Blue Ridge Anglican

Homily: 2nd Sunday after Trinity, Sunday, June 21, 2009

2009-06-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

I invite you to take a few moments to consider all the things that we can see in God’s creation, and consider: what things invoke in you a kind of indescribable awe and wonder? What are those things that make you stop in your tracks, and realize that you are in the presence of indefinable mysteries, wonders which defy explanation? C.S. Lewis said of Tolkien’s work “Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron.” What for you has that same kind of effect?

There were many times when, living in Montana, we had the opportunity to hike in the glorious Glacier National Park and witness those “beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron.” If I tried to put into words what it is like to hike the ridges along Logan’s Pass, or to watch the many cascading waterfalls at Avalanche Lake, I would fall woefully short. You just need to go, see for yourself, and take off your shoes in deference to the holiness of the place.

Agur, writing at the end of the book of Proverbs, mentions four things that, for him, had the same sort of effect. He writes:

Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a virgin.

Without suggesting at all that Agur missed something, I would add my own fifth thing that is “too wonderful for me” that “I do not understand”: and that it the process of birth.

Think about it: who is not fascinated by birth? We’re talking about new life coming into existence. Every time Kristie was pregnant with our kids, I could not get over the thought that God used our love to bring into existence these souls, these little images of God who will exist forever. I still can’t get over it.

Not only is birth wonderful and full of unspeakable mysteries, but let’s face it: it’s messy. Just because it’s beautiful, doesn’t mean it’s clean and tidy. It’s anything but.

Now, there are some parents who, fascinated as they are with the birthing process, want to video-tape the delivery of their child. If any of you are out there, more power to you. That’s just not me. To me, the moment is holy and not conducive to the use of that kind of technology. It’s the kind of thing that’s better remembered than recorded. Not only would I be uncomfortable watching my own wife’s delivery, I would be uncomfortable watching any other wife’s delivery, even if the woman’s identify was unknown to me(as, for instance, in those videos that they show to prospective dads in childbirth classes). I wouldn’t want to record my own wife’s holy moment, and I simply wouldn’t want to peek in on anyone else’s holy moment either.

Now, with animals, that’s a different story. My family is getting a Beagle puppy soon; and on YouTube recently I watched a short video of a Beagle momma giving birth to her pups. Absolutely fascinating. Beautiful. But, at the same time, it was messy.

Not only is the process of birth beautiful and mysterious, and messy, but there is this interesting feature about it: when you tinker with the process, it can get downright ugly. As our technological prowess grows, so too does the temptation grow to tinker with the mysteries of conception and birth through eugenics, genetic engineering, inbreeding, and cloning. Modern man is trying desperately to create the “ideal man” through this kind of tinkering: for some, the ideal of family planning is to pick out, ahead of time, your child’s eye and hair color, build, IQ level, the works. Such attempts to break into the mysteries of God’s universe will, invariably, produce not happy, ideal men, but rather more misery.

Here’s the thing about birth, then: every time something is born, whether a new tree shoot, or new puppy, or new divine-image-bearing human, we are reminded over and over again that our origin is not in ourselves, but in Someone far greater than ourselves. Every birth is a signpost, pointing to the fact that God is the Creator and Sustainer of all life. Every single birth disproves the claims of atheists and other mockers. If you want a simple, straightforward case to make against an atheist, simply point out a birth in progress and say, “there, fool: now try to tell me there is no God.”

The Psalm we recited earlier is all about birth: it mentions birth three times. But like birth itself, Psalm 87 is a bit messy—inspired, yes, but messy nonetheless. At least in the English translation, it comes across as a bit incoherent; the poetry seems a bit clumsy, like that new baby deer that is trying to stand up on its own legs too soon. Even in the Hebrew, the sentences are incomplete, and the transitions from one line to another are awkward. It doesn’t have the elegance of a, say, Psalm 23. Go ahead and take a look at it again (on page 382 of the Prayer Book):

Her foundations are upon the holy hills: * the LORD
loveth the gates of Sion more than all the dwellings
of Jacob.
Very excellent things are spoken of thee, * thou city of God.
I will make mention of Egypt and Babylon, * among
them that know me.
Behold, Philistia also; and Tyre, with Ethiopia; * lo,
in Sion were they born.
Yea, of Sion it shall be reported, this one and that one
were born in her; * and the Most High shall stablish her.
The LORD shall record it, when he writeth up the
peoples; * lo, in Sion were they born.
The singers also and trumpeters shall make answer: *
All my fresh springs are in thee.

Wonderful words, of course, but it’s simply not the most elegant Psalm. It’s the kind that Bible commentators complain about. But again, it’s like birth itself: full of wonders, but not need and tidy.

So what is the Psalmist talking about? First of all, understand that this is not one of David’s Psalms; this one was written much later, after the Temple of Solomon was destroyed and the people of Judah were exiled in Babylon. Some of the people of Judah returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the Temple, but many, many other Jews remained scattered throughout the world.

This scattering of the Jews, called the Diaspora, was part of God’s surprising plan to bring in the nations to his fold. What happened is that the Jews settled in cities all over the Babylonian, and then Persian, Empires, and continued to worship God in their distinctive ways. As a result, many pagans in other nations converted, and began worshiping the one, true God.
What this Psalm is celebrating is this: that many peoples from nations that used to be Israel’s enemies—they are now in God’s fold. The Psalmist mentions a few of these formerly hostile peoples: Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia. All of them are represented, and are now making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the major feasts, just like any good Jew would have made a pilgrimage.

How did this happen? How on earth did idolatrous pagans from hostile nations decide to flock to Jerusalem to celebrate things like Passover? One word sums it up: they were re-born. As the Psalmist says in verse 4, and then repeats it in verse 6: “In Sion they were born.” Sure, their place of physical birth might have been Egypt or Babylon, but as far as God reckons things, they were born in Jerusalem, and are therefore given the full rights as citizens in God’s holy city.

We’ve all heard stories about how people from other countries like Mexico or Cuba do extraordinary things to become citizens of the United States, or to give their children that opportunity. Pregnant women have been known to cling to the bottom side of trucks crossing into our borders so that their child could be born on American soil, and thus reckoned an American citizen.

What the Psalmist is celebrating is that all these people from all these nations are now part of God’s eternal family. They might have been born somewhere else, but the fact that they were re-born in Zion is what matters in God’s eyes. This is a wonder and mystery to be celebrated.

It is this wonderful news of re-birth that is at the heart of the good news of God’s kingdom. We don’t always know exactly what Scriptures Jesus had in mind when he was talking with and instructing different people; but I can’t help but think that Jesus had this Psalm in mind as he spoke with Nicodemus about being “born again.” Here is Nicodemus, a prominent leader and scholar, and when Jesus tells him in John 3 that a man must be born again if he is to see the kingdom of God, Nicodemus is all confused: What? Can a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born? How can these things be? And then Jesus gently childes him, saying, “are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” Jesus was not, in fact, saying anything new: that God’s plan was to make the nations his own through re-birth had been sung long before Jesus’ time, right here in Psalm 87.

Now, I want to draw our attention to what this means for us as we consider the arrival of our new priest in a few weeks. It is easy for any church, whether a mega-church with 5,000 members, or a small church like our own, so see the pastor as the professional who is going to do all the work of the church. It’s easy to see the pastor as the guy who simply maintains the nice social club of sheep, who smoothes things out so that things don’t get too rocky or messy for the sheep, and then the sheep can go on leading their normal lives. My hope is that we do not fall into that trap.

What we need to keep in mind as Fr. Mike comes to us is this: as our pastor and priest, he is in the business of re-birth. His calling before God is to create an environment in this parish where the Spirit of God can work and bring about new life. When the Spirit is at work, it is like watching a birth take place….because it is a birth taking place. It is beautiful. It is awe-inspiring. It is full of mysteries. And yes, it can be, and often is, very messy.

If Fr. Mike fulfills his calling in our midst—and I have every reason to believe that he will—that will mean that you as an individual, and we as a parish, will be constantly re-born. The make-up of our parish will change: it will change because we are being changed, and also because others will be added to our number. And sometimes, those added to our number will be very different from us, just like those Egyptians and Babylonians and Ethiopians who flocked into Jerusalem were very different from the Jews who also made the trip.

It is, indeed, an exciting time for our parish. May God give us the grace to be ready for the time of re-birth and growth that He has planned for us.

In closing, I want to pray specifically for Fr. Mike in this regard. Please turn to page 59 of the Book of Common Prayer, as I lead us in praying the second prayer under the heading For Pastors, or Ministers-in-Charge.

O LORD Jesus Christ, we beseech thee that the Ministers of thy Gospel, here and everywhere, may be true to their calling. Endue them with thy Holy Spirit, that they may remember the words of Holy Writ, that their understanding thereof may be enlightened, and that their witness may be in truth and with power, to the salvation of sinners and the edifying of saints. May they rightly and duly administer thy holy Sacraments, and by their life and doctrine set forth thy true and lively Word. May they be to all men wholesome examples in faith, word, love, chastity, and fidelity; that so thy Name may be glorified, who art, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

Homily: 1st Sunday after Trinity, Sunday, June 14, 2009

2009-06-16T04:51:00.000-07:00

The liturgical green is out, signaling that the long season of Trinity is upon us.

To call it a “season” is most appropriate: the green color of Trinity season is meant to provoke agricultural images of growth and fruitfulness. Just as a farmer does much planting and pruning and watering and weeding during the spring and summer if he hopes to have a good harvest in the fall, so too are we called during this season to prepare our lives for a long, sustained season of growth in Jesus Christ.
St. James put it like this in the reading we heard earlier this morning:
Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains.

You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

“Establish you hearts.” If you want a slogan or motto or guiding principle for the Trinity season, that is it: “establish your hearts.” Having our hearts established is not something you can do in a short period of time; like farming, it involves a lot of sustained, disciplined attention, coupled with a strong faith in the Holy Spirit to bring forth the fruit of that long, sustained labor.

Older writers used to call this process “spiritual formation,” and that term is making a welcome comeback in our day.

What is often assumed, unfortunately, is that this process of “establishing our hearts,” this process of “spiritual formation,” is something that just happens to us or doesn’t. For some Christians, they have such a high view of God’s sovereignty—which we should all have—but come to the mistaken conclusion that God’s absolute sovereignty means that I do absolutely nothing of my own effort to aid in spiritual formation. For other Christians, it is just plain laziness that gets in the way.

But for most Christians, I believe, the problem that keeps them from properly “establishing their hearts” and taking responsibility for their spiritual formation is simple ignorance of how it works. They have a desire to grow in Jesus, but they just don’t know how to get there.

It would be helpful, then, to draw an analogy between our spiritual formation and another area of life that we know something about. While no one here is a professional athlete, we all know something about what it takes to be physically fit, and so let us compare spiritual formation to being physically fit.
Whether we are talking about physical fitness or spiritual formation, there are three things that are absolutely necessary: we need a vision for what we can accomplish; we need the intention to accomplish it (in other words, we need a real plan); and we need the means to carry out the plan. Three things: Vision…intention…means.

Let us say that you three friends who have aspirations to run the Lynchburg 10-miler next fall. All three friends are excited about the idea of running the race, but each has a distinct approach to the race. With just two weeks to go before the race, you approach each one of them.

You ask Friend #1: “Are you ready for the race?”

He responds, “Well, I suppose so.”

“What do you mean, you suppose so?!? Haven’t you been training?”

“No, I haven’t been training. If I’m meant to finish that race, it will happen. There’s no sense in wearing myself out through this long, hot summer.”

Friend #1 had barely had any vision; he apparently had no intentions to train; and he certainly did make any use of the means to train.

You then ask Friend #2: “So, are you ready for the race.”

Friend #2 responds, “Yes, I think I’ll be ready. Training didn’t go quite as I expected, though.”

“Oh? What happened?” you ask.

“Well, money was really short,” your friend explained. “I couldn’t afford running shoes and the right equipment, and I couldn’t join the gym to work out. Since gas prices have gone up, I couldn’t put gas in the car either…so I just made the best of things. I walked to work every day—5 miles there, 5 miles back—with all my work materials packed into my backpack. It wasn’t the best way to train, but I did what I could, so I should be ready, but I can’t know for sure.”

Friend #2 had a great vision, and also had intentions to train. He just didn’t have the best means in place. Sure, walking to work and back is better than doing nothing, but it might not prove a sufficient training regimen for the long, hilly run that is the Lynchburg 10-Miler.

You then ask Friend #3: “How about you? Are you ready for the race?”

Friend #3 responds, “You know, things could happen: I could get injured or dehydrated during the race, and be forced to quit. But I’ve trained smart, and trained hard. I went on two long runs per week, two shorter and faster runs per week, and I lifted weights twice per week. I had a nagging foot injury about six weeks into training, but because I had been lifting, I was strong and was able to recover quickly. I have slowly been able to work up to good, solid 9 mile runs, so I should be ready for the big day.”

So friend #3 had the vision for what he could do; he had the well-thought out plan and intention; and he employed the right means to meet his goal. The obstacles will come, but this friend has sufficiently prepared himself to meet and overcome those obstacles.

And so it is in our spiritual formation: we need to think of “establishing our hearts” as a kind of exercise. We, too, need the vision, and intention, and means to train ourselves in godliness.
• The vision is this: God, the Holy Trinity, has brought us into his life. We are called to serve him in his Kingdom.
• The intention is this: we need to “establish our hearts” by deciding whether or not growing in Jesus is important. It is one thing to say that growing in Jesus is important to us; it is quite another thing to believe it, and act on it. Just like an athlete needs a training plan in order to compete, so too we need a plan to grow into spiritual maturity.
• The means is this: we need to have specific, concrete ways to carry out our intentions. If we intend to grow in Christlikeness, we need to employ means that are challenging, and yet realistic. For example: before we try to memorize the whole book of Romans (which is the spiritual equivalent of running a marathon), it would be best to simply try to memorize one chapter of Romans, and go from there.

I have become absolutely convinced that the best way to think about spiritual formation, about “establishing our hearts,” is to think of it as a kind of exercise. Ignatius of Loyola did well to name his famous book exactly that—Spiritual Exercises.

Here in America, the popular name for a collection of spiritual disciplines like prayer and Bible reading is “devotions.” To call these practices “devotions” is certainly not wrong, but it can be misleading…and here’s why (and here, I return to a sports analogy):
• An athlete who goes regularly to the weight room is not doing so to prove that he is devoted. He is devoted to his sport, and therefore trains in order to become stronger and more skilled.
• Likewise, an athlete does not talk things over with his coach and pick his coach’s brain just to prove how devoted he is to his sport. Instead, he does so in order to grow in knowledge become a better athlete. His interaction with his coach is not the proof of his devotion, but the fruit of his devotion to the sport.

Very often, when Christians want to display their spiritual credentials, to prove their love for God, they talk about their “devotions.” Again, don’t hear me wrong: the word is not inherently bad, and certainly the practice is worthwhile. We just need to be aware of the misconceptions the word can bring.
• A Christian who reads and studies the Bible is not doing so to prove that he is devoted to God. Instead, he is devoted to God, and therefore reads and studies in order to transform his mind more and more to the mind of Jesus Christ. Bible study is not the proof of one’s devotion, but the fruit of one’s devotion to God. It is an exercise.
• Likewise, a Christian who prays is not doing so to prove how “devoted” he is to God. In fact, the more a Christian prays, the less and less he will even think about how devoted he is. The more we pray, the more we very naturally think God’s thoughts after him, and the less we are concerned with how “devoted” we feel.

So as we begin this Trinity season, and we anticipate the growth that God is going to bring about in our lives, take time to consider: what is my plan for becoming more and more like Jesus? And what are the means and tools I need to carry out that plan? Perhaps your intention might be to read through the whole Bible this summer—there are many means to do so, and I’d be happy to point them out. Perhaps you would like to walk more steadily and regularly in prayer—there are plenty of means to do that as well. Perhaps there is some great book by a great Christian writer you wanted to tackle—I, and certainly Pastor Ed, would be happy to help you there. Remember that even a defective plan is better than no plan at all. God is not looking for a squeaky-clean, flawless plan that looks impressive to onlookers: rather, He is looking for men and women who are simply dedicated to living more fully in that Kingdom.

In closing, let us turn to page 71 of the Book of Common Prayer, as I lead us in praying “A Prayer for Christian Faith.”

Almighty God and heavenly Father; Open thou our eyes that we may see ourselves to be sinners in thy sight, partakers of a fallen nature, and actual transgressors against thee. Enable us to realize our continual need, both of thy pardoning mercy and of thy quickening grace, and to receive Jesus Christ as the only Saviour of our souls. May we trust in his atonement, and rely on his intercession, as our only hope. Rejoicing in thy free salvation, and renouncing our own righteousness, may we walk in the way of thy commandments, serving thee faithfully, and striving against every sin; through the grace that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Homily: Trinity Sunday, Sunday, June 7, 2009

2009-06-07T07:31:00.000-07:00

Things are always more valuable to us when we know just how much they cost us. When we invest a lot of time, money, and effort into something, we generally put a higher premium on it.

This is true of our possessions. For instance, if you have diligently saved up your money to buy a nice car, you are more than likely going to take good care of that car, since you know just how hard you worked to get it. On the other hand, if you paid $100 for a beat-up car from the junk yard, more than likely you are not going to waste your time giving that car a good polish or good detailing. So whether we are talking about cars, clothing, jewelry, books, or basketball shoes, we place value on something when we know how much it has cost us.

This is also true of our traditions. Recently, we celebrated two civic holidays: a few weeks ago, we celebrated Mother’s Day; and then a few weeks after that, we celebrated Memorial Day.

Just consider why we put so much stock in those days.

In the case of Mother’s Day, we value Mom so much and honor her on one particular day each May because we know how much it cost our Moms to raise us. There is often a lot of pain and sickness in the pregnancy and birthing process; and when it comes to raising children, there is very often even more pain and sickness involved. So we honor moms on Mothers Day because of their sacrifice on our behalf.

Likewise on Memorial Day: we honored those men who have died on behalf of our country. We honorrd those soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen and value them greatly because have paid the ultimate price; and we, in some way, have benefited from their sacrifice.

So in both case—in Mothers Day and in Memorial Day—we recognize that the cost paid by certain people is high…and therefore, we honor those people highly.

And now, here we are today, not celebrating a civic holiday, but rather a church holy day. Today is Trinity Sunday, and on this of all days, it is appropriate to ask you this question: how much do you value the Trinity?

How important is it to us to believe that God is one God, and that God exists in three Persons?

Do you love the Trinity? Sounds like a strange question. We are used to people asking if we love God, or asking if we love Jesus, or if we love our Bibles. But the idea of loving and valuing the Trinity sounds strange in our ears. By why is that?

Perhaps the question does not make sense until I tell you how much this doctrine has cost certain people. Consider the Nicene Creed that we recited together today. Among other things, in reciting that Creed we confessed our faith in the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost.

But are these simply words that flow glibly from our mouths? Does this all seem like dry, stale doctrine, written by a bunch of men who are fond of just composing fine-tuned theological distinctions?

Would it change the way you think about the words of the Nicene Creed if I told you that the men who composed it suffered immensely for what they believed?

A historian notes this about the men who gathered at Nicea about 1700 years ago: “The early church came to Nicea already battle-scarred from the struggle with the enemies without and within, struggles with the empire and with the heretics. The Fathers went to Nicea with the marks of battle…arms made useless by the application of red-hot irons to the nerves, crippled and maimed of body. Some had the right eye dug out, others had lost the right arm." They suffered in this way because they had the audacity to tell the world that God is much grander than we might have supposed.

So this Creed which we recite together at least once a month does not get us into trouble right here, right now, in this country. Perhaps it should. And perhaps some day it will. But for the men who wrote it, it literally cost them life and limb. If it cost them so much, perhaps we should value it even more.

But it still begs the question: why is the belief in the Trinity so important that these men were willing to suffering pain, humiliation, exile, and even death?

Simply put, these men rightly recognized that God’s existence as the Trinity is the most foundational belief we confess. This is not some optional or secondary doctrine that you can take or leave as you wish. If you take away the Trinity, you have taken away the Christian faith in its entirety.

Let me briefly address two applications of this doctrine of the Trinity. Our forefathers in the faith recognized that there were numerous applications of this truth; we would do well to heed several of them today.

There are two things we want to avoid as we consider the Trinity: both of them begin with “S”: we want to avoid Simplification, and we want to avoid Subordinationism.

First, we dare not attempt to simplify this doctrine. God is bigger than us; as our Creator, there are some things about him that are going to be mysterious to us. That is how it should be. Think about the Epistle reading today from the book of Revelation. In Revelation 4 and 5, we are given a glorious picture of what a heavenly worship service looks like. Around the throne of God are the 24 elders; and on each side of the throne are the four living creatures, terrible and beautiful to behold. For all their mighty power, a power that far exceeds our own, these four living creatures do nothing but proclaim

Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,
Who was and is and is to come.

The four living creatures are overwhelmed by the glory and majesty and mystery of God’s presence.

We, too, should be shot through by the holiness of God. But when we take what God has revealed to us, particularly how He has revealed his Trinitarian character, and we try to simplify it and dumb it down to suit our sensibilities, then we are guilty of a most grievous sin. When we try to dumb down and simplify what God has taught us, it shows that we have no interest whatsoever in worshiping God as He really is.

Yes, the doctrine of the Trinity is hard to understand—in fact, no created being, whether human or angelic, can possibly understand it. God is One; God is also Three. This is, as Daniel Webster once remarked, “heavenly arithmetic” that transcends our understanding.

I love teaching in a Christian high school, because the students ask their teachers great, straightforward questions. One of my students—back when I taught in Montana—in a Bible class asked me point-blank: “Mr. Martin, if you deny the Trinity, will you go to hell?” It was a simple, honest question, and so I gave the class a simple, honest answer: yes, if you deny the Trinity, you will go to hell. BUT, I had to qualify that answer. We do not have to UNDERSTAND the Trinity: none of us do, and none of us can. But we have to believe it, because that is how God has revealed himself to us.

But many men do not like complexity; they are uncomfortable with things they cannot understand. And so, instead of trusting God for what they cannot understand, they instead try to bring God down to their own level. Whenever we try to bring God down to our level, the result is heresy (at best) and idolatry (at worst). In fact, every heresy and every cult group out there begins with some kind of denial of the Trinity.

Let us resolve, then, to not try to take away the mystery of God’s character. The angels in heaven would not tolerate that, and neither should we.

Second, not only should we not attempt to simplify the glorious truth of the Trinity, but also we should not fall into the error of subordinationism. Let me explain what I mean by that word. The Scriptures teach that God is one God, existing in three Persons, and each of these 3 Persons are fully and equally God. Subordinationism, though, is the error that says that one of the Persons is superior to the other persons, or that one of the Persons of the Trinity is more fully God than the others. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for instance, are subordinationists, because they insist that Jesus Christ is not fully God as the Father is fully God. Jesus was created by God, they insist; and in doing so, they commit a grievous error.

But let us not think that it is only the cult groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons that can fall into this error. We, too, are prone to fall into subordinationism in more subtle ways. Here is when the doctrine of the Trinity becomes incredibly practical.

For instance, we fall into the error of subordinationism in how we think about marriage. This happens when the husband asserts that, since he is the head of the household, that somehow he is inherently superior to his wife. Since she has to submit to my authority, the husband reasons, that means that I am a superior person. This kind of thinking goes under various names, such as macho-ism or chauvinism.

Now, where does this kind of thinking come from? A man who thinks that way is, in a very practical way, denying the Trinity. In effect, he is saying exactly the same thing as the Jehovah’s Witnesses: that having to submit means that one is inferior. Jesus Christ submits to the Father, this reasoning goes, and is therefore a lesser person. The husband who does not truly hold to the Trinity applies this same sort of thinking to his marriage, saying in effect that since my wife submits to me, she is therefore a lesser person. That is a grievous and common error, and men: we have all to some extent thought that way, and we need to repent of it.

But wives are just as susceptible to fall into error, only their error comes from another direction. The mistake many wives make in marriage is to say, well, both my husband and I are human beings; therefore we are equal, and because we are equal I do not have to submit to him at all. This is the basic idea behind modern feminism, and many Christian wives have unwittingly fallen prey to this destructive idea.

This idea that wives do not have to submit to their husbands is destructive because, again, it is an implicit denial of the Trinity. Jesus Christ is fully God, and yet in his role and function He does truly submit to the Father and do the Father’s will. The Holy Ghost is fully God, and yet in his role and function He does submit to the Father and to the Son. But when we do not understand the Trinity properly, it should not surprise us that our bad ideas about God are transferred quite readily into bad ideas about our marriages.

And so, amazing as it may sound, many of our basic problems in marriage today start with an improper view of the Trinity. When we truly grasp what God has taught us about his Triune character, our lives and marriages should be radically changed.

But the error of subordinationism is easy to fall into in other areas as well.

• Everyone here, young and old, who holds a job must submit to his or her boss. Yes, you are just as human as your boss and just as valuable in the eyes of God…but you must still submit to the authority of your boss, as Christ submitted to the Father’s authority.
• Children: you are human beings, created in God’s image. You are just as important in God’s eyes as your parents are. But as long as you live under your parents’ roof, you must submit to your parents and obey them, just as Christ submitted to the Father.
• On the reverse side, parents: we must keep in mind that our children area created in God’s image, and are not simply potential persons. Children are fully human, and important in the eyes of God. To think in a Trinitarian way about our children means two things: one, that we do not demean them or provoke them to anger in any way. But secondly, I think the more common thing today is to allow the children to get away with not submitting to their parents, to allow them to do their own thing. So to think in a Trinitarian way about our role as parents involves two things: one, it means you must uphold the dignity of your child as someone created by God in His image; and on the other hand, it means you do not coddle the child in such a way that the child does not submit to your very real authority. If the child does not learn to submit to authority in your home, your child will not learn it anywhere else.
• For those of you who are students: you, too, are as important in God’s eyes as your teachers. In fact, some of you students here might be thinking that you are actually smarter than your teachers. Well, perhaps you are. But in your role as a student, you must still submit to your teachers, just as Christ submitted to the Father.
• We should also apply this thinking to the church: in this parish, Father Mike will be the shepherd of our flock. That does not make him a superior person. And yet, it would be a mistake for us to say that, well, since he is not superior to us, therefore he does not have any real authority over us. Again, that is an un-Trinitarian way of thinking. In our role as parishioners, we must submit to the authority of those spiritual authorities whom God has appointed over us.

In closing, let me simply reiterate that this doctrine of the Trinity, which we will commemorate on the church calendar from now until Advent season, is a truly great gift. It came to us at great cost, and we should therefore put great value upon it.

Do not attempt to avoid the profound mystery of it by simplifying to your liking. And do not fall into the error of subordinationism, either in the way we think about God or in the way we think about man.

