John’s Gospel begins with one of the most striking passages in Scripture: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” It’s hard to get any higher than that. We’re at a cosmic level. An ancient and epic battle between good and evil unfolds before us, and we’re told that God will be victorious in the end. John’s readying us for an incredible ride.

But what we hear in today’s gospel lesson doesn’t exactly match up.

The creator of the universe, the light of humankind, the Son of God himself goes to a wedding. In the space of two chapters, we move from contemplating the heavens to watching what should be a moment of domestic bliss begin to unravel.

The wine has run out. 

And that’s a disaster. People would talk. They’d gossip about how bad the groom was with his money; and they’d take bets on whether or not the bride’s family would sue. There really is no more melodramatic problem that Jesus could walk into. 

But he did. And rather than walking away from the worldliness of it all, he brought the power that formed the universe to bear on this family’s crisis of hospitality. 

Where there was lack, he brought fullness. Where there was despair, he enabled rejoicing. Where there was water, he made wine.

When we take a step back from this story and look at the entirety of John’s gospel, the soaring introduction, the mysterious dialogues and beautiful prayers, the reasons for including this strange little tale at Cana in Galilee don’t immediately come to mind. Why does it matter that the Light of the World was a guest at this wedding? Why does John care that Jesus — who walked on water and raised the dead — would intervene so that one foolish man’s hospitality might not run dry? 

Because the God Jesus reveals is the very definition of radical hospitality. He doesn’t withhold blessing until we somehow deserve it. He doesn't wait until the situation is appropriately grave or religious. No, he’s a God of extravagant generosity, lavish hospitality. He’s the manager who pays his workers a full day’s wages for one hour of work. He’s the father who throws a party for the son who squandered his inheritance. He is the God that the world cannot understand because his generosity won’t stop even at the giving of his own son. 

This is the God we worship.  

Mary told the servants to do whatever her son said, and Jesus asked for water. And what they brought him were six stone jars dedicated to the Jewish rites of purification. The water Jesus received was the water of the old covenant, the water that might make a sinful person clean for a day but could never do anything about the hardness of our hearts. Jesus asked for that water, and he changed it to wine, wine that offers us a taste of heaven, for it is the blood of the new covenant. 

And that is why the wedding at Cana matters. We worship a God who stepped down from his throne, who did not refuse to join us in every facet of what it means to be human, who would sacrifice his own life so that he might welcome us to another wedding banquet, where the Lamb of God is no longer a guest, but the Bridegroom himself. 

Again and again, God gives us a share in his hospitality. When we taste of his wine and eat of his bread, we are united to him and to each other. We become his very body. We become the hands and feet of he who is hospitality incarnate. Thanks be to God for his glorious Gospel. AMEN. 


​

My favorite New Year’s tweet this year was posted by an Episcopal priest I follow: “20 years ago,” he said, “I made a New Year’s resolution that I have kept ever since. And it was – No more resolutions!”

If you have taken a shot at the annual “New Year, New You” project yourself, you know that there is a wisdom to that. But by and large, the market for campaigns of self-improvement via willpower is endless, and not just at New Year’s. Drink a superfood smoothie every morning. Purchase a subscription to these new workout videos which somehow are going to be completely different than all the other workout videos. Track your screen time, and your steps, and your calories, and your sleep so you can get rated day by day as to what progress you’re making.

Even home decorating stores will sell you art based on rules for you to keep. I took a picture of one in a store not too long ago: a framed gold and white image that said Work Hard and Be Nice to People. Since whether you’re truly doing enough of either of those isn’t measurable, it’s just a constant invitation to guilt and low-self esteem. Hang it on your wall!

There are some folks who see the whole Christian enterprise like that. Who see it as one of several possible ways to change yourself for the better (if you’re thinking individually), or one of several possible ways to change society for the better (if you’re thinking politically). And since we never manage to do those things, then it looks like an invitation to guilt and low self-esteem. And it might be that, if we only had, in the terms of today’s Gospel, say, John the Baptist and his baptism to turn to. But we have something else.

We see John today down by the Jordan, as we saw him in Advent. He has been preaching about changing your life, turning around, doing something different. Our reading from Luke this morning didn’t include everything we read in Advent, but it’s from the same chapter. You may remember that along with what he says today, John was giving instructions to those who had flocked to him for baptism at the Jordan river, telling them what they needed to do. Share your food with those who are hungry, he said. Be ethical in your business practices. Be happy with what you already have rather than seeking more. Work hard and be nice to people (well he didn’t actually say that last one.)

And people flocked to that message. We all naturally flock to that message, because we all naturally want to believe John. We want to believe we could redeem ourselves and be what we dream of being, if we just tried hard enough. We want to believe we don’t need help. And so even when John castigates his hearers for not measuring up, calling them a brood of vipers, they don’t reject him then either, any more than we reject our app when it tells us we didn’t take enough steps or drink enough water today. Yes, we failed. We know it’s true.

But see, the thing is that John doesn’t stop there. He doesn’t stop at telling us his message, that we ought to do better and reform ourselves. We all already knew that. That’s not news. What John does in the long run is to point to a new message, to something other than himself, other than his own efforts or ours.
He makes a striking contrast -- "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” The gap between the one who is coming, whom we know to be Jesus, and the Baptism he will administer, and John and the Baptism he will administer is an immense gap. They’re physically cousins, but spiritually they are in two different eras, two different realities.

Interestingly, Jesus later makes a very similar contrast. He says, "Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the least person in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” The least person in the kingdom of God is greater than John the Baptist. Eddie is about to enter the kingdom of God via the baptism of Jesus, and when he does he will be greater than John the Baptist. John is the end of an era. He’s the hinge between the old way, the old covenant, and the new way, the new kingdom, the new covenant.

On one side of that hinge, as we saw, the crowds were coming to John. They want to be better. They want to change. And they think: Maybe this time it'll work. John tried to tell them "This isn't it. Don't pin your hopes on this. There’s something totally different coming right after me." And just as by Jan 9th most people’s New Year’s resolutions have probably petered out, a week or two weeks after John’s Baptism, most people who went to the Jordan were probably again left dry. They’d been washed externally, on the outside. They were washed as a sign of their own repentance, their own effort to change. That’s how things were on John’s side of the hinge.

On the other side of the hinge, we have the last couple sentences of today’s Gospel in which the experience of Jesus serves as a picture of the baptism into which he invites us. The Baptism into which he invites Eddie this morning. What will Eddie be baptized into? What are we baptized into? We're baptized into Jesus. Immersed into him, which means to be immersed into God’s life, God’s very being. How is this Baptism Jesus offers us different from what happened in John’s Baptism, on the other side of the hinge? Well, in several ways.

First off, this Baptism is something God does, not us. In the language of our Gospel, every time a new Christian goes to the font, the heavens are opened, and the Spirit descends. From God’s point of view, whatever it looks like to us, in the Sacrament of Baptism the person is changed forever supernaturally. We can never make that change happen; only God can.

Second, unlike in our various self-improvement efforts, in Baptism a new identity is spoken over us that is immediate, and not earned. We do not have to do anything, in fact we can’t do anything, to achieve this identity; it is given, as a free gift, at the font. What God the Father says to Jesus in today’s Gospel is what he says to us once we are baptized into Jesus: You are my beloved son, my beloved daughter. This is what you are.

Finding and expressing your true identity is such a big theme in American culture these days, and people work so hard to get it right. But identity is an elusive goal when you’re depending on yourself. How do you know you’ve gotten there? How do you ensure you stay true to yourself? But in Baptism you get a rock-solid forever identity that you don’t have to curate and you don’t have to earn: I am a relative of Jesus, a child of God, I am marked as Christ’s own forever.

So first, God does it. Second, it gives us a new unearned identity. And third, it happens on the inside. In John’s Baptism he baptized just with water, which washes on the outside but cannot change a person’s being. In Jesus’ baptism, there’s still water involved, but it is sanctified so that it carries the in-person action of God. When God bestows the Spirit and gives us our new identity in Christ, that happens not externally but on the inside. It touches the deepest levels of our being. Down below the roots of the personality, below our experiences or beliefs or goals. And that presence of God dwelling there then (unless we refuse it) goes to work on us from the inside out, not the outside in. In Christianity, change grows outward from the deep identity God has given us; it doesn’t come from something we try to push into ourselves from the outside.

There's no resolution in there, no program, no willpower, nothing we can earn. It’s simply a gift to be received. A love to be allowed. A presence to be consented to.  But the ironic secret is that this gift of baptism into Jesus Christ, this holy unshakeable identity, if we will receive it, actually offers much greater potential for change than any of our self-improvement projects.

Even if you were baptized 50 years ago and have been ignoring God’s gift all this time -- even if you haven’t fed it with Holy Communion, even if you haven’t nourished it with God’s Word, even if you didn’t know you could say yes to it – no matter how long you’ve let it lie fallow, that gift of a true identity in Jesus is still there for you, and it still has the power of transformation. So if you want to be a somewhat improved person some of the time, OK, make a resolution, download the tracking app, use your willpower. But if you want to be a transformed person, the person God made you to become, receive this gift waiting for you in our baptism into Jesus. When we with Eddie renew our vows to God in a minute or two, take seriously what you say. Take seriously that yes.

So much has happened in the last 12 months that has been outside of our control. We’ve lost friends. Some of us have lost family members. And we’ve all lost much of what we loved about life before COVID-19 turned everything upside down. Couple all that with the statistics and graphs and predictions about 2022, and I don’t think any of us need much imagination to understand why lots of folks are at the end of their patience.

Yet here we are, sitting in church the day after Christmas, when the candy canes and colored lights are on sale and stores are already setting up for Valentine’s Day. The world around us is moving on to the next antidote for the darkness. But we aren’t. The greens are still up, the Baby is in the manger, and we are gathered here today in hope and expectation — because we know that the birth of Jesus still holds promise for us today. 

As St. John says in our Gospel reading this morning, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” 

Our world changed forever when God’s Son was born of Mary. He who is the perfect image of the Father left his rightful throne to be with us — coming to earth not as a king or a warrior but as a helpless child.

What does this tell us, that he who knows the name of every star willingly and gladly accepted the limitations of infancy? That he who scatters hail like bread crumbs would humble himself to the point where he must learn how to walk and how to speak and all of it from two feet off the ground. What does this tell us but that God wants more than anything to save every last one of us. He wants us to see who we are in his eyes: beloved men and women and children who are made in the image of God himself, made to love in return the one who loved us first.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and in the light of his presence, we can see. We can see the immensity of God’s mercy; that even amid the pain and sorrow of our world God knows and will accomplish the plans he has for us, plans for welfare and not for harm, to give us all a future with hope. 

And all of this rests, not on our ability to get things right, but on the shoulders of God’s Son, who knows precisely what it means to be human, from birth to death and beyond. And it is out of that fullness, out of Christ’s life of perfect obedience and love toward the Father, that we have all received grace upon grace; that we might be given the power to become children of God.

This is the promise we possess, a promise guaranteed in Christ’s name and underwritten in his blood, a promise that will not come down with the Christmas decorations or be boxed up until next year’s holiday season because it is founded in eternity. 

Hear these words: Before the world began, God knew each one of us and deemed each one of us as worthy of salvation, no matter our histories or our current struggles or even our fears about the future. God loves us regardless of any and all of that, loves us so fiercely and so selflessly that he would send his only Son into a dark and cruel world, knowing that his life of suffering and death would be what saved us from ours. 

This is our hope, our light that illumines the path before us, leading us on toward glory even when we’re not sure we know how to get there — for this light is certain. This light is sure. This light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. AMEN. 

​

“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.”
 
Today marks the coming to an end of the season of Advent. If you have been following along with the Sunday lectionaries I would not be surprised if your head is spinning a bit today. What happened? Last week we heard about the adult John preaching and calling everyone to repentance. Today the same John is yet unborn, in his mother, Elizabeth’s womb. In both Gospels he demonstrates his prophetic voice by delivering important messages, but that is getting ahead of the myself. (If you want to read the Luke story in more chronological order follow the lectionary for Morning Prayer this coming week. We are in year 2, the fourth week of Advent.)

