, incarnate, in the communion of saints. When faced with famine, pestilence, war, and death, the saints knew that no one and nothing could offer them shelter but God. The things of this earth will always fail. Money can’t always buy us out of our troubles; family can’t always love us back. Power, passion, pleasure: They all pass away in the end. Only God remains and remains the same. And only he can give that which the world cannot take away. Dwelling within us, the Lord reworks our hearts and reshapes our wills, turning earthenware pots into precious vessels of His mercy and fine instruments of his peace, never doubting or departing from us as he removes the scales from our eyes. Step by step, moment by moment, the Lord works, and in the light of his presence, we see the truth (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross [Edith Stein]): God is everywhere we look, in all things and in every place. In the good and in the bad, in the garden and on the cross — we learn to see Christ in all that is (Alexander Schmemann). This is what the saints teach us. It’s how each one of them lived. And it is the wisdom we need so desperately today. Because anger and hatred and violence breed darkness; and in the fading light, the temptation to take the very weapons of our enemies and recast them as the sacred servants of justice is deeply attractive. Even the best people can be corrupted by the desire for vengeance. Even the holiest, in her own strength, can forget the image of God in her neighbor. The saints teach us to not be numbed or hardened by the cruelty we behold (Etty Hillesum) but to go on seeing, even if it causes us pain — because when forgiveness, when mercy, when love disappear, the best of the human dies, and what we are left with is weeping and the gnashing of teeth. The saints knew this. They knew, more than most, the depths to which humankind can sink — but nevertheless be redeemed. Holiness does not mean perfection. It means becoming whole. Holiness is a process. A path. A long obedience in the same direction (Eugene Peterson). When we follow our Lord on his way, we dare to risk our life — which doesn’t usually happen in an arena, surrounded by wild beasts, but in the hidden, secret death of dying to our own desires, deliberately sacrificing our own ego, for the sake of Christ and our neighbor. And yet, in losing our life, we shall find it. Paradoxical as it may sound, what we learn from our teachers the saints is what Jesus was saying all along: We must hate the world so that God can teach us to love it aright (St. Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia). This is the constant conversion our lives in Christ will take: Turning, always turning, away from the things of this world toward the love that knows no end, the foolish love of God (St. Nicholas Cabasilas), that changes the world by changing us. Even the smallest among us — the youngest in terms of age or in terms of faith — can do this good work. Take courage, the saints say, for the most insignificant act done in pure love makes visible the grace of God (St. John of the Cross and Brother Lawrence). That witness to the truth makes present the One who holds us in his hand, who has promised to bring great good even out of great evil, and who has done it in the resurrection of his Son. To act in such a way may smart from time to time. It may cost us our pride or our self-righteousness, but what we gain vastly outweighs whatever we lose; for with every act of love, with every step on the path of life we come more fully awake to the fact that we live and move and breath in a world charged with the grandeur of God (Gerard Manley Hopkins). We walk amongst a great cloud of witnesses, who sing with endless praise, who know the truth and that truth has set them free, to take what they were given — the good and the bad — and give it back to God with thanksgiving for this miracle that is life now. Even now, when the world is dark, when the days are short. God speaks in his Word and in his saints. He calls us to persevere in our faith, to imitate the ones who came before us, who are praying for us that we might see what they see and taste what they taste — for they know that all things pass away; God never changes (St. Teresa of Ávila). And those who have God lack nothing because Christ is everything: Joy and life and light, transforming every moment of every day into a foretaste of his kingdom (St. Porphyrios Kafsokalyvia and Alexander Men). This is ours, even now, as we open our hands to pick up our cross and join the great crowd, the numerous throng, in singing “Salvation belongs to God and to the Lamb.” Despite what the world might say and what we might fear, it is finished. Truly, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” (St. Julian of Norwich) for those who cling to Christ. AMEN. We’ve come to that time when we’re asking for your pledges for the coming year so that your Vestry knows how to budget for next year. So, this is my opportunity to talk about my favorite topic and yours! I say that it’s my favorite topic and yours with tongue in cheek, for after talking about stewardship for the 41 years I’ve been a priest, I know fully well how a sermon on stewardship is viewed by the average person in the pew.
I’ve had people say to me things like this: “I invited my friend to come to church with me today, but if I had known you were going to talk about money, I wouldn’t have done that.” My answer to that is, “That’s why I didn’t tell you I was going to talk about money. I wouldn’t want you not to bring your friend to church.” Or there’s this one: “All the church ever talks about is money!” My answer to that is, “Not so!” Or this: “You shouldn’t ask people to pledge. You should live on what people put in the plate and let it go at that.” My answer to that is, “How would they know what they should put in the plate if you never talk about it?” And then there’s this one: “When I come to church, I want to hear about Jesus, not about money.” Well, I’m glad you said that. Jesus talked a great deal about money. He used it to teach about the kingdom of God, as in the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price and the Parable of the Lost Coin. In fact, 16 of the 38 parables deal with money and stewardship. He warned us that money could be a barrier to our salvation. For example, he taught us that where our treasure is, there will our heart be also. He actually told one rich young man that for the good of his soul he needed to sell all of his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor. Jesus realized that young man couldn’t love God and his neighbor with all of his heart, mind, and soul because he loved money too much. And Jesus lifted up as a virtuous example the widow who gave all that she had to the temple treasury. Jesus talked a lot about money. Why? Because money is one of the most powerful forces in life. We all know it’s power. We know the stress produced when there isn’t enough of it, and for some persons there’s never enough. It can ruin friendships and marriages; it can destroy trust; it can become more important than anything else in a person’s life. It’s so crucial to life that three of the 10 Commandments deal with it, including the first and the last. While there’s much negative power in money, it’s also a powerful force for good. It builds churches, hospitals, and schools; it enables the creation of great works of art and music. Linda and I watched the Ohio State /Wisconsin football game last night. Go Buckeyes! What would college football be without a strong financial foundation? Money helps those who are called to spread the good news of salvation; and, not to be overlooked, it has enabled the ministry that goes on in and through Emmanuel Memorial for over 145 years, where the sacraments have been administered, the Word of God taught and proclaimed, the sick and shut-in visited, and the poor given relief. It’s this work that makes it necessary to have a pledge drive, but if we didn’t need to have a pledge drive, if all of our financial needs were met, we still should talk about money, because how we deal with this powerful force in life affects our relationship with God. If we don’t deal with it properly it can be a barrier to our relationship with God and, therefore, to our salvation. Our stewardship theme this year is “Take the Next Faithful Step.” I love that slogan because it speaks to us no matter where we are in our spiritual journey. We’re not told what the “next step” is, because the next step is different for every individual. It depends upon the place from which you’re starting. “Take the next step” challenges each of us to progress in his or her stewardship of the gifts God has given us. Only you can decide what that next step is in terms of your pledge. Is it to work closer to a tithe of your income? Is it to exceed a tithe? Perhaps it’s simply to make a pledge for the first time. Prayerfully consider what the next step is for you, and may it truly be a step that brings you closer to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We’re here today to receive what our Lord Jesus wants to give us, and that is himself, in his Body and Blood. Yet, he wants to give us himself so that we, in turn, may give ourselves to others, through the giving of our time, talent, and treasure. As one of our hymns puts it beautifully: “To give and give, and give again, what God hath given thee; to spend thyself nor count the cost; to serve right gloriously the God who gave all worlds that are, and all that are to be.” Take the next faithful step. Sermon preached by the Rev’d Dr. Fredrick A. Robinson Emmanuel Memorial Episcopal Church Champaign, Illinois 22nd Sunday after Pentecost 29 October 2023 One Sunday a priest told his congregation that the church needed some extra money and asked the people prayerfully to consider putting a little extra in the offering plate. He said that whoever gave the most would be able to pick out three hymns.