The Trinity is a truth to embrace, not a riddle to write off.

And the Trinity is not only a truth to embrace: it is also a life to embrace. We should not simply contemplate the truth of the Trinity in a detached, intellectual fashion. No: to be saved by God means that we enter into the life of the Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit began a dance when the world was created, and we are invited to become part of that dance. We are co-workers with the Trinity as God continues the work of New Creation.

Let us then close by turning to p. 68 of the Book of Common Prayer, as I lead us in praying “For Every Man in his Work.”

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who declarest thy glory and showest forth thy handiwork in the heavens and in the earth; Deliver us, we beseech thee, in our several callings, from the service of mammon, that we may do the work which thou givest us to do, in truth, in beauty, and in righteousness, with singleness of heart as thy servants, and to the benefit of our fellow man; for the sake of him who came among us as one that serveth, they Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Homily: Pentecost Sunday, Sunday, May 31, 2009

2009-06-01T06:28:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine from seminary, whose oldest son is five years old, recently asked me if it was time for him to start reading the Chronicles of Narnia to his boy. I assured him that yes, at age five his boy can begin to grasp the basic storylines. As I recall, it took about a year and a half to finish the Chronicles with my oldest kids; and from there, we took about another year and a half to read through the Lord of the Rings together.

For those of you who have read the Lord of the Rings, or have seen the movies, or have just a passing acquaintance with the story, you know that the story is built around an unusually large cast of characters that makes it a challenge not only for young reader, but also for older, seasoned readers. Most authors expect their readers to keep track of about a dozen characters or so; but when you read Tolkien, you must keep track of about ten dozen characters.

What’s more, many of these characters are very complex and often greatly misunderstood. Take, for instance, one of the main characters, the wizard Gandalf. He comes, he goes. He comes, he goes. And when he comes and goes, something significant always happens—and often, it is not pleasant. Many of the other characters do not understand Gandalf; they think that because Gandalf shows up just in time before something evil happens, Gandalf must therefore be causing the evil thing to happen. Even those who are close to Gandalf and trust him with their lives do not begin to claim that they understand him.

Our purpose today, of course, is not to talk exhaustively about fictitious wizards like Gandalf, but on this day it is appropriate to draw our attention to a character in the Bible who is also misunderstood by many. I can think of several biblical characters who are widely misunderstood: Jacob comes to mind; Sampson is widely misunderstood; all the prophets were misunderstood; St. Paul was and is widely misunderstood. But here, on Pentecost Sunday, we need to draw our attention to the story of the most misunderstood character of the Bible, the third member of the Holy Trinity…that is, the Holy Spirit.

There are many reasons why the Holy Spirit is widely misunderstood, but two of these reasons stand out. First, most people, myself included, find themselves habitually referring to the Holy Spirit with the impersonal pronoun “it” rather than properly referring to the Holy Spirit with the personal pronoun “he.” No one I know of is the habit of referring to our Heavenly Father as “it,” nor to our Lord Jesus Christ as “it.” And yet, we find ourselves referring to the Holy Spirit as “it” quite often. This shows that we tend to think of the Holy Spirit more as an invisible force or power than as a real person. And then naturally, when we think of the Holy Spirit as a force or power, the temptation is to try to figure out how to control and manipulate that power. One thinks of Simon the Magician, who in the book of Acts saw the apostles do signs and wonders through the personal power of the Holy Spirit, and wanted to buy that same power for himself.

Not only do we tend to think of the Holy Spirit as an impersonal force rather than a divine person, but the second prominent misunderstanding is this: many assume that the Holy Spirit just suddenly appears on the scene in Acts chapter 2 (the passage that was read today) when the wind rushed into the room where the apostles were meeting and flames of fire came down upon their heads. Certainly, this event was a glorious manifestation of the Holy Spirit, but it was by no means the first appearance He made in the story given to us in the Scriptures.

In fact, the Holy Spirit makes his entrance into the story in the opening scene of the very first act of God’s play. In Genesis 1:1, we are told, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and then, in the very next verse we read this: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Here we see that the Holy Spirit is far from a newcomer in God’s story: He was there from the very beginning. He was “Hovering over the face of the waters,” bringing order and glory to God’s newly created universe. Too often we think of God as a distant god who sits up in the highest heavens and glares down at the physical creation, and every now and then gets his hands dirty with the world as we know it. But right here from the start, we see that the Holy Spirit has always been intimately involved in God’s creation.

Of course, we know that in just a short period of time, Adam and Eve sinned and fell from the original glory of God’s creation. But the role of the Holy Spirit did not stop: the Holy Spirit brought new life to the original creation, and the Holy Spirit continued to do so even after sin and death came into the world. We see this in Genesis chapter 8, when God flooded the whole world but saved Noah and his family and a massive floating zoo along with them. Recall that as the flood waters were subsiding, Noah first sent out a raven to see if there was any dry land; and then he sent out a dove on three different occasions. This was a real, flesh-and-blood dove that Noah sent out, and at the same time it was a symbol of the Holy Spirit. The dove hovered over the flood waters, searching for signs of new life; and likewise, the Holy Spirit broods over God’s creation, looking for and bringing forth signs of new life. It is no coincidence, then, that when Jesus himself was baptized, the Holy Spirit appeared on the scene in the form of a dove. And so, it is fitting that to this very day, the dove remains a well-recognized symbol of the Holy Spirit.

And then a short time later, we come to the account of the Tower of Babel in Genesis chapter 11, which again was read for us today. The arrogance of mankind got the better of him once again, for they wanted to “make a name for themselves” by building a great tower. God’s will for mankind was that he be fruitful and multiply and spread out all over the face of the earth, but these men said, “no, we want to stay right here and build ourselves an empire that will bring us honor and glory.” Well, in spite of the great height of the tower, God shows his wonderful sense of humor in that he had to come down from heaven to inspect what was in fact a puny little tower. And then the rest of the story we know well: God confused their languages, so that their attempts to build this tower and an empire were thwarted, and they were forced to scatter all over the face of the earth. When sinful men unite for the purpose of glorifying themselves over and above God, God will judge them and put them to confusion.

But what is the Holy Spirit doing in this part of the story? As before, the Holy Spirit is hovering over the chaos and sin that is in the world, and is drawing out new life from that world. And so, it is important for us to note one of the most important transitions in the whole Bible takes place right here, the transition between Genesis 11 and Genesis 12.

In Genesis 12, the Holy Spirit responds to sinful chaos by calling a man named Abram. Before, Abram was just another pagan, like the many pagans that had just been confused and scattered back at the Tower of Babel. But the Spirit called him, changed his name to Abraham, and promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. Note the connection, then, between Genesis 11 and Genesis 12. In Genesis 11, we have the problem illustrated for us: sinful man rebels against God, and God brings confusion into their midst and scatters them. In Genesis 12, God begins to fix the problem by promising Abraham he would be the means through which God would re-unite mankind and save him from death. Whatever the Holy Spirit was going to do to bring in this new life, He would do it through Abraham.

But the call of Abraham was only the beginning. Abraham was the physical father of the Jewish people, and for many generations the covenant was given to Abraham’s seed and Abraham’s seed alone. And throughout those many generations, the Holy Spirit guided the people of God: the Holy Spirit was manifest through the pillar of cloud and fire that guided the Israelites through the wilderness. The Holy Spirit was revealed when Moses received the Law on Mount Sinai (and, incidentally, for the Jews the feast of Pentecost fell on the same day that they believe the law was given to Moses). The Holy Spirit was revealed in the very structure of the Tabernacle. And most dramatically, the Holy Spirit was revealed upon the completion of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem: when the Ark of the Covenant was brought to the Temple, the Holy Spirit very dramatically filled the Most Holy Place with a thick cloud. Later, the Holy Spirit was revealed through the prophets, who tirelessly called the people of Israel to repent of their rebellion against their good God. But while the Holy Spirit guided God’s people throughout the history of Israel, outside the Jewish nation, the confusion and chaos of Babel continued unabated.

…And yet, God promised to Abraham that he would be the father of many nations, not just the Jewish nation. Somehow, Babel would be reversed.

Everything changed, then, when Jesus Christ emerged out of the tomb on the first Easter Day. The principalities and powers of the world, and death itself, were all defeated. Forty days later, Jesus Christ ascended to the throne of his Father. The job of the Apostles was now clear: since Jesus had taken his place as the rightful king of the world, their job was to let the rest of the world know it. But that job would be far from easy. After all, the world outside Israel was still the land of Babel, full of confusion and chaos. How on earth were the apostles supposed to go to the Greeks and the Romans and the Egyptians and the Ethiopians and Indians and tell them this crazy story about a Jewish carpenter who was shamefully crucified by the Romans, but then rose again from the dead in order to take his heavenly throne as the king of the world?** Humanly speaking, the message was absurd; and furthermore, how on earth were they to tell this absurd story to a people who spoke in tongues they did not know?

Once again, that mysterious and often misunderstood character enters the picture. In Acts chapter 2, we read that it was the feast of Pentecost. The disciples were gathered into a room when the Holy Spirit made a dramatic entrance, with a mighty rushing wind and flames of fire appearing over them. And being filled with the Holy Spirit, each one of them began to speak in languages that they had not previously known.

Now, notice what Luke tells us in the very next verse in Acts 2. In verse 5, he tells us, “Now, there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.” In Genesis 11, God had confused man’s language and scattered them into many nations all over the world. Here in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit reverses that Babel-like confusion. Then Peter goes on to assure everyone that the Apostles were not drunk, but rather what they were witnessing right there and then was nothing less than the ancient promises of God coming to their fulfillment. God promised Abraham a multi-national family, and that new family was being formed right before their eyes by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So what we see is that the same Holy Spirit, who was intimately involved in the old creation, hovering over and bringing forth signs of new life, is now unleashed by the Father and the Son in order to usher in God’s new creation. In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit is not introduced as a new character in the story; instead, the Holy Spirit is a very old character whose role now takes center stage.

Perhaps the most important way that the Holy Spirit takes center stage is by filling God’s chosen people and making them what we sometimes call “spiritual people.” And throughout the New Testament, the apostles also refer to members of the Church as “spiritual people.” In light of this all-too-brief survey of the work of the Holy Spirit, what does it mean for us to be “spiritual” people?

Well, let’s begin with what it does not mean. To be “spiritual” does not mean that we should write off the physical world as though it had little or no importance. Too often we suppose that being “spiritual” means that we treat the normal, earthy things of life as being somehow second-rate compared to the “non-earthy” realities. With this idea goes the thinking that prayer is important, but work is unimportant…or that Bible study has eternal value, but studying things like algebra or science or gardening or woodworking is a waste of time. Of course, prayer and Bible study are crucial—for without them, we cannot know the mind of God—but we are being deeply disloyal to our Creator if we turn around and say that God’s good creation is somehow second-rate. If the Holy Spirit has been brooding over creation from the very beginning, we who are Spirit-filled must also be about the business of brooding over creation. What that means is that this physical world that God has placed us in is hugely important, and we dare not abandon it. When we deny our physical nature, when we marginalize the created order in the name of “spirituality,” we are actually being deeply un-spiritual. The Bible begins in Genesis with Creation in a garden, and it ends in Revelation with New Creation in a city, a city that we will inhabit not as disembodied spirits, but with our resurrected bodies.

Secondly, to be “spiritual” does not mean that we demand to have highly dramatic, supernatural things happening to us and around us all the time. What we see in Acts chapter 2, when the Holy Spirit filled the apostles, was a wonderful display of God’s power, and we praise God that He has done and continues to do such mighty acts. But we also need to remember that this kind of pouring out of the Holy Spirit was unique in God’s redemptive history: it was during this time that God was laying the foundations of his new kingdom. For those of you who have built homes, you know that the laying of the foundation involves a lot of dramatic work: you have to chop down trees, pull up roots, level the ground…and sometimes, if the ground you are working on is especially rocky, you have to use dynamite to break up those rocks so that you can dig and pour the foundation. That’s what was happening in the book of Acts: the Holy Spirit was clearing away the brush and bramble of the old world in order to lay the foundation for God’s new world. It was certainly dramatic. But now that this foundation has been laid, our task as a Church is to build on that foundation, one brick at a time. Yes, the Holy Spirit can and sometimes still does act dramatically like He did in the book of Acts…but let us not suppose that to be “spiritual” means that we demand that the Holy Spirit act in this manner in all times and in all places. Even in the Bible, we see that God’s normal way of dealing with his people is to change them slowly but surely over long periods of time. As Eugene Peterson has said, discipleship is a “long obedience in the same direction.” Those who are truly “spiritual” have the patience and long-suffering to see God work through them over the long haul.

In sum, to be “spiritual” means to see the world as the Holy Spirit sees the world. As Saint Augustine put it, we are to “think God’s thoughts after him.” The world has had a new King ever since Jesus Christ ascended up to his heavenly throne. Our job, through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, it to proclaim the Kingship of Jesus throughout the world, by both word and deed. And though there remains in this world many pockets of resistance, though there are men and women who do not want to concede that Jesus is the world’s true King, and though we who are lead by the Spirit may often experience suffering…Jesus promised that as we go about this task, the gates of hell will never, under any circumstances, prevail against His Church.

Let us close by praying “A Prayer for the Holy Spirit,” found on page 62 of the Book of Common Prayer.

O God, Holy Ghost, Sanctifier of the faithful, visit, we pray thee, this congregation with they love and favor; Enlighten their minds more and more with the light of the everlasting Gospel; graft in their hearts a love of the truth; increase in them true religion; nourish them with all goodness; and of they great mercy keep them in the same, O blessed Spirit, whom, with the Father and the Son together, we worship and glorify as one God, world without end. Amen.

Homily: Sunday after Ascension , Sunday, May 24, 2009

2009-05-26T05:01:00.000-07:00

Text: II Kings 2:1-14

One of the keys to becoming a better student of the Bible is to come to grips with the fact that the Bible is literature.

Right away, when you make that claim, you might face objections from two sides. The first objection you get is from non-believers, who say, “Come on, the Bible is just a hodge-podge collection of ancient writings, sloppily thrown together. There is no coherence to the Bible whatsoever.”

The second objection to the notion that the Bible is literature comes from some well-meaning Christians, who are afraid that in saying “the Bible is literature,” that you are saying, “….and therefore it is a man-made product and not inspired by the Holy Spirit.”

But when we say, “The Bible is literature,” what we are saying is that the Bible is certainly more than literature—because, indeed, all 66 books are inspired by the Holy Spirit. We are also saying that the Bible is not less than literature: in other words, we do ourselves a great disservice when we read the Bible as a gangly connection of stories and moral advise. No: the men who wrote the Bible did so with great care and insight. As with any piece of great literature, in the Bible the characters are well-developed; key themes and motifs appear and re-appear; the authors skillfully connect what seem to be insignificant details. When we think of the great works of ancient literature—works by Homer and Virgil and Cicero and others—the Bible stands shoulder-to-shoulder with them in literary terms. As Christians, we simply go one step further and say that this great piece of literature is great ultimately because it is inspired by God.

One of the ways the Bible proves itself to be to be truly great literature is in the use of types. A “type” in the Bible is a person or place or thing that foreshadows another person or place or thing. For instance, the Old Testament is full of “types” of Jesus: Adam is a “type” of Jesus; Joseph is a “type” of Jesus; Moses is a “type” of Jesus; David is a “type” of Jesus; even the lambs that were regularly sacrificed were “types” of Jesus; the Tabernacle and Temple were also “types” of Jesus.

What is fascinating about the types in the Bible is that they can be very complex and do double-duty, so to speak. Take the prophet Elijah. Here, Jesus is very specific: he tells us that Elijah is a type of John the Baptist. And if Elijah is a type of John, then it logically follows that Elisha his successor would be a type of Jesus.

But Elijah as a type does double-duty: yes, he was a type of John the Baptist; but he was also a type of Jesus Christ. And when Elijah is considered as a type of Jesus, then logically Elisha his successor would be a type of the Church.

As you can see, typology and symbolism in the Bible can get complicated.

And so, let us get into the details of the story of the last moments of Elijah’s life here on earth.

The whole story of the Bible is about God’s presence with his people. In Elijah’s day, God had almost entirely withdrawn his presence from Israel because of their great apostasy. Elijah himself represented God’s presence in Israel—so much so, that when Elijah departed from the people and went into exile, God also departed from the people, as symbolized by the three-year drought.

As 2 Kings chapter 2 opens up, we are told that Elijah is soon to be taken up into heaven. Elisha knows this, and is disheartened: after all, if Elijah is taken from us, what does that mean for us? How will God be present among us if his great fire-prophet is taken from us? Three times Elijah tries to convince Elisha to remain behind while he goes on across the Jordan River, but three times Elisha refuses.

So Elijah and Elisha come to the Jordan; Elijah takes off his cloak, strikes the water, and it parts for them. Upon reaching the other side of the Jordan, Elijah asks if Elisha wants anything (much as God asked Solomon if there was anything he wanted). But instead of asking for wisdom, Elisha asks for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit (in asking for a “double portion” of something, Elisha was claiming the right of a firstborn son, who received a “double portion” of a family’s inheritance—cf. Deuteronomy 21:17). Elijah says that his desire will be granted if and only if Elisha actually sees Elijah ascend into the heavens.

And then, we know the story well: Elisha sees chariots of fire sweep Elijah away to heaven in a whirlwind. And with great sorrow, but also with great confidence, Elisha picks up the cloak of Elijah—a symbol of prophetic authority—and retraces Elijah’s steps. He strikes the Jordan with the cloak, and it parts for him as it did for Elijah.

And if you take time to read on through the events of 2 Kings, you see that in many ways, as great as Elijah was, in many ways Elisha was even greater. Truly, a double portion of Elijah’s spirit was given to him.

Now, why is this text chosen for the Sunday after Ascension Day?

There is, of course, the obvious reason: the same cloud-chariot—the symbol of God’s presence—that carried Elijah into heaven also carried Jesus into heaven. The difference with Jesus is that he was carried into the very throne room of heaven, to reign as king of the world.

But it is not just the fact of these ascensions, but the result of these ascensions that are instructive for us.

1. The first result is this: when Elijah ascended, his presence—his “spirit” was not withdrawn from the world—instead, it became more powerful. Elisha became, as it were, the “re-incarnation” of Elijah. (now, do not misunderstand how that word is being used here: I am not talking about an Eastern-style “reincarnation” where a person could die and be born in the form of another human or even an animal some time later. I am using the word in its most Biblical—and literal—sense: Elisha is the “re-incarnation” of Elijah in that he embodied the same Spirit that empowered his master). Having received a “double portion” of the Spirit, Elisha went on to do even greater things than his master.

Likewise, when Jesus ascended into heaven, the Church that remained on earth became the “re-incarnation” of Jesus (again, using that word in the Biblical sense: to be “incarnated” means to be “embodied,” and the Church is the Body of Christ). Jesus made an incredible promise to his disciples in John 14, verse 12: "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”

How on earth could the Church do “greater works” than Jesus? Hard words to believe, yet that is exactly what Jesus said. It must have been equally hard for Elisha to believe that he truly did have a double portion of Elijah’s spirit.

2. The second result was this: after the sons of the prophets were convinced that Elijah was gone, they immediately recognized that Elisha was his successor. They realized that there was a strong family resemblance between the great prophet who was before and the great prophet that stood before them now. Elijah had departed, but in a sense he was still there.

Likewise, after Jesus ascended, the Jews in Jerusalem took note of the courage displayed by Peter and the other apostles, and their conclusion was that these men had obviously been with Jesus. There was a strong family resemblance. Jesus had departed, but in a sense he was still there, embodied in his Church.

In our Collect for this week, we prayed that God “would not leave us comfortless.”

Much as it might surprise us, Elijah and Jesus needed comfort. Our word “comfort” comes from the Latin word “forte” which means “strength.” Yes, even Elijah and Jesus needed strengthening.

Think for a moment about the lives of Elijah and Jesus. Here is Elijah, that great man of action, the fire-prophet who embodied the power of Yahweh. He calls down fire from heaven; he slays hundreds of the prophets of Baal; he confronts evil kings and queens; he shuts up the heavens for three years. And yet, he spent much time in exile: first, at the brook Cherith, where he had to be fed by ravens; and then he fled from Jezebel into the wilderness. He experienced the “dark night of the soul” with utmost intensity; he was utterly convinced that God had lifted his presence completely from Israel. But God spoke to him in a still, small voice, and Elijah was comforted; he was strengthened.

And then there is Jesus, who not only embodied the presence of God, but was and is very God of very God. Yet he, too, spent time in exile; he, too, experienced the “dark night of the soul” when he fasted 40 days and nights in the wilderness, being tempted by the devil all along the way. He felt the anxiety of separation from his Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, and experienced that separation most acutely during those final hours on the cross.

And now that Jesus has ascended, we might at times feel the same way that Elijah felt. We know that Jesus’ ascension means that he is king of the whole world, but quite frankly when we look at the state of the world it is hard to believe. Is God really in control? Has God abandoned us? Can this evil world truly be redeemed? Like Elijah and like Jesus, we sometimes experience the “dark night of the soul,” and we need comfort.

That comfort, prompted by the Holy Spirit, could come in very surprising forms. We often expect that if God is going to act, it is going to be dramatic and bombastic. But that’s usually not how God works. Remember, that Elijah fled into the wilderness and experienced his “dark night of the soul” right after calling down fire from heaven and destroying the prophets of Baal: he had just seen God act dramatically, and still he needed to be comforted. It was not the memory of God’s dramatic action that comforted him; instead, it was the still, small voice of God that gave him comfort.

It will often be the same thing with us. Jesus is our ascended Lord, and as such he is orchestrating all things in heaven and on earth. We might be tempted to think that Jesus needs to orchestrate something really big and really dramatic in order to prove that he is running the show and to give us the comfort that we need. But if Jesus is Lord of the world and is orchestrating all events, that includes the small things as well as the big things. More often than not, God will use the “still small voice” to comfort us, to assure us of his presence, and to prove to us that his strength is made evident in our weakness.

Jesus has ascended; and the Comforter has come. Let us pray.

O God, the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven; We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thy Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Savior Christ is gone before, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

Homily: 4th Sunday after Easter, Sunday, May 10, 2009

2009-05-11T05:52:00.000-07:00

Today is one of the most celebrated Sundays of the year. All over our good land, people will come out of their worship services and meet at various homes and restaurants to feast and celebrate.

You might be looking up at our hymn board, and wonder, “oh, I didn’t realize that the 4th Sunday after Easter was considered such a big deal.”

But of course, I am not talking about the 4th Sunday after Easter. I’m talking about Mother’s Day.

Now, it would certainly be worth our time to discuss the value and importance of motherhood—it would be worth a 10-part sermon series at least.

My only regret about Mother’s Day—other than the fact that, to my chagrin, I usually do not become mindful of it until about 8 A.M. on the actual morning—is that it usually falls in the midst of some very important days on the church calendar, and kind of shoves them out of the way. It’s not the case this year, but in many years Mother’s Day falls on the same day as the Sunday after Ascension Day. In thousands of churches across the land, Mother’s Day takes the preeminence that should be given over to Ascension Day.

And then, after Ascension week, we roll straight into Pentecost Sunday, and then straight into Trinity Sunday. These feasts are all tied close together, and their significance is obscured if proper attention is not given to the feast that kicks them off—that is, to Ascension day.

What I would like to do today, then, is to begin to consider the importance of the Ascension, even though it is a week and a half away. And then, I intend to continue to speak of it next week (on Rogation Sunday), and conclude with the Sunday after Ascension. It is simply too important to simply mention it in passing.

And so…this morning, we heard read to us the first few verses of the Acts of the Apostles. As most of you know, Acts was written by Luke, the physician and historian, who also wrote the third Gospel.

In fact, the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts should be seen as one continuous story: while we do not normally think of the book of Acts as one of the “Gospels,” it would not be improper to think of Acts as “The Gospel According to St. Luke, Part II.”

The Gospel of Luke is about the life of Jesus when He was bodily present; and Acts is about the life of Jesus when He was ascended and then present through his saints. The full title of the book of Acts is “The Acts of the Apostles,” but it could just as well be called “The Acts of Jesus Christ through his Apostles.” Even though Peter and Paul, Barnabas and Silas are the principal actors in this story, it is ultimately all about Jesus.

And notice the event that ties together the two books: both at the end of his Gospel, and at the beginning of Acts, Luke gives us an account of the Ascension. The Ascension is the pivotal point for Luke’s presentation of the life and work of Jesus.

Unfortunately, for many, the Ascension of Jesus is basically seen like this: “Jesus went up into heaven, and we hope to join him there someday.” But this is not how Luke presents it. If the Ascension was all about how we, too, might join Jesus in heaven someday, then Luke was wasting his time writing 28 chapters of detailed history.

Luke’s whole point, you see, was this: Jesus has ascended on high, and from his throne in heaven, He is directing the growth of his kingdom. The kingdom of Jesus Christ grows through a slow, historical process; God is concerned with the details of life, with particular places and particular people and particular rulers. The book of Acts—or, again, the Gospel of St. Luke, Part II—is simply the first few chapters of a very long, very glorious story about the growth of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

Notice how the book ends: in Acts 28, Paul is under house arrest, and Luke ends his account this way:

He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

That’s it! Luke ends his account in a very abrupt way. Why? He was a good storyteller, that’s why. It is as though Luke is telling us that this story—the story of the kingdom of God being proclaimed “without hindrance”—continues to our own day and beyond. It is as though Luke put a little “dot-dot-dot” at the end of this book, to suggest that the story goes on and on.

But what about that kingdom? Let us go back to those opening verses of Luke’s account.

Jesus had gathered his disciples together; and in Acts 1:6, we read that the disciples asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?”

Jesus does not give them a direct “yes” or “no” answer to the question; and many have assumed that Jesus’ implied answer is, “no, I am not really intending to restore the kingdom to Israel.”

I think the better understanding, however, is that Jesus’ implied answer is “yes, I am restoring the kingdom to Israel…but I am doing it in a way you never would have expected.”

What were the disciples asking? What were their expectations of Jesus? How would these good Jews, who had studied the Hebrew Scriptures their whole lives, have been expecting Jesus to do at this point?

Any good Jew who knew the Scriptures would have had several expectations for the true Messiah.
1. First, God-fearing Jews expected that the Messiah would be a ruler like King David. He would not only be a descendent of David, but would vanquish the enemies out of the land like David did.
2. Second, God-fearing Jews expected that, once the Messiah was enthroned, the world would be turned around. The blessings God had given to Israel would begin to flow to the rest of the world. In the book of Ezekiel, we see the image of a river flowing from the Temple in Jerusalem, out to the world, getting deeper and deeper as it goes. So for the Jews, the Messiah’s rule would not be for Israel alone, but for the whole world.
3. Third, God-fearing Jews expected that, when the Messiah was enthroned, evil nations would be judged. The faithful Jews saw how Egypt had been judged; they saw how Assyria had been judged; they saw how Babylon had been judged. And they fully expected to see the monstrous Roman empire judged as well once the Messiah was enthroned.
4. And then fourth, God-fearing Jews expected that, when the Messiah was enthroned, those Jews who had been faithful all along would be rewarded, and would be given top jobs in the new Messianic government.