I want to go back a bit from today’s Gospel and remind us of what has happened in the story right before this. Mary, a devout, teenaged girl, engaged to be married to an older man, Joseph, has been visited by the angel Gabriel. In that visit she was told that she will bear a child who will be the long-awaited savior. This child she will carry will be the Son of God and is to be named Jesus. That encounter ended by Mary answering yes to Gabriel, let it be according to God’s word.  

There are many glorious works of art, paintings, sculpture, music depicting this encounter of the angel with Mary. We have a copy of one on the altar in the Lady Chapel that is rests there each Advent. It is the beautifully colored Fra Angelico’s work from the 15th century. I love to look at these various art works of the Annunciation. Most often I focus on the faces of both Mary and Gabriel. Usually, the artist will show Mary concentrating hard on Gabriel. Sometimes she has a dreamy expression, off in her own world it would seem.

Sometimes she has a look of surprise or even shock at what she is hearing. The angel on the other hand most often looks serious and intense, though not stern. He has an important message to bring after all. Recently I saw a pair of statues of this encounter and both Mary and Gabriel had looks of surprise and amazement. Like I said, I enjoy focusing on their faces and wondering what must it have been like to receive and give such a message?

Mary was able to give her consent to what would be, because of her faith in God but the scripture does not give us any other words of hers following this meeting. We are left with Mary’s quiet wonder at what she had been told.
 This brings us to the passage from today. We are told that in “haste” Mary traveled a fair distance away to stay with her cousin Elizabeth, whom the angel related is also expecting a very important child. This is not so different of what might have happened to an unmarried pregnant teenager even as late as the beginning of this century. The thought was to get the girl away from the gossip and spare her family embarrassment. In Mary’s time becoming pregnant while engaged to another man could be very dangerous, she might even be killed for it.  Making inferences Mary was probably an outcast, alone, separated from her family by their astonishment and lack of understanding of the situation.

So, Mary goes to stay with her cousin. This cousin had had an encounter with Gabriel of her own. Elizabeth is pregnant with a son, John, who will become the prophet to tell others of the savior Jesus’ coming. Elizabeth is also probably isolated from others. She was older, beyond the usual age of childbearing and her husband Zechariah was unable to speak throughout the pregnancy as he did not believe the angel’s message. She too was an item of gossip in her town.
 
What happens when Mary and Elizabeth meet, the in-utero John leaps and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit allows Elizabeth to be able to recognize and acknowledge what is happening with Mary.
Both women, likely distanced from others because of the circumstances of their pregnancies, embrace each other. Their relationship is firm; they have another to lean on. They have formed a community of two.

With Elizabeth’s affirment of who this baby is that she is carrying, Mary is better able to understand what this means. And as she grows in her comprehension, the surprise and fear quickly turn to joy. Her joy overflows in song, a famous song from generation to generation. We have spoken it and heard it twice this morning. Mary’s soul is filled with God’s presence and her gratitude and joy abound. Those emotions are not present in any of the artistic works I have seen from the annunciation. Mary did not sing with Gabriel’s message. This joy at becoming the mother of Jesus, who he will be and what he will do, has taken time for Mary to comprehend. And it is in the supportive presence of Elizabeth that has assisted in this growth.

Being in community with another who is going through similar things helped both Mary and Elizabeth in living into who are these children they are carrying. While the message to each was given by the angel alone, it was the community, the relationship between the two, that aided in the realization of what this meant. Mary would continue to draw on her community to grow in understanding of who Jesus is, throughout his time on earth.
So, what can we learn from this story this morning? Following Mary’s example, as we live with Jesus, it is important that we have a community to assist us in that relationship and in building joy, finding peace and being able to sing out our gratitude for it.

While God or his angels may speak to us alone, we need the Christian community to assist in our understanding of what is His message.

Each of us is a part of many communities. There are communities built around our work, our roles as family members, a like of a certain game or sport, our own physical neighborhoods and so on. However, it is our community which has at the core a shared love of God and desire to know him better, that assists us to grow into our relationship with Christ. Just like Mary, it is this faith community that will help us get beyond fear and amazement to reach joy and peace.

How do we build such a faith community? It is through regularly spending time together, sharing scripture, praying for each other, caring for one another, and demonstrating the love of Christ to the wider world. Community can grow also by working towards a common goal—perhaps helping this worship space reflect the glory of God or in participating in one of the intergenerational formational activities of the church. Another important characteristic of a true faith community is seeking and welcoming others to join it. There are multiple opportunities to build these faith communities that can be areas of growth and understanding of who Jesus is.
​
Remember that Mary was able to say yes to God at that original encounter with Gabriel, but she did not experience the joy until the affirmation of her cousin and the sign from the yet unborn John. It was then that Mary could sing out her understanding of the wonder that was happening to her and her gratitude for this son that she would bear.
While you have already heard her song twice this morning, I think reciting it again together is a good way to end the Advent season. Please take your bulletin and let us say the Magnificat along with Mary to express our joy at this soon to arrive Messiah.
 
 
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.
He has mercy on those who fear him
        In every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
        He has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
        And has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
       And the rich he has sent empty away.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel,
      For he has remembered his promise of mercy,
The promise he made to our fathers,
      To Abraham, and his children forever.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
       As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen. 

Today, we’ve all received a Christmas card from our good friend John the Baptist, and it reads: “Happy Holidays, you brood of vipers!”

We laugh, but that’s actually what’s going on. John is speaking to us; and his words cut. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

What would your reaction be if you opened a card like that? We’d think, How judgmental can you get? And then throw the card in the trash without a second thought because we don’t need someone hating on our good intentions. After all, we’re mostly nice, law-abiding, God-fearing people. Isn’t that enough? 

But what we forget is that John’s original audience was also made up of decent, law-abiding, and God-fearing people — who were just as complex, just as good and just as bad as we are. 

Humankind hasn’t changed. Beneath the surface, every one of us is a mess of pride. Of jealousy. Of idolatry. Of “me first and then we’ll see about everyone else.” And if we’re honest with ourselves, we can admit that. Think of the story in John’s gospel of the woman caught in adultery. Jesus says, whoever is without sin can cast the first stone — and what happens next? Everyone leaves because everyone has sinned.

John knows this, knows that “no one is righteous. . . . All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” He knows this, and he won’t rest until those who hear his message will accept it as truth — because the stakes are higher than anyone realizes. Hope is on the horizon, and if we could but raise our eyes from the ground, we would see it.

“For behold, darkness covers the earth, and thick darkness is over the peoples; but the LORD will rise upon you, and His glory will appear over you.” 

A light is dawning in the east, and in the grey shadows of morning, the world is changing. Valleys are being filled, crooked paths are made straight, and rough ways are smoothed. The one crying in the desert is preparing the way of the LORD, then and now. For what must be prepared, what must be brought low, what must be set right but our hearts, our hearts that are restless and wandering and confused until we find every good in God himself? 

John challenges us to grapple with the fact that we are just as broken as the soldiers and tax collectors and sinners gathered in the desert that day. We are just as desperate for Emmanuel as Israel was of old. In the classic words of our last Prayer Book: “We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. . . . And there is no health in us.”

There is no health in us — but the physician is coming. Our savior is coming. Not as a baby boy in weakness. Not as a man bound for the cross, but as a conquering king. 

In righteousness he will judge. Before him, nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. “All power is his, all glory! All things are in his hand, all ages and all peoples, till time itself shall end!”

And yet the one who is coming, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, the conquering king. . . . he is like a Lamb who was slain. His robes are dipped in blood. The writer of Hebrews tells us that we have a great high priest who has been made like us in every respect, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near the throne of grace, for Mercy himself is found there.

For this we sing. For this we shout. For this we rejoice and exult with all our hearts, for the LORD will save the lame and gather the outcast. He will proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind. He will change our shame into praise and renown in all the earth. 

And this is not just a promise we are looking forward to. It is a gift we are given now, for Christ came in weakness that he might rise in strength and return in glory. And on that day, all will be set free and all will be made right and all will obtain the freedom of the glory of God. 

Therefore we will trust and not be afraid; for the LORD God is our strength and our song, and he has become our salvation. Cry aloud, inhabitant of Zion, ring out your joy, children of God, for the great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel. AMEN.



​

For most of the world’s Christians, today is New Years’ Day. Happy New Year! We begin a fresh liturgical year this morning. If the liturgical year is unfamiliar to you, you actually pass a diagram of it every time you walk in that back door, so stop and look -- and you can pick up a free calendar with its dates and times in the Great Hall to take home today. Living by that calendar rather than by the secular American calendar is one of our important Christian tools.

The liturgical year is our way of letting the Spirit teach us that that time itself belongs to God, and that every day and hour is given its real meaning by the work of Jesus Christ in his life, death, and resurrection. The liturgical year is our way of letting the Spirit demonstrate that no matter how many times we approach Jesus together in Scripture and Sacrament, there is always something new to find. The meaning of who Jesus is and what he has done is inexhaustible, so we live it out in our calendar year after year, even though most Americans barely know our calendar exists.

The diagram of if you pass on the way in shows the liturgical year a circle, which is a common image, but one scholar has suggested a better image may be a spiral, ascending as it moves. Because every time we come back to the readings for today, the collect for today, there has been change in us, change in our world, and we discover that God is competent to address it. We learn by experience that he has ever new guidance and insights and challenges for us, as we spiral through the liturgical year and re-encounter the same readings and prayers over and over. So if you are choosing to live as a disciple of Jesus, one thing that will help you is to pick up this tool of the liturgical calendar and begin using it. Your clergy can recommend more resources.

Now you might have noticed in our readings today that on this day of new beginnings, we begin at the end. All three readings do this, but let’s look right now at the Gospel from Luke. Luke is our Sunday Gospel for the next 12 months, and we’ll be focusing on it this whole liturgical year, until Advent 2022. In Luke today, Jesus talks about the passing of the present order of things and the hope of the future, when he is revealed in his fulness and the universe finally, fully works God’s way. And again, we see a similarity to that difference of what calendar you follow: there is a difference between us who belong to Jesus, and those who belong to something else.

Jesus explains, “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."  Do you see those two reactions? Some people are filled with fear and foreboding when God gets his way, but how do disciples react? We stand up and raise our heads, because our redemption is drawing near.

If we are invested in the present order of things – and I think even we who belong to Jesus fall into that investment at least some of the time – we are likely to want to stay inside that order and all the things we’ve invested in. Now if you are in an oppressed group that’s getting a raw deal systemically, it may immediately hit you as good news that the present order is not permanent. Many Christians live under that kind of oppression. But if the present order is basically working OK for you, you are likely to want to keep it going.

But the problem there is that the more we limit our vision to the present order of things, and the more we feel like doing so is working out OK, the more placing our hope in Jesus’ order of things will stop coming naturally to us. The more our motivation to live as a disciple will peter out. God just won’t seem as real. So you can see why, if we habitually focus our hearts and our time on adjusting to the present order of things, we probably would be filled with fear and foreboding when we have to face the truth that that whole order is not ultimate. All the things we’ve focused on and invested in will in the end let us down.

But it’s not like that if you have begun at the end, as Advent gives us the chance to do year after year. If you have looked past the present order of things and gotten your perspective in line with Christian truth, you will have a more realistic view. If you have put Jesus first in life and trusted that he is able to arrange all the other good things in the way that he knows is best, when the end comes – either your own end, or the real last days – you will find yourself able to stand up and raise your head and know that while loss of things you’ve been used to is hard, your redemption is drawing near. It’s one of the many great gifts of discipleship. Because we begin at the end, we don’t have to cry out: our world is being shaken! Run for your lives! We cry out, Come, thou long expected Jesus! from our fears and sins release us, now thy gracious kingdom bring!

If you’ve ever rewatched a movie or re-read a book, you have experienced the difference it makes to know the end. When you know the end, you can see the beauty of the construction of the story, the hidden references you missed the first time, you appreciate how it was all put together. And so in Advent, we begin at the end. We begin with ultimate questions: Where is my life headed? Where is the universe headed? What’s the last chapter of the story of the world? What is the real situation we are in as human beings? What deserves to be my top priority?