After the offering plates were passed, the priest glanced down and noticed that someone had placed a $1,000 bill in the offering. He was so excited that he immediately shared his joy with the congregation and said he'd like personally to thank the person who placed the money in the plate. An elderly lady all the way in the back shyly raised her hand. The priest asked her to come to the front. Slowly she made her way to the front. He told her how wonderful it was that she gave so much and in thanksgiving asked her to pick out three hymns. Her eyes brightened as she looked over the congregation, pointed to the three most handsome men in the building and said, "I'll take him and him and him!" We’re soon going to start our stewardship drive and I thought that might be a good way to begin! Today’s Gospel is about money, too. The religious leaders don’t like Jesus. He has been repeatedly critical of them. He chooses to keep the company of sinners while rejecting them. His popularity among the Jewish people is increasing. The Jewish leaders see him as a threat and they are plotting among themselves how best to neutralize his popularity and influence, and if possible, they’d like to get him in trouble with the Roman authorities. So they ask him a question, calculated to evoke an answer that would be a problem for Jesus, no matter how he answered. The question is: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” If he answers, “Yes, it is lawful,” he’ll make his Jewish followers mad, for they hate paying taxes to Caesar, not only because people in every age in every country don’t like to pay taxes, but because it was against their religious sensitivities for a variety of reasons. On the other hand, if he says, “No, it’s not lawful,” then the Herodians and their sympathizers, who like the benefits that came from being a part of the Roman Empire, will be turned against him. Besides, then he could be turned over to the Roman authorities as a troublemaker. It was a clever question. Some of the best minds in Israel at the time had come up with it. But, in addition to being a very spiritual man, Jesus is also smart and clever himself. He turns the tables on them. He asks for a coin, and they give him one. In doing just that, they are entrapping themselves, for in possessing a Roman coin, which was the property of the Roman government, they could hardly object to giving some of it back. Then he gives his answer: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God, the things that are God’s.” So Jesus answers the question not by a simple yes or no, but in such a way that they have to come up with the answer themselves. He’s paid due respect to Caesar, but no more than necessary, and he’s kept the faith with Judaism as well. Jesus’ answer is very satisfying to Jewish teaching. Why is that, while at the same time it’s not really an answer at all? Because everything ultimately belongs to God, even taxes paid to Caesar. The religious leaders knew that. In fact, every good Jew knew that, and springing from that tradition, we know that, too. “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.” We remember the exchange between Jesus and his detractors and we still marvel at his clever answer. But we shouldn’t stop there. We need to take to heart the basic truth which that answer recalls, especially as we approach our stewardship season. We need to remember that all that we have and all that we are comes from God, and that all that we have belongs to God, and we belong to him. We need to remember that God continues to sustain us and that he will provide for us. That’s why it is important that we remain faithful in giving back to God his due. We continue to be faithful in prayer and in reading of scripture. We continue to be faithful in attending mass. And we continue to share our time, our talent, and our treasure for the work of the Church and to help those who are in need. Have you ever thought about why we make such a big deal out of the offertory? Every Sunday the choir makes an offering of music, your gifts of money are ceremonially collected in beautiful, brass basins, and then with great solemnity, as the organ swells to the fullest, the gifts of money, bread, and wine are offered and placed on the altar. It’s not that the money, bread, and wine, are important in and of themselves. These substances represent our lives, and as they are placed upon the altar, they represent the offering of our lives upon that altar. By the time of the offertory, we have heard the word of God read and proclaimed, we’ve confessed our faith, prayed for the needs of others, confessed our sins and received absolution, and offered to one another signs of peace. All of that has led to the offering of our whole self, just as God transforms ordinary bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, so he can, and does, transform our ordinary lives into extraordinary lives, fitted for his service. We give to God from his bounty, but we can never outgive God, for what we give to him, he returns to us, transformed into even greater, more precious gifts. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Writing from a prison cell, the Apostle Paul assured his beloved brethren in Philippi that despite every indication to the contrary, there was no reason to fear. His imprisonment only served to further the gospel. His rivals, unwittingly, did the same. Paul’s hands were bound, but his spirits were free. You can hear it in his voice: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” After a week like this past one, when we’ve watched the body count grow, when we’ve found that old hatreds are alive and well, when we’ve seen with horrific detail the fact that there is no winner in total war, we hear this word. Rejoice. The Lord is near. Do not worry. Tell him what you need. He will protect you. This exhortation, this encouraging reminder, is important always; but now it is essential, especially when each morning we look at the news and expect to see something worse unfold. Worry stands to become our constant companion. How could it not, with this level of uncertainty. Despite the amount of information at our fingertips, we can’t know what will happen. Good outcomes, bad outcomes, miracles, disasters — hundreds of scenarios race through our minds, until we look up and realize that the day has gone or the night has passed, and nothing has changed for the better. Tired and confused, we buy an extra coffee and check our phones again, hoping to find something that will give us a sliver of peace, a moment of rest, but nothing seems to take the edge off for long. Rejoice. The Lord is near. Do not worry. Tell him what you need. He will protect you. When the Apostle Paul wrote to his church in Philippi, he knew that they were struggling. Their founder (St. Paul) was jailed. And when they sent a beloved member of the congregation to bring him aid, that man became terribly ill. The Philippian Christians thought he had died. And while they waited for news of his fate — and of Paul’s — the community was suddenly beset by people who contradicted everything they thought they knew about God and his Christ. Afraid and unhappy, the Philippian Christians began to argue with one another. Old friendships ended. New strife emerged. Their future looked bleak. So Paul told them to look at something else. It’s not for nothing that we tell our kids: Be careful little eyes what you see. That age-old wisdom dovetails with Paul’s concern. Where we bestow our attention will inevitably color our perception, which in turn, shapes our reality. Paul knew that if the Philippian Christians focused on their fears to the exclusion of all else, they would become that fear. If they focused on their anger, they would become that anger. Paul wanted his spiritual children to be free, to be people of faith, hope and love – regardless of circumstance. Earlier in his epistle, Paul writes this: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him . . . . that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” At times like these, when our world shakes and shakes us with it, when we can’t help but search desperately for any small measure of peace, the Apostle Paul reminds us of where to look: There is only one God who can make a table in the wilderness. Rejoice. The Lord is near. Do not worry. Tell him what you need. He will protect you. When we seek Christ, when we take hold of the gifts he has given us, we begin the lifelong process of learning to see with the eyes of faith. We begin to recognize that the peace we crave is there not because of how hard we’ve tried to find it, but because Christ is at hand. He is in our hearts and on our lips, and he gives generously to all who call on him. As we allow ourselves to dare to believe that what our Savior says is true — “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you” — that wholeness, that rest, that light everlasting will begin to shine in everything we see: in the sun rising and setting, in the faces of each stranger we meet, in the Bread and in the Wine and in the Word; until, our hearts re-tuned, our vision realigned, we wake up to the fact that the banquet has begun and that the king has called us friend and that the worry and the weeping and the gnashing of teeth fade away before the Lamb who was slain for our sake. Rejoice. The Lord is near. Do not worry. Tell him what you need. He will protect you. AMEN. In The Rapture of Canaan, by Sheri Reynolds, Leila was the matriarch of a large rural family. Her husband was not only patriarch, but also the leader of the church to which the family belonged, the Church of Fire and Brimstone and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind. He ruled with an iron hand, meting out reward and punishment as if from the hand of God, and his punishments were severe. He also regularly used his wife as an illustration of a sinner in his sermons, subjecting her to that humiliation in front of the whole family and community.