What Luke wants us to see is that, when Jesus ascended to his throne in heaven, all these expectations started to be fulfilled.

1. Jesus was a king like David…only better.
2. When Jesus ascended, the blessings did start to flow to the rest of the world….beginning in Jerusalem, and then Judea, then Samaria, then to the uttermost parts of the world.
3. When Jesus ascended, he began the work of judging the nations, starting with apostate Israel itself (in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.), and the subsequent unraveling of the Roman Empire.
4. When Jesus ascended, his faithful followers were given important jobs to do—but these were far better than typical bureaucratic jobs. They were given the gift of the Holy Spirit, and gifts to use in the kingdom of the Messiah (more on this in just a few weeks, when we get to Pentecost Sunday).

In short, when the disciples asked, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”, the answer is, “yes, much more than you could possibly imagine.”

Think of it this way: let’s say you have a rich uncle who has no children, and he promises you a very nice inheritance when he passes away, to the tune of $1 million. To your surprise, when your uncle dies and his lawyer reads the will, you find out that he has left you not just $1 million, but a million times $1 million. No sane person would protest and say, “wait, that lousy excuse for an uncle, he did not give me what he promised!” No, he didn’t: he gave you so much more.

And when Jesus was about to ascend into heaven, that is essentially what he told his disciples: “all those expectations you have had about the Messiah’s kingdom—I am going to fulfill them more than you could have possibly expected.”

And that is what we need to keep in mind: the ascended Jesus is always doing more than what we could have hoped or expected. We go about our daily, mundane business, wondering what it will all mean in the end: the many hours in the office, the piles of bills that need to be paid, your attempts to be kind and patient with a difficult neighbor, the many hours you invest in the training of your children, the hospitality you extend to your family and friends. All of these things and more are the means through which the ascended King Jesus extends his kingdom.

The entire book of Acts is simply the first few opening chapters of this long and glorious story, the story of how the ascended Messiah is bringing redemption to the world. And he has graciously made us a part of that story. Jesus far exceeded the expectations of the Jews; he will far exceed our expectations, as well.

In closing, I will be praying the prayer found on page 56 of the BCP, “For the Coming of Christ’s Kingdom.” Let us pray.

O ALMIGHTY Father, thou King eternal, immortal, invisible, thou only wise God our Saviour; Hasten, we beseech thee, the coming upon earth of the kingdom of thy Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and draw the whole world of mankind into willing obedience to his blessed reign. Overcome all his enemies, and bring low every power that is exalted against him. Cast out all the evil things which cause wars and fightings among us, and let thy Spirit rule the hearts of men in righteousness and love. Repair the desolations of former days; rejoice the wilderness with beauty; and make glad the city with thy law. Establish every work that is founded on truth and equity, and fulfil all the good hopes and desires of thy people. Manifest thy will, Almighty Father, in the brotherhood of man, and bring in universal peace; through the victory of thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Adam-Adamah

2009-05-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

From The Unsettling of America:

We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, debased by them.

The relationship between "man" and "earth," and also between "man" and "work" is not obvious in the English language.

But in Hebrew, the relationship is unmistakable. "Man" is adam, and the earth or ground is adamah. Thus, what man does affects the earth and the work done on the earth, and the work of man in turn affects man himself. Who we are affects what we do, and what we do affects who we are. Hence, our liturgy (literally, "work of the people") is of central importance (which includes worship, but is not limited to worship).

Foundation for Living

2009-05-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

From A World Lost:

In my father's assortment of passions-his family, the law, bird hunting, and farming-farming was the fundamental one: from farming he derived the terms and conditions of his being.

What makes up the "terms and conditions" for modern man? Invariably, it is consumption of some kind. We are consumers of good, of services, and even of religion. The addiction of consumerism knows no bounds in our culture.

Un-Modern Learning

2009-05-06T11:47:00.000-07:00

As farmers never tire of repeating, you can't learn to farm by reading a book, and you can't tell someone how to farm. Older farmers I knew used to be fond of saying, "i can't tell you how to do that, but I can put you where you can learn." There is such a thing as incommunicable knowledge, knowledge that comes only by experience and by association.

--The Way of Ignorance, p 125

That's what true spirituality is also all about: you can't learn to live with God by reading a book, joining a cause, or getting access to the right "information." Spirituality is about placing ourselves "where you can learn": planting ourselves in the rich humus of God so that God's Spirit can do his work in us; immersing ourselves in story and song and habits of living and thought which encourage health (which, properly speaking is what "salvation" is).

Strike the Root of the Problem

2009-05-06T11:39:00.000-07:00

In his essay "Agriculture from the Roots up" (in the collection The Way of Ignorance), Berry writes:

Henry David Thoreau wrote somewhere that "hundreds are hacking at the branches for every one who is striking at the root." He meant this as a metaphor, but it applies to modern agriculture and to the science of modern agriculture. As it has become more and more industrialized, agriculture increasingly has been understood as an enterprise established upon the surface of the ground.

Substitute "education" or "spirituality" for "agriculture," and the problem is the same: our Christian schools (including classica ones) are simply hacking at the branches, not addressing the root of our educational crisis; and our eviscerated spirituality does not in the least challenge modernity.

A Specialized Religious Vocabulary

2009-05-06T11:31:00.000-07:00

Again, from Nathan Coulter:

Some of the inhabitants of Port William employ a highly rarefied religious vocabulary. Grandma Coulter is always obsessing about sin (especially on Sundays), while Jig is a walking windbag of Scripture quotations that never quite match the circumstances on the ground.

It seems for Berry that a proper "religious vocabulary" should consist of words and syntax taken from the natural contexts and transformed, as opposed to imposing foreign terms from the Platonic world of religious forms. Indeed, the more I read Berry, the less tolerant I become of Christian lingo and the hermetically-sealed systems of thought and language one finds in the Christian ghetto.

This, though, seems to be a step in the direction of Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity," with which I am not yet entirely comfortable.

But it begs the question: how much of biblical vocabulary is borrowed from the surrounding Greco-Roman world? And of the terms coined by Paul and John and other New Testament writers: did they coin them so that we could repeat those particular words ad nauseum, or did they do so that we could be given a model of how we also can use and transform our language?

Explosive Magic of Modernity

2009-05-06T11:01:00.000-07:00

In Nathan Coulter (the first of the Port William novels), J.D. visits town, having left 30 years earlier to make it big in Louisville. His co-worker William is with him. When the locals were gawking over Uncle Burley's massive catfish he had caught the previous night, William decides to show them what "real" fishing is: he goes to his car, pulls out a stick of dynamite, lights the fuse, and throws it into the river. Fifty pounds of dead fish float to the surface. "Kinda takes the fun out of fishing," says Nathan.

And then the local game warden, who is supposed to be the guardian of local animal culture, gets pulled into the magic of modernity. Uncle Burley had taken William's other stick of dynamite (for safekeeping? for a future prank?); the game warden somehow knew this, and asks Burley to use that second stick in the river again so that he can get an easy fifty pounds of fish.

Who, then, are the guardians of our culture, those entrusted to keeping the wild boars of modernity out of the vineyard? Ministers, community leaders, statesman, fathers...most of the them, like the game warden, have been seduced by the power of modernity.

Gnostic Spirituality

2009-05-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

"A desire to get to heaven, and its subsequent neglect of the world, is simply a rarefied form of gluttony."

--Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural

Berry consistently puts his finger of the one of the root problems of spirituality in America: an ever-present obsession with escaping this flesh-and-blood world to get to an immaterial heaven. A "spiritual" person is seen as one who separates himself from the mundane things of this world, rather than one who fully engages the world.

Berry simply knows this problem at an intuitive level; he is not an exegetical theologian who is going to quote chapter and verse from the Scriptures to back it up. But for anyone who does want to see the exegetical work that backs up Berry's contention, N.T. Wright's expostion of Philippians 3:20: "But our citizenship is in heaven..." This is widely mis-understood to mean that "heaven" is where we really belong, and we pine away for the day we get there. Not so, says Wright: just like a Roman citizen living in Philippi would labor to bring the life, the stories, the culture of Rome to Philippi, so too we should be bringing the life, the stories, the culture of heaven to earth: after all, we do pray "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," NOT "thy kingdom stay there, thy will be done only in heaven, when we finally get there."

Port William Journal

2009-05-06T10:28:00.001-07:00

The past few years, three writers have molded my thinking more than any others: the German immigrant Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, the French sociologist Jacques Ellul, and the American farmer Wendell Berry.

No seminary I am aware of uses any of the works of these men. That's too bad: because, while not a one of them is a "professional" theologian, each of them has much to teach us. Our modern age is viciously pragmatic, rationalistic (and irrationalistic at the same time), reductionistic....in a word, gnostic. And I have found these three companions to be the best guides out of the swamp of gnosticism.

Wendell Berry has exerted a particularly strong influence on my thinking this past year. A year ago from yesterday (on Cinco de Mayo, 2008), I blew out my knee cap playing soccer with my students, and was then laid up pretty much the rest of the summer. Ed Hopkins asked me if there were any books I wanted to read during this time of enforced solitude; I told him it would be great to read "that Wendell Berry guy." I knew of him only because Eugene Peterson makes numerous references to him throuhout his books on spirituality and pastoral theology.

Little did I know just how much influence Berry would have on me. I have now read well over a dozen of his books, including works of essays, poetry, and fiction.

His works of fiction all take place in the fictional town of Port William, Kentucky. The name and characters might be fictional, but they are all inspirted by the actual land that Berry knows well.

Berry is no means a "sytematic" thinker: I think he would shudder at the thought that anyone should be systematic. And yet, several themes consistently emerge across his vast corpus of writing:

1. The fate of man and the fate of the land are inexorably entwined.
2. The greater our sphere of knowledge is, the greater our contact with mystery also is
3. Spiritual salvation cannot be separated from a healthy relationship to the earth and to our communities
4. A healthy economy accounts for all costs, not just immediate monetary costs. Our modern way of life keeps the most vicious costs off the books: the diminishing quality of water and air, the loss of topsoil, the loss of intimate communities.
5. Technology is not an evil per se, but the use of it is evil if it mitigates against healthy communities.
6. There are two fundamental worldviews at war with each other today: the commodity view of the world, and the sacramental view of the world. The former leads to death, and the later perpetuates life.

There are, of course, many more themes, but these are the ones that come to mind.

My "Port William Journal" will be simply a means by which I record my very un-systematic thoughts as I continue to have a conversation with this great prophet of our times.

Homily: 3rd Sunday after Easter, Sunday, May 3, 2009

2009-05-03T07:30:00.000-07:00

Consider, this morning, that creature which is—depending on whom you ask—is either horrifying or fascinating. For most girls, this creature is the stuff of nightmares; for most boys, it is the source of enthrallment...but perhaps I am stereotyping.

The creature I am referring to is the snake. Putting aside any sense of revulsion you might have about snakes in general, for our purposes consider this morning just the digestive system of the snake. While we humans and many animals chew our food and savor the taste as part of the digestive process, the snake knows no such process or pleasure. Instead, it devours its prey whole—whether its victim be something relatively small like a field mouse, or something significantly larger, like a rabbit. If you have ever seen a picture of a snake right after dinner time, you know what a sight it is: this long, slender reptile with a massive bulge in its middle. And then, almost the entire length of its body is one, huge stomach that breaks down this super-sized meal.

It is fitting, then, that the Scriptures constantly use the snake (or serpent) to symbolize the Devil and his work. The first time we see the Serpent at work, of course, is in the early chapters of Genesis, when the Serpent tempts Eve to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve have been given complete freedom to enjoy the entire Garden and all its fruits; God only established a limit, saying this is the one Tree that you may not eat.

But the Serpent said, “no, no, it’s not enough. If you want to be like God, to have total, complete freedom, you need to grasp that fruit as well, and consume it.” It’s as though the Serpent was telling them that all God had given them was little field mice, when they had right there, within their grasp, a much larger meal, something more akin to a large rabbit. All you have to do, the Serpent said, is to reach out and grab it, and it’s all your.

Right after Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation of the Serpent, God gave the first prophecy: that the Woman would bear a Seed, and that that the Serpent would strike the heal of the Seed of the Woman, but that the Seed of the Woman would crush the head of the Serpent.

I don’t know if you have ever had the opportunity to crush the head of a real live snake before. On one occasion, I did: we were living in a rented home in the suburbs of Philadelphia; our oldest kids had just turned five, and they were outside playing happily in our small yard. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, slithers this snake, right near our feet. It was obviously not a poisonous snake…and yet, I did not want my young kids to be near it, or near any children it might bring into the world. So I picked up a rock near by and dropped it on the snake, giving it a mortal head wound. The interesting thing was that it was effectively dead, but it’s body was still quite active—twisting and thrashing all over the place. It took a while for its body to come to a complete standstill.

When we think about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and how He crushed the head of the Serpent, that is what we need to keep in mind: Jesus dealt Satan a death blow, ensuring final victory. But Satan, that Serpent of old, though defeated and effectively dead, can still thrash about and do damage.

And that is why, during the Easter season, the Church traditionally baptizes many people, and encourages the already-baptized Christians to renew their baptismal vows. Even though the victory has been won through Jesus Christ, Satan is still thrashing about, and we need to be armed to do combat with the world, the flesh, and yes, the Devil too.

So we live in a world that is a battleground between two rival kingdoms: the kingdom of Satan, and the kingdom of God. Or, if you want to put it this way, between the kingdom of the Serpent and the kingdom of the Savior. Both of these kingdoms are trying to squeeze the thinking of their citizens into a certain mold.

There are two fundamental ways of looking at the world, then. On the one hand, there is what I would call the commodity view of the world; and on the other hand, there is what I would call the sacramental view of the world. The Serpent would have us all look at the world as one huge commodity; whereas our Lord and Savior would have us all look at the world as one huge sacrament.

But first, some definitions and explanations.

Our English word “commodity” comes from an old French word meaning “to benefit.” We use the word “commodity” today to refer to things that are useful and can be turned into a profit. Usually, when we hear the word “commodity” used, it is in reference to the market of raw materials: we hear about the buying and selling of “commodities” like corn and wheat and oil and gold. Some people get very rich (and some end up in the poorhouse) as a result of their adventures in the “commodity” market.

There is nothing inherently evil about the word “commodity”; properly used, it can be, well, useful. The problem comes when we take on a commodity mindset. This is the mindset that is prevalent today, and it is the mindset of the Serpent. The commodity mindset sees everything in the world as something that can be used, as something to be exploited, as something to be consumed. Again, think of the snake, how its entire body is one big stomach, and how it swallows its prey whole without tasting and savoring it. That is the commodity mindset.

On the other hand, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ wants us to mature in a sacramental mindset. Our word “sacrament” comes from the Latin word which means “mystery.” During the early centuries of the Church, the world “sacrament” took on a specialized meaning, and now we use it primarily to speak of the rites of Baptism and Holy Communion. But more broadly speaking, a sacramental mindset sees all of existence as a gift from God and an expression of God’s goodness. As Robert Weber puts it, the sacramental principle is that

God works through life, through people, and through physical, tangible and material reality to communicate his healing presence in our lives. The point is that God does not meet us outside of life in an esoteric manner. Rather, he meets us through life incidents, and particularly through the sacraments of the church. Sacrament, then, is a way of encountering the mystery.

So on the one hand, we have the commodity mindset, which sees all of life as a thing to be grasped and exploited. Its symbol is the Serpent. And on the other hand, we have the sacramental mindset, which sees all of life as a gift from God to be cherished. Its symbols are the manger, the Cross, and the empty tomb—which are all symbols of God’s grace, and his self-giving love.

How do these mindsets play out, specifically?

Let’s start with creation in general—or, since we don’t hear non-Christians use the word “creation” very often, we can for our purposes substitute the term “nature”.
• The commodity mindset asks, “how can I use nature to fulfill my purposes? What’s in it for me?” It is all about crass domination.
• the sacramental mindset asks, “what is God’s purpose in nature? How is He glorifed?” It is all about godly dominion.
• the commodity mindset employs magic: whether in the hands of a primitive witchdoctor, or in the hands of the modern technocrat, the issue is the same: man skillfully uses nature to manipulate forces beyond its control.
• the sacramental mindset, though, employs prayer: it recognizes that it is not our actions that ultimately matter, but our participation in God’s actions.
• the commodity mindset sees nature as a huge warehouse of raw material, available to be exploited for wealth and power
• but for the sacramental mindset, nature is the stage for God’s drama, and we are the stage-hands
• the commodity mindset looks at genuine mysteries and tries to analyze them away
• but the sacramental mindset trembles at mysteries
• In short, the commodity mindset looks at nature, and turns everything into an idol; everything is valued only to the extent that man can use it, control it, manipulate it.
• but the sacramental mindset looks at nature and sees everything as a gift from a wise and good God

Consider, then, how these two mindsets differ radically on the value of the family and children.
• the commodity mindset says, “getting married is good to the extent that it makes me gratified. And once I cease to be gratified, I reserve the right to move on to greener pastures.” And, since the commodity mindset sees everything in creation as inter-changeable parts, it only makes sense that we are seeing such a push for the legalization of homosexual marriage: after all, if marriage is all about self-gratification, whether that gratification comes from a member of the opposite sex or from a member of the same sex is entirely irrelevant. The marriage partner is just a commodity to be exploited.
• But the sacramental mindset says, “marriage is a gift, an opportunity to pour my life into another, in the same way that Jesus pours his life into his Church.” The beauty of true, sacramental marriage is that two very different people—a man and a woman—are made one flesh, and different as they are, are given the opportunity to pour their lives into each other, just as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit pour the life of God into us.
• concerning children, the commodity mindset sees them as valuable only to the extent that, again, they gratify me, and give me a sense of fulfillment. But when it comes down to dollars and cents, they are a liability—after all, children are not productive. They require work and sacrifice, and might or might not in the end be worth the work and sacrifice. Thus, while large families used to be quite common, today large families are considered strange, queer—and potentially dangerous, since having too many children means they will gobble up too many precious resources.
• but for the sacramental mindset, children are a gift from God. When a husband and wife together bring a baby into the world, they are seeing, more vividly than any other experience can convey, what the love of God is like. That baby is completely, 100% dependent upon his parents. So too are we completely, 100% dependent upon our God—though we often forget it. But through parenting, we have the unique opportunity to pass on God’s gift of life to the next generation. And if that requires time and money, if that requires us to give up certain jobs and certain luxuries, the sacramental mindset says, “so be it. Children are a gift from God, and I am not going to willingly set aside that gift.”

Consider, then, the area of education.
• the commodity mindset would have use buy into this equation: a good elementary and high school education = getting into a good college = getting a good job = having lots of money and power. Education is seen, then, simply in terms of its potential to make more money. Just the other day, I heard a student here at New Covenant Schools—a young student!—talking to one of his friends in the pick-up line, and he was explaining this mindset with the utmost sincerity: he said, “look, man, you have to get good grades so you can get into a good college so you can get a real job.” Yep, that’s what he said—“so you can get a real job.”). No teacher at New Covenant Schools taught him that way of thinking: he simply picked it up in the cultural air we all breathe. And our culture reinforces the idea, over and over again, that getting a B.A., an M.A., a PhD is important if and only if it gives you the ability to be a bigger consumer.
• But the sacramental mindset denies that the end of education is simply a bigger paycheck. The word education comes from the Latin word which means “to lead out of”; the idea is that a truly educated person is lead out of slavery and into freedom. True education is the process by which our minds are conformed to God’s truth; and as our minds are more and more conformed to God’s truth, we are more and more liberated from various forms of slavery—especially the slavery of the commodity mindset. The sacramental mindset sees that advanced college degrees are sometimes needed to equip people to better take dominion over the world. But the sacramental mindset with equal clarity sees that, while not everyone needs advanced degrees, we all need to grow and mature in our knowledge and love of God. And that’s what true education is: it is a process that began in earnest when we were baptized, and continues until our resurrection (and even then, it continues in some glorious fashion that we cannot begin to imagine).

And then, consider the thing that is in the news probably more than anything else: those ever-present economic issues. How do the two mindsets play out when it comes to economics?
• for the commodity mindset, we are all consumers (again, think of a snake here…). Since we are fundamentally consumers, the goal of economics is to manipulate circumstances and people so as to acquire as many things as possible in the most efficient manner as possible. It’s a zero-sum game: I only win if someone else loses. Commodity economics treats human beings are simple units of labor—in other words, human beings themselves are turned into commodities. Commodity economics takes no thought for tomorrow: what matters is what gives me profit today, regardless of the damage done to future generations. Commodity economics cares nothing for the poor and the outcast—except to the extent that a certain economic policy will buy their votes for the next election.
• But for the sacramental mindset, economics is the discipline that employs patience and wisdom and virtue to teach us how to be good stewards of God’s material gifts. Sacramental economics sees every material thing as a gift from God that can be invested well or invested poorly, as the Jesus’ parable of the talents shows us. Sacramental economics never treats human beings as commodities to be exploited, but as images of God to be renewed. Sacramental economics cares for the plight of the poor and the outcast, not for any political gain, but because it sees in them the face of Jesus himself.

And then, finally, we need to see how these two mindsets can affect the way we see salvation itself.
• A Christian who is infected by the commodity mindset can see even the great gift of salvation as a thing to be grasped and used and exploited. Salvation can be seen as simply a fire insurance policy that gets us out of trouble in the next life, but allows us to do as we please in this live. And when salvation is seen as a commodity, it should not surprise us that religion becomes commercialized; indeed, religion—especially Christian religion—is a big business in these United States.
• but for the sacramental mindset, salvation is a gift from God that is to be enjoyed right here, right now, all the while living in hope that the full gift will be enjoyed after the resurrection. Those who are part of Christ’s true religion accept the gifts of God, and, as our Collect for the day puts it, “avoid those things that are contrary to their profession, and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same.” True religion refuses to be turned into a program; true religion would never consent to commercialization.

Our “profession,” given to us at our baptism, is, on the one hand, to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and, on the other hand, to beat down that Serpent, Satan, under our feet. That means we must resist the commodity mindset with every fiber of our being. Doing that is not easy; learning to see all of life sacramentally does not come naturally. The best way to train ourselves to see the world as a gift from God is to give thanks always, and for all things. In closing, then, I would like to lead us in praying the prayer that is normally prayed “Upon a National Day of Thanksgiving,” found on page 78 of the Book of Common Prayer.

Let us pray.

Most gracious God, by whose knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew; We yield thee unfeigned thanks and praise for the return of seed-time and harvest, for the increase of the ground and the gathering in of the fruits thereof, and for all the other blessings of thy merciful providence bestowed upon this nation and people. And, we beseech thee, give us a just sense of these great mercies; such as may appear in our lives by an humble, holy, and obedient walking before thee all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all glory and honour, world without end. Amen.

Homily: 2nd Sunday after Easter, Sunday, April 26, 2009

2009-04-29T10:37:00.000-07:00

It has happened several times in the last few years, that I am teaching in a chapel service with younger students—students ranging from, say, 3rd through 7th grade—and I ask them a simple question which then leads to a very complicated problem.

Once, I asked a group of students what I thought was a simple question: I asked, “who comes to mind when we think of the wisest man who ever lived?” Invariably, the answer is, first, “Jesus,” and then right after him, “Solomon.” That is the easy part.

But then, a bright student invariably asks, “well, if Solomon was sooo wise, why did he marry so many pagan women, and then turn away from God into idolatry? That doesn’t sound very wise to me.” I have yet to be able to formulate a simple answer to that very good question.

Consider the accomplishments of King Solomon: under King Solomon, the kingdom of Israel was the strongest it had ever been, and the city of Jerusalem was the glory of the ancient world. The Temple of God was built; wars had ceased; nations were streaming to Jerusalem to see the fruits of Solomon’s wisdom.

But while we can marvel at the accomplishments of Solomon on the one hand, we also need to consider his failings, as my students are so quick to point out. How could a man, given so great a gift of wisdom by God, have fallen so deeply, not into trivial sin, but into outright idolatry? As great as Israel was during the height of his reign, the fact remains that, because of Solomon’s sin, the kingdom of Israel was torn in two, never to be united again.

Is this the kind of man that we should imitate? Should we sit at the feet of a man so capable, so brilliant, yet so fallible? Well, we can certainly learn a lot from the Proverbs of Solomon; and then, there is that strange book known as the Song of Solomon, which makes young and old people alike squirm a little bit. The Church has learned much from that book over the years.

And then, there is the book of Ecclesiastes, a portion of which was read to us earlier today. Here is the most puzzling book of Solomon, in which he starts out proclaiming “vanity, vanity; all is vanity.” He sounds like one of those modern existentialists with their white, middle-class angst, writing depressing poetry, having long forgotten what the purpose of life is. At least, that is what Solomon sounds like at first.

But this is Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and it is therefore profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

What we need to keep in mind when approaching the book of Ecclesiastes is that it was written at the end of Solomon’s life. Whenever any man or woman is coming to the end of their long life, and is reflecting on the meaning of it all, we would do well to listen to them. Our culture is very ill because, among other things, we have stopped listening to those who are about to die. So here is Solomon—who still, in spite of his great sin, is rightly known as the wisest man other than Jesus who ever lived—and he is reflecting upon his storied life after he repented of his idolatry. We would do well to listen.

When you read the book of Ecclesiastes in its entirety (which, by the way, I highly recommend you do: take some time to read it all in one sitting, chapters one through twelve), you will see that there are two refrains or two themes which Solomon comes back to over and over again.

1. Refrain #1 is the vanity of life “under the sun.” When Solomon refers to the life “under the sun,” he is speaking of the space and time that is inhabited right here, right now by all men. It is in this realm that “vanity” rules. By “vanity,” Solomon means that unexplainable repetitiveness of life that seems to add up to nothing whatsoever. There is nothing new “under the sun,” and there is absolutely nothing that you, as a human being, can do to change that. Nothing.
• what goes up will come down
• the sun will rise, the sun will set. Over and over again.
• there will be rain; there will be drought.
• there will be birth, and there will be death
• there will be joy, and there will be sorrow
• building will be erected, and buildings will be torn down
• there will be some justice, and there will be much injustice
• the stock market will go up, and then the stock market will go down.