Many of us, these last months, have lost sight of those kinds of questions. Of course those who have most completely lost sight of them are not with us at Mass anymore. But even those of us who are here, let’s be honest, we have been shaken these past months, nearly all of us. Even those of us who do know the end. We have found ourselves staring dully as we scroll endlessly through our phones, or having one too many cocktails a few too many times, or being too numb to make the simple efforts of showing up in the communities that used to mean so much for us. And today, the Bible warns us, Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.

The first Sunday of Advent is a time to accept the grace of starting again. To come to Christian truth, and Christian tools, and Christian belonging, afresh. On the first Sunday of Advent, we begin at the end: where is all this going? Who holds the future? The present order of things has no idea of the answers to questions like that. But your Bible can tell you. The liturgical year can tell you. The Mass can tell you. Jesus can tell you. Happy new year.

If someone had sat us down two years ago and told us that much of what we love would be changed or taken away from us entirely over the course of 2020 and 2021, I think we would have laughed. A catastrophe of this magnitude and length would simply have been beyond our ability to imagine. It wouldn’t be worth thinking about seriously because dwelling on the cost of prolonged isolation, mixed scientific and political messaging, and the death of hundreds of thousands of people is pretty clearly an unhealthy exercise. 

Yet here we are. Everything we love has changed, and we’re still scrambling to make something of what’s left. 

I begin there today because I think our collective pandemic experience puts us in a unique position to empathize with Jesus’ disciples, who have just learned that the Temple they love will be destroyed. “‘Do you see these great buildings?’ Jesus asks. ‘There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.’” Everything you love will change, Jesus says — and the disciples simply don’t know what to do with that knowledge. 

So they ask him privately, “‘When will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?’ And Jesus begins to tell them about the false prophets who will come bearing his name and how the disciples will hear of wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and famines. “Do not be alarmed,” he says. “This must take place, but the end is not yet. . . . These are just the beginning of the birth pangs.’”

We can almost see the expressions on the disciples’ faces — their wide eyes, their clenched jaws — at hearing this news. Everything you love will change, Jesus says. The places you go, the people you see, the little things you took for granted because they were so much a part of your life — all of it will change, will be gone in an instant. And that’s just the beginning.

What could be worse news? Wars and natural disasters are life-changing events; but to have the core of one’s faith left in rubble is a waking nightmare, the kind that you can’t shake even months and years later. The Temple was a part of the disciples’ home, a cherished part of their lives. And it would all be destroyed.

To make way for something better.

Not that that was the thought that came to them in the moment. The worry was too present, like a weight on their shoulders or pressure in their chests. They couldn’t possibly imagine the gift that would be given them when the Temple was destroyed, only to be raised three days later.

And yet this is the path onto which the disciples have stepped. The path we also walk. 

The disciples will suffer. We will suffer. Everything we love will be radically changed — whether by the marching armies of Rome, by a years-long pandemic, or simply by time; but like the woman who cannot imagine surviving the pain of childbirth, there will come a moment when the suffering is nothing compared to the new life before us. 

Looking back, the disciples will grieve what they have lost, just like we grieve what we have lost. We shed tears over what once was, knowing that the past held both beauty and goodness. But then there will come a day when the story resolves, when the pieces click into place, and we turn our eyes toward the one who is life incarnate, who “by a single offering . . . has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified,” knowing that by his sacrifice, the path our lives take will never end in the valley of the shadow of death. 

And in that moment, when our hearts are lifted up to the heavens, we will praise God, saying, “O Lord, you are my portion and my cup . . . I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand I shall not fall.” Because God is at our right hand, we will not be shaken.

We shall not be shaken because we are washed, we are clean, we are made new in the blood of the Lamb. Through our Savior’s sacrifice, we have a certain hope that we will not be abandoned to the Pit, that we will not be left to struggle forever against the corruption in this world; but that our minds, our hearts, and our bodies — our whole selves — will be redeemed, will be brought into the very presence of God. 

And that is a promise that cannot be broken. A fortress that cannot be overrun. A reality that will never change because Jesus himself, God himself, has given his own life to guarantee it. 

Brothers and sisters, we are living in a time of loss, a time when our lives have changed before our eyes into something we wouldn’t recognize two years ago. The pain of that is real and present; and we will wrestle with it for years to come. But it is also not the end, for we walk a road that ends in resurrection. 

“I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand I shall not fall. My heart, therefore, is glad, and my spirit rejoices; my body also shall rest in hope. For you will not abandon me to the grave, nor let your holy one see the Pit. You will show me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy, and in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” AMEN.

​

The clergy have had a lot of questions about this, so let me start by saying: No, the Episcopal church does not have a formal canonization process. In other words, while we have feast days on our calendar that commemorate particular Christians, there’s no committee that grades their holiness as an individual and passes judgment on it. In the Anglican communion, we do not pronounce people saints.

Instead we follow what was the practice in the first 1000 years of Christianity, which was not to grade individuals’ virtue, but instead to pay attention when faithful Christians continued to be inspired by someone after their death. Were Christians continuing to find this person’s witness to the Gospel inspiring, were local traditions growing up to celebrate and remember the person, were Christians naturally asking for the person’s prayers? So in essence, was this a believer whose story and actions were still inspiring many people to love Jesus better even several years after their death? Was this a believer whose story and actions might inspire us to love Jesus better right now? Then let’s remember them.

David Brown from Durham Cathedral, who wrote Through The Eyes of the Saints, comments that this is a more useful way to think than saying “Well, St. So and So was perfectly holy. God bless them. Of course, I could never be like that, so I’m off the hook.” Saints are actually meant to put us on the hook, precisely because they are like us. They are not superhuman or superperfect. But they are people who have been notable in letting the presence and teaching of Jesus reveal itself through them, and specifically, reveal itself in the context of a different culture or time period than first century Judea. And that’s really the Christian life, isn’t it? We’re not here because we’re interested in first century Judea, but because we long to experience and reveal Jesus in our own culture and our own time.

Emmanuel has been running a series of Instagram quiz posts on saints the past couple weeks, and they kind of made an effort to point out the different backgrounds of many of the people Christians commemorate: Egyptian, Syrian, African, Asian. Not because we are aiming at checking boxes, but because the Good News of Jesus is that big. I’ve mentioned before that the historian of Christianity, Andrew Walls, has pointed out that most of the great world religions are centered in the same region of the globe where they began. Buddhism has spread, but the Far East is still where the majority of Buddhists live. Islam has spread, but Mecca is still its center today. Hinduism, born in India, remains a predominantly Indian religion.

Christianity is an exception to that rule. Its center keeps moving. Most of its adherents were first in the Middle East, then in North Africa and the Roman Empire. After that, most Christians were in Europe for awhile, and now the center has moved to the Southern Hemisphere. There are about 685 million Christians in Africa, for example, most of them in locally-based churches that have no equivalent in the West. Jesus is wide enough for all of us, and if we act like Christianity is only good news for one kind of person, we are misrepresenting Jesus and the Gospel. The good news of what Jesus has done is for absolutely everybody.

So when we look at the wide variety of the saints, we are helped to imagine how big and how accessible and inclusive the Gospel is. We are helped to notice that Jesus is enough for everyone, of every race and culture, every era, every gender expression, every generation, every body. When Christians are bearing authentic witness to Jesus, we will look as different from each other as the saints do.

In fact, the genuineness of my and your profession of faith can probably in part be evaluated by how much being Christian has connected us to people we would not ordinarily spend time with. People where the only explanation for our connection is Jesus. If we come to church, but while we’re here we limit our relationships to people who are our own age or our own economic group or our own education level, we are simply importing the sinful patterns of the world into the Kingdom.  

After all, we come together at church to have sort of a lab -- to live the Kingdom, to show each other and the world what the Kingdom of God looks like. We’re nourished by the life of the Kingdom when we hear the Word of God, fed by the life of the Kingdom when we receive the Blessed Sacrament. Yet you know as well as I do how easy it is, even here right in the middle of our lab for the Kingdom, to behave in ways that contradict the Kingdom. To import the sinful habits of this age that undermine our own faith and our own witness. Of course there are lots of those habits of this age, and we’ve all seen them imported into the church in discouraging ways. But on All Saints Sunday that habit of churchgoers acting as if the world’s groupings define us even here, is particularly worth renouncing.

This is one reason we’re deliberately inviting everyone to mix it up today – to form scavenger hunt teams that are not just people you already know you enjoy, to rotate among stations with Emmanuelites you wouldn’t naturally get to know. It’s why, especially at the food table, we have discussion topics, so that we won’t stand around and import secular norms for chit-chat that undermine why we came to church in the first place. We don’t want to have a secular gathering that just happens to be taking place at the street address of an Episcopal parish. Our situation in the churches today is far too urgent for that. We don’t have that luxury anymore. We need to learn what Christian belonging means, and we need to learn it now.

And we have the saints to help us. We have the proof in them that any distance we think exists between us and Jesus can be bridged. We have the proof that the Gospel is big enough for everyone. We have the proof, in all these very different human lives, of what is possible when you surrender to God. And we have their prayers, that we, too, would surrender.

All you Holy Apostles and Evangelists, Pray for us.
All you Holy Martyrs, Pray for us.
All you Holy Bishops and Confessors, Pray for us.
All you Holy Priests and Levites, Pray for us.
All you Holy Monks and Hermits, Pray for us.
All ye holy men and women, saints of God, make intercession for us. Amen.

“The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad indeed.”
 
It seems like many things I read these days reference the longer lasting effects of the pandemic. There are disagreements over vaccinations, wearing masks, and rules and regulations. While designed to keep us healthy, I think many people are tired of it all. Negative emotions abound. Grief over actual loss of life and grief over loss of life as we knew it are both very real. Anger is close to the surface for many and that anger comes out, not always at situations related to the pandemic. I find that simple kindness is often a rarity. One example that comes to mind is the increase in speeding and what I would call reckless driving. This is both in town and on the interstates. After much reflection over several times of distress, I have concluded that making what I consider poor choices in the use of a motor vehicle is one area where people can have control of their environment. Rather than let another car into a long line of traffic, said cars often speed up to close that gap for themselves. Winning at small things seems to give glee. Driving too fast, dodging in and out of traffic, has become a way of life that affects us all. I often find myself yelling out, “People live here! Slow Down!” Now that is also showing my anger—inside my car no one can hear me yelling, except me! So why do I continue to do that? I am angry at the other’s anger. Hmm.

Fear, Grief, Resentment, Anger, and more have become part of the pandemic life. We can certainly see evidence of the broken or fallen world on a day-by-day basis. We need our savior Jesus more and more.
My reflection in witnessing and experiencing these emotions and actions has gone on to pondering, how can we change this cycle? Perhaps a better way to phrase this is how can we allow our Lord to change us?
Always when I am feeling stuck, I find that turning to scripture and prayer helps. For me it is scripture first and then prayer. And most often for me the psalms are the best place to start.

So, this morning I will take a closer look at Psalm 126, the lectionary appointed one for today. This particular psalm is one of a group of 15 together called the Songs of Ascent. These were sung by the Hebrew pilgrims as they walked to Jerusalem for major feasts, such as the Passover. Jerusalem is a city on a hill so no matter the direction from which you travelled you always were going up. To break the monotony of the long journey they would sing. I can relate to this as before we had our “devices” my family would sing to break up long car trips. How wonderful that the Hebrews would use these Songs of Ascent as they walked.

Professor and writer of Old Testament Interpretation, James L May has said that the songs of ascent are both “Joy remembered and joy anticipated.” Joy remembered and joy anticipated. Why don’t you look at your bulletin for a moment and we will see this joy expressed.
 
This psalm recalls the historical events of the Jewish exiles returning from Babylon and the rebuilding of the Temple in 6th century BCE. That time was a grand scale restoration of the Israelites and brought with it intense joy. In singing this psalm the people would remember the marvelous things that God had done for them in the past. The first two verses: “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream. Then our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.” And then the next two recall how grateful they were for what God had done for them. “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad indeed.” Then the tone changes a bit and in the next verses they speak with confidence to ask for God’s restorative power now. “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses of the Negev.” And then continued to express their trust that “Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.” Remembering what God had done assured them that God would be with them time and again. It was God who would replace their sadness with joy.