Leila, though not very pious, was always supportive of her husband, and really the truly religious one of the two. One day she was talking to her granddaughter Ninah: “Grudges are bad things, Ninah… There’s only so much room in one heart. You can fill it up with love, or you can fill it with resentment. But every bit of resentment you hold takes space away from the love. And the resentment don’t do no good no way, but look what love can do.” Forgiveness is at the heart of the Gospel. It’s the purpose of the coming of Christ. We’ve been baptized for the forgiveness of sins. Every celebration of the Holy Eucharist re-presents the sacrifice of Christ on the cross—for the forgiveness of our sins. Forgiveness is at the heart of the Gospel, and thus, the heart of our faith. Peter asks the question, “How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Poor Peter, wrong again! Jesus responds, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” That works out to 490 times, but he was really saying, “Your forgiveness must be boundless.” Peter wasn’t prepared for that answer and neither are we. Throughout my ministry I’ve known many people in many different circumstances. One of the great privileges and responsibilities of being a priest is that people trust me with the deep secrets of their hearts, the wounds that haven’t healed. One theme recurs again and again and again, and that’s the difficulty of forgiving someone who has truly hurt you. It’s relatively easy to forgive the small transgressions, but when you’re really deeply hurt, forgiveness is difficult. A lying friend, a cheating business partner, a child who continuously disappoints his parents, an unfaithful spouse—these are just a few of the wounds that are difficult to forgive. If there’s one thing that each of us understands, it’s when someone says to us, “So and so did such and such to me, and I’m having trouble forgiving.” Jesus knows how difficult it is for us to forgive, but he won’t let us off the hook. In fact, the hardest aspect of his teaching on forgiveness, which is found scattered throughout his teachings, is that God’s forgiveness of us depends upon our forgiveness of others. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.“ And there’s the parable in today’s Gospel, which gives the clearest reason behind our Lord’s teaching on forgiveness. A servant owed the king 10,000 talents. A talent was the equivalent of about 20 years’ wages. The king summoned the servant, and since he couldn’t pay such a debt, ordered that the servant be sold, along with his wife and his children, and all that he had, and the money given to the king. The servant begged for mercy, and the king simply forgave the debt. What unimaginable generosity! Then the servant came upon a fellow servant, who owed him 100 denarii. A denarius was a day laborer’s wage. In today’s figures at minimum wage, 100 denarii would be about the equivalent of $5000– not a small sum, but certainly a debt that could be paid overtime. His fellow servant fell down and begged him to have mercy, and give him some more time to pay his debt, but the man had him put in prison. He had been forgiven an amount that would run a small country, but he would not forgive a much more reasonable amount. The irony of the situation didn’t escape the king’s other subjects. Greatly distressed, they reported the incident to the king, who summoned the servant, and said, “You wicked servant. I forgave all that debt because you besought me, and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” Then he sent him to prison until he could pay off all his debt, which meant forever, for he could never begin to work off that debt in prison. The parable really is a metaphor in which the king stands for God, and the unmerciful servant, for any of us who chooses not to forgive. God has forgiven us, and continues to forgive us our countless transgressions of his law. We confess those transgressions generally at every Eucharist: “We have sinned against God in thought, word, and deed. We have not loved God with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” Again and again we accept God’s forgiveness. The parable asks us and the faithful of every generation, “How can you, who have been forgiven so much by your heavenly Father, have the audacity not to forgive anyone else for any transgression? It’s the height of ingratitude and hypocrisy. I once confessed to a close friend that I was having difficulty forgiving another friend who had deeply hurt me. My friend to whom I made the confession was surprised. She said, “How can you, a priest, indulge yourself in holding a grudge?” She continued, “You have no choice. If you’re going to be faithful, you have got to forgive. How can you choose not to forgive?” I felt duly chastised, but she was right, but not just because I am a priest, but because I am a Christian. Do you have a broken relationship in your life because you choose not to forgive? Don’t wait even one more day. Free yourself of that burden and accept our Lord’s teaching. Besides, as Leila so wisely put it, “Resentment don’t do no good, no way, but look what love can do.” If you look at it on paper, there is no reason why today shouldn’t be the very best time to be alive. We have more money, more medicine, and more information than ever before. Our lifespan is longer, our health better – we can even eat strawberries in the middle of August.
We live in a day and age that is rich, full of everything that you could ever possibly want. And yet, you don’t need to read the New York Times or possess a degree in sociology to know that beneath the facade of ease and happiness are the same fears and feelings that have accompanied humankind since the very beginning. We’ve just gotten better at hiding them — which only serves to intensify the pain when it comes. And it is coming. We don’t need a prophet to tell us that the next year will be a minefield. And we don’t need a historian to affirm that the last three have ushered in an age of uncertainty and instability the likes of which have not been seen in a generation. No one brave enough to really look at our society will like what they see. And though we hear that better education or better politicians or better social media will fix our problems, the reality is that nothing worldly will do. What we need is a miracle. What we need is a mystery. What we need is a mother. We need someone who can take us, fractious children that we are, and love us and lead us on to what is good and right and true. We need someone who will help us grow up, without giving up on us in the process. We need someone whose tenderness and compassion knows no bounds. We need a mother. But not just anyone will do. We need Mary, the Mother of Jesus, the Mother of God. The Blessed Virgin Mary has long been esteemed in the church catholic as worthy of the highest honor and praise — for through her, we have Christ. Through her flesh, God the Word took on flesh. This is no small thing; and she is no ordinary person. Mary birthed the Savior, nursed him, cared for him, raised him, and then walked with him as his disciple. She was at the wedding where he transformed water into wine. She was at the foot of the cross when he was crucified. She was on the mount when he ascended into heaven and with the Apostles when the Holy Spirit came down in tongues of fire. The story of Jesus is inseparable from the story of his Mother. She was there from the beginning to the very end. Her love never failing, her “yes” always constant. More than anyone, Mary accepted the will of God and dared to live within that, even when it felt like a sword to her spirit. Even when she watched her Son die. Through it all, Mary refused to let go of hope, for her whole life was alight with the knowledge of the One who brings life out of death and joy out of sorrow as surely as the flowers bloom and leaves unfurl each Spring. And so it is that the same song would always be hers, even when it hurt to sing: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. From this day, all generations will call me blessed. The Almighty has done great things for me, and Holy is his Name.” She sang with astonished joy at her Son’s conception. She sang through the tears at her Son’s death. The tone of her voice changed, but the truth did not, for God is always bringing up the lowly. He is always feeding the hungry. He is always ready to give in abundance to those who lack. And we see that born out again and again in the Blessed Virgin’s life: for the woman who was bereft is now the mother of many children. She is ours, and we are hers, just as surely as God is our Father. Now more than ever, when we feel the world pulling us apart, when we are afraid, when we are sorrowful, know that the Mother of our Lord loves you, is praying for you, is pointing you toward Him who is infinitely good. In her life and death, in her assumption into heaven, we receive so much hope: for she is there, even now, sitting beside her Son, never again to be parted. And she is praying that that end might be ours, too. AMEN. You’d think a person (who shall remain nameless) would learn to carry an umbrella, especially at this time of year, when the high temperatures clash with low pressure, and the cool breezes of autumn provoke the lazy heat of summer. You’d think that, having experienced sudden rain storms for almost three weeks in a row, this person would remember to always have an umbrella in the car. You would be wrong.