On, and on, and on it goes. What does life “under the sun” add up to? Nothing. Zilch. Nada. It is just endless repetition of the same old things. Even those people who claim that something new has emerged are proving the point, because people in every generation have always claimed that something in their time is genuinely new. Things never change, especially people and their claims of novelty.

So far, that sounds pretty depressing, and one may wonder why this book is part of Holy Scripture. But that is why we must be mindful not only of this first refrain, but also of the second refrain.

2. Refrain #1 is the vanity of life “under the sun”; and Refrain #2 is the great gift of God. As Solomon says in his Proverbs, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and to those who fear God, God gives this incredible gift. That gift is the ability to actually enjoy the vanity that happens “under the sun.”
This second refrain is important to understand, because many well-meaning, pietistic Christians would assume that, if refrain #1 is the vanity of life “under the sun,” then refrain #2 must be escape from that endless repetition. But that is not at all what Solomon is teaching us throughout the book. The gift that God gives to his people is not escape from life “under the sun”; rather, it is the ability to truly enjoy that life and to witness the inscrutable wisdom of God at work in the endless, and seemingly meaningless, repetitions of life.

Think of it this way. The world is given a bottle of fine, aged wine. But they have no means to actually enjoy the wine, because they do not have a bottle-0pener. And so they take that bottle of wine and play catch with it; they can shake it; they can lick it; they can play spin the bottle with it; they can do anything with it except actually drink it and enjoy it. That is the kind of vanity that Solomon is talking about.

The great gift of God, then, is like being given a bottle-opener. Those who fear God are given the same bottle of wine that the rest of the world has…but it is only those who fear God that are given the means to actually enjoy that wine. Those who fear God can look at the same endless repetitions of life and conclude not that it is vanity, but rather conclude that they, too, are the gifts of God:
• They can look at the sun rise and the sun set and see the glory of God
• they can look at birth and death and glorify in the inscrutable wisdom of God
• they can even experience pain and sorrow, and know that it is nothing less than the anticipation of joy when all things are made new

Notice how Solomon’s thinking proceeds in Chapter 9. Death is the great equalizer; if you stop and think about it for just a few moments, you see that the funeral home business is the most recession-proof of all businesses. Notice what he says, beginning in the first verse of chapter 9:

But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun.

and then he continues the theme in verse eleven:

Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.

So you have two men: one is a smart, savvy, wealthy, and extremely generous man, a great man in the community who funds great projects and sets up numerous foundations to help disadvantaged people. And then you have the town drunk, who has always been a thorn in the side of the community, and always will be.

What is the difference between these two men? As far as “life under the sun” is concerned, there is no difference whatsoever. Death awaits both of them. The memory of both of them will be blotted out. That is vanity.

Though even Solomon could not have understood it fully in his day, he is anticipating what St. Paul taught about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul says in I Corinthians 15 that if Jesus is not risen from the dead, then we of all men are to be pitied. Death is the great equalizer, and those who have not died with Christ experience nothing but perpetual death, even while they are biologically alive.

For if Jesus is not risen from the dead, then life is one huge exercise in vanity. The smart and the stupid both end up in the grave; the respectable citizen and the town drunk both end up in the grave. And in the meantime, the best you can do is to artificially stimulate your senses and ignore the death that inevitably waits.
• If Jesus is not risen from the dead, you might as well get drunk
• If Jesus is not risen from the dead, you might as well get stoned
• If Jesus is not risen from the dead, you might as well get gorged
• If Jesus is not risen from the dead, you might as well get a leg up on that never-ending ladder of power
• If Jesus is not risen from the dead, you might as well overwhelm your senses with ear-tickling sounds and overwhelm your eyes with fascinating images

All these things are simply different ways that humans ignore the inevitable reality of death.

What’s the alternative? According to Solomon, the alternative is this: enjoy the vain repetitions of life, for God has already accepted your work. If this life is like a bottle of fine wine, then accept the gift of God and open that bottle and enjoy it fully. As Solomon says in chapter nine, beginning in the 7th verse:

Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

Again, what Solomon is doing is foreshadowing St. Paul, who says at the end of his great chapter on the resurrection, I Corinthians 15, that “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

The ability to take joy in the endless repetitions of life is a gift of God. Solomon saw that truth in its shadowy form: Paul sees it in its full reality as he looks at the life and work of Jesus Christ.

Now, if we are not careful, this can sound sentimental and Pollyanna-ish. It can sound like we are saying, “oh, I know life really stinks, but Jesus can make it better…somehow.” What we need to see is why and how the resurrection of Jesus changes everything.

Earlier in the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon pointed us in the right direction. In chapter three, verse 14, he says:

I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him.

“Whatever God does endures forever.” That is the key. What we as humans do goes with us to the grave. It all means nada. Zilch. Nothing.

Only God and his works endure forever. And so the only way that your life and your labors will endure is for you to die and rise again with Jesus. That is the meaning of our baptism: when we are baptized, we die with Christ and rise with him. And then we are part of the body of Christ, so that his work becomes our work, his calling becomes our calling. Then, and only then, is our labor not in vain. Then, and only then, can we enjoy—truly enjoy—what to the rest of the world is only meaningless repetition.

I can do no better in concluding this morning than to quote the closing words of Solomon’s great book. Here are the words of a dying man—a very wise dying man:

The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

Let us pray.

O God, who for our redemption didst give thine only begotten Son to the death of the Cross, and by his glorious resurrection hast delivered us from the power of our enemy; Grant us so to die daily from sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection;through the same thy Son Christ our Lord. Amen.

Homily: Easter Sunday, Sunday, April 12, 2009

2009-04-16T06:08:00.000-07:00

There are hundreds, even thousands, of decent writers on the market today. Most of them can write compelling introductions, and develop very clever characters and plotlines.

What is not so common, however, is a writer who can write a good conclusion.

When I was in school, I was a decent writer of essays. More than decent, actually: one of my history professors told me that I was the best essay writer he had taught in years. But he was also brutally honest with me: “Martin,” he said, “as good a writer as you are, you can’t write a conclusion to save your life.” He was right, and I knew it.

A good, skilled author knows how to wrap up his story in such a way that the reader is drawn into the story: when an author writes a good conclusion, the attentive reader will not simply shelve the book and say, “all right, that was well and good. Now that I’ve read it, I never need to think about it again.”

No: a good author will finish his story in such a way that the reader is permanently drawn into a new world, or is at least drawn into a new way of thinking about the world.

Take, for instance, the way J.R.R. Tolkien finishes his epic Lord of the Rings. The Ring of power has been destroyed; the power of Sauron has been broken; the throne of Gondor has been returned to the rightful King; and all is well for the Hobbits in the Shire. Here we have Samwise Gamgee, the best friend of the Frodo and (according to Tolkien), the real hero of the story. Shortly after Frodo and Sam and the rest of the Hobbits return to the Shire, Sam marries the woman of his dreams, Rosie Cotton; and within a short period of time, Sam and Rosie have their first child.

But alas, his master Frodo is destined, along with Gandalf and others, to take a ship to the Undying Lands. After escorting Frodo to the Grey Havens and bidding him a heart-wrenching farewell, Sam returns to the Shire…and we read these closing words:

And [Sam] went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap.

He drew a deep breath. “Well, I’m back,” he said.

And with that, the epic trilogy comes to a close. No fireworks; no bombastic party. Just Sam at home with his family. “Well, I’m back.”

Why did Tolkien close his tale like this? He did so to draw us, the readers, into the world of Samwise Gamgee. For Sam and his family, the destruction of the Ring and the end of Sauron’s power was not the end of the story; rather, it was the beginning of something new and glorious. Life—mundane life—would go on…and yet, it would go on in an entirely different way than it would have had Sauron not been defeated. There is still a lot of hard work ahead: Sam had to raise a family (when it was all said and done, he and Rosie had thirteen children); he had to tend to his farm and garden; he had to provide leadership to the Hobbits in the Shire in the wake of the recent crisis. For Sam, this was not a time to escape the Shire; rather, it was a time to help renew and redeem the Shire.

For many people, without consciously thinking about it, the events of Easter morning more or less form the end of the story. The thinking goes like this: “Jesus came alive on Easter morning; and so we know that we, too, can live forever if we just believe in Jesus. End of story.”

This way of thinking is actually deeply rooted in the American religious psyche. A few generations ago, the most popular evangelist in America was Billy Sunday, an athletic and flamboyant preacher who would invite listeners to “walk the sawdust trail” at his revival meetings—which was his short-hand way of inviting people to respond to his “altar call,” to come forward, and to receive Jesus as their Savior.

His summary of the Christian life went something like this: you “hit the sawdust trail, fall on your knees, and receive Christ your Savior. Then walk out of this tent into the street, get hit by a Mack truck, and go straight to heaven.”

Like I said, Billy Sunday was wildly popular in his day, and his influence on the American religious scene can be felt to this day. In his way of thinking, Easter morning was pretty much the end of the story. According to this way of thinking, what Easter means for us is this: as long as you believe that Jesus died and rose again…. BOOM …off to heaven you go.

But Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote their Easter stories with something entirely different in mind. Each one of the gospel accounts leaves the reader with the impression that Jesus’ Resurrection was not the end of the story, but the beginning of an entirely new story.

This is especially obvious in John’s Gospel. No one would ever think, after reading the account of Creation in Genesis, that the story is about to end: rather, it’s just beginning! And John is written the same way. Consider the parallels that John draws between his Gospel and the book of Genesis.

Genesis begins with the words, “In the beginning, God…

John’s Gospel begins with the words, “In the beginning was the Word.”

In Genesis, the first man, Adam, is created on the sixth day

In John, the second Man, Jesus Christ, is presented by Pontius Pilate with these words: “behold the Man.”

In Genesis, at the end of the sixth day, God announced that his work of Creation was finished.

In John, at the end of that sixth day, Jesus announced from the Cross that “it is finished.”

In Genesis, on the seventh day, God rested from his work

In John, on the seventh day, Jesus rested in the tomb

In Genesis, on the first day of the week, Adam and Eve began the work of Old Creation, working in the Garden

In John, on the first day of the week (and John reminds us several times in the text that it was the “first day of the week,” just in case we missed that important detail), Jesus emerged from the tomb and began the work of New Creation. And it is not insignificant that Mary Magdalene mistook this Second Adam as a “gardener.”

So given the fact that John is trying to draw our minds back over and over again the Creation story in Genesis, what is the point he is trying to make? Well, John states his purpose in writing very clearly at the end of chapter 20: he says,

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ,the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

What John wants his readers to see is that New Creation has already started. We don’t have to wait to die for it to start: it started when Jesus emerged from the tomb.

Unfortunately, when John says, “and that by believing you may have life in his name,” this has widely been interpreted to mean, “If you believe in Jesus, you have your fire insurance policy in hand, and all you need to do is keep on believing it until you get hit by that Mack truck and go to heaven.”

But that is not at all what John is saying. Earlier, John records Jesus’ high priestly prayer in the 17th chapter, where Jesus prays, “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Did you catch that? If you believe in the risen Jesus, eternal life has already begun. It’s not something we wait for in the life to come; it has already started—right here, right now. When we believe in Jesus, we are already a part of the New Creation that he started when he emerged from the tomb.

This New Creation took the disciples completely by surprise. They, like all faithful Jews, understood “resurrection” to mean what happens to all of God’s people at the very end of history. For Jesus to experience Resurrection right in the middle of history was simply inconceivable, no matter how many times Jesus said it would happen. But Jesus then spent 40 more days with them before He ascended, to teach them to re-think all their assumptions. They had to learn that the Resurrection was not the end of the story, as they had anticipated; rather, it was the beginning of an entirely new story.

And that is where we are drawn into the story. Last week, I spoke of a great mystery: that Christians die twice: once at their baptism, and once when the breath of this life leaves them. And now, we need to emphasize the flip side of that mystery: Christians die twice, but they are also resurrected twice. Notice how Paul, in Romans 6, speaks of our baptism being a death, but also a resurrection:

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Paul goes on to reason that if we have died with Christ and have been raised with him, therefore the Old Creation, with its sin and death, has no more dominion over us.

What does that mean? Go back a minute to Sam Gamgee, after the power of Sauron was broken. Sam still lived in Middle Earth, and in many ways it was the same Middle Earth, complete with mountains and forest and streams, and also with good and bad people. And he was the same Sam Gamgee, who was still fat and still loved gardening and was still in love with Rosie Cotton. In once sense, nothing had changed.

But in another vital sense, everything had changed. It was a completely new era; Sauron no longer had any power in Middle Earth. Sam could now, without fear, get to work, doing things that Hobbits were supposed to do: like raising good families, and taking care of the land. For Sam to go on living as though Sauron were still alive and well would have been foolish, for he knew better than anyone else how the power of Sauron had been broken. A new age had dawned, and it was time to live in a way consistent with that new age.

And so it is for us: in one sense, when we are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, nothing changes. We have the same body, the same habits, the same struggles. But in another very important sense, everything has changed: the threat of death is removed, for we have already died. Sin has no longer our master, because we now Jesus Christ is our master. We are truly living in a new age.

When we as a Church gather year in and year out to celebrate Easter, we are doing two things. First, we are proclaiming to the world that yes, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical fact, not the figment of someone’s imagination. It’s not just a heart-warming tale, but something that truly happened in space and time. The apologetic task of defending the Resurrection remains an important one, and there are capable men and women who today are championing that cause: men like Bishop Wright of Durham, and Professor Habermas right here in Lynchburg.

And then Second, the Church gathers to celebrate Easter year in and year out in order to re-affirm what our mission is. Our mission is this: to implement New Creation. Our job is, as Wendell Berry puts it, to “practice resurrection.” What that means is that we look for signs of God’s new life breaking through in our lives and the lives of others. We look not for attempts to escape this world, but rather to cultivate life—true life—right here, right now in this world God has put us in.

And “practicing Resurrection” starts right here at this Table. This past Thursday, I and my two oldest children were at a Maundy Thursday service, and the priest was praying a prayer that said, “He who eats this bread will live forever.” Josiah tapped my shoulder and said, “Dad, that’s not right! We don’t live forever when we take the Lord’s Supper” I told him we would talk about it later, and later I explained that the priest was quoting the words of Jesus: anyone who feeds on Jesus will truly live forever. It was a good opportunity to explain that “living forever” does not start after our second death: it starts after our first death. And now, having died with Christ and having been raised with him, we are now strengthened for our mission right here at the Table.

It is traditional, in some churches, for many baptisms to take place on Easter Sunday, and for the rest of the people to renew their baptismal vows. At this time, we are going to something to that effect: so please turn to page 467 of the Book of Common Prayer. Notice these words that the Presbyter addresses to the gathered saints:

And as for you, who have now by Baptism put on Christ, it is your part and duty also, being made the child of God and of the light, by faith in Jesus Christ, to walk answerably to your Christian calling, and as becometh the children of light; remembering always that Baptism representeth unto us our profession; which is, to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like unto him; that as he died, and rose again for us; so should we, who are baptized, die from sin, and rise again unto righteousness; continually mortifying all our evil and corrupt affections, and daily proceeding in all virtue and godliness of living.

The key word in that admonition is the word “profession.” In the American religious world, a “profession” is something you do at the beginning of the Christian walk; it the door that gets you into eternal life.

But this understanding of “profession” is much deeper, much more rich. Notice that “Baptism representeth unto us our profession” and then “profession” is defined for us: “…which is, to follow the example of our Savior Christ, and to be made like unto him…continually mortifying…daily proceeding.” Our “profession” is something that defines who we are: every day, every waking moment.

Easter is not simply a story that climaxes with us making an initial “profession of faith”; rather, Easter is the beginning of our profession, our eternal walk with God. It has already started. Welcome to God’s New Creation.

Homily: Sunday Next Before Easter (Palm Sunday), Sunday, April 5, 2009

2009-04-06T06:27:00.000-07:00

In order to begin to get our minds wrapped around what our Savior Jesus accomplished on the Cross, we need to see that He was accomplishing three related but distinct things.

Let me illustrate these three things by relating it to a patient who is suffering from a terminal form of cancer. Let us say that this patient has been living an extravagant lifestyle, abusing his body with bad food, and too much of it…too many parties, too little rest, too much booze, too little exercise…and he now has a vicious cancer which, according to the doctor, is going to kill him within six months unless some drastic measures are taken.

So the patient goes into surgery, and the surgery is surprisingly successful: every last cancer cell has been removed. And it seems that the patient, rather than having only six months of life to live, now has many, many years to live. “And now,” the doctor says, “we need to deal with this crazy lifestyle of yours that got you into this mess in the first place.” And the doctor proceeds to instruct the patient on how to eat right, how to rest well, how to begin exercising, so that all his bad lifestyle choices can be replaced by good lifestyle choices.

Notice that there are three different problems that the doctor has addressed in this situation:
-First, there is the disease itself which had to be removed
-Second, there is the threat of death which was hanging over the patient
-Third, there were the bad choices that the patient made which lead to the disease, and these bad choices had to, from that point on, be replaced with good choices.

The analogy, of course, is imperfect, but it does illustrate the three things that Jesus accomplished in his death on the cross:
-First, our disease is sin, and Jesus dealt with that by taking sin upon himself
-Second, there is the threat of death: Jesus’ death was the death of death
-Third, God through Jesus provided for us an example of how to live to God’s glory

Each one of these themes is taught throughout the New Testament; but this morning, I want to focus on that second aspect of Jesus’ death: that is, how in his death he conquered death itself, and invites us to die with him.

To go back to the illustration of the patient with his doctor, we would find it quite odd if, after the patient went through surgery, he found out that the surgery was successful, resolved to make many lifestyle changes, and then has this conversation with his doctor: “wow, Doc, I am sure glad you are a good surgeon, and you have taught me how I need to go on living properly. It’s good to know that I won’t be dying within six months.”

And the doctor says, “oh, didn’t I mention it? Even though the cancer is gone, and even though you are going to live more responsibly, you are still going to die in six months. Sorry.”

You see, if the doctor dealt with the disease issue, and dealt with the lifestyle issue, he has ultimately solved nothing if death is still crouching at the door.

And this is the one aspect of Jesus’ work on the Cross that is often overlooked or neglected. Yes, He dealt with sin; and yes, He gave us an example by which we should live. But if Jesus had not dealt with death itself, his work of atonement would remain woefully incomplete.

How did Jesus deal with death? Not by avoiding it, not by skirting it, but by walking straight into it.

Once we start considering this question, the question “how was Jesus’ death the death of death?”, we immediately face mysteries beyond our comprehension. I, for one, cannot get my brain wrapped around the mystery: how God the Father gave up God the Son to suffer; how the Son, who is one with his Father, for a three-hour period of time experienced complete alienation from his Father; and how those three hours of darkest death became for us the means of life. If you were to ask me, “how exactly does that work? Show me the math behind that; demonstrate to me how that is possible!”—I could not do it.

THAT it is true, I happily affirm; HOW it is true, I cannot possibly tell you. As C.S. Lewis is always reminding us, even the mundane things of life are very odd and inexplicable; and if Jesus’ death and resurrection are the central events of all human history, we should expect them to be at least as odd and inexplicable.

Rather than seeking out explanations of things that we can’t understand, what we need to do is immerse ourselves in the story God has given us, so that we can see how we fit into that story.

And so, to the story we go.

Here we see Jesus, awake to the late hours of the night, wrestling with his Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, much in the same way that Jacob wrestled with God way back in Genesis. He is betrayed Judas. And then He stands before the high priest Caiaphas; and then before Pilate; and then before Herod; and then before Pilate again. He receives his death sentence, and begins the long, agonizing journey to Golgatha.

And even though He has been up all night, and has already suffered through many beatings and humiliations, still at this point Jesus’ attention is focused not on himself at all. We see this several times in Luke’s account:
-When women followed him and wept for him, he tells them, “do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves.”
-Even right after He was crucified, He says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
-Later, before the sixth hour, He assured the thief crucified next to him that he would be with him in Paradise that day.
-And then, from John’s account, we see how he commits his mother Mary into the care of his beloved disciple

All this took place before noon. But at noon, darkness covered the land, lasting about three hours. These three hours were dark not only for the world, but also for Jesus himself, for it was in these three hours that Jesus experienced that inexplicable alienation from his Father.

Earlier this morning, we recited together Psalm 22; and it this Psalm which seems to have been on Jesus’ mind during these dark hours. In fact, Jesus’ first and last words during those dark hours come from the first and last verse of Psalm. Echoing the first verse of that Psalm, He cries out, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” And then Jesus’ final words, “It is finished” echo the final verse of that same Psalm.

“It is finished.” Not only did these words echo the final line of Psalm 22, but they draw our minds back to the story of Creation, way back in Genesis.

Notice the parallels between the Creation story and the Easter story:
-on this Sixth day, God capped off his glorious Creation with the creation of the first Adam.
-And here, on the sixth day of the week, Pilate (not knowing the full import of what he was saying), declares “behold the man!”
-And then, at the end of the sixth day of Creation, God declared, “It is finished!” The work of Creation was done.
-And here, at the end of the sixth day of the week, Jesus declares from the Cross, “It is finished.”

“It is finished.” Jesus had accomplished what He set out to do. When he died, the old creation, with its sin and death and corruption, died with him. Just as there was nothing lacking in the Father’s work of Creation, now there was nothing lacking in the Son’s work of redemption.

As we approach Good Friday, we do not come to this story as mere spectators, as though we were visiting a graveside to pay homage to somebody. Nor do we come to this story as though, by our own acts of religious piety, we can somehow add something to what Jesus accomplished. When Jesus said, “It is finished,” he shut the door on the possibility of us somehow adding to what He did.

So we cannot add to what Jesus did; but what He invites us to do is to participate in what He did. Before Jesus went to Jerusalem, He told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

The reason we observe Good Friday year in and year out, then, is that in doing so we probe the meaning of our daily dying with Christ. Throughout his letters, Paul explores what this means:
-in Galatians, he says “I am crucified with Christ”
-in I Corinthians, he says “I die every day!”
-in Colossians, he says “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
-and in Romans, he says, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”

What on earth is Paul saying? Paul is saying that Jesus conquered death, and if we want to be part of Jesus’ conquest of death, here is the mystery: we need to die, not once, but twice.

Yes, that’s right: Christians die twice. Our first death takes place at our baptism; again, as Paul says in Romans, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”

Our second death occurs when God’s breath of life goes out of these bodies. But as John reminds us at the end of Revelation, this “second death” has no power over us.

What happens between our first death at baptism and our second death is this: God takes us through a series of mini-deaths. Theologians give this a technical term called “sanctification.” “Sanctification” happens when we experience more and more what is means to die every day, to be crucified with Christ.

What, specifically, can a “mini-death” include? Eugene Peterson gives a list of common mini-deaths: “dead ends, rejections, bewilderments, snubs, abandonments, unanswered questions, and wrong turns.” All these things, Jesus experienced on the Cross; and when we are baptized into his death, we experience them as well, to one degree or another. Slowly but surely, God is putting to death the old man in us, and replacing it with what C.S. Lewis often calls the “Christ-life.”

The need to die to oneself became particularly evident recently when my wife Kristie was catching up on the phone with a dear friend. This lady and her former husband were very close friends of ours, but some years ago their marriage came unraveled; and now, she now lives in thousands of miles away with her new husband. Through many plane trips, she is able to see her children several times a year, but she obviously feels like she doesn’t get to see them enough.

Lately, God has been doing a work in her. She is realizing what terrible mistakes she has made along the way, and is recognizing the need to ask forgiveness of many people that she hurt. And although becoming re-married to her former husband is now impossible, she has been seriously thinking of moving back to her old home town just to be closer to her children.

But she can’t quite bring herself to do it. It’s obviously the right thing to do; she knows that it’s the right thing to do. Then why doesn’t she do it? Here is her answer to that question, and it’s a very telling answer: she says, “but my life is down here.”

“My life.”

How often we say that ourselves. Our constant temptation is to come to the Cross of Jesus, and say, “Sure, Jesus, I accept your way…plus my way. Your life would be a wonderful supplement to my life…but I am going to keep my life.”

To that, Jesus says, “It is finished.” There is no adding to or supplementing what Jesus accomplished. Jesus is not part of “our life”; rather, our life is part of his. And what that means is that if we have been crucified with Christ, our own ideas of what “our life” consists of must die.

The process of dying to self is often painful (how could it not be!). It often feels like God is abandoning us, just as Jesus felt abandoned by his Father. But the wonderful news is that, when one is baptized into Jesus, every death gives way to a resurrection.

In closing, not only does the Prayer Book provide a wonderful guide for Scripture readings for each day of the upcoming Holy Week, but is also contains different Collects for each day of Holy Week. I invite you to turn now to page 185, to the Collect for Easter Even which is a very appropriate prayer for us to offer to the throne of God at this time:

Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him; and that through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection; for his merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Mexico and Montezuma's Revenge

2009-03-26T07:01:00.001-07:00

Dear Saints,

Many thanks for your prayers as I was away in Mexico. It was a wonderful trip in every respect. Because of the numerous reports of violence in northern Mexico, we took several precautions, and did not visit some places that we normally would have, like the border crossing area in downtown Nogales. But in spite of the restrictions we had to place on ourselves, it was a great trip. The Kingdom of God is advancing, even in the poor and dark places of the world.

But starting Saturday morning, Montezuma did get the best of me, and I am only just now back to 100%. Many thanks to David and Peter and all the others who helped out on Sunday when I was unexpectedly out of the picture.

Peace,

Deacon Bart

Homily: 2nd Sunday in Lent, Sunday, March 8, 2009

2009-03-10T06:33:00.000-07:00

[please note: This is another one of those weeks when I preached from an outline. Even though it might not make full sense to someone who didn't hear the sermon, I'm still posting this because a few people requested I do so.]