Psalm 126 and the rest of these Songs of Ascent were community songs of trust. Remembering  God is the one who brings joy out of sorrow, laughter out of tears and good out of evil, strengthened their trust in him.
Joy remembered brings joy anticipated.

While we can certainly use this for our personal joys, this morning I propose that we try this collectively, looking at our community. What joy has God brought to Emmanuel in the past?

The first joyful memory that first comes to my mind is the result of the rectory fire. Seeing the flames going high out of the rectory roof was a time of shock and fear. However, due to the wonderful fire fighters and to the grace of God that fire was put out with little damage to the rest of the building. The nave, sanctuary, offices, Great Hall and Mowry building were fine. That in itself was a joy. But the future has brought even more joy as the rectory has been redone saving the beauty of the original structure and repurposing the space to offer more to the surrounding community. Plans are currently in formation as to the specific details of how the building will be used but the joy at seeing it fully completed is wonderful. It is more beautiful than we could have imagined. Our gratitude to all who worked on it and our gratitude to God is something wonderful to remember. And, if you want a reminder of the devastation of the fire, for now you can still see the paint peeling off the pillar of the porch in the courtyard. God has brought us out of tragedy and into joy!

The second joyful memory of mine is also of a fire. This was smaller in scope and occurred on the high altar. While the flames destroyed the altar linen and a few other things it was quickly extinguished by the lay reader before the space was totally gone. There is a reminder of this joy on the front of the tabernacle on the altar. The carving of the agnus dei, the lamb of God is charred black. It has been left that way purposefully as a reminder of God’s providence and saving power.

As we remember the joys, we are grateful, and that gratitude extends to all the people who listened to God to help achieve His purposes here. The Polks, the family who gave the money to build this structure, are a part of that group, as well as those who gave the stained glass windows and other items to reflect the beauty of God’s world and God’s story. The committees who planned and saw to it that the additions to the building were made to reflect the needs of the 1960’s. The people who worked tirelessly in the late 1980’s to see that this space would continue to be a beacon of Christ’s light in the world of downtown Champaign. There is much joy to be remembered here.
And as we remember the joy that God has brought to us we can also find the assurance of his presence with us through the more difficult times. “Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.” The times of sadness are like a season of growing and they will come to an end.

The psalms of ascent promise that; God promises that.

Joy remembered and joy anticipated.

Take home the weeks psalm. Read it and remember your own times of joy at what God has done for you. Be grateful for those and be assured that joy will come again. God is present with us always and doing good for us in all things. Our gratitude will overflow! And we will want to give back to the one who has given us all.

 Perhaps now instead of yelling at those other drivers I can pray for them to know God’s kindness, presence and joy!
 
The Lord has done great things for us and we are glad indeed!
 
Amen.

As we’ve commented, this fall is a time when our lectionary readings reveal Jesus showing himself at his most challenging. Just to remind you where we’ve come from, before we talk about where we are:

Last week Jesus left his disciples “exceedingly astonished” by teaching that not even a moral pillar of society, a man who had it all economically, socially, and spiritually, had the slightest chance at entering the life of God without giving up reliance on his skills and achievements and relying on Jesus instead. When the man walked out on that offer, the disciples were not happy. (I mean, he could have been a potential big donor. An important supporter of the ministry. And Jesus won’t compromise the message to keep him happy.)

You’ll remember that Jesus commented to the disciples, “It’s so hard for people like that to enter the Kingdom.” And at this point they can’t contain themselves: “If not him, Jesus, who?” And Jesus, true to form, cheerfully replies, “Nobody. Nobody can enter the Kingdom. It’s impossible. Except with God.” What can you say? He is so confident in his Father that he just has no fear.

So as we come in today, the disciples have been trying to process this event. And their conversation eventually morphs into a hypothesis. It’s the kind of hypothesis you come up with when you try to fit Jesus and his message into your preconceptions about religion.

So here’s their hypothesis: all this security that makes Jesus so completely confident, all these resources he acts like he has, and that he seems to think so outweigh money and achievement that you could drop those in a second if you only understood -- maybe all those riches and power and security are going to show up. Maybe Jesus is going to be crowned King, and reign in glory, and they’ll be the Cabinet. Maybe that’s what’s going to happen.

And so two members of his inner circle, James and John, want to call the best seats. “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Now there is going to be glory. There are going to be infinite resources revealed. But it’s not going to happen in a way that fits their preconceptions about religion. The Son of Man is going to be glorified, all right, but glorified by being lifted up on a Cross, by showing the lengths to which God will go to give himself to us. Glorified not by collecting glory, but by giving it away, liquidating his assets and pouring them out over us in love.  

Not exactly what James and John were thinking of. But you can’t blame them; we all think like that without God’s help. As Jesus says it’s impossible to enter the Kingdom for us. We have to let God bring us in. Without God, we all turn everything back to how it affects us, what we think we and others deserve, how we will benefit. We think that’s normal, because we think sin is normal. But as I said a couple weeks ago, Jesus knows what’s actually normal, what God originally intended.  

Jesus’ reply to the disciples’ request is gentle, but also comical in its level of understatement: “You do not know what you are asking.” They don’t know that the way they interpret Jesus, according to their preconceptions about improving yourself and managing your own resources – all of that comes from being trapped within the worldly system that Jesus came to save us from. And so Jesus tries to tell them. He tries to help them imagine how it is, in God’s system, God’s kingdom, which, remember, he has already launched and is already available.

Jesus tries to explain, as he does over and over, that the way God does things isn’t the way this fallen world does things. “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. He came to give his life away, a ransom for many.” With God, the primal movement is not inward, it’s outward. It’s not about what comes to me, but about what I let go. It’s not about who respects me, but about giving honor and opportunity to others. It’s not about safeguarding our blessings, but about being a blessing to others.

This principle is all through the Bible, and it baffles me how often churches act as if it weren’t. In so many churches you would swear someone just cut all those pages out of the book. In so many churches the attitude is like, yes, that’s what’s in the Prayer Book and the Hymnal and the Bible, but once we walk out of Mass into the parish hall – never mind walking out of the parish hall into the parking lot – once we leave the service we are going to act as if God were very limited in his abilities and very narrow in his priorities, and we need to ration our resources and make sure we don’t get too involved, because apparently the Holy Spirit has been kidnapped and tied up in a closet somewhere.

But all those pages are in the Bible, and God knows what he’s doing with this infinite blessing stuff, and the most heartstoppingly beautiful example of that is Jesus. The way he emptied himself on the Cross for us is so beautiful that when we really see it, when it really connects, it opens up the opportunity to feel all those other things that have taken over our priorities being drained of the power we mistakenly thought they had. We thought we needed them, but that was just the way the world did things. The way God does things is different. Acclaim is just acclaim. Time is just time. Money is just money. In Christ, we can have them, or let them go. He is enough for us.

You don’t have to believe that, of course.  Christianity is hard to believe. And the Episcopal church is, thank God, a safe place for people who aren’t yet ready to believe it, a safe place to ask questions and dip your toes in the water of Christian life. But it’s not meant to be a place that encourages you to stay in the shallows forever and never go past your toes, either. It’s meant to help you learn to swim. God the Holy Trinity is an infinite ocean of joy and creativity and love and the sooner you strike out into the depths the better your life will be. And the better the lives of others will be, because as you become secure in God’s blessing he will be able to use you to bless others.   

God is always seeking to give more and more out of his infinite resources -- even to us Episcopalians, who so often hold back, lingering right on the shoreline in case some better option comes along. Who so often can’t be bothered to realize how much God is offering us because we’re far more motivated by trying to hold on to what we’ve got.

But when we do open our hands, when we do even start to look at Jesus and let go of trying to deserve and control and plan, when we swim instead of backing away from the beautiful big waves, we’re filled with blessing. And the same blessing spills out from us, and we say “Is that how Christianity works? Why did I miss this for so long?”

You don’t have to believe that. But I want to tell you, it’s worth a try.

A man ran up and knelt before Jesus, and asked him, “‘[What] must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘You know the commandments: You shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal . . .’ He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”

Few passages in the Gospels put us on edge as much as this one can — because no matter how much we try to distance ourselves from Jesus’ teaching, we can’t shake the feeling that he is speaking to us. And despite the fact that we consider ourselves to be fairly nice people who are also fairly generous, we have a feeling that the story would end the same way: with us going home disheartened. For we, too, have great possessions. 

Much as we’d like to deny it, however, that is exactly what’s going on. Jesus is here among us and he is speaking to us now and his words are sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the center of our hearts, revealing what it is that really matters there.

And, if we’re honest with ourselves, it’s not him. 

Not that we don’t think Jesus isn’t great. We do; but we have a habit of pushing him to the side when the real stuff of life comes up. Jesus doesn’t have anything to do with my finances, with how I live my life or spend my time. We hear “Go sell all that you have and give to the poor and come follow me,” and we immediately begin equivocating, pointing to the good things we’ve done, to the plans we have, to our intentions — anything to avoid the fact that Jesus so frankly reveals: We don’t love him most of all. 

Which is an uncomfortable reality to face. Like the disciples, we watch in amazement as the rich young ruler leaves. But he’s a good person, we think. We’re all good people and we just want to follow you, Jesus. Isn’t that enough?

And Jesus says that it’s not. 

“Then who can be saved?” 

Who can be saved when the rich can’t buy their way into heaven and when even the most decent person among us can’t meet the bar Jesus sets — because try as we might, we can’t make ourselves love God as he deserves. We can’t make ourselves stop worrying about the cares of this world. We can’t make ourselves stop wanting and needing the things that Jesus literally tells this young man to leave behind. 

So what do we do when we come to this point? What do we do when Jesus confronts us with the truth? Will we cling to the gold and jewels of this life? Will we go away sad because we simply can’t give up our possessions? Or will we open our hands and our hearts and reach for the pearl of great price, the silver coin, the treasure hidden in a field, knowing that he is more beautiful, more valuable, more precious than anything, than everything, we’ve left behind?

If that sounds impossible, it’s because it is. In our own strength, we will not, indeed, we cannot make ourselves love God more than money or family or whatever idol rests on the altar of our hearts. For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible — even the saving of a rich young ruler. Even the saving of us. 

Jesus, looking on the young man kneeling before him, loved him. Jesus, looking on each and every one of us today loves us, too. He loves us so deeply that he gave up the riches that were his own and emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, so that we might be saved — so that his riches might become our riches and his life our life. 
God himself chose to make the poverty of our sin his own so that we might share in his abundance, so that the poor in spirit and the poor in body might be blessed according to God’s generosity, not according to some worldly standard or worldly standing. 

This is the gift Jesus offers us today, a gift of riches beyond all reckoning hidden within the humble body of our Lord. 

We are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because of Christ — and we will grow to desire him, to long for his presence more than we long for even the most beautiful things our world would give us as we follow him, as we cling to him, as we choose to set aside our burdens and our cares bit by bit and day by day and look to him instead. 

Together with the psalmist, let us pray: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands — O prosper the work of our hands!” AMEN.

​

 saw in the News-Gazette recently that a local grocery chain is cutting back its hours because of staffing problems. That reality of “this is the best we can do under the circumstances” has really become part of life, hasn’t it? The MTD is having to make all kinds of service reductions, too. And you have that sentence we’re all used to now: There are supply chain issues. These have become the routine experiences of life post-Covid, where we all regularly accept that this is the best everyone can do under the circumstances.

The theological equivalent of “the best we can do under the circumstances,” probably, is something we’ve all been living longer than any of us can remember -- existence in a fallen world. That term, fallen, comes from the Christian claim that the world no longer works the way God intended it to. That nature, relationships, systems, everything around us and within us, has been distorted by what we Christians call the Fall. But in this case, we’ve gotten so used to the distortion we often treat it as normal. But it isn’t, or at least Christians believe it isn’t.