Perhaps you, unlike this person who shall remain nameless, would learn that a clear sky can’t promise you anything. But, unfortunately, in the case of this individual, that lesson has never sunk in. Which is why I’ve found myself standing in a parking lot with rain dripping off of my nose while wrestling two kids into their car seats — not once, not twice, but three times in a row. Are you like me? Maybe. Though I’d hazard a guess that we’ve all been that person who heads out the door unprepared for the storms that will cross our path. Such is the nature of our world: we can’t always be ready for everything we meet. We can’t always control the tempests that come our way — which puts us in the very same boat as Jesus’ disciples. For all they knew, this journey across the Sea of Galilee would be like any other, not smooth sailing, surely, but not this. This was different. The wind snapped at their hands, the rain stung their faces, and the waves rose higher and higher. Nothing but thin boards stood between them and the fathomless depths. Worse than all that, though, was the fear. The helplessness. No feat of strength could save them. No carefully constructed plan could rescue them. They were at the mercy of the elements, which did not know and did not care that 12 lives might end that night. Trapped aboard that fragile vessel, the disciples faced the heart-wrenching, gut-twisting fact of their own mortality. Of their own limits. Something we’ve all encountered in our own way and in our own time: you don’t have to be in the ocean to know what it feels like to drown. Maybe it was the difficult work conversation that drastically changed your career. Or maybe it was the same fight replaying night after night at home. Or maybe it was the doctor who couldn’t look you in the eye when he said there was nothing more to be done. The storm clouds gather, the temperature drops, and before we know it, the proverbial waters are up to our neck. What we wouldn’t give at those moments to run away, to escape the storms without, which are so often accompanied by the storms within; for the rain as it falls reveals much, much that we might otherwise be free to ignore. We may once have believed that our own strength or our own ingenuity or simply the sheer force of our will would see us through anything and everything. But at moments of crisis or at times when the burdens we bear just get to be too much, that illusion will be torn away, and we will see and we will feel how small and weak and helpless we are. “When evening came . . . the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them.” Broken open, we, like the disciples in that frail craft, close our eyes and bow our heads, waiting for the waves to descend, waiting for the sound of wood cracking and water rushing, followed by silence. But at that moment, Someone speaks. At that moment, Someone walks toward us, unhindered by the waves, unafraid of the storm, raising a hand, saying, “Be of good cheer, I AM.” When the winds blow and the fires rage, when the earth quakes and all you can see is how wrong everything has gone: Listen. Listen. God is there, the stillness the sign of his presence, his wholeness revealed in the nothingness, in the cry of our hearts, “Lord, save me!” Our Lord is always the same, always drawing near to the broken-hearted and the needy. Always ready to help those who call upon his name. For as we do so, as we tell his story, as we allow the Word of the Lord to dwell in us richly, we come to expect, to hope for our salvation, which is life with Christ now, union with him, rest in him, security in his love no matter what winds may blow. No one can prepare for all that is to come. No one, truly, can be ready for the trials and tribulations that will come our way — because we cannot know what the future holds. Ours is not the power to command the seas to still and the rains to cease. All we can do is look for the one who walks on the waters as though they were dry land. He is coming our way, even now. Even now, he is here, holding out his hand, ready to join you in the darkness or in the light of day, ready to bring you in safety ot the other side — for only he knows the way. When they stepped back into the boat, the winds ceased. The rain stopped. And the disciples looked at Jesus: “Surely, you are the Son of God.” AMEN. One day, Joe, Bob, and Dave were hiking in the wilderness when they came upon a large, raging, river. They needed to get to the other side, but had no idea how to do it.
Joe prayed to God, saying, "Please God, give me the strength to cross this river." Poof! God gave him big arms and strong legs. He was able to swim across the river in about two hours, although he almost drowned a couple of times. Seeing this, Dave prayed to God, saying, "Please God, give me the strength and the tools to cross this river." Poof! God gave him a rowboat and he was able to row across the river in about an hour, after almost capsizing the boat a couple of times. Bob had seen how this worked out for the other two, so he also prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the strength and the tools, and the intelligence, to cross this river." Poof! God turned him into a woman. She looked at the map, hiked upstream a couple of hundred yards, then walked across the bridge. I love hiking, but I I’ve never had an experience quite like that! When I’m out there in the beauty of creation, walking for miles, hour upon hour, it’s incredibly peaceful, and I find myself doing a lot of thinking and praying. I especially love hiking in the mountains, getting to the top, and walking along the ridges. I find that I do a great deal of praying when on a mountain. In encountering God on the mountain I’m in good company. On Mt. Horeb Moses encountered God in the burning bush that wasn’t consumed. Moses also went up on Mt. Sinai and spent forty days and forty nights. It was there that God gave him the Ten Commandments. Elijah went up on Mt. Horeb to encounter God. On Mt. Horeb Elijah didn’t hear God in the wind or in the earthquake or in the fire, but in a still, small voice. God said to Elijah, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He said, “I’ve been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the people of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with a sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life to take it away.” It was on that mountain that Elijah discerned what God wanted him to do. God calmed his fears, assured him that there were others who had not forsaken him, and gave him the direction he needed. Likewise, hundreds of years later our Lord took three of his disciples, Peter, James, and John, up on a mountain to pray. While Jesus was praying, those disciples witnessed Jesus with Moses, the Law-Giver, and Elijah, the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. Luke tells us that Moses and Elijah were speaking with Jesus about his impending suffering and death. This was truly an epiphany for Peter, James, and John. They knew Jesus was the Messiah. Peter had recently confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. What that meant exactly, no one knew at that time. Now Jesus is seen with the two greatest figures in the history of Israel, Moses and Elijah. Peter’s response was to make a memorial right there on the mountain. He proposed that they build three booths, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus. He most likely came up with that idea because of the Jewish festival of the Feast of Booths, or the Feast of Tabernacles, in which the Israelites commemorated annually the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai to Moses. But what was happening on this mountain was not the giving of a new law, but a much greater reality. And then they heard the voice of God: “This is my Son, my chosen; listen to him,” and when they heard that revelation, Moses and Elijah had disappeared. Only Jesus remained. What are the lessons for us of the Transfiguration? First, it was a revelation of Jesus as the Messiah, and so it calls for a response, not only from Peter, James, and John, but also from all who would come after them and hear of this theophany. Second, it’s another example of Jesus as a man of prayer. There’s no one closer to God than Jesus. In fact, he is God. Yet he needed prayer and regularly sought out times to be with his heavenly Father in prayer. Jesus sets the example for all of us to pray frequently and regularly. Third, prayer didn’t take the difficulties of this life away from Jesus. In fact, this event served as a preparation for the ordeal he was to face in his suffering and death. We often view prayer as an attempt to escape the difficulties we face, and sometimes God does give us that. But more often, prayer leads us to deeper levels of commitment, taking us into the fray, rather than out of it. You see, in prayer one of the things that happens is that we begin to see things from God’s point of view, rather than from our own. Are you having trouble in your marriage? Take it to God in prayer. But don’t think that God’s going to say, “If you’re having some problems, then you should get out of the marriage. After all, I want you to be happy.” Divorce is a very complex issue, and there are times when divorce is the lesser of two evils. But divorce is certainly not where God is going to begin. He’s much more likely to say, “Work at it. That’s what your vows are for. Remember, you said ‘For better, for worse.’” Jesus is revealed as God’s Son. He gives us the example of a life grounded in prayer, and just because we pray doesn’t mean life’s going to get easier. It might just get harder. God wants us to be happy, but true happiness can only come from living according to his will. When we do that, we experience that peace that passes understanding. You and I don’t have to go hiking up a mountain to meet God on the mountaintop. We’re on the mountaintop right now. He gives us this opportunity not only for our own good, but for the purpose of sending us into the world in witness to him. That may not always take us to comfortable places, but it will give us peace. One of the great blessings of being in ministry for my wife, Linda and me, is that we’ve lived in several different parts of the United States. When I was a Methodist minister, I had a parish in Jackson Center, Ohio. Once I became an Episcopalian, I served for a year at St. Boniface, Mequon, Wisconsin, as a Seminarian Assistant. After that year of seminary graduate work, I was a curate at Saint Mark’s Church in Arlington, Texas, and then later on the Rector of St. Andrew’s in Grand Prairie, Texas. After Grand Prairie, we went to Grace Church in Monroe, Louisiana, and after Monroe, we went to Sarasota, Florida, where I had my longest term as Rector, 26 years, at Church of the Redeemer. After I retired, I was Interim Rector of St. John’s Church in Tampa. And now, of course, we are at Emmanuel Memorial, where I am once again the Interim Rector.