I. You are appointed Ambassador in the foreign country of Congo
a. you are paid handsomely in Congolese francs
b. your term of service is two years
c. at the end of those two years, everything you buy must remain in Congo
d. but what you can do in those two years is convert your Congolese francs into American dollars, and send that money back home to American banks where it will be there for you
e. the goal is NOT to live extravagantly and accumulate Congolese wealth
f. rather, the goal is to live simply: to serve your country and provide for your future

II. goal of Christian life: to live simply in God’s kingdom. This means we take what is given to us in this present kingdom of man, and invest them in the kingdom of God
a. to repeat: to exercise the discipline of simplicity does not mean avoiding complexity or rigor
b. rather: the discipline of simplicity is about a single-minded focus on the kingdom of God

III. focus this Lent season is on discipline of simplicity because it gives focus and clarity to so many other discipline
a. over a period of time, our hearts drift, and we find that there are many masters competing for our service. The discipline of simplicity is our attempt to focus our whole selves—hearts, minds, and bodies—on service to God and his kingdom

IV. we learn more about simplicity in Matthew 6 than anywhere else in the Bible
a. Jesus begins by teaching about giving, prayer, and fasting
b. in each case, we are giving up something from the kingdom of man in order to gain something even greater from the kingdom of God
i. When we give, we sacrifice our own riches in the kingdom of man in order to gain riches in the kingdom of God
ii. When we pray, we sacrifice our own power within the kingdom of man in order to gain power within the kingdom of God
iii. When we fast, we sacrifice the pleasure of eating in the kingdom of man in order to gain pleasure in the kingdom of God

V. Jesus’ teaching on giving, praying, and fasting culminates in these well-known words in the middle of chapter 6:

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also...No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

VI. The order here is often misunderstood
a. song by Glad: “Where your heart is, there your treasure will be…”
b. the right order is this: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”
c. Our treasure comes first, and then our hearts follow

VII. How do you know where your treasure is?
a. A.W. Tozer’s four questions: 1-What do we value the most? 2- what would we most hate to lose? 3-What do our thoughts turn to most frequently when we are free to think of what we will? 4-What affords us the greatest pleasure? Your honest answer to those questions will tell you where your treasure really is.
b. the counter-intuitive truth is this: our treasure comes first, and then our heart follows
c. example: how do you get a heart for missions? By putting your treasure there

VIII. Eventually, when discussing the discipline of simplicity, you have to get down to brass tacks (even at the risk of appearing legalistic). The question is this: How can we invest in the kingdom of God when we have houses to maintain, and cars to buy, and clothing to replace, and other bills to pay?
a. First, buy things for their usefulness, not for their status
i. cars
ii. clothes
b. Second, develop a habit of giving things away. De-accumulate!
c. Third, develop a healthy skepticism towards the advertising industry
i. just because it’s on sale doesn’t mean you need it
ii. “labor-saving” devices rarely live up to their claims

IX. Lent is a great time to back up, and gain perspective on our lives. It is a good time to remember that we are creatures who are made to live eternally with God. Our life right now is a mere dot, from which stretches an infinite line. Do we want to invest our time and money and energy in this little dot which is our present life, or in the line which extends into all eternity?

X. Closing: Thanksgiving for Plenty, p 80

O MOST merciful Father, who of thy gracious goodness hast heard the devout prayers of thy Church, and turned our dearth and scarcity into plenty; We give thee humble thanks for this thy special bounty; beseeching thee to continue thy loving-kindness unto us, that our land may yield us her fruits of increase, to thy glory and our comfort; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Homily: 1st Sunday in Lent, Sunday, March 1, 2009

2009-03-06T05:17:00.000-08:00

[please note: sometimes, I do not preach from full manuscripts. This is one of those weeks when I preached from an outline. Even though it might not make full sense to someone who didn't hear the sermon, I'm still posting this because a few people requested I do so.]

[also, I should note that much of the material contained herein comes from Richard Foster's book Celebration of Discipline, as well as his book-length treatment of the discipline of simplicity called Freedom of Simplicity. I recommend both of these highly.]

1st Sunday in Lent: Discipline of Simplicity, Part 1

I. Life at West Point
a. everything is taken from you, and then slowly given back
b. on the surface, it is a “normal” college: you take classes in English, Calculus, and Physics; you can play sports and join the band. But it is not “normal” in that everything you do is oriented towards one thing: preparing to be an officer in the United States Army
c.contrast with ROTC at a civilian college, where one’s Army life is just a slice of one’s total college experience

II. Life at West Point was simple
a. that does not mean it wasn't rigorous
b. that does not mean it wasn't complex
c. but it was still simple in this respect: that it was single-minded. Everything you do is about preparing to be an officer

III. Lenten focus: discipline of simplicity
a. it is a discipline of abstinence, like fasting
b.unlike fasting, it is not something you “do”; rather, it is a mind-set that affects everything you do

IV. What simplicity is NOT
a. it is not being a “simpleton” (see Proverbs)
b. it is not avoiding hard (even complex) theological issues
i.this is a misunderstanding of 2 Corinthians 11:3: “But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”

V. What simplicity IS
a. single-mindedness
b. opposite: not complexity, but duplicity
i. example: David vs. Saul
c. specifically, it is single-minded devotion to the Kingdom of God
d. Foundation text for the discipline of simplicity: Matthew 6:25-34

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Con sider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

e. The Kingdom of God, then, trumps everything: food, clothing, money, health, children, church, education. When we put the Kingdom of God first, God promises to meet all those other needs.

VI. Why is the discipline of simplicity so important?
a. we Americans are a very anxious people, in spite of having everything
b. why? we have had the opportunity to build up our own kingdoms, and our kingdoms are fragile, and we are filled with duplicity as we try to defend them

VII. Focus this week: inner reality of simplicity

VIII. How do you know whether you are exercising discipline of simplicity? How do you know whether are seeking first the kingdom of God? Answer: When you are free from enslaving anxieity.
a. Characteristic #1: when you receive everything you have as a gift
i.opposite: “what I have is what I earned”
b. Characteristic #2: knowing that it’s God’s business to care for what we have
i. opposite: “what I have I must hold on to”
c. Characteristic #3: if what you have is available to others
i. opposite: “what I have is mine and no one else’s”
d. what drives us away from the freedom that comes from simplicity? Answer: Fear of the future

IX. A Great Prayer for Christian simplicity: p 72, A Prayer for Future Protection:

ALMIGHTY God, by whose will we were created, by whose providence we have been sustained, and by whose mercy we have been called to the knowledge of eternal life; Vouchsafe unto us evermore thy preserving and protecting grace. Unto thee, the support of our infancy, the help of our youth, and the guide of our advancing years, do we commit our lives for the time to come. In all our ways we acknowledge thee; and wilt thou direct our paths. In our prosperity, give us grace to use with moderation our several enjoyments, and a compassionate spirit for the wants of others. Save us from those temptations which might occasion our fall; and in our adversity, impart unto us patience and strength. These blessings we ask in the Name of our only Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Homily: Quinqugesima Sunday, Sunday, February 22, 2009

2009-02-23T06:53:00.000-08:00

The majority of us gathered here this morning have, I believe, read the entire series of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. For some, that might have been a long time ago, but nevertheless the stories are in your mind, even if they have been lying dormant for some time.

So if, like me, your memory is getting worse and worse with time, and you have a hard time recalling details of stories—even stories you have read several times over—let me refresh your memory of the beginning of Book 4 of the Chronicles, The Silver Chair.

Eustace Scrubb has already been to Aslan’s country (we read about his adventures in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader); but now, he is back in England, and has been forced to attend this awful school called Experiment House. One of his peers is a girl named Jill Pole. Both of them desperately want to get out of Experiment House; and the only way Eustace thinks that is going to happen is if somehow, someway, he can get back into Aslan’s country.

He tries to convince Jill that Aslan’s country really does exist, and that he has really been there. She is somewhat skeptical, but trusts him nonetheless. “How do you get there?” Jill wants to know. Eustace responds that you can’t just do some kind of incantation or hocus-pocus to get there: Aslan would not approve of that. But, he says, it never hurts to simply ask.

And so together, Eustace and Pole face East and say, “Aslan, Aslan, Aslan, please let us go into your— “

-and then they are cut off by the sound of some annoying classmates pursuing them. They try to get away, but are blocked by a high stone wall, which has a door that is almost always locked. It turns out this time that it is not locked, and with some trepidation they walk through the door, which turns out, in fact, to be a portal into Aslan’s country.

A short time later, Jill meets the Great Lion himself. Aslan tells her she has a task to do.

“Please, what task, Sir?” Jill asks.

Aslan responds: “The task for which I called you and [Eustace] here out of your own world.”

At this point, Jill is terribly confused. She says, no, no, there must be a mistake. You see, you did not beckon us to come; instead, we asked to come into your world, and then the door was opened to us.

And the Lion’s response is very important: he says, “You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you.”

Aslan then proceeds to give Jill her quest, along with four signs that will help guide her on that quest.

And so the quest to find the long-lost Prince Rilian begins.

Now, why do I bring up that story? Well, several days ago, I was having a conversation with a bunch of seventh-grade girls in theology class, and if I had my wits about me, I would have thought of this story (a story that would be more fresh in their memory than it is in ours). The topic of the discussion was infant baptism. Most of these young ladies come from a church tradition that does not practice infant baptism (and I think the majority of us gathered in this chapel come also come from traditions that do not practice infant baptism).. They were genuinely curious (and a bit suspicious) about why some churches see fit to baptize babies who have not made, and are unable to make, an audible profession of faith.

The way I tried to explain it to them was this: I went around the room and asked one girl at a time what her last name was.

“What’s your last name?”

“Rucker”

“Did you choose that last name?”

“No.”

“If you did not choose that last name, why was it given to you anyway?”

“Because I was born into the Rucker family, and all children born into the Rucker family are given the Rucker name.”

So I went around the room and did this with several girls to drive the point home:

“You are a Mayberry, not because you chose to be a Mayberry, but because you were born into the Mayberry family and given their name.”

“You are a Sullivan, not because you chose to be a Sullivan, but because you were born into the Sullivan family and given their name.”

Now, if a child born into the Rucker family is a Rucker, what do you call a child born into a Christian family? Answer: a Christian. And what does God do to declare that someone is a Christian? Answer: he baptizes them.

So baptism, I tried to explain to them, is God’s declaration that this individual is now a member of His family.

So an individual can be born into God’s family, and thus is baptized as a baby;
or an individual, whether 12 or 22 or 82, can be adopted later on into God’s family, and is then baptized.

Either way, the order is the same: God calls the sinner into his family, and the sinner is baptized and then given the quest to live his or her entire life to the glory of God.

And it was at that point in my explanation that I wish I had recalled the story of Aslan and Eustace and Jill, because it illustrates a crucial point: when we come to God as thinking, questioning adults, we think we are doing so by our initiative. At least, it seems that way to us. But what we find is that we did not come into God’s country because we asked to; rather, we asked to come into God’s country because He had already beckoned us to do so.

The order is crucial: first, God calls; then we respond; and then after that God equips us to fulfill his calling in our lives. Aslan called Jill into his country, then she responded by desiring to come, and then he gave her a quest. This pattern is true of any Christian, regardless of when he or she was baptized. As theologian James B. Jordan often says, “every baptism ultimately is an infant baptism.”

In a few minutes, we will be conducting a service of confirmation. It is important for us all to be clear on something: when the bishop lays his hands on Cynthia and prays that she would receive the Holy Ghost, what the Church is NOT saying is that before, she wasn’t really a Christian, but now she really is. Nor are we saying that before, she was a second-class Christian, and now she is a first-class Christian.

No: God declared her to be part of his family when she was baptized. I have heard many explanations of confirmation over the years, and many of them explain the rite in such a way that it takes away from the significance of baptism—as though baptism is somehow incomplete, that baptism doesn’t really “stick” until someone is confirmed. That is terribly misleading.

It is important to insist that there is no deficiency in baptism: that when one someone is baptized, they are issued fully into God’s family. When someone is baptized, they are granted full access to the riches of God’s kingdom.

To go back to the story of Jill in Narnia: baptism can be compared to Jill walking through the door into Aslan’s country. Once she walked through, she was totally, 100% in Aslan’s world.

What, then, is confirmation? Well, if baptism can be likened to Jill walking through the door into Aslan’s country, then confirmation can be likened to Jill receiving from Aslan her quest, along with the signs he gave her to help her on that quest. Aslan was giving Jill a difficult task: she had never been to Narnia before, and would need some help along the way. She needed certain landmarks, certain terrain features that would tell her that she was on the right path.

We all know how it is when we are traveling to an unfamiliar place. My father-in-law, when he is giving directions, doesn’t like to use route numbers and distances; instead, he likes to give landmarks. He’ll say something like this: “when traveling south on this highway, you will eventually see a huge Wal-Mart distribution center on your right; when you do, you know that you will soon be making a turn…and then, you will see these massive grain towers on your left; you want to take the next left after that…and if you see this strange antique shop on your right, then you’ve gone too far.” The advantage of giving directions like this is that you get a very clear indication of whether or not you are on the right road; every time you see one of those signs, they are a confirmation that you are heading in the right direction.

When the Church confirms someone, what is being declared is this: you are on the right path on your Christian pilgrimage. God saved you by his grace, He has called you to be part of his family, and you are showing all the evidence of someone who is mature and healthy in Christ. Confirmation is a major landmark that God places in your path to strengthen you on your journey (indeed, that’s what the word “confirmation” literally means: it comes from the Latin confirmare, which means “to strengthen.”)

Confirmation also reminds us that, as members of God’s family, we have a very active role to play. I was recently listening to a theologian give a lecture; this man is well-known in some circles, and I respect him greatly, having learned much from him. But he insisted in this lecture that man’s relationship to God is a passive one.

On that point, I had to disagree with him. When you become a member of a family, your relationship to that family is never passive. A baby might, relatively speaking, be more passive than an adult, but even a baby is not completely passive. When you grow up in a family, you have duties to perform, obligations to carry out, and joys to embrace. All these things require active participation by everyone in the family.

And so, confirmation acts as a reminder—to the one confirmed and to the rest of us—that being part of God’s family requires our full participation. This is the pattern we see all throughout Scripture.

God parted the Red Sea, but the Israelites had to walk through it.

God made manna fall from heaven, but Israel had to gather it up according to God’s instructions.

God brought Israel to the edge of the Promised Land, but Israel had to actively cross the Jordan River and conquer the land that was given to them.

And then, the whole book of Deuteronomy—a portion of which we heard read earlier—can be thought of as one big confirmation service. In that book, Moses knows that he is soon going to die, and the people of Israel will cross over into the Promised Land without him. He wants to ensure they are fully equipped for the life that awaits them on the other side of the Jordan. So what does Moses do? He recounts all the wonderful things God had done to save Israel from Egypt; and then, Moses rehearses the Ten Commandments, and applies them in numerous ways. Moses is doing this to strengthen them—to confirm them—as God’s chosen people. And then, at the end of the book, the people complete this confirmation by taking oaths to serve and obey God for the rest of their lives.

You can think of a confirmation service, then, as the entire book of Deuteronomy writ small. When someone is confirmed, we are all reminded of how gracious God has been to us, and are reminded that God has called us to a great task: to conquer not just the Promised Land, but the entire world, for King Jesus.

The season of Lent is upon us, and let me draw our attention to what this means for that upcoming season on the church calendar. Many people approach the season of Lent with a sense of foreboding—with the sense that something unpleasant is about to happen, and we need to simply endure it. Often, people put on a long face, and simply expect that they will experience no joy for 40 days.

Now, it’s true that Lent is a season of fasting, and not feasting. Yes, the Church does say that this is a period of abstinence, to train ourselves to take up our crosses and follow Jesus. It does not follow, however, that it is a season of all gloom and no joy. It is not, in the memorable words of C.S. Lewis, a time when it is “always winter but never Christmas.”

Consider the paradoxical words found in Hebrews, how we look to Jesus, “the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

How can the season of Lent possibly be a time of joy? It can be, and it should be, if we approach it the right way. When we abstain from something that has control over us—whether some kind of food or drink or entertainment—what we learn is that God and God alone is our source of comfort and strength. If we observe Lent seriously, God will take us through a wilderness experience, and in that wilderness we will find that God confirms us, strengthens us, over and over again. Israel discovered this in the wilderness, Elijah discovered this in the wilderness, Jesus discovered this in the wilderness, and we will discover the same.

And then, what you might find is that your perspective changes. When you abstain from something that has control in your life, and you commit that time to prayer, what you may find is that the period of abstinence is not a wilderness experience at all. You just might find that to be rid of those compulsions is the most liberating thing imaginable.

In just a few weeks, I will be taking about a dozen students to Mexico again, and we will be there for about one week. I’m glad this year that the trip falls in the middle of Lent, because this is the perfect opportunity to introduce them to the Lenten disciplines (most of them come from a tradition that does not observe Lent). One of the disciplines I will impose of them is this: once we get off the plane, there will be absolutely no electronic gadgets of any kind: no cell phones, no IPods, no hand-held video games, nothing. For many of these students, to go a whole week without those things is really hard—they are truly hooked on these devices (our music teacher here at New Covenant Schools calls IPods, and the music that goes on them, “audible drugs.” That’s very well put).

The students I took last year agreed to this discipline, but they did not like it. At first. But as the week went on, they found their perspective changing. Instead of having their eyes glued to the latest text message on their cell phone, they were able to look up and see the wonders that God was performing right before their eyes; instead of having their ears tuned in only to their self-censored music, they were able to take in with their ears many of the wonders that they would have otherwise missed. In short, what at first seemed to them a harsh discipline turned out to be a means of liberation. And through that, God confirmed them and strengthened them as his children.

God wants to strengthen his children; he wants to place landmarks in our lives that tell us, “you are on the right path. Keep up the good work, and keep on relying on the strength of your God.” Confirmation is one of those major landmarks for the individual Christian; and Lent is one of those major landmarks for the whole Body of Christ, if only we make the effort to observe it well.

In closing, I am going to offer the prayer found within the Offices of Instruction, on the top of page 474 (it is also the Collect for the Fourth Sunday after Easter).

Let us pray:

O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men; Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Homily: Sexagesima Sunday, Sunday, February 15, 2009

2009-02-16T05:05:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, a storyteller seems to wear out his welcome.

You have probably experienced it from time to time: you are reading a book, or watching a movie. The characters are well developed, the plot is well constructed, the story reaches a climax, there is a resolution, and then, satisfied at the telling of a good story, you expect it to be wrapped up soon. But for some reason, just when you think the story is coming to an end, it just keeps going. And going. And going. And soon, you begin to wonder whether the book or movie has in fact gone from being a good, enjoyable use of time to a huge waste of time.

My wife Kristie went to see a movie recently with a friend where exactly this sort of thing happened. It was a great movie, she said: good acting, great cinematography. But over and over again, she thought the movie was wrapping up, only to see it continue. If the movie had, in fact, wrapped up 30 minutes earlier, she would have come home raving about the movie. As it was, she came home a little bit disappointed. The director had simply worn out his welcome.

Some of the stories in the Bible seem, at first glance, to fall into that same category. Just when the main part of the story seems to be done, there is a sort of “appendix” attached to the end, sometimes causing us to scratch our heads in confusion.

There is, for instance, the story of Noah, how God rescued him, his family, and the animals from the Great Flood. After the flood waters recede, and you are lead to believe that the story is ending, there is this interesting little episode about how Noah plants a vineyard, gets drunk on the wine of his vineyard, and is seen naked in his tent by his son Canaan. Noah’s other two sons cover their father; and when Noah awakes and discovers what Canaan had done, he cursed Canaan. What is this story doing, and why is it attached to the very end of the story of the Great Flood?

Is that appendix to the story irrelevant?

Or, take another example, that of Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son. Here is the well-known story about a young man who takes his inheritance early, goes out into the world, squanders it, and in his humility returns home. Though he expects to be treated only as a servant, his father welcomes him back as son, and restores him fully and orders a great celebration to begin. And just when we think the story is over, Jesus goes on to tell us about a little exchange between the father and the older son is not at all pleased that he father is celebrating the return of the younger son.

Is that unexpected appendix to the story irrelevant?

The answer in both cases is “no.” In biblical storytelling, what we might see initially as an irrelevant appendix actually helps to highlight what the story is all about in the first place.

Such is the case with our Old Testament reading today. The reading was from 2 Kings, chapter 5: the story of how Naaman the Syrian was cured of his leprosy. Like I mentioned earlier, the lectionary gives the option of just reading the first half of the chapter, or reading the entire chapter. Indeed, the “meat” of the story is contained in the first half of the chapter, where Naaman follows the instructions of the prophet Elisha and is cured of his disease. But the story goes on, recounting this strange tale of how Elisha’s servant attempts to profit from Naaman’s healing.

Like many other stories in the Bible, this “appendix” to the story is not at all irrelevant: instead, it helps to drive home the whole point of the story.

Let us go back and review the details of this story. Naaman was a Gentile; and not just any Gentile, but the commander of the Syrian army. He was, by all accounts, a “great” man, a “man of valor.” But in spite of his power and renown and wealth, he was a leper.

He hears from a captured Israelite girl that there is a prophet in Samaria who is capable of healing such diseases; and so, on his behalf, the king of Syria sends a letter to the king of Israel. Namaan travels to Israel, laden down with great treasures, and bearing the letter from his king. The king of Israel, upon reading the letter, is convinced that the king of Syria is trying to pick a fight: after all, why would the Syrian king send his general to Israel to be cured of a disease that everyone knew could not be cured?

But then, Elisha gets word of the king’s distress, and bids him to send Naaman to him. And so Naaman, that man of greatness, comes to Elisha’s house, with all his horses and chariots and wealth: it is clear that Naaman wishes either to impress the prophet, or to intimidate him, or to convince the prophet that he just might get wealthy by giving Naaman what he wants.

And how does Elisha respond to Naaman’s display of raw power? Elisha does not even go out to greet Naaman; instead, he sends out his servant, who bears Naaman a simple message: “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.”

Naaman is enraged. “How dare this prophet send out his lowly servant to me? And how dare he give me these ridiculous instructions about washing in the Jordan river? If that’s all it took, I could wash in the rivers back home! Why have I, a great man, traveled so far with such great wealth, only to be treated with contempt by this puny prophet and his puny servant?”

But Naaman, in his rage, was unable to hear the heart of Elisha’s message. Naaman’s own servants have to persuade him that his focus was all wrong: all he heard was “wash seven times in the Jordan,” and concludes that it is the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. And his servants say, “look, father, the prophet said you would be clean if you did this. Is it really too hard a thing that he is asking of you? Can you not humble yourself, and simply do what the prophet bids you to do?”

And then Naaman does indeed humble himself, dips in the Jordan River seven times, and is cured of his leprosy. He becomes like “a little child”, and is made alive in God’s kingdom. From that point on, he promises to worship only the God of Israel. He tries to offer gifts to Elisha, but Elisha refuses.

And then we come to that so-called “appendix” of the story. Elisha tells Naaman to “go in peace.” Naaman departs, and a short time later, Elisha’s servant Gehazi cooks up a scheme in his mind; he concocts this story about two men who have just arrived at Elisha’s house from the hill country, and they have need of money. So Gehazi runs after Naaman, and tells Naaman that they could, in fact, use some of the money that he had previously offered. Naaman assumes that Gehazi does indeed speak for Elisha, and gives him two talents and two festal garments, and then continues his journey back to Syria.

Gehazi returns to the house, and Elisha asks him, “where have you been?” Gehazi gives him a bold-faced lie: “oh, your servant has not gone anywhere.” Elisha, of course, knows better, and tells him that since he lusted after the wealth of Naaman, the leprosy that Naaman lost would now cling to Gehazi and his descendents forever.

So there it is: an interesting and very strange story. What are we to make of it?

First of all, notice that this is a story about how God’s salvation is brought to the Gentiles. Salvation comes to Naaman not by means of wealth and power, but rather by means of humility. Here Naaman is, a military commander in a powerful nation, yet he is tormented by this lowly disease. He appeals to his king, who then appeals to Israel’s king, but the path of power and prestige that gets him nowhere. He goes to Israel with great fanfare—with soldiers and chariots and great wealth—but all to no avail.

Instead, salvation comes to Naaman when he heeds the word of a series of lowly servants. First, he listens to little girl who was captured from Israel. Then he has to submit himself to the word of the servant of the prophet, not the prophet himself. And then, he needs to listen to the counsel of his own servants, who bid him to carry out the simple instructions given to him. And so, after hearing the word of three different “servants” Naaman humbles himself, washes, “and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child.” What we have here is a foreshadowing of what Jesus taught throughout the Gospels: that he who would be born into the Kingdom of God must become like a little child.

And then, notice how this is a story about how some within the household of God turn their backs on the gifts of God. Here is Gehazi: as the servant of the great prophet Elisha, he has a front-row seat in God’s unfolding drama. He has seen God work powerfully, first-hand. Most people in Israel knew of God’s power only through the stories handed down to them—stories like the plagues in Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, the manna in the wilderness. But very few had the opportunity to see these sorts of things first-hand. But Gehazi did…and yet, for some reason, his heart was captured by the wealth and prestige of Naaman.

What this story reveals to us is that God judges our lust by giving us exactly what we lust for. In Gehazi’s case, he lusted after Naaman’s Gentile wealth; and in return, he gets not only Gentile wealth, but also with it, he gets a Gentile disease.

And this story is repeated in thousands of different ways. Jesus said, “seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” The reverse is also true: as Peter Leithart puts it, “Christians who seek the world and its righteousness will get everything they desire, and all the world’s pathologies will be added to them.” Another Christian writer notes:

The findings in numerous national polls conducted by highly respected pollsters like the Gallup Organization and The Barna Group are simply shocking. “Gallup and Barna,” laments evangelical theologian Michael Horton, “hand us survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general.”…Only 6 percent of evangelicals tithe. White evangelicals are the most likely people to object to neighbors of another race…the sexual promiscuity of evangelical youth is only a little less outrageous than that of their nonevangelical peers.

If we want to be like the world, God will give us exactly what we desire, and getting what we desire will itself be our judgment.

If we lust after wealth, God will give us wealth, and all the pathologies and insecurities that come with it.

If we lust after pleasure, God will give us pleasure, and all the emptiness and barrenness that comes with it

If we lust after fame and prestige, God will give us fame and prestige, and all the anxiety that inevitably accompanies those who have to constantly maintain their status

There is a reason why the Church has seen fit to place this story in our lectionary at this time of the year, just a week and a half before the season of Lent begins. I spoke several weeks ago, during the Advent season, how the seasons of Advent and Lent are different, and yet complimentary. During Advent, our focus is “putting on” Christ: the focus is on the spiritual disciplines of engagement. On the other hand, during Lent our focus is “putting off” sins that weight us down and keep us from following Christ: the focus is on the spiritual disciplines of abstinence.

I will be addressing this more next week, but for now I invite you to consider: what are those lusts which have a grip on your heart? What is about the world, the flesh, and the devil which allures you, when the riches of Christ and the blessings of his Kingdom are standing right in front of you? Once we identify what our lusts are, we are then in a better position to commit to a certain discipline during the Lent season which will help us to combat that lust. This kind of self-examination process is important during the pre-Lenten season we are in right now, because apart from honestly assessing ourselves and our desires, whatever Lenten discipline we impose on ourselves will simply be acts of human self-righteousness.

But how, you may ask, do I identify my lusts, especially if my heart is dark and deceptive? Richard Foster addresses this question:

How do you discern an addiction? Very simply, you watch for undisciplined compulsions. A student friend told me about one morning when he went out to get his newspaper and found it missing. He panicked, wondering how he could possibly start the day without the newspaper. Then he noticed a morning paper in his neighbor’s yard, and he began to plot how he could sneak over and steal it. Immediately he realized he was dealing with a genuine addiction.