However you read the picturesque story about Adam and Eve itself, our narrative as Christians claims that the universe that originated from God mirrored his perfect justice and love. It was a world in which for example there was no racism, no sexism, no disease or decay, no lies or betrayals. That’s what originated from God. But people said “no. We don’t trust you, God. We know better than you what’s good for us.” And thus began the decay of God’s universe in favor of a universe shot through with human self-centeredness. From that rupture in love, that rupture in trust, the ripples of distortion spread. And in Christian theology, we call that the Fall.

So living in this fallen world means that we are often faced with the best everyone can do under the circumstances. The things we deal with in life often express not God’s full dream for us, not his ultimate purpose for society, not his vision of what’s normal, but the best everyone can manage amidst the abnormal distortions human sin has caused. I mean, God sees sin as abnormal, whereas we see it as normal. No wonder we miss the point.   

There’s an interesting instance of that in today’s Gospel. The Pharisees come with one of their attempts to trap Jesus into saying something that can be used against him. In this question, they are referring to an existing political controversy about King Herod’s family, but they frame it abstractly, asking whether a man can divorce his wife. Jesus starts by referring them back to the law of Moses, one of the ways God helped his people deal with the reality of a fallen world before Jesus came. What did the law of Moses say, Jesus asks.

It actually doesn’t directly say anything, but there is one passage, Deuteronomy 24, which is about remarriage after divorce. It just assumes, given the circumstances of a fallen world, that there are going to be divorces. That passage, which the Pharisees turn to because they have nowhere else to turn, takes for granted that a man could divorce his wife for any reason, that sending away a spouse is common and unremarkable, and takes for granted that the husband should write up a document testifying to the divorce for the wife’s protection.

That’s not a Biblical command, but this passage assumes that’s how it works when divorces happen. Given the circumstances of a patriarchy. Given the circumstances of broken relationships. Given the circumstances of a subsistence economy for most people. Given the circumstances, that’s the best Deuteronomy can do right now – at least provide for the poor woman economically. Our culture also assumes that there are going to be divorces in a fallen world, but we have extremely different ideas about what the process should look like. And when Jesus pushes them, the Pharisees go to that passage because they have nowhere else to go.

But the astonishing thing about Jesus is that he has somewhere else to go. He goes not to the Law that addresses life after the Fall, not to the sad realities of a broken world, but back before all that. Because he knows what God’s normal is, what the world is like without sin and shame. Yes, he says, "Moses wrote you that law because of the hardness of your hearts. To help you manage the circumstances of a fallen world. But I can let you in on my experience, the experience of a world that isn’t fallen." Jesus says to them and us, I have a cure for hardness of heart. I have a cure for the Fall.

It’s just audacious. But it’s why he came.  Jesus didn’t come to assist us in muddling through as we make the best of a fallen world. Having him in your life does help with that! But God came to earth in person not to improve our muddling somewhat, but to cure the Fall. Jesus’ role is to open the door for us to share with him in living God’s original intention. To open the door to the new creation, which begins the moment he enters the world and will continue until the great last day when God’s designs are perfectly realized and the universe is set right.  

So Jesus just changes the terms of the discussion. He does it here, he does it all over the place. Jesus repeatedly says things that clearly set a stricter standard than the Law. Why does he do that? Because he’s rooting his answer in God’s vision before the Fall, before sin entered the world. When things were normal. Jesus gives these shocking answers to underline the radical change he has made in the order of the universe. To underline that there is a new reality at hand, the kingdom of God, which he has launched, which makes it possible to be set free from bondage to sin. To be set free to experience something of what God intended from the beginning.

Jesus knows what it would be like if God’s infinite compassion and justice were fully manifest in every situation. Jesus knows what normal was before the Fall, what normal will be when God is all in all, and he won’t shrug his shoulders and say, “Well, given the circumstances, what do you expect. Just try and make do the best you can.” He won’t conceal from us what God’s intentions for wholeness are. He won’t dumb it down.

Moses wrote this law for you, Jesus says, because of the hardness of your hearts. But Jesus can cure hardness of heart. Jesus can bring into your life and mine experiences of new creation, just as if sin had never wreaked havoc among us. We’ve reminded ourselves over and over at Emmanuel that this new creation, launched by Jesus when he came, will run along parallel to the old creation until the end of time, when God will be all in all. But it is possible now for us to throw our arms open and welcome moments of joy and healing that give genuine tastes of the new creation.

I’ve talked often here about how I’ve experienced new creation and a cure for my hardness of heart around money since I threw my arms open at age 23 and took the risk of trusting God that he meant what he said about tithing. You’ve heard me say there is nothing, ever, that could make Mark and me stop giving away at least 10% of what we receive. For us, that’s just normal now. And doing so has proved to us that the new creation is happening, and when you take the risk of saying yes to it, you have joy. It also happens that after 35 years, a whole lot of other signs of new creation and moments of joy have been paid for in part by our giving, but that comes second for us. Trusting enough to take a step into God’s world where generosity is normal comes first.

Whenever we send out letters and ask our members to estimate what you will give to Emmanuel in the coming year, as we’ve done this week, I pray that some of you will actually change the terms of the discussion in your heads, just as Jesus does to the Pharisees today. Like Jesus’ words about divorce, his words about money are not meant to make life harder for us as we try to muddle through under the circumstances, but to remind us how beautiful and freeing and desirable God’s original intentions are. Jesus changes the terms of the discussion to help us notice that now that he has come, we have another alternative. We could trust God. We could be lavishly loving. We could throw our arms open to new creation.

Now, I’m not naïve. I know that many, many Christians do not consider changing the terms of the discussion when they start filling out their pledge cards. I know the boring, post-Fall, broken-world questions all too well: “What’s the best I can do given the circumstances?” “What did we pledge last year?” “What’s a nice round figure?” There’s nothing to stop us from thinking about giving that way. Now that Jesus has come, though, we do have another alternative.  

You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

We’ve looked quite a bit at James this month, one of the New Testament letters, which we’ll finish reading at Mass next week. As both Deacon Chris and Marisa have mentioned, this letter focuses on behavior – how those of us who belong to Christ live out that belonging. So James doesn’t really address the baseline question of what makes somebody a Christian; he’s focused on the next step, what it looks like when Christians express the identity God has given us.

Luke Timothy Johnson, a NT scholar from Emory University, points out that throughout his letter, James speaks about two measures for human behavior. How do we measure what’s good and admirable? How do we decide what’s the best way to live? James teaches that either we can measure this by God, our creator and source, or we can measure it by the way human priorities, oriented around us, measure things. Throughout the NT, and here in James, that second attitude is often called “the world,” that whole bundle of human priorities independent of God -- “what looks worth it to me by my own lights, what everyone else is doing, what just feels normal.”

When you hear the word “world” in the NT, that’s usually what it means, which is worth remembering because by “world” we often mean the whole planet or the beauty of nature or something positive. So when James says “friendship with the world is enmity with Christ,” or the apostle John says “do not love the world,” they don’t mean Christians shouldn’t value natural beauty or enjoy life. They mean we shouldn’t love approaching existence as if we were on our own to get what we want out of life.

So there are these two measures, in James: we measure what’s worth doing by God, our creator and owner, or we measure what’s worth doing by us. And where James is especially interested in making inroads, is in waking up people who think of themselves as accepting God but are actually measuring what’s good and helpful and valuable by themselves, by the values of the world. James calls this “double-mindedness.” He says that we can either be a friend of the world, or a friend of God. But we can’t live by two measures at once.

What you measure by, what counts for you as a good way to live, affects your behavior in all kinds of ways. So we’ve already heard James address over these past few weeks what it looks like when you use God to measure how you respond to economic inequity, as well as when you use God to measure how you respond to the way language can be a tool for violence and exclusion. In the whole first section of today’s reading he talks about how disputes and compromises are handled when you use God as your measure.

In all of those areas – dealing with economic disparities, with our speech, with conflicts -- measuring the best way to live by God produces very different results than measuring the best way to live by us, by the world. In fact those two measures produce different results in every single thing we do all day. And James is trying to tell his readers: OK, we’re sitting in church right now, but in our routine assumptions, what measure of value are we actually going by? What ideas of the best way to live are we actually putting into practice? Because that will tell you whether you are living as a friend of the world, as he calls it, or a friend of God. Far more than what you say, what priorities you put into practice tell you who you really are.

James applies this today in a really subtle way to prayer, and I want us to try and notice how his flow of thought works here. First he talks about cravings that we have and how we respond to them. Just these baseline, I want it experiences, whether big or small. This could be anything at all. You’re at an event and someone is being made a fuss over and you think, how come I’m not getting any credit? I work way harder than her. Or my flight is delayed and we have to sit on the tarmac for an hour. Or I went to my lunch restaurant and they didn’t have the tuna salad today and I only went because I wanted the tuna salad. Our lives are full of experiences where our cravings get denied. Where we don’t get what we prefer.

And James uses this very common experience to ask us to notice what measure we use in prayer. Up till now he’s talked about daily life, now he talks about prayer. You do not have, because you do not ask, he says. In other words, whatever craving is getting frustrated right now, have you prayed about it? If you’re measuring the way you live by you, not by God, will you think to pray in situations that don’t seem quote, religious, unquote? Probably not.

You know, you can pray in absolutely every situation. On the tarmac. At lunch. God is present in every millisecond, relating to you, loving you, closer than your own breath. There is no situation in which it isn’t possible to measure by God. Now, probably only the greatest saints live minute to minute with that perspective. But it’s always possible.

So James first says: you’re measuring by yourself, so you do not ask. And then he goes even further: You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. When someone’s measuring by themselves, even if they do pray, they’ll tend still to pray with that self focus. They will tend to measure what’s important by themselves, even in prayer. It’s such a subtle point James is making. That’s what he means by “you ask wrongly.” If someone is measuring what’s valuable by themself, their prayer will be mostly trying to recruit God for their agenda, to treat him as a resource for satisfying cravings.

You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.

So if we are willing to be as subtle and self-aware as James this morning, we can look at our prayer lives. Are we mostly praying when we have a want or a craving? Are we praying in order to get things? Or are we praying, if you will, in order to get God? In order to draw near to God and allow him to draw near to us? When you’re a friend of the world, in James’ language, you’ll talk to God about the world.

When you’re a friend of God, you’ll naturally start to talk to God about God. To thank and adore him for who he is. To just sit in his presence in silence and soak up his love. To let yourself steep in the words of Scripture so that your perspective can get bigger. To receive his limitless forgiveness. Just to enjoy him. Our Presbyterian friends say in their Westminster catechism, that the chief point of being a human being is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Praying not to get things, but to get more of God, to enjoy God, to draw near to God, to allow God to draw near to you. And those of you who know what I’m talking about know that what often happens is that we start our prayer with self, and then God widens us out to enjoying him and seeing things from a broader perspective. We start with the worldly concern we have: “God I’m so angry about this flight being late,” and then as that prayer goes on he opens everything up for us, widens our vision, and changes our reactions. We see this all the time in the Psalms; today’s is a good example though we don’t have time even to look at it. It alternates prayer based on that human measure, that self-preoccupation, with God widening out the preoccupations and pouring down his love and his spaciousness.

If you think you might be stuck in that human measure, if you talk to God mostly about things and mostly when you want something, rather than spending time routinely enjoying him and letting him broaden your mind, I’m going to suggest you use today’s collect as an initial little bit of leverage to begin changing that. Take the bulletin home, or use the Forward Movement app or your Book of Common Prayer, and spend 10 or 15 minutes in the presence of God with this week’s collect. You do not have because you do not ask. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. 

It boasts of great things because the words that cross our lips can never be taken back — though we don’t often think of them that way. We’re so used to the constant stream of information and perpetual noise of TV and social media that when we speak we imagine the words disappearing, as short-lived as our attention spans. The sarcastic comment toward our loved ones may be bad but it doesn’t really have a lasting impact. The muttered insult at people who cut us off in traffic won’t really change anyone or anything. But the reality is that nothing we say will truly go unheard. Our words make up our reality. They linger on in our memory. They make us who we are and lead us toward who we will be. 