We have loved every parish, and every parish was different in one way or another. Each of the parishes has been relatively “high“ liturgically, and each of them was a little higher after I got there! And each of them were fairly social places. They loved the worship of the church, but they also loved getting together and enjoying a good meal and socializing. People tell me I have a fairly healthy appetite, some might even say robust. I’m glad I do, because that makes eating pleasurable. There may be something circular in that reasoning, but I’m not going to worry about it! And I have to say that the most unusual place we lived with respect to cuisine was Louisiana. There’s a wonderful point of contact between my experience in Louisiana and the Parable of the Mustard Seed which we heard in the Gospel this morning. When we first moved to Louisiana, I heard that all Louisiana recipes start out with the same five word sentence: “First you make a roux.” That certainly is how gumbo is made, and gumbo has an interesting history. Back when New Orleans was getting established, the wealthy families who moved there brought their French chefs with them. Many of the ingredients with which these chefs had learned to cook were not available in New Orleans, so they had to improvise, using ingredients that were native to their new surroundings. One of the ingredients they discovered was okra. They wanted to make bouillabaisse, but they had to improvise, and the new ingredient they used was okra. Okra has an interesting history as well. That history is really the reason I’m talking about gumbo this morning. Okra isn’t native to Louisiana, but to Africa. The black women who were taken to New Orleans from Africa as slaves, hid okra seeds in their hair, so that they could plant them in their new home. The fruit of this African plant is what the New Orleans French chefs used to make a creole version of bouillabaisse called gumbo. Small okra seeds brought in faith from Africa by black slave women brought about a delicacy now known around the world. If God had chosen Louisiana for the setting of the incarnation, I’m sure we would have a parable or two about okra, rues, and gumbo. Instead of a parable about okra seeds, what we have is one about a mustard seed. “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown, it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” The things of faith may seem small, even insignificant, but actually produce a life that is richer and more abundant than anything else in life. Our Lord may have told this parable to encourage his disciples concerning the growth of the Church. After the resurrection, as they spread the Gospel, they would encounter systematic and determined opposition. Jesus warns them that they would suffer persecution, and even martyrdom for his sake. He was encouraging his disciples not to let those who opposed them, those who are much bigger and stronger, to cause the disciples to think that their cause was hopeless. At one level, the parable of the mustard seed is a prophecy that the seed God planted in Bethlehem 2000 years ago would indeed become an organism that would reach to the ends of the earth, transforming the lives of people in countless generations. Yet there’s another level of meaning in the parable. It’s what you and I probably think of first when we hear of the tiniest of seeds becoming the largest of plants. It has to do with our faith. It’s the tiniest of seeds because the things of faith are basically very simple. Say your prayers, read your Bible, go to church on Sunday, forgive those who wrong you, help the needy. Do the simple things of faith, things that taken separately look very small and insignificant, and eventually that faith will be the most meaningful, most fulfilling, most important aspect of your life. Furthermore, your life will become so attractive that others will find peace and refreshment just being around you, not because of any particular thing that you do, but because of who you have become. For in the process, God has made a dwelling in you. God has a purpose for you and me in calling us to be a part of his Church. We must never think that our role in the Body of Christ is insignificant for the growth of the kingdom of God. We’re a part of the Church, and specifically, we are a part of Emmanuel Memorial, for a purpose. Through prayer and through talking with other Christians, we discern as best we can what that purpose is, and then we exercise that ministry, by the grace of God, and to the best of our ability—doing all to the glory of God. And all the while, we continue to do the simple things of faith, for those things are what provide a foundation for an effective ministry. God wants our life of faith to be like a good gumbo, with all the ingredients working together to make for a rich, rewarding life. We all love to hear a good speaker, an engaging talk, an inspirational message. When we come to church we want to hear a sermon that lifts us out of our everyday life and transports us to the feet of Jesus. We prefer that to be done with some humor and it's especially good if it makes us cry! And if it's memorable, well that's all the better!
All tongue in cheek aside, we want to hear the word from God that will change us, make us less self-centered and more loving, more the people God would have us to be. I suspect that we would all pretty much agree that the quality of the sermon depends on the preacher. What I would give to have heard Jesus! I know many things that he said, of course, because his words are recorded in the accounts of the Gospel. But I know he said things that were not written down and I don't know how he said those things. How he raised or lowered his voice, how he paused before an important point, his use of gesture. We all know of the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, but we tend to forget that that miracle happened because 5,000 men, plus women and children, walked a long way just to hear our Lord teach. What a powerful teacher and preacher he must have been when he walked this earth. Of course, they didn't always like what he had to say. He was known to make some folks angry, angry enough even to want to kill him. But that speaks of a powerful speaker as well. Jesus certainly was aware of the expectations of his hearers. He knew the human need to be moved and to be entertained. But in one of his parables he turns the tables on them. In the parable of the sower our Lord shifts the emphasis from the preacher to the hearer. A farmer scatters seed on the ground indiscriminately. Some of the seed falls on the hard earth of the beaten path or on stony ground. That seed never has a chance to take root. Some who hear the word are too hardened by hatred to get anything out of the message. Some of the seed falls on shallow soil, so the roots can’t go deep, and the plants die from the heat of the sun. Some hear the Word, it makes an impact but the person doesn't allow the Word to touch him where he lives. Some seed takes root, but the plants are choked by weeds and thorns. Some hear the Word and respond, but golf, and making money, and any number of other concerns soon takes the place of faith. And some seed falls on good soil, establishes deep roots, and flourishes, producing fruit in abundance. Some hear the Word, respond, and repent, taking the Word to heart and living according to it, and as a result, God is able to do wonderful works of mercy and justice through them. Jesus has turned the tables ! Yes, the message is important, but the result of the teaching depends upon the quality of the hearing! Linda and I sent to see the new Mission Impossible movie last Tuesday night. In it there was an exciting car chase through the streets of Rome, driving by the colosseum, and St. Peter’s Basilica. A couple of cars even drove down the Spanish steps! It was fun watching that, because it brought back great memories of our trips to Rome. We saw the place where St. Peter and St. Paul were imprisoned; the Pantheon, a pagan temple to all the gods built over 2,000 years ago, and later converted into a Christian church dedicated to all the saints; the catacombs, where early Christians worshipped in secret and where many were buried. On every block in the city there were magnificent churches, testimonies to the great faith and sacrifice of Christians in ages past. Everywhere we went, we were reminded of our faith. We walked on streets named for the saints. Religiouns artifacts were for sale in all of the stores. Christian icons and paintings were even found on the outside of public buildings. In other words, the seeds of faith were everywhere, wanting to take root in the lives of all passersby. Yet, ironically, in another way that city looks just like any other city. People shoving and shouting; no one dares carry much money, and what is carried is carefully concealed, because of all the pick-pockets. Poverty abounds. For all of its beauty and for the countless testimonies of faith, Christianity still has a lot of work to do in that great city. The seeds are certainly there, but not all of the soil is receptive. The result of the message depends upon the quality of the hearer. I have a couple of things I want to say to you concerning this parable of the sower. The first is that whenever I return to the parable of the sower, which is really more aptly called the parable of the soils, I identify with all of the kinds of soils mentioned. There have been times in my life when I have been too hardened to hear the good news, times when I have heard the Word but not allowed it really to touch me, times when I have allowed worldly concerns to choke out all thought of Jesus, and there have been times when the soil has been good, by the grace of God. And sometimes those kinds of receptivity follow closely upon one another. Human sin is always ready to rear its ugly head. If the soil of our lives is to be truly receptive to God's Word, it is by the grace of God. So we all need to pray that God will continually make us receptive to his Word, that we might bear fruit for him. And second, the next time you find yourself being overly critical of a sermon, ask yourself if perhaps there might be something in your life that is causing you not to hear what God is trying to tell you. Believe me, that doesn't take the burden off of the preacher, but it does recognize shared responsibility for the resultsl For remember, the result of the teaching depends upon the quality of the hearing. Whether we’re going to the library or to the park or to church, there are several items I must have in order to avoid a complete parent/child meltdown. You could probably fill in the blank knowing the ages of my children: Diapers. Wipes. Snacks. Change of clothes (which I constantly forget). These things ensure that whatever emotional or biological mess erupts, we can at least begin to clean it up. We can at least start to make things better.