Even though Foster uses an example here that might seem trivial, the trivial illustration points us to a weighty truth: that undisciplined compulsions reveal to us what we lust after. When we do not humbly, and prayerfully, check these undisciplined compulsions, they create in our hearts fertile ground for all kinds of egregious sins. As James puts it so simply and yet so profoundly, “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

And so Elisha’s servant, Gehazi, stands for us as symbol of why we need to practice the spiritual disciplines of abstinence. God judges our lust by giving us exactly what we lust for; and one of the main purposes of the upcoming Lent season is to reveal what our lusts are, so that we can confess them before God and be healed of them, rather than be destroyed by them.

In closing, I invite you to turn to page 71 of the Book of Common Prayer, as I lead us in praying A Prayer for Penitence:

Most merciful God, who art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and hast promised forgiveness to all those who confess and forsake their sins; We come before thee in an humble sense of our own unworthiness, acknowledging our manifold transgressions of thy righteous laws. But, O gracious Father, who desirest not the death of a sinner, look upon us, we beseech thee, in mercy, and forgive us all our transgressions. Make us deeply sensible of the great evil of them, and work in us an hearty contrition; that we may obtain forgiveness at thy hands, who art ever ready to receive humble and penitent sinners; for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ, our only Saviour and Redeemer. Amen.

Homily: Septuagesima Sunday, Sunday, February 8, 2009

2009-02-09T05:51:00.000-08:00

If you ask a dozen adults to share their memories of the English classes they were required to take in high school, you are likely to get a variety of answers. Some might speak of the delights of reading Shakespeare and Milton; others might recall the torture of diagramming one sentence after another.

Others might recall certain rules of grammar and writing that have stuck with them. One of those oft-repeated rules that some might recall hearing from their English teachers is this: never, never mix your metaphors. Never take two images, and get them entangled in the same sentence or the same steam of thought (and someone who is very perceptive and clever will note what I just did: that sentence I just used itself employed a mixed metaphor: the idea of something getting “entangled” like a rope, and the idea of thought being like a “stream” of water. It’s very easy, you see, to mix metaphors). Some other examples of mixed metaphors would include these:

•“Everyone was quiet. Someone had to speak. So Bob stepped up to the plate, and grabbed the bull by the horns.” (here you have two images—baseball and bull-riding—that do not mesh very well)

•or this: “milking his employees for all they were worth, the boss barked orders at them” (here, you again have two images—that of milking a cow and barking like a dog—and they don’t fit very well together)

What we were taught by our English teachers is generally sound advice. We want our language to be crisp and clear, and normally the use of mixed metaphors does not help us to be either crisp or clear in our communication.

But if some of the writers of Scripture were here with us today, they would fail high school English. The Apostle Paul, for instance, very frequently employs mixed metaphors (and run-on sentences, and a number of other things some English teachers might frown upon).

This morning, we recited together Psalm 125. Psalm 125 is set in the midst of an extended metaphor—actually, it is set in the midst of several mixed metaphors, where the Psalmist combines the images of a pilgrimage or journey with the image of mountain-climbing.

Psalm 125 is known to us as one of the Psalms of Ascent. Psalms 120 through 134 were sung by the Jewish people when they would make their pilgrimage from various parts of Israel to Jerusalem for one of the three major feasts. The Psalms contain many images of a journey; and, since Jerusalem is a high point geographically, the journey is mostly uphill, thus giving us the image of mountain-climbing. So again, to appreciate these Psalms, we need to hold these two images together: pilgrimage on the one hand, and mountain-climbing on the other.

Let us go ahead and read again Psalm 125 (we will read it in the Coverdale version that’s in our Prayer Book):

They that put their trust in the LORD shall be even as
the mount Sion, * which may not be removed, but
standeth fast for ever.
The hills stand about Jerusalem; * even so standeth
the LORD round about his people, from this time forth for
evermore.
For the sceptre of the ungodly shall not abide upon
the lot of the righteous; * lest the righteous put their hand
unto wickedness.
Do well, O LORD, * unto those that are good and true
of heart.
As for such as turn back unto their own wickedness, *
the LORD shall lead them forth with the evil doers; but peace
shall be upon Israel.

The theme of this Psalm is security. The ancient civilizations of the world put a very high premium on security: they erected high, thick walls in order to keep enemies out. They built strong gates which were open only during certain times of the day. The places outside the city were often unsafe, where thieves and bandits awaited unsuspecting victims. To be inside the walls of the city was to feel safe and secure.

The Psalmist is saying, “look: even if you are the road toward Jerusalem—a road that can be very difficult (because it’s all uphill) and can be very dangerous (because of the thieves and bandits), if you trust in the LORD, it is as though you are already in the walled city. You know those hills that surround Jerusalem, the hills that give even more military security to the city? Well, if you trust in the LORD, He surrounds you in the same way. God is like a citadel or a circle of hills that surround you wherever you go. You might feel like you are traveling on a narrow ridge, where you could easily fall off to one side or another; you might feel like you are traveling through a narrow ravine where you could easily be ambushed by thieves, but if your hope in anchored in God, it is as though you are already there, in Jerusalem.

Security. It is all about security. Psalm 125 is just as relevant for us today as it was for our Jewish forebears. The ancient peoples put a lot of stock into it, and so do we. When we think about what it means to be secure, we do not normally think about God, who surrounds us like the hills surround Jerusalem. No, when we ask ourselves the question, “what makes you feel safe and secure?” we think of a world-class military that keeps invaders off our lands. We think of a highly-skilled police force that keeps criminals away from our homes. We think of multiple insurance policies that keep unexpected events from attacking our savings accounts. We think of Presidents and lawmakers who will pass just the right bills into law that will somehow, like magic, keep our economy from crumbling.

We think our security lies in all these things. But then, something like 9/11 happens to us, exposing our insecurities about physical safety; …and then, a recession hits us, exposing our insecurities about our economic safety. And then the truth comes out: that we Americans are, ironically, the most insecure of people.

We need to internalize Psalm 125 so that we are constantly reminded that God and God alone is our unmovable Rock. Towers may fall, invaders may plunder, large companies may go bankrupt. When we place our security in anything or anyone other than God himself, we are going to be not only disappointed, but also thoroughly disillusioned.

Even when we do place our security in God himself, things are still hard. The Christian life is a long pilgrimage, and most of the time it is a hard, uphill climb. The Scriptures never promise that being a disciple of Jesus Christ is easy. What the Scriptures do is encourage us to name and identify those sources of insecurity, and to be realistic about them.

1. The first source of insecurity we all face is our feelings. The thing about feelings is this: feelings are great informants, but they are lousy masters. Our feelings can give us great clues as to what is happening in the deep, mysterious recesses of our hearts and minds. When we feel joyful, it tells us that we are somehow in tune with the grace of God. When we feel angry or bitter, it tells us that deep within ourselves, we are somehow out of tune with the grace of God.

But we run into problems when we allow our feelings to change roles from being informants to being masters. Some days, in our Christian pilgrimage, we crest a hill and see an incredible view, and the joy we experience in the presence of God is unforgettable. But there are other days that we are called to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, or what St. John of the Cross called the “dark night of the soul.” Either way, we must not allow our feelings to dictate whether or not we anchor our security in God. We cannot live from one thrill to another; instead, we must live by the grace that God gives, from one day to another…remembering that God’s grace is strongest when we are at our weakest. C.S. Lewis put it this way—here, he is speaking in the context of Christian marriage, but it applies to the Christian life in general:

This is, I think, one little part of what Christ means by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow — and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all around them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.

2. Another source of insecurity is the stark reality of pain and suffering. In verse 3 of our Psalm, we read that “the scepter of the ungodly shall not abide upon the lot of the righteous.” The older English in the very is difficult to understand at first glance, but what it means is this: that pain and suffering is part of the Christian pilgrimage. Contrary to the “health and wealth gospel” teaching that is still very popular in our day, God never promises that our lives will be untouched by evil. What we are promised is this: that for those whose trust is in God, evil will never be able to cancel God’s purposes for us. Satan and his minions will never be able to veto what God intends to do. Somehow, in the mystery of God’s plan, He uses pain and suffering to direct us and change us into the image He desires. When we experience pain and suffering, we will be tempted to think, “perhaps I was mistaken; maybe God is not my source of security after all.” But the testimony of one Christian after another for thousands of years now is this: that it is through pain and suffering that we see the grace of God more clearly revealed.

In mountain climbing, sometimes a group of people will rope themselves together: the idea is that, even if the climb is hard and dangerous, with all sorts of real possibilities to lose your footing, it is unlikely that everyone will lose their footing at the same time. So when one person slips, he is attached by a rope to the entire group, who can then help him get back on his feet. At the front, at the top of the rope chain, is the most experienced, the most expert climber.

Say you are part of this climbing team, and you slip and slam into a rock, and you are overcome with pain. At that moment, it would be foolish to think, “yeah, I knew that this whole rope chain was a bad idea. I’m going to pull out my knife, and cut the rope that ties me to the rest of the group and to the group leader and just take it from here.” No! At that moment, that is the last thing you want to do. It is exactly at that moment that you need to remain attached to the rest of the group, and especially to the group leader.

And that’s what it is like when we are going through pain and suffering. We will be tempted to think during those times that God has abandoned us, and that we are better off going our own way. But that is the time when we most need to rely on the strength of the lead climber.

3. Not only can our security in God be threatened by feelings; not only can our security in God be threatened by pain and suffering; but our security can be threatened by the real possibility of desertion. In verse 5 of our Psalm, we read “As for such as turn back unto their own wickedness, the LORD shall lead them forth with the evil doers…” It is a sad reality that there are apostates in the Church: men and women who have tasted of the grace of God, who have been nourished by Word and Sacrament, but chose to walk away from it all. These are the pilgrims who see a different path from what God has revealed, a path they think is easier and more gentle, not quite so demanding. They look at the cost of discipleship, and conclude that it is way too steep.

Our security in God can be threatened when we see these people walk away, because the natural question that arises in our minds is, “could the same thing happen to me?”

On the one hand, the Scriptures do not mince words on this subject. As Paul says, in the reading from 2 Timothy that we heard earlier today, “if we deny him, he will also deny us.” You cannot shake your fist at God, you cannot deliberately choose to walk a different path than the one God revealed, and expect things will be all right. Things will not go well for those who consciously abandon God. The Psalmist says that “the LORD shall lead them forth with the evil doers.”

On the other hand, the Scriptures also encourage us in this way: the fact that some depart from the faith in no way casts a shadow of doubt upon God’s faithfulness. Our security is anchored, as Paul said in our reading today, in the fact that God cannot deny himself. He is not going to one day say, “you, Christian, are mine,” and then turn around the next day say, “no, wait a minute, I changed my mind; you’re not mine after all.”

Human husbands might abandon their wives; but our security is anchored in the factor that our Father in heaven is also a faithful Husband to his Church, and He will never abandon his Bride.

That there are some who walk away from the faith is a sad, sobering reality. But walking away from the faith is something they consciously do, not something that simply happens to them. This Psalm assures us that faith in God is not like walking on a tightrope, where you could suddenly, inexplicably fall off; instead, faith in God is like living securely in a citadel, even when we are traveling on the road.

There is a sense in which a life of faith in God is uncertain: it is uncertain in that we do not know ahead of time where exactly God is taking us. If I polled everyone here, and asked you, “could you, 20 years ago, have imagined being where you are all today,” I think every one of you would say, “no way. I could not possibly have seen ahead of time where God has brought me today.” God takes our desires and our plans, and has this incredible way of steering them to his greater purposes.

The world would tell us, “that’s crazy! You have to have a plan, and if you can’t realize your plan, then how can you feel secure?” But the Christian life is much more exciting than that. Our security lies not in the fact that we can craft a plan for our lives, and force the circumstances of life to fit into that perfect, preconceived plan.

No, our security lies in this: that as God directs our steps—and sometimes He does so through our feelings, sometimes He does so through pain and suffering—but as He directs our steps, He promises to surround us, as the hills surround Jerusalem. If we put our security in anything or anyone else, we are headed for disaster.

The pilgrimage God calls us on is exciting, but it’s also a bit frightening. God know that. God is not asking us to do anything that Jesus himself was not willing to do. That’s exactly why Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, tells us three times, “do not be anxious…do not be anxious…do not be anxious.” That is exactly why God told Joshua to “be strong and courageous.” And then God has to tell him again, “oh, did I mention before? Be strong and courageous…for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

In closing, let me lead us in praying A Prayer for Christian Faith, found on page 71 of the Book of Common Prayer.

Let us pray.

ALMIGHTY God and heavenly Father; Open thou our eyes that we may see ourselves to be sinners in thy sight, partakers of a fallen nature, and actual transgressors against thee. Enable us to realize our continual need, both of thy pardoning mercy and of thy quickening grace, and to receive Jesus Christ as the only Saviour of our souls. May we trust in his atonement, and rely on his intercession, as our only hope. Rejoicing in thy free salvation, and renouncing our own righteousness, may we walk in the way of thy commandments, serving thee faithfully, and striving against every sin; through the grace that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Morning Prayer Service for February 8 (Septuagesima Sunday)

2009-02-06T06:32:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,

With Bishop Morse coming to make his episcopal visit in a little over two weeks, we are going to change our normal pattern of Holy Communion/Morning Prayer services. The next two weeks will be Morning Prayer, and Bishop Morse will be our Celebrant for Holy Communion when he comes on the 25th.

For this coming Sunday, here is what we have lined up:

*Liturgist: Chad Griffiths
*1st Lesson: Bart Martin (Joshua 1:1-9)
*2nd Lesson: David Mitchell (2 Timothy 2:1-13)

That's all that folks have signed up for so far. If you are able and willing to do refreshment preparation and/or nursery, please let me know.

Many thanks for serving Christ in his Church.

Homily: 4th Sunday after Epiphany, Sunday, February 1, 2009

2009-02-01T06:34:00.000-08:00

As January gives way to February, more and more of us become aware of the fact that the big national un-holiday is coming upon us, and we need to be preparing ourselves accordingly. The big national un-holiday I am referring to is, of course, April 15, when all our taxes are due.

Virginia is the sixth state or commonwealth I have lived in, and is the fourth one in which I have been an official, tax-paying resident. I have been through the tax-preparation process long enough now that I pretty much know the drill. But this year, the wonderful commonwealth of Virginia (and I do mean that—it is wonderful) has thrown me a few curveballs when it comes to taxes.

Curveball number one is what Virginia tax law calls the “use tax.” This is a tax on all the items you have purchased outside the commonwealth, and therefore did not pay Virginia sales tax. In particular, the tax applies to purchases made through the Internet, and shipped from another state. One of the reasons people order things from the Internet is to avoid state sales tax, but the Virginia tax man has eliminated this benefit. And so, I grudgingly had to make an honest estimate of how many purchases I made this past year through the Internet, and pay a percentage of that as part of my Virginia tax preparation. I did not like it, but that is what the law required.

Curveball number two came in the mail this past week. We lived in Campbell county until this past June, and the county tax office sent us notice that we have to pay a personal property tax on the vehicles we operated during those few months. At first I thought it was either a mistake or a joke. I had already paid sales tax on those vehicles, I thought, and surely the county cannot tax me simply for owning and operating the vehicles. Like I mentioned before, this is the fourth state in which I have taken up residence, and I never encountered anything like this before. But after making a few inquiries, I found out—again, to my chagrin—that yes, in fact, the county can charge this tax, and bad things await those who refuse to pay it.

During this season of tax preparation, it is providential that our Epistle lesson should be drawn from Romans 13. Paul’s instruction about the role of civil government in this chapter serves as a reminder to us that the State—and by that I mean all civil government—is the servant of God. Every man and woman who holds office in some part of civil government does so by God’s sovereign decree.

Let me re-read this portion of God’s Word:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval,for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

There have been many critics over the years who have suggested that Paul was simply wrong about his assessment of earthly rulers. After all, the reasoning goes, Paul says there in verse four that an earthly ruler is “God’s servant for good.” Doesn’t that contradict what we all know to be true of earthly rulers? Maybe if Paul lived during the twentieth century, and witnessed the tyranny of Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot, he would change his tune a little bit.

But of course, Paul was not naïve. Paul was a Jew, and he knew very well that his people had lived under tyrants that make our 20th century tyrants look like choir boys in comparison. Paul’s people suffered under the rule of many Pharaoh’s; the Jewish people suffered under the rule of Sennacherib the Assyrian; they suffered under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian and his son Belshazzar; in the inter-Testamental period they suffered under the rule of Alexander the Great. And then there was Herod the Great, who murdered all the infants in Bethlehem in order to get to Jesus. And then Paul was living and writing this very letter during the reign of Emperor Nero, the most despicable and diabolical of all the Caesars. And let us never forget that the greatest crime committed in the long history of mankind was carried out under the watchful but cowardly eye of Pontius Pilate.

Were all these men evil? Yes, they were evil, evil beyond our imaginations. And yet, they were God’s servants, doing his will. Paul’s teaching here in Romans 13 is not a textual error; it is not a strange parenthesis in the midst of otherwise sound teaching; it is not the blathering of a man who is too naïve to see the evil in the world for what it is. What Paul presents here is consistent with the whole warp and woof of the Bible’s teaching on the role of civil government.

The issue here is one of power. Where does political power come from? Who are the legitimate powers that we must obey, and who are the phony powers to whom we owe no obedience or allegiance?

There are actually two Greek words that are translated “power” in the New Testament. The first one is kratos. Kratos is simply raw power—it is the power one possess by virtue of strength and dominance. Kratos could by either good or evil, legitimate or illegitimate. A man with a gun is a man who has kratos—he has raw power. With that gun, he can commit murder…or he can prevent a murder.

According to the Bible, a government is not made legitimate by kratos, by raw power. If that were the case, any group of thugs with guns could set up shop as a government. A legitimate government will have to use raw power in order to keep the peace, but it is not established by raw power.

The word for “power” that Paul uses in this passage is exousia. Exousia is delegated power. A policeman, by virtue of his office, has exousia: his power, his right to enforce the law comes from the fact that it is handed to him by a legitimate higher power. In most cases, he also has kratos—raw power—by carrying a gun. But even if the police officer does not have the raw power that comes from handling a dangerous weapon, he still has exousia, the power that comes from being a legitimate authority under law.

Paul’s teaching here is that civil governments are legitimate because they have exousia—that is, their power is delegated to them by God himself. To resist a legitimate civil government is to resist God himself.

But then right away we face a problem: Caesar’s power comes from God, but very often Caesar is not on the same page as God. How can we say that resisting the civil government is the same as resisting God, when the civil government is not upholding God’s standards? What if the civil government is charging taxes that are so ridiculous, that it constitutes legal theft? What are we to do when the civil government allows, and in some cases encourages, the murder of unborn babies?

When we consider the conflict between God and Caesar (and I use “Caesar” here as a shorthand for civil government in general), there are three possible, logical options.

Option #1 is to say that God’s rule alone is supreme, and that Caesar’s rule is illegitimate. This has been the way Christian hermits over the years have handled the dilemma: their thinking is that, since Caesar is evil, we will retreat from the world and submit ourselves exclusively to the rule of God. We have also witnessed in church history how some Christians take this approach, but in the opposite way, by starting a violent revolution against the civil government. Their thinking is that, since God’s rule alone is supreme, we have an obligation to employ violence to make God’s rule visible to all.

The teaching of Scripture clearly opposes this option. We may not ignore Caesar; nor may we attempt to overthrow Caesar by force.

Option #2 is to say that God and Caesar both have a legitimate place, but Caesar’s place is preeminent. This is the option that the modern world has by and large chosen. This is the option that says that God might be out there, operating in the quietness of human hearts, but that God’s rule has nothing to say about how the world is to be run. In the public square, Caesar calls the shots. If you want to believe in God, you are free to do so…in the privacy of your own home and in your heart.

But contrary to the assumptions of even many Christians, the Christian faith is not private whatsoever. It is about as public as you can get. The essence of the Gospel is that Jesus is the supreme Lord; and if Jesus alone is the supreme Lord, that means Caesar cannot be. The teaching of Scripture is clear: as Jesus said to Pilate during his so-called “trial,” “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.” To those who want civil government to have unlimited kratos, unlimited raw power, Paul reminds us that civil government is what it is only because it has exousia, the power delegated to it by God.

Option #3, then, is to say that God and Caesar both have a legitimate place, but God’s place is preeminent. This is the teaching of Scripture. What this means is that, so long as the civil government is not explicitly operating outside the confines of God’s law, it is legitimate, and we must obey it. But since God rules over Caesar, we may disobey—we must disobey!—civil government when it requires us to violate God’s law.

If the day ever comes when we are commanded to stop spreading the good news of Jesus Christ, we must obey God rather than Caesar. If the day ever comes when we are forbidden to gather together to worship God, we must obey God rather than Caesar. If the day should ever come when our wives are forced to have abortions, we must obey God rather than man.

Thankfully, that day is not here. Yes, in our day, civil government frequently abuses its power. Are taxes too high? Yes, they are. Is government spending money irresponsibly? Yes, it is. Is our government failing in its most basic of responsibilities, that of protecting the defenseless, especially the defenseless babies in millions of wombs? Yes, it is failing.

But in all these cases, our civil government is not yet forcing us to break God’s law.

Furthermore, God’s common grace is still very much in evidence in our land. Our civil government is still the envy of every other nation on earth. Take just a few examples:

Just a few weeks ago, we witnessed the inauguration a new President. Think about it: in most countries throughout the world and throughout history, transfers of political power are marked by high levels of violence. But in this case, a rival political party was taking over the executive branch of our government at 12:00 noon on January 20. The President of the United States is the most powerful man on the face of the earth. You would think that, with so much power being transferred, there would be a proportionate amount of violence accompanying that transfer. But once again, that was not the case. We had yet another peaceful transfer of power. No tanks in the streets, not a single shot fired. That happens, over and over again in our country, because of our deep roots in Scriptures’ teaching on civil government. We are very blessed.

And take another example. Paul says that that the civil government is “an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” We live in a land where, if you here someone crashing into your house in the dark of night, you can pick up the phone to call the police, and have half a dozen competent police officers at your home in two minutes. That is incredible.

So before you become cynical about Paul’s teaching on civil government—that it all sounds too good to be true—just consider what the alternative would be like. Consider what it would be like to have blood in the streets every time power changes hands. Consider what it would be like if we could not trust the competence and integrity of our police force. No government is perfect, but a sub-standard government is far superior to no government. C.S. Lewis put the matter very well: “The practical problem of Christian politics is not that of drawing up schemes for a Christian society, but that of living as innocently as we can with unbelieving fellow-subjects under unbelieving rulers who will never be perfectly wise and good and who will sometimes be very wicked and very foolish.”

So how do we go about living “innocently,” as Lewis put it? Two main things apply here.

First, we must consistently pray for our rulers. Paul tells Timothy, “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” It’s easy to pray for those leaders we like, but difficult to pray for those we dislike. To give an example, President Clinton was not a moral man. I disliked him personally; I thought he brought a lot a dishonor to the office of the President. In his eight years, I never once prayed for him. That was wrong. I was in deep sin. President Clinton desperately needed our prayers. Our current President needs our prayers. We would be failing as Christians, as priests to the world, if we failed to uphold our President and other members of civil government in prayer.

Second, we should strive to be absolutely the best citizens in the land. America is a strange land, where you can fail to pay your taxes, and still become the Secretary of the Treasury. But no Christian should ever fail to pay his or her taxes. Furthermore, we must be diligent to obey all the laws of the land, no matter how much we personally resent them. Vehicle inspections can be an annoyance, but we must follow through with them. Speed limits can be an inconvenience, but we must abide by them. Building codes can increase our building costs, but we do well to abide by them. We show our faithfulness to God by obeying all these little things. If we are faithful in the little things, we will also be faithful in the big things.

In closing, let me lead us in prayer by praying the prayer “For Our Country,” found on page 62 of the Book of Common Prayer.

Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favour. Bless us with industry, prosperity, learning, and purity of life. Save us from discord and violence, and from pride and arrogancy. Preserve us from public calamities, pestilence, and famine; from war, privy conspiracy, and rebellion; and especially from national sins and corruption. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with wisdom those in authority, that justice and peace may prevail. Make us strong and great in the fear of God, and in the love of righteousness, that, blessed of thee, we may be a blessing to all people. In prosperity fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in trouble suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Holy Communion Service for February 1 (Fourth Sunday after Epiphany)

2009-01-30T06:15:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,

Here is what we have lined up for this Sunday's service of Holy Communion:

*Synthia: Barbara Webb
*Refreshment Prep: Kristie Martin
*Liturgist: Peter Joslyn
*Old Testament Lesson: David Mitchel (Deuteronomy 8:1-10)
*Epistle Lesson: Chad Griffiths (Romans 13:1-7)
*Nursery: Amanda Gardner

The one need we have unfilled is for someone to prepare the Communion table.

Many thanks for your service to Christ our King.

Morning Prayer Service for January 25 (Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul)

2009-01-22T12:52:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,

Kristie, the kids, and I will be in Maryland this weekend to attend her brother's wedding. Ed will be delivering the homily, and I appreciate everyone's helping hands.

Here's who we have slated:

*Refreshment preparation: Michelle Griffiths
*Liturgist: David Doughty
*1st Lesson: David Doughty (Isaiah 45:18-25)
*2nd Lesson: Chad Griffiths (Acts 9:1-22)
*Nursery: Phaedra Callaway

If you can serve in any capacity for our Holy Communion service the next week, please do sign up.

with gratitude,

Deacon Bart

Homily: 2nd Sunday after Epiphany, Sunday, January 18, 2009

2009-01-19T07:12:00.000-08:00

This past week, New Covenant Schools hosted a gathering of area pastors and school leaders and campus ministers, and the aim of this gathering was to address the issue of spiritual formation in our school-aged children. What prompted the gathering was the overwhelming testimony of numerous studies, by George Barna and others like him, that the vast majority of Christian kids—up to 70%--walk away from the Christian faith during their college years. Seven out of ten! That means that they graduate from high school, claiming to have some kind of vital connection to Jesus Christ, but within four years they renounce that faith entirely. This trend shows no sign of abating, and so all of us in the Christian community should deeply, deeply concerned.

So we gathered this past week to begin a discussion. What is it about college life that pulls so many kids away? What can we do to better prepare them for the trials of college life? Is there anything that we are doing which actually turns them away from the Christian faith? We did not come to any firm conclusions on the matter, since this is one of those things that defies simply explanations and easy solutions—but it was a profitable discussion that got all of us thinking hard about the issue.