But we don’t often speak as though that is the truth. Words have a power we don’t fully understand, a power that St. James refuses to downplay: “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. . . . For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by humankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” 

James makes such an impassioned case against the human tongue because he knows that our words matter more, much more, than we think they do. Listen to what the Proverbs say: 

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits” and
“Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life; he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.”

Our words matter. But it’s not only in the here and now that they weigh on our lives and the lives of others. We are told in Scripture that one day we will give an account for our words. For all of them. Jesus said that on the day of judgment we will stand before God himself, and he will weigh everything we have ever said: “I tell you, on the day of judgment you will give an account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

If we think about that for a second, it should scare us. Every careless word we utter, every backhanded complement, every passive aggressive aside — we will give an account for it. 

Where, then, does that leave us? If every word we say will be examined before God’s judgment seat, then what hope do we have that mercy awaits us? 

In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul writes: “Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ . . . Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another . . . . Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up . . . so that your words may give grace to those who hear . . . . [Be] kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

The Father has spoken one Word, the Word who took on flesh. The Word who has come to us full of grace and truth. This Word is Jesus Christ, the one through whom all things were made and through whom all things will be redeemed. He is the certain hope that we have because he offered himself up for us, that we might become one with God himself, his words becoming our words, his grace our grace.

It is only through Christ, living in us and among us today, that we can speak grace and truth to one another. Our human hearts are hard, quick to judge and quick to hate; yet Jesus remains with us, never leaving nor forsaking us, leading us on to better things. And as we travel with him, as we walk his road, we are changed. Christ Jesus shines into our hearts and our minds and our voices, revealing the depth behind every kind word, the consolation behind every sorrow. His story becomes our story, his life our life. As St. James says, “Draw near to him and he will draw near to you. . . . Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.” May these words sustain us today, tomorrow, and in the coming weeks. AMEN.


​

So the Pharisees and the scribes asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Where does evil come from? Surely the most popular answer to that is “over there.” Point over there, name the evil, condemn it, and separate yourself from it. The Pharisees Jesus jousts with today are far from the only human beings that have dealt with evil like that. In fact, it’s interesting how our postmodern culture has enthusiastically, though I’m sure unwittingly, adopted one of the principles at the heart of the Pharisee movement: purity means overtly signaling your distance from evil. "It’s over there; I condemn it; see how pure I am." Whether you signal your distance from evil by what you post on Twitter, or signal it by how visibly you observe the purity rules of a religion, trying to set yourself apart from the bad guys and make clear your own virtue is one of the most common human behaviors. Where does evil come from? The easiest answer may be “over there,” but Jesus’ answer is “in here.”

Now the idea that it’s not just some hearts over there, but every human heart, that harbors and expresses evil intentions is not something Jesus made up on his own: it is the witness of the Old Testament Scriptures which he grounds himself in. And it is the witness of the New Testament Scriptures that the Holy Spirit will inspire after his death and resurrection. And it is the witness of all the saints of the church over the past 2000 years, who came to know the depths of their own fickle hearts best of any of us. Mainstream Christian testimony is unanimous: Evil is not over there; it’s pervasive, including in here.

This is, of course, one of the parts of the Christian account of human nature that has now been the most resoundingly rejected in Western culture. Not that the Pharisees liked it – in fact, the disciples didn’t like it either. They push back against Jesus in this chapter too, and he retorts, “Are you also without understanding?” But I think we in the contemporary West might like this teaching least of anybody.

What passes for spirituality among us now teaches that everyone has a true inner self that is beautiful and sacred, and that the more we discover and express that self, the better and more spiritually authentic we and the world will be. But at the same time – this is a logical contradiction, of course, but people don’t seem bothered by that -- it also says that when certain other people express their inner selves, their speech and their deeds are evil, and it is our sacred duty to exclude and erase and shame those people, and to be seen doing so, because after what they did, you know, they are just beyond redemption.

Now at those two words, anybody who takes Jesus seriously ought to be able to recognize a problem. When we hear a human being characterized as beyond redemption, something ought to kick in and we ought to say, “Hey, wait a minute. ‘There’s a wideness in God’s Mercy like the wideness of the sea. There is plentiful redemption in the blood that has been shed.’”

Christians know, or at least should, that God’s plentiful redemption is enough for you, and for me, and for everyone. We can’t declare him unable to redeem anybody. But in order to make sense of that offer of plentiful redemption and mercy, and draw on it in your behavior towards others, we need to take time to internalize what Jesus says about people, as actually applying to us. What Jesus says about the human heart as applying to your heart.

Alan Jacobs has written, and I think it’s true: “When a society rejects the Christian account of who we are, it doesn’t become less moralistic but far more so, because it retains an inchoate sense of justice but has no means of offering and receiving forgiveness. The great moral crisis of our time is… vindictiveness.”

What is it in the Christian account that can set us free from moralism and vindictiveness, and give us this all-important means of offering and receiving forgiveness? The answer is Redemption. The plentiful, final and full redemption you and I and the whole human race need has been provided for by Jesus through his Cross and Resurrection. It’s not up to us. You may not believe that yet, or not be sure if you believe it, and that’s fine, but I wonder if you might try with me to imagine how it works.

After the Cross, we now know that a justice greater than we can imagine will be done on the last day, and that it will perfectly satisfy both God, and our own need to see things made right. We now know that death and evil have lost any ultimate power over us and the universe. We now know that our partial and shortsighted efforts at improving the world will be swept up by God in a great cosmic rectification of all things, in the new heavens and the new earth. And we also know that this redemption works not just at that cosmic level, but that it’s available to deal with even the smallest misdeeds in your life and mine.

And where Jesus is so psychologically brilliant in this chapter is in asking us to start grasping his kind of redemption right there. He knows, probably, that starting anywhere external will feed all our worst tendencies. He doesn’t ask us to start grasping how God makes things right by trying to improve or sanction others. He doesn’t ask us to start grasping how God makes things right by thinking in terms of global solutions or policy statements. He asks us to start grasping how God makes things right, how vast and full the redemption he offers on the Cross is, by noticing our own need of it. By letting him do it for us.

Not to stop there. His redemption is so big you can’t stop it anywhere. He asks us not to stop with our own heart, but to start with our own heart. Because however bad we think those evil people over there are, however much they merit being erased and shamed, if we start trying to figure out how things get made right by looking at them, that will feed our self-righteousness and our moralism and our natural tendency to exclude. Self-righteousness and moralism and exclusion are all things Jesus came to save us from!

So if we want to understand redemption Jesus style, Scripture style, Christian style, we start with ourselves. We start with the realization that in making things right God reaches all the way down. Redemption reaches to the bone, to the tiniest flaws and the most intimate hurts. Redemption both rectifies in God’s sight, and starts healing in our own experience, everything that is broken in us. God’s loving justice addresses even the tiniest cracks.

So, for example, your hateful little remark about people who won’t get vaccinated, or about people who want to require the vaccine -- or whatever it is, it could be any little sin – up against the perfect beauty and the perfect love and the perfect holiness of God, that flare of anger, that little crack, is something he loves you enough to want to make right. Right there, God wants to offer forgiveness and redemption. And as you begin to look at your little cracks -- or your big ones, the ones that still keep you up at night – as you look at those up against the perfect beauty and the perfect love and the perfect holiness of God, you start to internalize that if we are to erase and shame those who have fallen short of that perfect beauty and perfect love and perfect holiness, we will erase and shame everyone. Start with me.

I am beyond redemption. And yet Jesus redeemed me, because that is who God is. This is the scope of the love we’re talking about, and this is the place from where we just might be able to look outwards without moralism and without vindictiveness. Examining your own conscience brings it home: We’re all beyond redemption, and yet Jesus still redeems.

Once you grasp it, it seems too good to be true.  But it is true. Yes, as Jesus teaches, evil is not just over there, in someone else. It is from within, from the human heart, including yours and mine, that evil intentions come. And there’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea; there’s a kindness in his justice which is more than liberty. There is plentiful redemption in the blood that has been shed. Even for those of us – all of us – who without Jesus are beyond redemption. Thanks be to God for his glorious Gospel.  

Wisdom has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. She calls from the highest places in the town, "You that are simple, turn in here! Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity and live."

We’ll be looking today at this invitation from the figure the Bible calls Wisdom, and at the similar but different invitation from Jesus. This is the third in a series of sermons using our summer book by Henri Nouwen, and before we start talking about invitation, let me remind you that after Mass there’s a discussion of the book over in the education area. We’ll do that again next week as well. But for the moment let’s look at this Proverbs lesson about Wisdom.

Wisdom, in the Old Testament, develops into a personified figure, a woman who is an image for aspects of God. The early Christians quickly realized that what the Bible said about Lady Wisdom was the same thing they were discovering to be true about Jesus, and so both St. Paul and St. Matthew use the term Wisdom in describing him: Christ the Wisdom of God, Paul says.

Now in this Proverbs reading, notice how proactive Lady Wisdom is. All the preparation for the meal is hers. She is the hostess. She is searching for guests. She is calling out to us to come to the table. It’s all her. And this is true: God’s invitation to come to the Table is his to give. Jesus just takes that for granted as he describes himself in today’s reading from John. What we see, though, is that while that invitation from Wisdom was good and gracious, what Jesus is inviting us into goes much further. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them…. Just as I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate.

Isn’t that interesting, that phrase: not like that which your ancestors ate. Why does he mention that? Well, look at what Jesus says about what it does to us not just to show up at the Table, but to internalize his presence, to consume his reality: if we eat him, he says, we live because of him, we abide in him, we feed on him. And Nouwen points out that this piece of the Eucharistic experience actually requires an invitation from us. We think of Jesus proactively inviting us to his table, like Wisdom did, and offering us an encounter that is joyful or comforting or whatever, but the temptation is to leave it where Proverbs left it, where our ancestors left it: God invited me. Wasn’t that lovely? Now let’s go to brunch.

Nouwen points out that after Jesus invites us to his table, it’s then on us to invite Jesus to stay with us, day by day. When we invite Jesus in, the fruits of the sacrament multiply and we begin to belong to him in daily life. But if we don’t invite Jesus to stay with us, to continue his presence throughout the next hours and days until we come to his Table again, it’s all too easy to let the extraordinary gift he gives us at Mass slip away.

And what will inevitably happen then, if we do not invite Jesus into our lives after he invites us to the Table, is that we will move on to other things to abide in. We will leave Jesus to one side until we’re in church again, and try to feed on other things, to live because of other things. You know those things as well as I do. What things other than Jesus do people live because of? What do we abide in? What do we feed on?

The obvious answers are that we try to nourish ourselves with, and live for temporary things, the things our ancestors ate: family, a comfortable life, achieving your goals, romance. Wilier answers have a veneer of spirituality: I want to feed on having a balanced life, I want to feed on being kind, I want to abide in becoming my authentic self, I want to live for the growth goals I have set.

Or what most of us fall for, the wiliest answer of all, is an unintentional mix that just happens without our even being conscious of it: "I'm going to abide in my family while being fed by my church involvement and my personal quest for authenticity, while also living for my career." Or fill in the blanks with whatever stuff you think about all day. If you have not consciously chosen not to live that way, you are probably living that way.

And this can be very deceptive, because it feeds the mind and the emotions, feeds the need for relationships and purpose and a sense of something meaningful. It keeps you busy enough that you may not even notice what’s missing. But none of that, none of it, actually feeds the thing Nouwen is talking about in his book or Jesus is talking about in this reading. And that's why Jesus says this difficult sentence, "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you."

Be offended by that if you like, but Jesus isn’t talking about ordinary life. You can have a wonderful, fulfilling ordinary life without eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking his blood. Jesus is talking about something different, about the possibility to have the life of God himself in you. God designed into each of us a human capacity for this almost inconceivable gift of union with God in Christ, and that gift either is alive in us or it isn’t. Only God can cause it to be born, and only God can feed it with himself and thus keep it alive.

This is why Jesus' offering is so vital. The invitation Wisdom gives in the first reading is beautiful. She is feeding us something wholesome, nourishing, but not herself. But Jesus doesn’t hold back; he addresses our deepest possible need. He gives himself. This is just staggering generosity. He has to use these metaphors of eating, drinking, consuming him, because nothing else is intimate and concrete enough. God doesn't want just to inspire us or enhance us or comfort us. He wants union. But he will never force it on us. He respects us too much for that. He wants union, but we have to invite him.