If there is one thing that having children in your life teaches you it’s this: Life together is messy. Life together is complicated — at all ages and stages of human development. Each of us have our own personalities, some of which clash. Each of us have our own preferences, some of which clash. Each of us have our own wants and needs and hopes and dreams, and we are each tasked with figuring out how to pursue those things without shutting out or shutting down our neighbor. I forgot to ask Deacon Chris how long it’s been since we’ve had this kind of Sunday morning parish-wide social at Emmanuel, though the answer could very well just be “too long.” It’s been a tough three years. The pandemic isolated us. It changed not only how we relate to one another but how we relate to the world. So much that helped us to see the human in our fellow human beings is gone, replaced by InstaCart and Instagram and all the other shortcuts that claim to make life better but really just obscure it. For the past three years, we’ve lived so much of our lives apart from one another — and in many ways, we’ve gotten used to it: A text message is easier than a phone call. A podcast better than a conversation between friends. A life of seclusion, of withdrawal, of homogeneity safer than a life lived in community. And yet, by the very fact of our gathering here this morning, we say in word and deed that a community is what we want to be. We want to be a community drawn together and bound together by Christ. That is our commitment, which is not easy, especially now, as our society shifts and we are formed more and more not by the liturgies of the church but by the liturgies of algorithms. Our Lord calls those who follow him to lay down their lives for one another. He calls us to bear one another’s burdens. He calls us to suffer together — because that is what Jesus and his followers have always done. As he said, “A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master.” What a thing to consider on the morning of a picnic, perhaps the most quintessentially “happy” and “quaint” postcard moment we could come up with. But just as someone will inevitably knock over a cup of tea or have a tantrum because Mom said no to another cookie: true fellowship, real community, opens us up to the possibility of trouble, of pain, and of suffering. And that’s because when we abide together, when we take the risk of living with one another as we really are, we learn of the terrible weight of grief behind the warm greeting; or the stunning selfishness beneath the kind exterior; or the outsized anger that can bubble up when personalities collide. We learn in no uncertain terms that we are all human. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, Christian community is never an ideal. It is a divine reality. Only in Christ can people who are so wildly different come together and stay together through the joys and trials of life. Only in Christ can we encounter our neighbor’s needs, our neighbor’s sinfulness, and love them because we were loved first. Only in Christ, can we take that chance and put our own hearts on the line, because only in Christ can the pain and the problems of today be the glory of tomorrow. Story after story tells us this is true, whether it comes through the song of the psalter or the prophecy of Jeremiah. “Sing to the LORD; praise the LORD. For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.” That is who he is. Let us remember: Humankind was once in strife. We were once estranged from one another because of our estrangement from God. Sin and death ruled our lives — until the Son of God came in the fullness of time to intervene. Jesus accepted the work of bringing humankind back into community with God — knowing what it would cost. Knowing that the people God had made for himself would turn against him and cast him into the Pit. And what did we do but that exactly? Met with perfect love and perfect holiness, humankind looked at God incarnate and said “‘Perhaps . . . we can prevail against him, and take our revenge on him.’” And so we nailed him to a cross. Such are the darkest depths to which human community can sink, the hell that is a mob, that is love turned to hate. And yet Christ responded to it all not with indignation, nor with vengeance, but with his very Body and Blood —that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us. This miracle, this victory is ours. As we cling to Christ, as we work out our salvation in his Church, we share more and more in that victory, becoming the kind of people who can suffer hardship and still sing: “But as for me, this is my prayer to you, at the time you have set, O LORD: In your great mercy, O God, answer me with your unfailing help. Answer me, O God, in your great mercy.” There is an expectation there, a knowledge deeper than thought, that God will redeem even the worst of wrongs. “For if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” And that resurrection begins now. Here. As we are gathered together under the Word of God, as we are made one in his Body and Blood, we are made alive to God, struck through with the love that would willingly hang on the cross and die that all creation might be saved. This is the love that makes community possible. This is the love that refuses to let Death and Sin have the final say. This is the love that would redeem us, remake us, and so transform the world. Life together will always bring its share of confusion and heartache as well as its moments of joy and celebration. Whatever mess we may encounter, whatever tears may come, whatever cross we must bear, May we all remember the Lord who died so that we might live and love one another as he loves us. AMEN. Mahatma Gandhi was once asked what he thought about western civilization. “I think,” he replied, “that it would be a very good idea.“ There are many things that characterize a civilization, but what really makes a people civilized? Let me ask some other questions, that may seem to be unrelated. What’s the secret to happiness? What makes a business worthy of existence? What’s the sign of an emotionally and mentally healthy person? How can we tell if Emmanuel Memorial is faithful to the Gospel? On this Father’s Day, what is a father’s responsibility to teach his children, both by word and example, that will help them the most to lead productive lives?
The answer to all of these questions, whether we speak of whole civilizations, businesses, families, or individuals, is love. The song that was popular when I was a teenager is, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.“ The Beatles sang about it: “All you need is love.” The songs are right to a degree – what the world needs is love, all you need is love—but it’s hardly a kind of love that can be characterized by the word sweet. It’s a love that isn’t an emotions with a feeling. It’s a love that comes from the will. It’s the intention one has for the physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being of another person or persons, and it is expressed in deeds of compassion, forgiveness, and charity, with no expectation of return. This love is sometimes sweet, but more often it’s sacrificial, contrary to human nature, and difficult. Most of you are old enough to remember a little book, titled, All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten, by Robert Fulghum. He tells a story about V. P. Minon, who was a significant political figure in India during the struggle for independence after World War II. Two characteristics of Minon stood out as particularly memorable – a kind of aloof, impersonal efficiency, and a reputation for personal charity. His daughter explained the background of the latter trait after he died. When Minon arrived in Delhi to seek a job in government, all of his possessions, including his money and ID, were stolen at the railroad station. He would have to return home on foot, defeated. In desperation, he turned to an elderly Sikh, explained his trouble, and asked for a temporary loan of 15 rupees to tide him over until he could get a job. When Minon asked for his address, so he could repay the man, the Sikh said he owed the debt to any stranger who came to him in need so long as he lived. The help came from a stranger, and was to be repaid to a stranger. Minon never forgot that debt. His daughter said that the day before Minon died, a begger came to the family home in Bangalore asking for help to buy new sandals, for his feet were covered with sores. Minon asked his daughter to take 15rupees out of his wallet to give to the man. It was Minon‘s last conscious act. And there’s even more to this story. Fulghum relates that this story was told to him by a man whose name he didn’t know. He was standing beside him at the baggage counter at the airport. Fulghum had come to reclaim his bags and had no Indian currency left. The agent wouldn’t take a traveler’s check, and Fulgham was uncertain about getting his luggage and making the next plane. The man paid the claim check fee—about 80cents— and told Fulghum the story about Minon, as a way of refusing his attempts to figure out how to repay him. His father had been Minon’s assistant, and had learned Minon‘s charitable ways and passed them on to his son. Some might call his story “love in action,“ but that’s superfluous, for true love always expresses itself in action. Jesus sent the 12 disciples out, not just to preach about the kingdom of heaven, which they were indeed to do, but also to do the work of God. “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons,“ our Lord told his disciples. In other words, he told his disciples to give of their all in meeting the needs of people who were hurting, diseased, even dead. Such loving service is the responsibility of the Church to this day. Every Christian is called to this ministry, not only for the sake of helping people with their problems, but also as a sign to the world that the kingdom of God is at hand, The extent to which this principle of self-giving love is realized in the lives of people is the extent to which that people is civilized. The business that operates on that principle wins the right to exist. The individual who lives under such a rule is at least on the road to emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being. And on this Father’s Day, the father,l who teaches such self-giving love to his children, and who teaches them from whence that love comes, has given them the best gift he can give; for this is the same love which God the Father has shown us in his Son, Jesus Christ. A family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other was their looks. If one felt it was too hot, the other thought it was too cold. If one said the TV was too loud, the other claimed the volume needed to be turned up. Opposite in every way, one was an eternal optimist, the other a doom and gloom pessimist.