One of the interesting and beneficial points that came out of the discussion was the idea that, if a young adult does choose to walk away from Jesus Christ, it should be a painful experience. It should feel like painful surgery without anesthesia; it should feel as though their very inner being was being violently torn apart. And yet this is usually not the case. Usually, when a young adult walks away from Jesus Christ, it is like what T.S. Eliot describes in one of his poems: it ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. Why is that? I will return to that question in just a few minutes.

But one thing about the discussion that I thought was a little bit disconcerting was a constant drift towards setting up a false contrast, a contrast between having a true, vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ on the one hand, and being religious on the other hand. You hear this kind of contrast expressed frequently in some Christian circles, and it usually goes something like this: “oh, I’m not religious, I just love Jesus Christ” or “Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship with a person.” Being religious and having a personal relationship with Jesus are pitted against each other, as though they are enemies. That kind of thinking is the default position of many American Christians, and this dichotomy surfaced from time to time in our discussion.

Someone once asked the great English pastor C.H. Spurgeon how he reconciled hard biblical doctrines, such as God’s sovereignty and man’s free will. He simply replied, “I don’t try to reconcile friends.”

This morning, I want to pull the word “religion” out of the trash bin. Being religious and having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ are not opposed to one another; rather, properly understood, they are friends.

The contrast we should be drawing is not between religion and a personal relationship, but between true religion and false religion. Our Prayer Book is full of prayers that include phrases like, “increase in us true religion.” In a Prayer for Youth and Institutions of Learning, we pray that our young people may “become strong in thy hands for the maintenance of pure and undefiled religion.” Our Prayer Book is simply reflecting the language used by Saint James, who draws us the proper contrast in James 1:26 and 27:

If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.

BUT

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Many people, in an understandable reaction against false religion, want to throw the whole category of “religion” out the window. But such a simplistic approach does much damage, and I believe that over-reaction is partly responsible for the mass exit from the Christian faith that we see among many young adults. We should be absolutely un-embarrassed to say, “yes, the Christian faith is a religion. What sets it apart is the fact that it is the only true religion, because it alone serves the only true God.”

So if the proper contrast is between true religion and false religion, we need to back up and understand what “religion” is in the first place. The word “religion” comes from the Latin verb “religare”, which means “to bind.” “To bind.” A “religion,” then, is the means by which a person is bound to someone or something. A religion includes the beliefs, covenants, ceremonies, ethical duties, and personal relationships that keep one in vital contact with some higher authority.

So think about those things in light of the Christian religion.
• There are certain essential beliefs that we hold, what we call “doctrine”: we believe that the holy Trinity made the world and made it good, that sin corrupted that good creation, that God came in the flesh to redeem his good creation. Our religion includes these and other essential beliefs.
• There are covenants that are essential, and these covenants are expressed in the sacraments: we are brought into covenant with Jesus Christ by faith and baptism; we are nourished in that covenant by the Word and by Holy Communion.
• There are ceremonies which are part of our religion. Worship is a ceremony, wherein we celebrate God’s presence with us. Marriage is a ceremony, wherein we celebrate not only the bringing together of a man and woman, but we also celebrate what marriage symbolizes: Christ’s marriage to his church. Even a funeral is ceremony—a solemn one, granted—but one that celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and our own future resurrection.
• And then there are ethical duties that are part of our religion. Christian ethics is not a dry list of taboos; rather, God’s commandments are the path on which we walk to enjoy true life with God. The Ten Commandments that we rehearsed earlier today form the foundation of Christian ethics, and these are applied throughout the Scriptures. In our Epistle reading from Romans today, Paul elaborates on a number of Christian duties, all of them simple yet profound: love one another! Show honor to each other! Serve the Lord! Be patient in tribulation! Be constant in prayer! Help needy saints! Show hospitality!
• And then there are personal relationships. The personal relationships I am referring to here are the ties we have with our brothers and sisters in Christ. The logic taught us in the Scriptures goes like this: Christ, the Head, reigns in heaven right now, and his body is on the earth. If you truly love Jesus Christ, then you must love his body; and his body is made up of each individual Christian on this earth. The first Epistle of John comes back to this theme over and over and over again:

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen… And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Put all these things together, and you have what we call “the Christian religion.” All these are the means by which Jesus Christ binds himself to us, and we bind ourselves to him.

Now, here is the danger when we pit “having a personal relationship with Jesus” against “being religious.” You cannot have a real, vital, personal relationship with Jesus Christ without true religion. Let me repeat that to be sure that I am absolutely clear: you cannot have a real, vital, personal relationship with Jesus Christ without true religion.
• Take beliefs: Can you truly have a personal relationship with Jesus, when you despise doctrine and do not hold to the correct beliefs about Jesus? No, you cannot.
• Take covenants: Can you truly have an ongoing, personal relationship with Jesus, when you set aside his sacraments, Baptism and Holy Communion? No, you cannot.
• Take ceremonies: Can you truly have a strong relationship with Jesus Christ when you do not worship him with the saints and the angels and the archangels? No, you cannot.
• Take ethical duties: Can you truly have a loving relationship with Jesus while breaking his commandments? No, absolutely not.
• And then take personal relationships: Can you honestly love Jesus Christ without loving the body of Jesus Christ? Can you say, “I love Jesus,” and then turn right around and despise your Christian brother or sister? Impossible.

You see, we should pray for the maintenance of true religion not because we are opposed to having a personal relationship with Jesus, but because we are zealous to maintain a personal relationship with Jesus.

For some Christians, their reaction to “religion” is understandable: they look at many Christians who go through the religious emotions, but they know that there is no love for God behind it all. And let us be honest and admit that is particularly easy in our Anglican tradition to go through the motions: we are largely defined by our liturgy, and it is very easy to show up on any given morning, and simply say the words of the liturgy, without being animated by the love of God. I’ll be the first one to admit that it happens to me from time to time.

But what is the proper thing to do when our worship becomes devoid of life? Is it to abandon worship? God forbid! When we come together to worship, one of most import things we do is confess our sins together, telling our Lord, “you know what God? We have failed. We have fallen short of your glory. Forgive us, and help us to lead a godly, righteous, and sober life from here on out.” The answer to dead worship is not no-worship; rather, the answer to dead worship is true, humble worship.

Likewise, the answer to a dead, Pharisaical moralism is not to abandon morals, but to confess our sins and ask God’s Spirit to fill us with a desire to truly keep his commandments.

I mentioned before that throwing out the category of “religion” altogether was dangerous, and was at least partially responsible for those alarming statistics that we hear about our young people departing from the faith. Let me now flesh that out a bit.

If we abandon the idea of “religion” altogether, and tell a young person heading off to college, “look, forget about religion—the only thing that really matters is having a relationship with Jesus,” then we are throwing that young person to the wolves, with only their own resources to fall back on. That young person is leaving everything they know—their home, their family, many of their friends, their church—and heading off into a new, exciting, but also dangerous world. They need to be bound tightly to Jesus Christ if they are to survive spiritually. And again, that’s what true “religion” is: it is the real, tangible means by which we are bound to Jesus Christ.

But if we send our young people off to college, and tell them, “you don’t need anything but Jesus,” then we are setting them up for failure
• We are telling them you can think like Jesus without nourishing their minds on the right doctrine of Jesus;
• we are telling them that they can have fellowship with Jesus without eating at Jesus’ table;
• we are telling them they can enjoy Jesus without gathering with saints to celebrate Jesus;
• we are telling them that they can love Jesus while being apathetic to the commands of Jesus;
• we are telling them they can have the mind of Christ while despising the body of Christ.

Is it any surprise, then, that when young people are given this Gnostic version of Christianity, that they so easily discard it during their college years? If they are not grounded in true religion, a religion that binds them tightly to Jesus, and instead just go off with this airy, intangible affection for Jesus, it should be no surprise that they discard their faith like a piece of clothing that has outlived its usefulness. On the other hand, a young person who is strongly grounded in true religion will find walking away from Jesus a hard, difficult, even gut-wrenching experience. The binds of Christ are so strong upon them, that they cannot walk away easily.

I have been referring to young people a lot, but what I say about them is equally true of any Christian at any stage of life. The college years are particularly challenging, because college students are facing so many intense challenges all at the same time. Adults, on the other hand, face similar challenges, just over a longer period of time.

What is the same for Christians of all ages is the need to be deeply rooted in Christ, to be true disciples of Jesus…which is to say, that we all need to have true religion.

True religion is aware of the reality of spiritual warfare, and that violence of many forms is a stark reality of life. And in the midst of the warfare, the Christian who is grounded in true religion is like a good soldier, trained to keep God and his works front and center at all times.

The Psalm we recited earlier this morning is a wonderful expression of the warfare that we face, and the wonderful LORD of Hosts that we serve in the midst of the warfare. When we read and sing and pray the Psalms, we are more and more training our eyes to see the world as God sees it, and we are more and more bound tightly to our Savior, Jesus Christ.

So I invite you to turn again to Psalm 46 (page 336 in the Prayer Book), and as I read these words in closing, I invite you to turn this Psalm into a prayer, a prayer that will help us to maintain true religion.

Let us pray.

God is our hope and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be moved, and though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof rage and swell, and though the mountains shake at the tempest of the same. There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God; the holy place of the tabernacle of the Most Highest. God is in the midst of her, therefore shall she not be removed; God shall help her, and that right early. The nations make much ado, and the kingdoms are moved; but God hath showed his voice, and the earth shall melt away. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. O come hither, and behold the works of the LORD, what destruction he hath brought upon the earth.

Service for January 18 (2nd Sunday after Epiphany)

2009-01-15T13:04:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,

Here is who we have lined up for this coming Sunday:

1. Synthia: Barbara Webb (and we heartily thank her for doing this week in and week out!)
2. Liturgist: Jack Gardner
3. Refreshment prep: Michelle Griffiths
4. Communion prep: Nancy Hunter
5. Old Testament Lesson: Bart Martin (Zechariah 8:1-8,20-23)
6. Epistle Lesson: Chad Griffiths (Romans 12:6-16)
7. Nursery: Michelle Griffiths

Next week, on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, I will be out of town (Kristie's brother is getting married). It will be a Morning Prayer service; Ed Hopkins will give the homily. If there is any way you would like to assist in the service, please let me know.

Thanks for all you do!

Homily: 1st Sunday after Epiphany, Sunday, January 11, 2009

2009-01-12T03:44:00.000-08:00

If you were to ask a foreigner—say, a European—to give his impression of Americans in general, probably what he would tell you is that Americans are brave, but also brash; Americans are generally intelligent, but largely uncultured; Americans are honest, but also uncouth.

But above all, the one characteristic of Americans that stands out is that they are deeply practical: the number one issue is always, “what works best?” Americans are deeply concerned with the bottom line, and obsessed with making sure that they get a good return on their investments. Americans are generally not concerned with truth for truth’s sake, or goodness for goodness’ sake, or beauty for beauty’s sake: they concern themselves with truth, goodness, and beauty if and only if they “work” for some other purpose.

As any historian of philosophy would tell you, America has produced no true school of thought, no great “-ism”, of its own except for one: pragmatism. Pragmatism is “What-works-ism.” Whether we are building a house, or voting for a political candidate, or choosing a religion, this impulse to “do what works best” dictates what we think and prescribes virtually everything we do.

No wonder, then, that worship is something that is so difficult to understand and practice. Of what practical value is worship? What is being produced in a worship service? What great problem of the day is being solved by people getting together to worship? In the worldview of pragmatism, worship has no legitimate place. As one writer put it, worship is “a royal waste of time.” And we could add to that that worship is a royal waste of money. The great story of Epiphany that we celebrate this week—the coming of the wise men from the East to worship King Jesus and to present to him expensive gifts—is usually highly sentimentalized, because we don’t know what to make of it. Why on earth would men of such prestige and wealth spend weeks and months traveling across the desert to worship and give gifts to an infant in Bethlehem? From a pragmatic point of view, the mission of the wise men makes no sense whatsoever: a royal waste of time and money.

Americans, of course, are not the only ones who have struggled to understand and practice true worship. Pragmatism might be our particular affliction, but other peoples in other times also had their peculiar sins which kept them from worshipping as they ought.

So the problem is by no means recent. In our first reading today, we heard from the prophet Haggai. Now, Haggai is another one of those so-called “minor prophets”, like Habakkuk and Zephaniah, who is not exactly a household name, so a little background is in order.

The people of Judah had been taken captive to Babylon, and there they stayed for 70 years. During those 70 years, many of them—like Daniel—served faithfully. Taking up the advise of Jeremiah, they built homes and raised families and prospered. But then, as we see recorded in the book of Ezra, the decree went out from Cyrus that the Jews would be permitted to return to their land and to re-build the Temple that the Babylonians had destroyed.

Many Jews, having become comfortable in Persia, decided to remain behind. Those Jews who remembered Jerusalem would have been very old at this point, and understandably would not be up for the long trip back home and for the hard work that would great them once they arrived. And most of the Jews never knew anything of Jerusalem, since they were born in Persia. Nevertheless, a contingent of the Jews did return, and they blazed a trail for others to follow.

The re-building of the Temple commenced: an altar was erected, and the foundation was put in place. But then, as we see recorded in Ezra chapter 4, the Temple-building project came to a halt due to the opposition of the Samaritans. Discouragement gained the upper hand, and for about 15 years, the foundation of the Temple was in place, yet no further construction took place on top of that foundation.

Here is where the prophet Haggai comes into the picture. Haggai, along with Zechariah, prophesied to the people that the work on the Temple must continue. Here are the words from the book of the prophet Haggai, starting in the first verse:

In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest: "Thus says the LORD of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD."

Then the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, "Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.

"Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD. You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the LORD of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors."

Here, in a nutshell, was Haggai’s message to the people in Jerusalem. You say that we can’t rebuild God’s house, and your logic goes like this:

One, building the Temple requires money and material
Two, at this time we have neither money nor material

And so, the conclusion is that we cannot rebuild the Temple at this time.

Notice that Haggai does not deny the first premise, that building the Temple will require money and material. Of course it does: anything worthwhile is going to be costly to some extent. What Haggai does is attack the second premise, the notion that the people have neither money nor material. Your whole understanding of the economy is all wrong, says Haggai. You have the cause and the effect reversed. It’s not the case that you are poor, and therefore cannot re-build the Temple. Rather, you have refused to rebuild the Temple, and therefore you are poor. You have spent the last fifteen years building your own paneled houses, but have neglected God’s house. And as a result, you have experienced drought and famine, and hence poverty. But once you get your priorities straight, then God will open the floodgates of heaven and bless the land.

Haggai’s message was effective. Within three weeks, the rebuilding of the Temple was underway again; but there were still challenges. We pick up the story in Haggai 2, the portion read earlier this morning:

In the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, "Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to all the remnant of the people, and say, 'Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?

Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the LORD. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the LORD. Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts.'"

The great challenge that the people faced as they completed the Temple was this: this new, second Temple was nowhere near as glorious as Solomon’s first Temple. The completion of the Temple was a bit anticlimactic. And so the prophet Haggai encourages them, telling them that, in spite of appearances, the glory of this new house of worship will be greater than the glory of the first house of worship. They couldn’t see it now, but God was going to do wondrous things through this new Temple. This prophecy began to be fulfilled several hundred years later, when (as we heard earlier today) a twelve-year old boy entered the Temple and began to school all the religious leaders of the day. No one realized it at the time—least of all the boys’ parents—but at that time God was filling his house with his greater glory.

So the message of Haggai is this: worship is the center of all life. Work hard at building God’s house, and then He will build your house.

This is the pattern we see here in Haggai and throughout the Scriptures: 1) God’s people are in bondage; 2) God’s people get spoil from the pagans; and 3) God’s people build a house for worship. This pattern was established early on in Exodus: God’s people were in bondage in Egypt; they leave with Egyptian spoils; and then they built something for worship.

But it is in this third step—building something for worship—that God’s people have often gone astray—in Israel’s time, and in our own. Having been liberated from Egypt and having obtained spoils from those pagans, the people had a choice: worship in their own idolatrous way, or worship God truly. We know what Israel did at the foot of Mt. Sinai, how they celebrated their new freedom from bondage by constructing a golden calf. The rest of the book of Exodus is God’s response to that idolatry, where God gives detailed instructions for the building of the Tabernacle. God tells them, “You have worshipped in you own fashion, Israel; now, let me tell you how I am to be properly worshipped.”

In Haggai, the process is the same…only, instead of building a golden calf, the people built their own houses and obsessed about the state of the economy. But the prophet responds to this idolatry in the same way: worship God rightly, and everything else in life takes its proper shape.

The constant temptation, in Israel’s day and in our own, is to marginalize worship, and substitute something else that we consider more practical, more relevant. Worship is worthwhile, we reason, “if we can get something out of it.” Israel in Moses’ day thought they could “get something out of” worshipping the golden calf; Israel in Haggai’s day thought they could “get something out of” building their economy.

The temptation today, in modern America, is to value worship only if it leads to political power; or to value worship only if it leads to “cultural relevance”; or to value worship if it inspires us to be successful in life; or to value worship if it gives us spiritual goosebumps. We “get something out” of all these things.

But all these things are simply modern examples of golden-calf worship. We don’t value worship because “we can get something out of it.” We value worship because we value God himself.

Do we believe that God alone is holy? Then the only proper response is to worship him along with the angels and archangels. Do we believe that God is the Creator of the world, who rested on the seventh day? Then the only proper response is to worship him and find rest in him. Do we believe that God’s Son died on the cross for us and for our salvation? Then the only proper response is to worship him, whereby we learn how to take up our crosses to follow him.

Do we “get something” out of worship? Yes, absolutely! But we must not reverse the proper order. We must not construct in our minds what is important, and then go to worship God as though he were some sort of cosmic vending machine who exists to serve our pre-conceived needs. Instead, we go to worship God because He is worthy of our worship. And then, having sacrificed ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice before God in worship, God cuts us up, molds us, and blesses us, and sends us back into the world to do his bidding.

So do you “get something” out of worship? Yes: just realize that the “you” that goes into the house of Almighty God is not going to be the same as the “you” that comes out the house of Almighty God. You might come into God’s house to have your desires confirmed; but God will send you out of his house having changed and enlarged your desires. Worship is God’s show, not ours.

Someone might ask, “yes, but what if I don’t feel like worshipping? If I am not in a worshipping mood, isn’t it better that I avoid hypocrisy and just stay away until I feel like giving God glory?” On the surface this might sound noble, but in reality this reflects a deep lack of faith. C.S. Lewis points out that the enemy of faith is not reason, as many suppose. Rather, the enemy of faith is emotion. He uses the example of surgery to explain this. A person going into surgery knows that a qualified surgeon is not going to start cutting until the anesthesia starts working. Even so, a normal person, when the anesthesiologist starts to put that mask on their face, is going to experience the emotion of fear. How does the patient overcome the feeling of fear? By acting on his faith. He knows that the anesthesia is going to help him; he knows that the surgeon is qualified; and therefore, he acts consistently with that faith. Faith recognizes the emotion, but overcomes it.

And so, when someone says, “well, I don’t feel like worshipping, so maybe it’s best that I stay out of God’s house,” he is being faith-less. If you do not feel like worshipping God when it is time for his people to assemble—and that happens to all of us to some extent—what you should do is act in faith, worship God anyway, and allow him to transform your feelings. Eugene Peterson puts the matter this way: “Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in the act of worship.”

Someone else might ask, “isn’t it good enough to just stay home and read the Bible by myself? Or can’t I just watch a sermon on TV, or listen to one on a CD?” There are a number of ways to respond to this, but I would simply point out that when you choose to be alone in your individualistic worship service, you are not, in fact, alone at all. You will be accompanied by the conditioning of the culture around you; you will be surrounded by the limitations of your own ignorance; and you will be keeping good company with all those prejudices you never realized you had. You will select portions of Scripture that inspire you without challenging you; you will select sermons that tickle your ears, but do not feed your soul. Reading the Scriptures on your own and listening to sermons through various media can be a wonderful supplement to corporate worship, but they are by no means a replacement for corporate worship.

The great law of worship taught us in the Scriptures is this: you become like what you worship. If you worship an idol, you will become like that idol. If, on the other hand, you worship the Almighty God, you will more and more be conformed to the character of his Son. And so let us here the message of Haggai even today, and commit to keeping worship central in our lives.

In closing, I am going to pray the prayer “For Congregations,” found on page 58 of the Book of Common Prayer.

O ALMIGHTY God, who hast built thy Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone; Grant that by the operation of the Holy Ghost, all Christians may be so joined together in unity of spirit, and in the bond of peace, that they may be an holy temple, acceptable unto thee. And especially to this congregation present, give the abundance of thy grace; That with one heart they may desire the prosperity of thy holy Church, and with one mouth may profess the faith once delivered to the saints. Defend them from the sins of heresy and schism; let not the foot of pride come nigh to hurt them, nor the hand of the ungodly to cast them down. And grant, that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by thy governance, that thy Church may joyfully serve thee in all godly quietness; That so they may walk in the ways of truth and peace, and at last be numbered with thy saints in glory everlasting; through thy merits, O blessed Jesus, thou gracious Bishop and Shepherd of our souls, who art, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

Service for January 11 (1st Sunday after Epiphany)

2009-01-07T11:01:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,

I have been out of it for a while, but we're getting back on track.

This month, we will be getting back on track with the pattern we established before Advent: Holy Communion on the 1st and 3rd Sundays, with Morning Prayer the 2nd and 4th Sundays. Thus, we will have Morning Prayer this coming Sunday.

Here's who is lined up for Sunday:

Synthia: Barbara Webb (and if you think of it, pray for the Synthia, which seems to be on the fritz, and pray for Barbara who has been wrestling with it :) )
Liturgist: David Doughty
1st Lesson: Carey Callaway (Haggai 2:1-9)
2nd Lesson: David Mitchel (Luke 2:41-52)
Nursery: Amanda Gardner

We could still use someone to prepare refreshments ahead of time.

Thanks to all for your service to Christ's Body.

Service for Sunday, 28 December (Holy Innocents)

2008-12-26T05:37:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,

Here is what we have lined up for this Sunday's Holy Communion service:

Synthia prep and playing: Barbara Webb
Refreshment prep: Michelle Griffith
Liturgist and homilist: Mark Foreman
1st Lesson: Chad Griffith
2nd Lesson: Jack Gardner
Nursery: Phaedra Callaway

It looks as though we need someone to prepare the Communion table.

Thanks, everyone, for your service to Christ's body.

Homily: 4th Sunday in Advent, Sunday, December 21, 2008

2008-12-21T07:30:00.000-08:00

Advent IV: The Way of Joy

I was having lunch with a friend just several days ago, and he remarked that there was just something about this Christmas season that was lacking. The life just seems to have drained out of our celebrations; the sense of anticipation is dead; and any buzz of excitement that we might witness seems so artificial and contrived. In short, our culture is going through the motions of celebrating Christmas, but the celebration is bereft of spirit and life. The joy has departed.

I had to agree with him. Without being able to put my finger precisely on the root of the problem, I sensed intuitively that he was right.

Our news media for the past month has given us many reports—too many to count—about one community after another where any public expression of a distinctively Christian celebration is under attack. Whether it’s the ACLU suing to remove a Nativity scene, or a community getting rid of any official “Christmas” celebration and replacing it with a bland, generic “holiday” celebration, there does indeed seem to be a groundswell of attacks on the holiday we all used to know.

But we as a Christian community need to be very clear on something: it would be a mistake to focus on these public attacks; it would be a mistake to lament them as though they were the cause of our problems.

The public attacks on Christmas are not the cause of our problems; rather, they are simply the symptoms of a deeper underlying cause.

It occurred to me as I spoke to my friend that, once again, our times are so similar to the times of Isaiah and Jeremiah, from whom we have heard a lot during the Advent season. Just like in their day, we can say, as Jeremiah said in our Old Testament reading today, that America is a “waste” and is “desolate.”

It would have been foolish for the people of Judah in that day to blame all their problems on the Babylonians; likewise, it would be foolish for us to blame all our problems upon the cultural revolutionaries attacking our foundations.

Isaiah and Jeremiah are perfectly clear on this point: when God’s people worship him and celebrate his greatness, the land prospers. That is just as true today as it was in their time.

But one of the fundamental problems in Judah is that they had lost their joy. They had lost their mirth. They had lost the ability to truly celebrate. We know this because Jeremiah looks to the future and sees a time when that joy will return (which suggests that there was no joy at that time): he says “And this city shall be to me a name of joy…there shall be heard again the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness…the voices of those who sing, as they bring thank offerings to the house of the LORD.”

It always shocks me to hear people suggest that Christians are dour and gloomy people, when the Scriptures abound in calls for God’s people to rejoice and be merry.

Jeremiah prophecies a day when joy and mirth will return.

Paul, in the end of his letter to the Philippians, encourages us with those well-known words, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, rejoice!” And remember that when Paul wrote these words, he was in prison.

Jesus was reputed to be very joyful—so joyful, in fact, that he was called a “glutton” and “winebibber”

So where do some people get the idea that Christians are dour and gloomy? Granted, in many cases, it is an unjust caricature; but let us be honest and admit that in many other cases, we have earned the reputation.

I would suggest, then, that the malaise we see in our culture during the Christmas season is simply a reflection of the malaise that exists in the Christian community as a whole. We have forgotten how to celebrate. We have abandoned the Way of Joy.

Sure, we have fun. Certainly, we have diversions. And no doubt, we have plenty of amusements. But all these are cheap substitutes for real joy. All of them fall short of the full-bodied celebration God calls us to.

It would be mistake for us to think that all is required is an attitude adjustment. When Paul says, “rejoice in the Lord always,” he is not calling on us to force bubbly feelings to the service; he is not asking us to put on plastic smiles.

When Paul said, “Rejoice!” the word he used had more the idea of a public celebration. The Roman world around him had regular public festivals and games, where they celebrated their own particular gods. And you don’t have to read too far into the books of Moses to see how many times God commanded the Jews to have feasts. So when Paul, a Jew in the Roman empire, said “Rejoice!”, that is what he had in mind. It was a public celebration that gave way to inward joy.

If we think of the Christian life as a pilgrimage, we see very quickly how important it is to stop, rest, and reflect. Our public celebrations are like signposts along the road: these signposts remind us, and the world watching us, of who we are and who we worship. We celebrate to remember that we worship and serve a God who is abounding in grace; we celebrate to demonstrate that our God is overflowing with goodness; we celebrate to show that our God is teeming with life. When we do not put these signposts along the road, we tend to forget who it is we serve, and we find ourselves wandering off that road.

I would suggest that, as we consider the Way of Joy marked out for us by Jesus, that we not allow ourselves to become distracted by the cultural malaise all around us. It is one thing to notice that our culture is losing its grip on the celebration of Christmas; it is quite another thing to obsess about our culture’s loss of celebration. If we are not careful, our condemnation of our culture can easily function as a mask, covering up our own faults and shortcomings.