Nouwen in his chapter "Inviting the Stranger" writes: “Our life is filled with good advice, helpful ideas, wonderful perspectives, but they are simply added to the many other ideas and perspectives… with such an information overload, even the most significant encounters can be reduced to ‘something interesting’ among many other interesting things …. Jesus is a very interesting person; his words are full of wisdom. His presence is heart-warming. But do we want him to come to know us behind the walls of our most intimate life? … The Eucharist requires this invitation. Having listened to Jesus’ word, we have to be able to say more than ‘this is interesting!’ We have to dare to say “I trust you. I entrust myself, with all my being, body, mind and soul to you… I want you to become my most intimate friend…I want to come to know you… as the companion of my soul.”

Nouwen concludes: “Jesus wants to be invited. Without an invitation, he will go on to other places… Unless we invite him, he will always remain a stranger, possibly a very attractive, intelligent stranger… but a stranger nonetheless.”

Once you’ve left Mass, do you start trying to abide in a mix of interesting things you never even really decided to live for? Are you having an interesting moment at church and then getting on with the rest of your day? What would happen if you came to this Table where Jesus himself has invited you, and then invited Jesus in turn to do what he wants with your life, to know you completely, to be a companion in every hour of your day? As Nouwen says, Jesus wants to be invited, but he does wait to be invited.

 For the summer read this year Emmanuel is using Henri Nouwen’s book, “With Burning Hearts” A meditation on the Eucharistic Life. Today’s sermon is part of a 4 week series using ideas from this book as it connects with the day’s lectionary. In addition to the sermon series there will be two opportunities for you to discuss the book on August 15 and 22 following the worship service. If you have not yet read the book I encourage you to do so. Hope spills from its pages. The chapter I will be using today is titled Mourning Our Losses: Lord have Mercy.
         
Today’s Old Testament passage finds us with the prophet Elijah at one of the lowest points in his life. Elijah, probably the most important prophet, certainly one of the most well-known, had many occasions of dramatic stories demonstrating the power of God. His name, Elijah, means the Lord is my God, and that is what defined his ministry, his time of being a prophet. He proclaimed over and over that Yahweh, the Lord, is the one true God.
         
Just prior to today’s passage Elijah confronted the God Baal and his worshipers. At that time Ahab was king of Israel. Ahab married Jezebel who was a leading believer in Baal and many in Israel began following Baal, instead of Yahweh, the lord God. Elijah warned King Ahab of the errors of his wife and her beliefs and spoke openly against the Baal worship. So Elijah had a contest of sorts with 450 Baal priests. Each group of worshippers had a bull to sacrifice. First the Baal priests took a pile of wood and spent most of the day crying to their God to burn the offering, without success. Later, Elijah rebuilt the Lord’s altar of stones that has been torn down and on it put wood and the bull sacrifice. He made it as difficult as possible by pouring water on the wood and building a moat of water around the altar. Then he prayed to God to send down fire on the altar and God did! Certainly this was an effective showing of God’s power and a visible and memorable sign of who is the true God!

There are many spectacular stories in the Old Testament!

But it is not over. Elijah then proceeded to kill all the priests of Baal. And then King Ahab took this story back to his queen Jezebel who vowed to kill Elijah in retaliation.
         
It is at this point in the narrative that we see the man, the human being, Elijah, rather than the great prophet Elijah who has just prayed for and received a great showy miracle from God. Elijah has forgotten what God has done for him throughout his life. His fear of Jezebel and what she has said she will do to him, overtakes him and he flees Israel. He runs to Beersheba (a land not under Ahab’s control) and even then continues another day’s journey deeper into safety. However Elijah is not relieved of his fear.

That is where today’s passage begins. Exhausted and spent, worn out from the killings, the running and the fear, Elijah sits under a bush and asks God to end his life. He is overwhelmed with pain and grief and depression. Enough he thinks, enough, and he asks God to die.

Notice that Elijah takes all of his pain and his grief to God; he does not hold back this part of his very human life. At some level Elijah must have had some glimmer of hope that only God can provide.
And what happens is that God does provide very practical, tangible things, a touch to remind him of God’s presence, bread, from heaven, and rest to recuperate. We are told that Elijah is fed twice with this food to sustain him and to prepare him for what God will ask him to do next.
         
In these short verses we hear of the depressed and hopeless man turning to God. At some level Elijah knew that God had provided for him in the past and that he may provide for him yet again. Even, or maybe especially the greatest ones with close relationship to God need that sustenance that only God can give. Elijah came to God depleted of everything and he is fed and given strength to continue on.

As we approach the Eucharist each week, there will be some times when a few of us will be at the point Elijah was in today’s lesson. We may be despondent, fear-filled, depressed and overwhelmed by our life’s situation. Other days, while things may be going fine for us personally, our thoughts may be filled with the situation in the world and the pain of other people. We may feel the weight of the variants of the Covid virus, or the current political situation, or the increasing violence around us. And at other times we may come filled with joy from something going on in our personal life. What we seek as we gather together in this sacred space is that hope that comes from God. We are not on automatic pilot as we enter the rite.  We bring our pain and our joy with us and ask for God’s mercy. We begin each Eucharist collectively saying Lord have mercy.

Losses are a part of human existence, a part of the journey of life. Some of these losses might be considered natural, a part of the human process. Others are more of a disturbance of the natural order, such as a sudden fire or a pandemic. While we do not each have the same losses we do all suffer at some point. And, we do not ignore suffering, we cannot, rather we ask God for mercy.
         
In the first chapter of his book Nouwen says this, “We come to the Eucharist with hearts broken by many losses, our own as well as those of the world.” And he tells us that we have two choices in experiencing those losses, we can become resentful, hardened by all that has happened or our hearts can be opened so that we become grateful for the gift of life. We can be resentful or grateful those are the options when faced with loss.

I quote again, “The word Eucharist means literally act of thanksgiving. To celebrate the Eucharist and to live a Eucharistic life has everything to do with gratitude. Living Eucharistically is living life as a gift, a gift for which one is grateful. But gratitude is not the most obvious response to life, certainly not when our experiences are a series of losses!”

Acknowledging the grief and pain of life, the act of mourning loss, is necessary before we can see the gratitude. It is through mourning that we are able to know life as a gift. As counter intuitive as it seems, Jesus told us, Blessed are those who mourn. When we try to glide over or avoid thinking about the loss we can become insulated, hardened and resentful. Yet when we acknowledge the grief and express it, rather than trying to avoid it we will be comforted. Through our mourning we will find hope, the hope that only God can provide.
         
As a congregation, as a group, we come here together to the Eucharist each time with a mixture of despair and hope. Some of us may have come with an attitude similar to Elijah’s in today’s reading. We may be despondent, perhaps even angry, overwhelmed by personal pain or by the pain of the world around us. Some of us arrive with thoughts of all the good we see in people around us or the good we have experienced recently. We come together with both the despair and the hope and we ask God for mercy. Lord have mercy is our continual prayer.

Certainly Elijah was not living his life as one who was grateful at the time of today’s reading. His prayer to God to end his life was really a prayer for mercy. Otherwise he could have ended his own life. Instead he asked for God’s help, for God’s mercy, at a very low and dark point. And God through his angels gave Elijah the sustenance to continue. God fed and comforted him to prepare him to continue in his journey to serve his Lord.

Like Elijah when we approach the Eucharist with our brokenness and ask for His mercy we will not be disappointed. God through the Eucharist will feed us. His grace will sustain us. We will find peace through our losses.
         
We begin each mass by praying: Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy; Lord have mercy. And in so beginning we prepare to receive God’s mercy and love. The hope inherent in the service is there each and every time we come. We will be fed. We will be sustained. We will be shown mercy, given hope and receive God’s love. Jesus invites us to his feast, to be closer to him and to know his love in this tangible way. His love is ready for the taking.

“The angel of the Lord came to Elijah a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.”

Again, I invite you to join with the Emmanuel community this summer to read and explore Henri Nouwen’s book. It spoke to me and I believe it will also speak to you about the beauty of knowing God through the Eucharist right in the midst of our very human lives.
Amen.
 
           
             
           
           
            

On the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.”

We’ve been reading Henri Nouwen together this summer at Emmanuel. He was one of the 20th century’s most respected writers on the spiritual life of Christians, with 39 books on topics ranging from solitude to disabilities to compassion to death and more. The one we chose, With Burning Hearts, is subtitled A Meditation On the Eucharistic Life. The clever thing about that subtitle is that it refers both to the life Jesus offers in the Eucharist, and to the life you and I can live when the reality of what goes on in the Eucharist comes home to us. When the shape of the Mass becomes the shape of our own lives.

Nouwen weaves the book around chapter 24 of Luke’s Gospel, where we hear of two disciples, just a few days after the Crucifixion, who meet a stranger on the road to Emmaus. He interrupts their grief and depression, and shows them how all Scripture points to what God was doing in Jesus. But it’s only when he breaks a piece of bread to share with them that they realize that he himself is the Risen Jesus -- and run out to share the news that he is alive.

The structure of this passage is also the structure of the Mass, which is certainly one reason God must have wanted to make sure it got written down and put into the Bible – he knew we would need that chapter of scripture to understand what he was doing here. We’ll have readings and homilies focusing on the Eucharist over the next 4 Sundays, with a little help from Nouwen’s book. Then on August 15 and 22, after Mass we’ll make time for group discussion.

As the stranger told those two disciples, God drops hints throughout the Old Testament about what is coming in Jesus, and today’s reading from Exodus is one of them: the people hunger, and God gives them manna from heaven. He starts by providing something they already understand: quails. We all know what quails are. But God’s next gift dares them to take a new step of trust, and they’re not too sure about it.

In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.

What is it? A very basic question, and it’s no wonder they are asking. The people have not seen this before, they’re not sure why it’s there, they’re not even sure if it’s edible. It’s easy to roast up a nice quail. But this stuff, this fine flaky substance, they can’t figure out. It’s a weird intrusion into their environment. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, what is it?

This is, in a sense, the position we are in every time we hear a Word from God. Something from beyond intrudes into our environment. God’s word and presence come to us from outside our assumptions, from outside what we assume should be true, from outside our perspective, and if we really take it seriously we will probably say What? What is it?

After all, if Christianity is what it claims to be, a revelation from God that brings news of God’s achievement in Christ, it has to be something we never could have made up for ourselves. It has to be something from outside that will keep on giving us new information that we didn’t have before. It has to be something that doesn’t quite fit with what we’d expect. I’ve been a Christian for just over 40 years, and I am still regularly saying What? I’ve eventually gotten used to feeling relieved and grateful when that happens, because I know it means that yet again God is intruding into my environment and challenging my assumptions with his weird, freeing, nourishing truth.

But the manna God gives me, gives all of us, in his Word and in his Sacrament is so unlike what you and I hear everywhere else. It’s so unlike all the other, easier, more normal-seeming offers out there of temporary distraction or of self-guided improvement or of curating your preferred identity through buying things. When God speaks to us, intrudes into our environment with his grace, if we’re listening, the most honest response is probably “What is it?”

And yet this intrusion, God’s giving of himself, full of grace and truth from outside us, is where we find the words of eternal life, the truth of who we are and what we’re meant to be. It is the bread from heaven, which God has given us to eat. If we do not learn how to receive and respond to God’s intrusive Word, his unexpected news of what’s really true about you and me, we will never have the full lives he intends for us. We will, knowingly or not, settle for a cheap, temporary substitute.

Nouwen writes about this in his chapter called “Discerning the Presence.” He says, “It is quite possible to come to the end of our lives without ever having known who we are and what we are meant to become. Life is short. We cannot simply expect that the little we see, hear, and experience will reveal to us the whole of our existence. We are too nearsighted and too hard of hearing for that. Someone has to open our eyes and ears and help us to discover what lies beyond our own perception... We cannot live without words that come from God, words… [that] lift us up to a place from where we can discover what we are truly living.”