Just to see what would happen, on the twins' birthday their father loaded the pessimist's room with every imaginable toy and game. The optimist's room he loaded with horse manure. That night the father passed by the pessimist's room and found him sitting amid his new gifts crying bitterly. "Why are you crying?" the father asked. "Because my friends will be jealous, I'll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff, I'll constantly need batteries, and my toys will eventually get broken," answered the pessimist twin. Passing the optimist twin's room, the father found him dancing for joy in the pile of manure. "What are you so happy about?" he asked. To which his optimist twin replied, "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!" Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Perhaps it depends on the circumstances. Our Lord Jesus has some guidance for us. In today’s Gospel we’re back in Holy Week, on Maundy Thursday. The passage we just heard is from Jesus’ Farewell discourse. He’s at the Last Supper. He’s washed his disciples’ feet and shared his last meal with them. Judas has left to prepare for his betrayal of Jesus. He’s preparing his disciples for the terrible events that are about to unfold. There cannot be a more torturous way to die than crucifixion. The Romans had perfected this form of execution to make it as painful as it could be in order to scare off anyone who might be tempted to commit a similar offense. As Jesus is preparing to suffer that most terrible of deaths, he’s giving his disciples a different way of perceiving what’s about to happen. He’s covering them with the words that will help them to understand his death as something ultimately good, when they would otherwise not be able to see beyond what the Romans wanted them to see. Of course, they would not truly understand until Jesus was raised from the dead. It’s in that context that Jesus says, “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid; believe in God, believe also in me.” By believe, Jesus isn’t talking about some vague notion that God exists, but putting all of their trust in God’s love for them and that he will provide all that they need to get them through that time of peril, and any time of peril. He’s not saying that evil won’t happen, for it was going to happen; but simply that it will not be victorious, and it certainly will not destroy them. And, Jesus makes a more astounding claim about himself: “Believe also in me.”---- “Put your trust in me, even though it will look for a while that I have been defeated.” We Christians need to live with that understanding. No matter what destructive forces are attacking us, we need to cover ourselves with these words: “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid; believe in God, believe also in me.” Are you worried about your health? The economy? The stock market? The 2024 election? Russia’s war against Ukraine? Trouble at home or work? Is that difficult person, who seems to be in your life in order to disrupt it, giving you problems? Have you lost a loved one? These words of our Lord apply in all circumstances. Put your trust in God the Father and in his Son who died for our sins. Cover yourself with that understanding. The way we Christians look at the world around us should always be through this lens. The Christian by definition cannot be pessimistic. We’ve been let in on the end of the story. God wins! And so to be pessimistic is to cast doubt on the fundamentals of our faith. St. Paul said we must be “transformed by the renewal of our minds,” as in all circumstances we put our trust in God. I have to confess to you, that isn’t always easy to do, and I can be as negative and fatalistic about things as the worst of pessimists, at times. But when that happens, by God’s grace I usually realize that such a response is not being faithful. In fact, it’s sinful. It’s something I have to confess when it happens. I realize then that I have to do my best to perceive circumstances from the perspective of faith, trusting that God has already won the battle. And you know, when I find myself not looking at things from the perspective of faithfulness, the most helpful thing I can do is recall how faithful Christians that I know, and with whom I associate on a daily basis, would deal with similar circumstances, and that helps to get me back on track. In the short time I’ve been here, I’ve found that this parish is blessed with many people who cover themselves with their trust in God and they’re tremendous models for me and for others. And I’ve found that to be the case in every parish I’ve been associated with. The German philosopher Nietzsche said, “Christians will have to look more redeemed if people are to believe in their Redeemer.” All I can say in response to that is that I know many who reveal in their lives on a daily basis the presence of Christ. I wish Nietzsche could have known the people of this parish. He wouldn’t have been so pessimistic. God grant us the grace truly to put our trust in our Redeemer, so that those who see us, those who hear our conversation and witness our deeds, will be brought nearer to him, who alone can save. After mass, a stranger approached the priest and said, “I’d like you to pray for my hearing.”
The priest placed his hands on the man’s ears and said a passionate, earnest prayer. “How’s your hearing now?” He asked. Looking surprised, the man said, “Well, it’s not until tomorrow.” The priest, of course, thought the man was looking for a much different kind of miracle! A couple of years ago I got up from bed and I was seeing brown designs floating across my eyes. I went to my ophthalmologist, who immediately sent me to an eye surgeon, telling me I needed to get there without delay. I found out I had a torn retina. The cause was that the gel-like substance inside the eye shrinks and separates from the retina as a person ages, causing a tear— just another adventure in the delightful process of aging! He said it needed to be dealt with immediately and he gave me laser surgery. The laser basically burns around the edges of the tear so that it doesn’t continue the separation. He did the operation that day, and then a few weeks later did it some more. I was healed completely after the second time. Thanks be to God! God healed me, for all healing comes from God. The eye surgeon, who happened to be a member of my parish, was known to be one of the best in the country. He’s God’s instrument of healing, and I give thanks to God for Dr. Niffenegger. My healing was gradual. It started with my recognizing that I had a problem and then seeking help. Then I went to a well trained and talented surgeon, who basically brought about the healing over a few weeks in a two step process. I’ve had the blessing of sight ever since I was born, but that problem with my retina could have eventually ended up with my becoming blind. In today’s Gospel, we heard the account of Jesus’ giving of sight to the man who was born blind. St. John gives a detailed description of the miracle: Jesus spat on the ground, made clay from the spittle, and smeared the clay on the man’s eyes. He then told the man to go and wash in the pool of Siloam, and after doing that the man was able to see. Of course, our Lord could have simply said to the man, your sight is restored, and it would have been restored. Yet, in this healing, he goes to a lot of extra trouble. It was believed in that day that spittle had curative properties, especially the spittle of a distinguished person. While we find such a notion to be unhygienic and superstitious, Jesus used a belief of his time to gain the confidence of his patient. Even doctors today know that the effectiveness of treatments of many illnesses depends, at least in part, upon patients’ beliefs in those treatments. On many occasions in which Jesus cured a person, he told that person, “Your faith has made you well.“ But there’s more to this miracle than simply the gift of sight. When first asked how he received his sight, the once blind man said, “The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes.” So early on, he describes Jesus as “the man Jesus.” When questioned further by the Pharisees, as to Jesus’ identity, he said, “He is a prophet.” The Pharisees were upset with Jesus, because he healed the man on the Sabbath. In other words, Jesus worked on the Sabbath, when the healing could have been done just as well on another day. By this time in his ministry, Jesus had done many things that upset the religious leaders, and so the supporters of Jesus were always in danger of being excommunicated, cut off from the faithful, prohibited from worshiping with the community. When the man born blind continued to speak in defense of Jesus, he was excommunicated. After he had been cast out, which is the way John speaks of excommunication, Jesus sought him out, and told him that he was the Messiah. The man who had been given the gift of sight, then said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshipped him. Thus, we really have heard about two miracles, one physical, the other spiritual, but both miracles are recalled basically for one purpose: that we might be cured of our spiritual blindness. Unlike all of the characters in the story, we know the story from the other side of the resurrection. We have the benefit of the insight of countless generations of Christians who have gone before. And yet, we’re still as susceptible to spiritual blindness as people of any age or culture. We still are often blind to the needs of those around us. We’re blind to the fact that our own spiritual health depends upon our willingness to forgive. We’re blinded by prejudice toward and fear of others who are different from us. We’re blinded by the idea that happiness comes from acquiring money and things; we’re blinded by the temptation to believe that what we have and what we are belong to us by right, and not as gifts from God. And a host of other things. One way to state the goal of the Christian life is to be cured completely of our spiritual blindness. In the 1700s, an Englishman by the name of John Newton was a slave merchant. He took African natives from their homeland and sold them to people in the American colonies. Newton became acquainted with three Anglican priests: George Whitefield, and John and Charles Wesley. As a result of their teaching and of his reading of Thomas a Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, Newton was converted to Christianity. He gave up the slave trade, and eventually entered seminary, and became a priest himself. You may not know the name John Newton, but you have memorized at least part of one of his hymns. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind, but now I see.” Newton’s story is a story of conversion. For most of us conversion isn’t a one time occurrence, but a lifelong process. Throughout our lives, we need many conversions, many turnaround’s, and I suppose that’s why Lent comes around every year. A great mystic once said, “Of what avail is the open eye, if the heart is blind?“ As God gave sight to the man born blind, as he renewed my sight, so he can cure us of a much more debilitating blindness—blindness of heart. You and I may be guilty of some blindness this past week, or of some blindness that lies deep within our personality. As always, Jesus offers us his forgiveness, and a new chance to learn more fully what it is to follow him as Lord. No matter how hard we try; no matter how many sidewalk cracks we jump; no matter how many vitamins we take or risks we avoid, we will all end up in the wilderness at some point in our lives.
Some of you — maybe many or even most of you — know what I’m talking about. Whether you have encountered the deserts of chronic illness, or the valleys of broken relationships, or the ocean storms that threaten to sweep us away when life slips out of control — we know that these times can leave us feeling unmoored, alone, and afraid. And no matter what we do, no matter what we buy or what ends we will go to to distract ourselves, the horizon stretches out before us, with no oasis in sight. Which begs the question: What hope do we have when we are lost in the wilderness? In our OT lesson today, we hear just a snippet from the story of Israel’s journey from Egypt to the Promised Land — and what we hear doesn’t sound good. Less than a month had passed since the Hebrew people had left Egypt, weighed down with the riches of their enemies. Less than a month had passed since God had parted the Red Sea, so that all of Israel might be saved — and all of Pharaoh’s armies drowned. Less than a month had passed, and already the people of God doubted that the One who had redeemed them from slavery, the One who had called them into existence, cared for them or could care for them now. All it took was a little bit of thirst. The people of Israel had just moved on from the wilderness of Sin and camped at Rephidim, where they quickly realized that there was just not enough water to go around. And so the people quarreled with Moses and grumbled against him, saying, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried to the Lord: “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” And no wonder. The human heart so readily turns to anger when we are afraid; and God’s people were afraid. Bad as it had been in Egypt, they had known who they were, known their surroundings, known what they wanted. But now the Israelites walked a seemingly never-ending path of rock and sand and heat and struggle. The present, with all its troubles, loomed before them, taller than the mountains, vaster than the desert. The Israelites could not imagine a future, and they had forgotten their past. Hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and afraid, they were done waiting for paradise. But God wasn’t done with them. As the story unfolds we see what most of us would not be able to give: Mercy. Patience. Love. In the face of what wasn’t simply grumbling or quarreling — the Hebrew words used there have more of a sense of open rebellion and strife — God gave water to his people. “Behold,” he said to Moses, “I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” There, in the midst of the wilderness, God provided for his people — not according to their deserts, to use an old term, but according to his love. Does that sound familiar to you? This is an age-old story, the only True Story, we might say. For God proves his love for us, again and again, in that while we were still sinners, while we were still weak, he chose to save us. This is the Gospel. This is the good news. This is the water of life and the bread of heaven that will sustain us even when we suffer — because we will. More than any other season in the church year, Lent reminds us that life is not all sunshine and roses. Every Ash Wednesday, we commit ourselves to following Jesus toward his crucifixion. We fall in behind and pick up our cross and begin (again!) the work of reckoning with the fact that our leader never sought the easy way out. He chose willingly to enter the wilderness of Sin that we might follow him to Paradise. And we won’t walk a different path. This is the way that leads there. God forms his people through the desert and in the valleys; he shapes us in the depths and in the heights. But he also waits for us. Guides us. Nourishes us. As our Lord said to the woman at the well: “Everyone who drinks of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” Our hearts may quake, our faith may fail. We will fall — and then get right back up again. For our God stands before us, the Rock of our Salvation, and the water he would give us can create a garden out of even the driest of ground. AMEN. Nicodemus is a fascinating character. Nicodemus is a wealthy man. He’s a learned man, a man respected for his great religious knowledge. He’s a leader among the Jews. He’s one to whom people come for answers to deep religious questions.
As someone who knows a great deal about the faith, and unlike many of his friends, Nicodemus can’t simply dismiss Jesus as some religious nut who’s attracting crowds with false teachings. No, he secretly admires Jesus and sees in him something that he himself does not have. And he wants, very much, to have what apparently only Jesus has to offer. By all measures of success, Nicodemus has arrived. And yet, at the top of the proverbial heap, one can almost hear him asking himself, “Is this all there is?” He has to talk with Jesus. But the “In” crowd, the circle of people in which Nicodemus moves, would surely disapprove greatly of his treating Jesus with anything but contempt. So he has to go to Jesus secretly, at night, under cover of darkness. After all, he has his reputation to protect. Jesus knows what Nicodemus is up to. He knows that Nicodemus doesn’t have the courage to show his respect publicly. He could send him away with a proper rebuff: “Come back in the daylight and ask your questions, you hypocrite,” he could have said. But that isn’t Jesus’s way. He receives the man, as he is, lack of courage and all, because he perceives in him someone who is genuinely searching for truth. Jesus doesn’t wait for Nicodemus to ask a question. He gets right to the heart of the matter: “Unless one is born anew he cannot see the kingdom of God.” “You’re wondering how you can have achieved so much. You have it all, Nicodemus—wealth, power, prestige—yet still there is a void in your life that makes everything else insignificant. You want that one added ingredient to your life that will make everything fall into place, give it all ultimate meaning.” Nicodemus expected perhaps an elaboration on the meaning of the Ten Commandments, or an admonishment to give more money to the poor, or to say more prayers—something he could do to make his life meaningful. The significance of Jesus’s answer was essentially, “You can do nothing to be a part of the kingdom of God. It is completely God’s doing. Just as you were born into this world through no effort on your part, so you are born into the kingdom of God through no effort on your part.” And how does God bring about this new birth? Through baptism. At baptism we are reborn of water and the Spirit, for the Holy Spirit is given at baptism. One is, therefore, made a Christian at baptism. St. Augustine maintained that baptism marks the soul as the property of the Trinity and that even in the case of an apostate person—a person who has renounced his faith--that character remains just as the royal seal remains on a coin. Here in the United States it’s not uncommon to be asked, “Are you a born-again Christian?” What is usually meant is, “Have you had an emotional experience in which you sensed the presence of God calling you to commit your life to him, and did you respond affirmatively to that experience? Furthermore, was that experience so strong that you date the beginning of your Christian life from that point? We Episcopalians as a rule are uncomfortable with that kind of theology and terminology, just as we are uncomfortable with the same kind of question, “Are you saved?” So when someone asks the average Episcopalian, “Are you a born-again Christian, a not uncommon response is, “Why, no, I’m an Episcopalian.” The person who asked the question then believes that what he thought all along about Episcopalians is true and either goes about trying to convert a newly-discovered pagan or takes his leave quickly. To talk about a born-again Christian is to be redundant. It’s like saying, “I’m a flesh and blood human being.” A person is born anew through water and the Spirit, in baptism. So look up the date of your baptism, memorize it, and the next time someone asks you if you’re a born again Christian you can say, emphatically, “yes,” and give that person the date. Yet, while baptism does give a person rebirth in the Spirit, it still is only a beginning of a life lived totally in devotion to Christ. The non-Christian, living without Christ, has an excuse, in a sense, for living a self-centered life. The Christian, on the other hand, should live a life worthy of this new birth given at baptism. What does that look like? It means not doing what comes naturally, for one thing. When you have an urge to look at some pornography, a growing problem in our society, you don’t do it because it is not worthy of the newly-born creature in Christ. When you are drawn to cheat on your wife or husband, even when the chances seem slim that you’ll be caught, you don’t do it because of your new-born status. In the old life of sin that might be done, but not in the new life of grace. It means constantly learning about one’s faith—reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting Holy Scripture. It means putting our Sunday obligation at the top of the list of obligations in life. It means spending time with God in prayer daily. All of these things we do, not in order to inherit the kingdom of God, for we inherited the kingdom at baptism, but in order to reflect that new reality into which we have been born anew. The sad fact of the matter is that Christians can all too often identify with Nicodemus, asking ourselves, “Is this all there is?,” finding little real meaning in our lives. When this is the case, we have not surrendered everything to Christ. We may be doing a host of right things—saying our prayers, attending church faithfully, giving sacrificially—but it still isn’t really life-changing. We think we want what Christ has to offer us, but we also want to maintain a style of life that isn’t completely Christian. And then we wonder why our lives are not completely blessed. William Sloane Coffin writes, in Sermons from Riverside, 1987: “…all of us are like Nicodemus most of the time. When we find ourselves in distress, and when we seek guidance, we think we want to change. In fact, we want to remain the same, but to feel better about it. In psychological terms, we want to be more effective neurotics. We prefer the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.” Similarly, Diettrich Bonhoeffer said, “The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.” Apparently Nicodemus continued to follow Jesus, although probably always secretly. You may remember that Joseph of Arimathea provided a tomb for Jesus’s body. What you may not remember is that Nicodemus brought for Jesus’s burial about one hundred pounds of spices to be bound up with the linen cloths, which was a Jewish burial custom. Lent is a time, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, when we examine our consciences and seek by God’s grace, to live more nearly into the reality of the new life we were given in baptism. May this Lent be such a time for us all. |
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