So I guess my question for you this morning is, how much of the 24 hours of your day is spent trying to live without words that come from God? How regularly do you allow God to lift you up to a place where you can discover what you are truly living? If your answer is not that often, take home today’s bulletin and read one of the lessons every day this week and ask God to speak to you through it. Ask him for manna from his word. And then do the same thing next week.

If you follow Jesus, he offers you the chance to experience God opening your eyes and ears and telling you things you could never have figured out on your own. God offers you words that come from him, manna that comes from him. It’s right there in your bulletin. It’s right there in your Bible. It’s right there on the altar. Without that manna, your spirit will starve, whether you feel hungry or not. What is it? It is the bread from heaven, the Bread of Life, that God has given you to eat.

As he went ashore, Jesus saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

In her sermon last week, Deacon Chris spoke about the way that the presence and power of Christ has sustained us at Emmanuel. She mentioned the text we use in the Episcopal Church to bless the Paschal candle, the Easter candle that symbolizes the presence of the risen Jesus among us. It’s a beautiful proclamation: Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, alpha and omega, all time belongs to him and all ages.

Deacon Chris talked about the experience we had with that text here at Emmanuel the past three years, which looked different on the outside but was the same on the inside. In 2019, the blessing was said at the Great Vigil of Easter, in the dark back by the baptismal font, with incense and a new fire burning, perhaps 150 people in the church, special music, a special reception, and a total of about 30 lay people serving in all kinds of roles at the Mass and after it. A complex 2 or 3 hour event, with elaborate ceremonial.

In 2020, the Paschal candle was blessed privately by the clergy in the Great Hall since nobody else could gather. It looked very different, but it was exactly the same spiritual event. The power of Christ and the truth of his resurrection was exactly the same in a very different context. Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end.

She talked about 2021, when the candle was blessed publicly - but in a separate rite just preceding the first of our 3 Easter Masses, since it was not possible for Emmanuel to mount a full Great Vigil liturgy. It looked very different, but it was exactly the same spiritual event. The power of Christ and the truth of his resurrection was exactly the same in yet another context. Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end.

We don’t know what the blessing of that candle will look like in 2022, whether we will still be working with only 40-50 participants at Emmanuel, or whether we will have had more invest themselves and will have the people resources to be more lavish. Those kind of questions about how we relaunch given where we and the world are now, that’s what our three vestry groups are working on, and it’s really all of you that will determine the answer. But the heart of what God is doing in that moment will not change. It will be exactly the same spiritual event as in 2019, 2020, and 2021. The same spiritual event, by the way, as it was in AD 121, or 521, or 1521, three more utterly different contexts. The power of Christ and the truth of his resurrection spoken into the world are exactly the same; it’s the context that changes. Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end.

Some of the most powerful moments in the pandemic for me, were those moments of sharing communion through a window, or giving a blessing out in West Side Park, or offering the ashes on Ash Wednesday... contactless. Those moments when the church was still the church right in the middle of the context we were working with were earthshaking to me, because they proved that nothing, nothing, can take Jesus away from us. Jesus gave the power to live out our sacramental life and our witness and our service in the face of Covid, and he is able to give the same power in the face of anything. Because Jesus is the same, yesterday and today, the beginning and the end. Circumstances and context are no obstacle to his truth and his power. They are the channels in which he can pour it out, if each of you turns to him.

I know that many of our parishioners didn’t quite experience what I just described. A large number of folks in our database were not here much, and just couldn't do it -- didn’t have the knowledge or motivation to take the demanding steps Covid required for someone to continue spiritual practice. Many have missed these powerful moments I’m talking about. Several folks who once came to Mass regularly to be fed by Christ are now completely out of the habit or have decided it’s no longer a priority, as you can see by looking around you.

Now Emmanuel is far from alone in this. It’s going on everywhere. If you read Marisa’s article on research by Ed Stetzer, or if you have friends in churches around the country, you know. The pandemic has been an accelerant to trends that are no obstacle at all to the power of Jesus, but that all kinds of churches were already struggling to understand and take into account: spirituality being repackaged as a consumer product to obtain and use privately at your convenience; hostility towards Christianity; growing numbers of people who have never experienced how any mature religion is lived out in community; the shift to locating sacredness is found in self-discovery and self-expression, not in a God who reveals himself.

The confusion and passivity of churches in the face of all those trends, and the resultant erosion of Christian communal practice, was evident before the pandemic, but easier to ignore in 2019 than it is now, when most churches have had a wake up call about how effective they have been in channeling the unchanging power of Jesus Christ within the lives of people in the database. All of that stuff plus Covid has affected how many people God currently has to work with here. It may affect what you guys prioritize on the Emmanuel schedule, how you try to form disciples, how you decide to reach out to Champaign-Urbana. But does anything there change Jesus? Does it change the sacraments? Does it change the Gospel? Does it change the power of the Spirit? No. By learning how to rely on God’s grace and truth and power and that alone, you the Church can be the living presence of Christ in every situation. Any situation.

Because Jesus will help us. Us. You. I mean, look at today’s Gospel. "As he went ashore, Jesus saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd." Sheep are herd animals, and their shepherd feeds and manages and guides the herd. The shepherd changes
them from isolated, hapless creatures into a body brought together, journeying together, eating together, with a common life and a common purpose. Jesus looks at these people in this text and doesn’t see an effective, united body; he sees isolated creatures with no shared guidance or goal. Another gospel writer recounting this same moment describes the people as “harassed and helpless.”

So is Jesus stymied? Is he unable to work in such a context? Is he unable to work with such people? No. When he saw the state they were in, Jesus had compassion for them. And how did he express that compassion? He taught them God’s truth, and he healed them.

Nearly all of us now are "harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd," and we barely even know it. We have become so unfamiliar with what the life God offers us, the good life, feels like that we barely realize we’re going without it. And of course 18 months of living much of our lives virtually, shut away, has accelerated this trend, teaching every single one of us -- oh, so many things that go against how God made us. Teaching us to dip quickly into all kinds of things rather than soak in the important ones, to stay home on the couch rather than make the effort to go out, to be schooled in how life works by memes and screens instead of by Scripture, to stay away from the sacraments and find a podcast or a meditation that suits our taste, to sign on for being harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

What does Jesus feel about people like this? About the people he sees in today’s Gospel? About us? Compassion. What does he do for them and what will he do for us if we turn to him? Teach us, heal us, as in today’s Gospel. Love us. Feed us. And even better than the shepherd and the sheep, live in us. And once you’ve soaked in his truth and his love and his healing, then he will use you. Christ can use exactly who Emmanuel has, exactly where you are, for exactly what he wants. We have nothing to fear.

But first us harassed and helpless people have to come to him and let him heal us, teach us, feed us, and love us. You have to become sheep with a shepherd. You have to become Jesus’s before anything else. Then you can start.

Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, alpha and omega, all time belongs to him and all ages. To him be glory and dominion through all ages of eternity. Amen.

We are at a liminal point in time right now. The pandemic, while definitely not over, is on the downside (hopefully that trend is continuing) and our gradual return to a more normal level of activity will keep going. So, we are at an in-between state—which is a fairly unique place to be. Something is ending and we are at the edge of something new. It is a time that is ripe for reflection of the past and thoughtful prayer about what the future might be. Our lives rarely have these liminal times so it is important that we don’t rush through them.

I ask you to join me in some reflection of the past and perhaps during the time visiting after church you may want to talk about your favorite memories of church.

While I enjoy all the liturgical year services, at the top of my personal list is the Easter Vigil. One of my favorite parts of that liturgy is the blessing of the Pascal Candle. For those of you who may be newer to the Episcopal Church, for most of the year  that candle is located in the back of the church next to the Baptismal font. During the Easter season and for any baptism or funeral it stands next to the pulpit.

(Symbolic for me, the 2020 Candle arrived in its well-packed box with a large crack in it. That crack continued to grow as the year progressed!) But I digress…
 
 Pre-pandemic the blessing of that candle happened in the Vigil after lighting the new fire and before processing the new light through the darkened church. In 2020 the Candle was blessed with just the clergy in attendance.  In 2021 it was done with a slightly larger number of people prior to the Saturday evening Easter service. I look forward to 2022.

Regardless of how it happens the blessing itself is what has sustained me throughout this troubling time. Mother Beth slowly said these words as her hand traced the cross on the candle. Christ yesterday and today. The beginning and the End. Alpha. And Omega; All times are His, and all ages; To Him be glory and dominion, Throughout all the ages of eternity. Amen.
 
No one has gone through this last 18 months unaffected. Some have experienced more loss than others but all of us have been touched during this time. For me these words of the Pascal Candle blessing have sustained me through the most difficult parts.  My summary of the blessing which is easier for me to remember is: “Christ yesterday, Christ today and Christ tomorrow. That is an eternal, unchanging truth. Christ was and is and is to be.
 
That is true for this liminal time also. While change is often challenging, sometimes frightening and sometimes exhilarating, this truth of Christ is throughout all of life. It is the rock on which life is grounded. Christ yesterday, Christ today and Christ tomorrow.
 
This morning we heard the beginning of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. The theme of this letter is God’s eternal purpose in establishing and completing the church—sometimes known as the body of Christ or God’s temple or the bride of Christ. In the first half of the letter Paul gives the theology of the universal church and then in the second half he offers more practical suggestions about how to be the church. In total the letter indicates the importance and the glorious blessing it is to be the church. 

The passage read today is the introduction to the entire letter. Thank you (reader’s name), for your thoughtful reading of this; I know it is very dense and not an easy read. In the Greek these verses are one long sentence with a lot of different clauses. At least the English translators tried to help us understand it a bit more!
 
I am going to suggest, as have some commentators, that we look at the passage as poetry, rather than what might be called a straight forward paragraph with one sentence logically leading to another. When we consider it as poetic images, certain words and phrases stand out.

For example the word “blessed or blessing” catches our attention. We who have received God’s blessing return that blessing to God. We, together as the church, bless God, as he has blessed us. A similar word used often in the passage is “praise” or “praise of his glory”. Our response to God’s loving care of us is to praise his glory. Another related word that comes through is “Grace” and Paul explains what that freely given love has encompassed. Blessing, praise, and grace are words that tell of God’s gifts to us and also our gifts to God. They point to our relationship as a collective body, the church, with God.

In this same vein Paul uses the names of the Trinity, God the Father, the son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit throughout the passage. Christ is mentioned six times in these few verses! And mixed in with the Trinity, Paul speaks of us human beings as children of God and God’s own people. The relationship between the church and God, what wondrous things God has done for us and how the church responds to the love of God is what these phrases are about.
       
Eugene Peterson in his eBook on Ephesians, titled Practice Resurrection says this,
“Ephesians roots the church in the gospel of grace, our redemption in Christ and our calling to be the vibrant, living, Holy Spirit empowered, presence of Christ in the world”

We are called to be the vibrant, living, Holy Spirit empowered presence of Christ in the world. Christians are to embody God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in all we do. Our daily lives must be Christ like. This is a powerful charge to us now as it has been throughout the generations since Christ’s resurrection. The church building itself is to be a sacred place where we are formed and strengthened to do this work. We as people then are to be the living presence of Christ.  

Now if you are not thinking, me, you? How can we do that? This is an overwhelming task! Well, my friends, we do not do it on our own, independently by ourselves, for sure. Rather we do it collectively, together with one another and together with God.
       
Peterson actually goes on to say that the church offers hope to the world not because of what individual human beings do on their own strength, but because of what God is doing through the body of Christ, the church.

This is a powerful charge to us but also an empowering one. We as the church are important and necessary to the work of God.

While I am fairly sure that the church in the time of Paul and in Ephesus did not look or even sound the same as the church in our day and time the basic truths are the same. We human beings are called into relationship with God to be His body on earth, to participate in His work in this particular moment. In this liminal time and as we seek to discern what changes we may make in the future, this awesome truth about the church remains the same! Our rock, Jesus Christ, is there always, present with us in all our circumstances and in all times. This is unchangeable.
       
Christ yesterday and today. The beginning and the End. Alpha. And Omega; All times are His, and all ages; To Him be glory and dominion, Throughout all the ages of eternity. Amen.