Our focus, instead, needs to be on that which is under our control. In particular, our focus needs to be on two things:
1. do we truly celebrate in our homes?
2. do we truly celebrate in our church?

So first, our homes. We need to consider, room by room, what our homes symbolize, whether good or bad. In particular, when we consider celebration, our minds naturally are drawn to the dining room. When our dining room tables are packed-full of mouth-watering foods and satisfying drinks, this is a symbol of the overflowing goodness of God. If, however, our dining rooms are more like fueling stations, where everyone stops for a few minutes to get the requisite number of calories before rushing off to the next activity…well, what is being symbolized then? What kind of God are we proclaiming?

If we truly want to celebrate in our homes—and I think we all do—but find ourselves woefully unknowledgeable in how to go about doing it, then it’s likely because we are out of shape. Here’s what I mean. God has given us a command to rest and celebrate on a particular day of the week; it’s a command we know well, because we re-affirm it every week. Yes, the 4th Commandment, to keep the Sabbath day holy. The command entails resting and celebrating, one day in seven.

Eugene Peterson has this to say about celebrating the Sabbath:

If there is no Sabbath—no regular and commanded not-working, not-talking—we soon become absorbed in what we are doing and saying, and God’s work is either forgotten or marginalized. When we work we are most god-like, which means that it is in our work that it is easiest to develop god-pretensions. Un-sabbathed, our work becomes the entire context in which we define our lives. We lose God-consciousness, God-awareness, sightings of the resurrection. We lose the capacity to sing “this is my Father’s world” and end up chirping little self-centered ditties about what we are doing and feeling.

Ironically, the command to “keep the Sabbath” is for many people seen as a burden, an onerous law that has to be kept to placate God. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, it is a discipline, but it is a discipline that brings freedom and joy. God tells us, once a week, “stop! Do nothing. I am running the world, not you. Celebrate who I am, and stop worrying about your work and your checkbook and your little empire. Be joyful, because I have all that under control.”

Just like our muscles atrophy from lack of use, so too our capacity for joy shrivels up and dies when we don’t take one day out of the week to stop and celebrate.

Is it any wonder, then, that when we want to celebrate in a major way—like at Christmas—that we find ourselves unable to do so adequately? Our “joy muscles” are out of shape from lack of use. C.S. Lewis puts the matter this way:

…Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

When we, week in and week out, truly rest and celebrate on the Sabbath, God uses that to get us into shape. Our weekly Sabbath celebrations become like smaller training runs that get us in shape for the marathon celebrations like Christmas.

So, as with any other discipline in the Christian pilgrimage, we need to start small. Learn to stop and truly celebrate on a weekly basis. Do not despise the day of small beginnings, because God will transform our efforts into something more glorious than we could ever imagine. But if we start small and celebrate the way God tells us to, we will find that our capacity for true joy increases exponentially.

And then, we will learn how to better celebrate in our church. When our families become true places of celebration and joy, they will naturally overflow to include other families in the body of Christ.

In addressing the issue of celebration in the church, there is a certain danger that I wish to avoid. The danger is this: if I get too specific and say, “I once knew of a church that was great at celebration, and they did it like this…” then we will find ourselves simply imitating that other church, and simply going through the motions. What we need to do instead is to use our imagination to discover ways of celebrating that are unique to us, given our particular situation and the make-up of this church.

So understand that what follows is not a prescription of what we should do: take them only as hints and suggestions and invitations to imagine what we could do.

First of all, consider the issue of time. We in the Anglican tradition mark time by following a traditional church calendar. We could treat the church calendar as simply a way to guide us as to what to read on a given Sunday, and to tell us what liturgical color we should display on any given day. But could it be more? Could not the church calendar become the means by which we plan our celebrations together?

For example, let’s say that you’re looking ahead on the church calendar, and you notice that the Feast of St. Mark is coming up in the middle of next week. Could we do more than simply acknowledge that the day is there? Could we not be literalists, and say, “hey, the Feast of St. Mark is coming…so everyone, let’s get together at my place and have a real feast, complete with wine and roast beef and mashed potatoes!” The wonderful thing about a small church like ours is that we are free to be spontaneous like this—there’s no committee who has to approve any request to hold a feast.

Next, consider the issue of place. We all have homes in which we dwell. Are they truly open to others within the body of Christ? It’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking that our homes are not good enough or well-appointed enough to have others as guests. We all tend to have the mindset of the person who needs to have the house perfectly clean before the maid arrives. But we would do well to remind ourselves that a home that looks more like a museum than, well, a home, is intimidating to most people. A certain amount of imperfection is actually an asset.

The important thing about hospitality is not that it is done perfectly; rather, the important thing is that it is simply done.

Also, as we consider places to celebrate, consider a huge asset that we have in our church body: this great café down on Main Street, just across from the Community Market. No, I won’t mention it by name, just so that no one can accuse me of shameless advertising from the pulpit. But think about that place: it has great food, great drinks, a wonderful atmosphere, surrounded by great books, and frequently is host to great music. We meet there once a week for a Bible study—which in itself is a kind of celebration.

How could we use that place even more to celebrate together?

It is a wonderful place to fellowship together as saints; and because it is also a public place, our fellowship can be seen by others. At a place like that, our corporate discipline of celebration becomes a visible signpost to those outside our body, testifying to the goodness and greatness of our God. I invite you to join me in imagining the possibilities there.

Lastly, consider the fact that the reading of Scripture is itself an act of celebration. When we read the Scriptures in public, we close the lesson with “thanks be to God!” I trust we see that this is not an empty ritual. The Word of God is available to us as individuals, but it was given to the Body of Christ. God did not have to reveal himself to us, but He did. And because we have the very Word of God with us, we do well to not simply be in possession of it, but to actually celebrate it.

When I was sitting and listening to David recite the Gospel of John last Saturday night, the thought occurred to me: this is the kind of thing we should be doing on a regular basis! In what kinds of ways can we, as a Church body, gather together specifically to hear the voice of God?

To combine this thought with others that I mentioned, could we not celebrate around the reading of God’s Word on certain feast days on the church calendar? Could we not do it in someone’s home, or at a certain café on Main Street? We are limited only by our imagination.

The wonderful thing about being a disciple of Jesus Christ is that we have a huge amount of freedom. Jesus beckons us to follow him on the Way of Joy, and there are countless expressions of that Way. We need only to walk in it by faith…and with a lot feasting and celebrating as we go.

I will close by praying two prayers from the Family Prayer section of the Book of Common Prayer: the Prayer for Quiet Confidence, which asks God to help us to truly rest; and also the Prayer for Joy in God’s Creation. Let us pray.

O GOD of peace, who hast taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength; By the might of thy Spirit lift us, we pray thee, to thy presence, where we may be still and know that thou art God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O HEAVENLY Father, who hast filled the world with beauty; Open, we beseech thee, our eyes to behold thy gracious hand in all thy works; that rejoicing in thy whole creation, we may learn to serve thee with gladness; for the sake of him by whom all things were made, thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Public Reading of the Gospel According to St. John

2008-12-15T06:06:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,

This past Saturday night was David Mitchel's long-anticipated dramatic reading of the Gospel of John. It was a wonderful evening. David's reading/recitation (he had LARGE chunks of the Gospel memorized) was spectacular. For those who were not able to be there, David plans to do this again sometime down the road.

Here we are after the reading was completed. Millie's idea of establishing parish solidarity was for us all to look like Santa Claus (or the Grinch, in Chad's case)

Homily: 3rd Sunday in Advent, Sunday, December 14, 2008

2008-12-15T05:52:00.000-08:00

Advent III: The Way of Holiness

The story is told of a young Jewish man here in America named Chaim Potok, a bright young man who, like many young men, was struggling to discern his future vocation. Unlike many other young men, however, who have only a vague sense of who they are and what they are called to do with their lives, this young man knew exactly what he wanted to do: he wanted to be a writer. His vocational struggle was not within himself, but with his well-intentioned but overbearing mother.

Even though Chaim’s desire to be a writer was evident from a very early age, his mother would have none of it. Just before he went off to college, his mother pulled him aside and said, “Chaim, I know you want to be a writer, but I have a better idea. Be a brain surgeon. You’ll keep a lot of people from dying, and you’ll make a lot of money.” Chaim responded, “no, Mama, I want to be a writer.”

When Chaim came home for vacation, the conversation was repeated. “Chaim, I know you want to be a writer, but I have a better idea. Be a brain surgeon. You’ll keep a lot of people from dying, and you’ll make a lot of money.” And Chaim would respond, “no, Mama, I want to be a writer.”

This same conversation would be repeated over and over and over again, every time Chaim would come home for break.

Finally, things came to a head. His mother, in exasperation, said, “Chaim, you’re wasting your time. Be a brain surgeon! You’ll keep a lot of people from dying, and you’ll make a lot of money!” To which Chaim responded with great intensity, “Look, mama, I don’t want to keep people from dying; I want to show them how to live!”

Through the creative work of writing, Chaim has done exactly that: he has shown people not simply how to avoid death, but how to truly be alive.

He saw, rightly, that our ultimate purpose is not to simply perpetuate our existence. Sure, we need brain surgeons; we need physicians in the ER; and other medical and scientific means of preventing death are wonderful blessings from God. But Chaim understood that after the successful, life-saving treatment, a human being must come face-to-face with the question, “what does it mean to truly live?”

Last night, hearing David read through the entirety of John’s Gospel, I was struck by many things. But one of the things in particular that struck me was how many times John records Jesus talking about life: by my rough count, the word “life” is spoken 42 times in the book. And it strikes me that Americans are wonderfully skilled at staying alive and avoiding death; but for the most part, are woefully unaware of what it means to be alive—at least in the sense that Jesus speaks of being “alive” in the gospel of John.

The one word in the Scriptures that best captures this sense of being truly alive is the word “holy.” Holy. It’s a word that many would like to ignore, but in a God-created and God-soaked world, you simply can’t escape holiness.

For the last few hundred years, ever since the so-called Enlightenment, the Western world has avoided holiness at all costs. We have been told over and over and over again that the material world is basically all there is; and therefore, what really matters in life is money and power, politics and economics. Sure, within this view of the world you can be “religious” or “spiritual” if you like, but just make sure that you confine your religion to the privacy of your own home. Make sure that your private religion doesn’t have any public consequences. Make sure that holiness—whatever that is—stays within the politically correct, defined limits.

But holiness cannot be contained within man-imposed limits. Containing holiness is like trying to stop the flow of water at Niagara Falls; containing holiness is like trying to put a lid on top of an erupting volcano. The modern world has done its best to contain holiness for several hundred years now, and the experiment is proving to be a failure.

Once again, the prophet Isaiah is our reliable guide. In the sixth chapter of Isaiah, the prophet is in the Temple. The Temple was literally the most holy place on earth—the meeting place between heaven and earth. But what Isaiah experienced there showed him that, as Solomon prayed at the consecration of the Temple, even the Temple could not contain God’s holiness. We read:

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

Later on, in chapter 35—our Old Testament reading for this morning—Isaiah likens this fallen world to a wilderness and a desert. Isaiah is showing us that, even though this world looks dead, even though it looks as though the holiness of God is but a distant memory, a day is coming when life will burst forth. “The desert shall rejoice and blossom like a crocus,” he says. “The waters will break forth in the wilderness.” When that happens, when the Kingdom of God starts breaking in to history, a number of things will begin to happen as well: the weak hands are strengthened, the anxious hearts will be empowered, the blind eyes will be opened, the deaf ears will be unstopped, the lame will be healed, the mute tongues will be loosened.

Somehow, all this good news comes to us at the same time that God’s judgment comes: the prophet says “Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.”

Somehow, God’s restoration of life and God’s judgment are linked together.

In the middle of this wilderness, says Isaiah, there will be a highway: it is called the Way of Holiness. And he beckons us to travel on this Way of Holiness.

But right there, we run into potential problems. When we are told, “walk on the Way of Holiness, lead holy lives, be holy as God is holy,” immediately we bring a lot of our baggage.

For some people, being “holy” means that you are devout and very pietistic. You have your “quiet time” every day, and try really hard to be good. You separate yourself from the world, and wait for Jesus to return and make the world better again. The Essenes in Jesus’ day chose this way: they removed themselves from society, they studied the Scriptures in their enclaves, simply focusing on their own personal, so-called holiness.

But that is not the Way of Holiness that Isaiah is talking about.

For other people, being “holy” means that you stridently fight against the evil of the day. You fight fire with more fire. You use the weapons of the world to fight God’s battles against the world. The Zealots of Jesus’ day chose this option: they fought and agitated against the Roman authorities, convinced that God would reward them for doing so.

But that also is not the Way of Holiness that Isaiah is talking about.

The Essenes were the moralists of the day; the Zealots were the activists of the day. Both the Essenes and the Zealots wanted to avoid death, and they both had their own peculiar tactics for avoiding death. But neither one was particularly interested in the true life of holiness. The Way of Holiness that Isaiah is talking about is the path between those two options. It is the via media, the middle way, between the Essenes who wanted to withdraw and focus on their own piety, and the Zealots who wanted to bring about the kingdom of God by force.

Contrary to the way of the Essenes, the Way of Holiness runs through the desert, not around it. And contrary to the way of the Zealots, on the Way of Holiness there are no lions and ravenous beasts to fight against.

Our Epistle and Gospel readings help to flesh out what this Way of Holiness is.

In 1st Corinthians 4, Paul is dealing with a challenge: many in Corinth are, quite frankly, disappointed with him. Paul is not the most charismatic personality around. Other teachers out there are exciting and dynamic, and Paul apparently was less than impressive in the PR department. Some in Corinth were going so far as to judge him, suggesting that he wasn’t a true apostle at all. Paul’s admonition to them is this: do not judge before it is time. You people, he says, want to bring God’s future judgment into the present, and accuse me of falling short of what God wants from me as an apostle.

In other words, Paul was dealing with people who were a lot like the Zealots: they wanted God’s judgment to come to pass right here, right now, on their timetable. And Paul says, stop! That’s God’s job. Don’t rush the work of God. God will judge the world soon enough, so let God do his work, and you do yours. As Jesus said in the parable of the wheat and the tares, when you are too anxious to pull out the tares before it is time for the harvest, you might be in danger of pulling up some wheat with it.

Now, there are times when we as Christians are called upon to bring God’s judgment into the present. Paul does this in the very next chapter, in I Corinthians 5, when he is telling the Corinthian church how they should handle a man who is living in explicit sexual sin. In the case of obvious and flagrant sin, you are by all means supposed to deal with it as you would deal with cancer—remove it!

So the Corinthians, said Paul, were not walking on the Way of Holiness. They were ready to call God’s judgment upon one whom they had no business judging, and at the same time were tolerating obvious sin their own midst.

And then we come to our Gospel reading in Matthew 11. John the Baptist had been in prison for some time; and he was beginning to have some doubts about this Jesus of Nazareth character. So John sends a messenger to Jesus, asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look to another?” Basically, John is saying, “look, Jesus, I thought you were the Messiah, but quite honestly, you are not following the script I expected of the Messiah. I was expecting an Elijah-like figure of power, and you don’t seem to be it.” Jesus’ response is surprising: he starts quoting Isaiah 35, saying, “the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.”

In other words, Jesus tells John, “you know that Way of Holiness that Isaiah talked about way back then? Well, I’m the one who is making the path. It’s happening right now.”

And then, somewhat mysteriously, Jesus ends his message to John by saying, “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Why would anyone be offended by Jesus? Simply for this reason: many expected the Messiah to be different from what He actually was. Many expected someone like Elijah, a fiery man of great power who would visibly conquer the enemies of Israel. The script Jesus followed wasn’t the one they had written for him.

But Jesus goes on to say that John the Baptist is the Elijah-like figure. And then, Jesus says something that is completely shocking: “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

In other words, Jesus has come to establish the Way of Holiness. Those who follow Jesus on that Way of Holiness are fulfilling everything that Moses and Elijah and John were called to do.

And what, exactly, are we called to do on this Way of Holiness? How can we possibly follow Jesus and be greater than even John the Baptist? To use some more images from Isaiah, we are called to employ two tools: the Sword, and the Plowshare.

If we bear the Sword alone, then we are like the Zealots, and are not walking on the Way of Holiness.

If we bear the Plowshare alone, then we are like the Essenes, and we are wandering off the Way of Holiness.

We use the Sword when we remind the world that God is coming to judge the world. God is a God of justice; He will, in his good time, bring the world to rights. There is a time to be like Elijah; there is a time to be like Jonah. If we do not use the Sword and address the wickedness of the world, sooner or later we find ourselves accommodating to the ways of the world. Without the Sword, we make peace with the way things are, and assume that God will bless us anyway. The world operates under the Myth of Progress: that if we just continue to do things the way we do them now, only bigger and better, then we will find peace and happiness. But we as Christians, on the Way of Holiness, are called to use the Sword to proclaim that God is coming to change the landscape of the world.

And then there is the Plowshare. A plowshare is a symbol of healing; it is a tool for cultivating life. With a plowshare, a farmer is able to bring life to a field where once there was only death. We who are called onto the Way of Holiness do the same: by exercising mercy and justice, by loving one another as Christ has loved us, we are used by God to bring healing into this sin-and-death-ravaged world.

Without the Plowshare, we as a people become defined by what we are NOT. Perhaps you have heard the saying that, for some people, “nothing is right unless something is wrong.” They complain about this evil, they denounce that evil, and on and on goes the litany of complaints and condemnations. Such a person loves the Sword, but has never learned to use the Plowshare. They denounce death, but haven’t yet learned how to live.

So for those committed to following Jesus on the Way of Holiness, the Sword and the Plowshare are essential tools. We cannot stay on the Way while employing just one and ignoring the other.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus talks a lot about water—another thing that came home last night as I was listening to David. In John 7:38, Jesus says that “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" This image comes from the book of Ezekiel, where water flows from the Temple out into the world.

What Jesus is saying is this: those who believe in me, who walk the same Way of Holiness that I walk, essentially become walking Temples. The life of God overflows in them. That’s what “holiness” is: it is the over-abundance of the life of God.

No one promised that walking on the Way of Holiness is easy. It’s not. Jesus did not come and live and die and rise again in order to make life comfortable for us. The Way of Holiness is full of challenges; learning how and when to use the Sword, and how and when to use the Plowshare, is not something that can be learned in one or two training sessions. Instead, it is a life-long commitment to discipleship; it requires us to be life-long students in the school of godly wisdom.

It is so easy to turn to the right, and fall into the rut of Essene moralism; and it is just as easy to turn to the left, and fall into the rut of Zealot activism. Both moralism and activism are cheap and easy substitutes for true holiness; both try to minimize the true cost of discipleship.

How do we stay on the straight course in the Way of Holiness? By a life-long comittment to prayer, to the Scriptures, and to the community of God's people. Learning to walk by faith on the Way of Holiness is a day-in and day-out process of learning to live with God. Recently, I came across this prayer in a Celtic prayer book, and I believe that is captures the essence of what it means to walk by faith in God on the challenging Way of Holiness. Let me first read this simple yet profound prayer:

Lord, You have always given
bread for the coming day;
and though I am poor,
today I believe.

Lord, you have always given
strength for the coming day;
and though I am weak,
today I believe.

Lord, you have always given
peace for the coming day;
and though I am anxious of heart,
today I believe.

Lord, you have always kept me
safe in trials;
an now, tried as I am,
today I believe.

Lord, you have always marked
the road for the coming day;
and though it may be hidden,
today I believe.

Lord, you have always lightened
this darkness of mine;
and though the night is here,
today I believe.

Lord, you have always spoken
when the time was ripe;
and though you be silent now,
today I believe. Amen.

Service for December 14 (Third Sunday in Advent)

2008-12-10T11:31:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,
Here is who we have lined up to help this Sunday:

Synthia: Barbara Webb
Communion preparation: Nancy Hunter
Old Testament reader: Chad Griffiths (Isaiah 35)
Epistle reader: Carey Callaway (I Corinthians 4:1-5)

Here is where we still need help:

refreshment preparation
nursery

Thank you all for your service to Christ's body!

Homily: 2nd Sunday in Advent, Sunday, December 7, 2008

2008-12-07T10:37:00.000-08:00

Advent II: The Way of Hope

The greatest author of the twentieth century, by the reckoning of many people, was J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Lord of the Rings was his greatest work. Tolkien lived through the worst turmoil and upheavals of the age: the Great War, the Russian Revolution, and then the Second World War. He saw, perhaps with more clarity than any other writer of his age, that the signs of the times pointed to one stark reality: Western Civilization as we know it is on its death-bed.

In the Lord of the Rings, the nation of Gondor, and its capital city of Minas Tirith, is Tolkien’s primary symbol of Western Civilization: the city was once great and glorious, but is now in a state of decay. The city had always been in the shadow of Mordor, and for a time was capable of holding back the forces of evil that threatened to pour out of the land; but now, Minas Tirith’s most glorious days were behind her, and despair loomed over the city.

Once upon a time, Minas Tirith was ruled by great kings; but then, the line of kings passed away, and for many generations, the city was ruled by a line of stewards. The steward’s job was to rule the city until the day that a rightful king should return. Even though the kings had been gone for many generations, the Tree of Kings remained in the main courtyard: the tree represented the hope and expectation that one day, a king would return and would restore the greatness and the power and the glory of Minas Tirith.

In one scene of the story [and here, I am quoting from the movie, the book; much of what Gandalf says actually comes from the mouth of Faramir in the book], the wizard Gandalf and the hobbit Pippin stride out into the main courtyard of Minas Tirith, and Pippin notices the Tree of Kings in the middle; and notes, quite accurately, that it is dead.

Gandalf remarks, “The White Tree, the tree of kings, will never bloom again.”

Pippin, in his endearing Halfling innocence, replies, “Why are they still guarding it?”

To which Gandalf says: “They guard it because they have hope; a faint and fading hope that it will one day flower; the king will come, and this city will be as it once was before it fell into decay. The old wisdom born out of the west was forsaken; kings made tombs more splendid than the houses of the living; and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of their sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry, while in high, cold towers asking questions of the stars. And so the people of Gondor fell into ruin. The line of kings failed; the White Tree withered; the rule of Gondor was given over to lesser men.”

Hope had almost died in Minas Tirith, and therefore its fall was all but certain. They hoped that the rightful king might return, but they were not counting on it.

The theme that ties together our Scripture passages and prayers this week is this theme of hope.

We see it in Isaiah 55: the word “hope” is not employed here, but the sense of anticipation is: God’s word goes out into the dying world, and brings forth new life: “Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle.”

We see it in Romans 15, where Paul says, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope”; and then Paul quotes Isaiah to say that in Jesus Christ “will the Gentiles hope.”

And then in Luke 21, we see not the word “hope”, but rather the content of our hope: Jesus says that when we see the powers of the heavens being shaken, we are to straighten up, and lift our heads, for the kingdom of God that we all long for is coming near.

And then, in our Collect for this week, we ask God to help us to ingest his Holy Scriptures so that “we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life.”

I mentioned last week that the theme of the Lent season is putting off: that the focus of that season is to seek God’s grace to be rid of burdens, to be rid of vices which weigh us down.

The theme of the season of Advent, on the other hand, is about putting on: the focus now is to seek God’s grace to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” to aquire those virtues that we need in order to be more and more conformed to Jesus Christ.

The way we “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” is by walking in the way of Jesus Christ: not only hearing what he said, but also doing what he did. Last week, we considered the way of humility; this week, we will consider the way of hope.

What is hope, exactly?

Sadly, the word “hope” has been worn down by years of misuse. When people use the word “hope” today, usually they are saying they have a desire, but not an expectation.

Going back to the example of Minas Tirith in the Lord of the Rings, the people of Gondor said they hoped for the return of the king, and so they went through the motions of guarding a dead tree; but in reality, no one was expecting the king to return.

To use a modern example: if some asks the question, “do you think the economy will improve this year?”, the response you are likely to hear is, “well, I hope so, but I’m not counting on it.” The desire is there, but not the expectation.

Yesterday was the 109th meeting of Army and Navy. I am a big Army fan, not because of their prowess on the football field, but only because of a deeply ingrained duty to my alma mater. If you had asked me yesterday, “do you think Army will win the big game this year?”, my response might have been something like, “well, I certainly hope they will pull it off, but after six consecutive years of losing and losing badly, I certainly am not expecting them to win.” And after seeing Army lose 34-0, anyone would say that my lack of expectation for Army was fully justified. But notice how I might have used the word “hope” there: I had a desire for my team to win, but my level of expectation that they might actually win was rock-bottom.

I could multiply examples, but the point is this: when we use the word “hope” today, we usually mean that we have a desire for something to occur, but we also doubt that it will occur. It is an expression of what we want to happen, while at the same time anticipating that it will not happen. Too often for us, the word “hope” carries with it a deeply-held cynicism. It is desire minus expectation.

But biblically speaking, “hope” means not desire minus expectation, but rather desire with expectation. A farmer plows his field and plants his seed; naturally, he desires a good harvest. Furthermore, he expects a good harvest. If he did not expect a good harvest, he would not bother wasting all that time and all that hard labor. If you asked him, “hey, mister farmer, do you expect that there will be a harvest next fall?” and then he said, “nope! I don’t expect a single ear of corn to grow”…well, then, we would count that farmer a fool. Where there is no expectation, there is no hope.

In the Bible, hope always means that God’s people look forward to God’s work of new creation. In the beginning, God created the world by the word of his power—He spoke it into being. And God has been speaking ever since. Whenever God speaks, things happen. Whenever God speaks, death is turned into life. As the prophet Isaiah put it in our reading today from chapter 55:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Hope, then, looks ahead to what God will certainly do in the future. When God’s word goes out into the world, it always, always, always brings forth life. And very often, it brings forth life in unexpected ways.

One of the big railroad tycoons of the 19th century was James Hill. He was the mastermind behind the empire now known as the Great Northern Railway, which runs from St. Paul to Seattle. James Hill bullied and bribed and steamrolled his way into greatness. As his railroad empire grew and expanded, he left behind one community after another with all of its life sucked out of it. Railroads require huge numbers of railroad ties. And so, many of these towns became known as “stump towns,” because all that was left of the once beautifully forested landscape was a bunch of ugly remains of once-beautiful trees. James Hill turned many quaint towns into outposts of Mordor.

The world into which Isaiah spoke was like a string of Stumptowns. The Assyrians had ravaged the northern kingdom of Israel; Babylon had ravaged the southern kingdom of Judah—even destroying God’s own temple! Death was king.

Isaiah’s message was stirringly clear: God is not silent. God is still speaking. And whenever God speaks, God brings forth new life.

Even in a Stumptown. Even in a Mordor. Even in a Jerusalem without a Temple. Even in an America which has all but forgotten her God.

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” wrote Alexander Pope. Well, that is true enough: Pope was right that human beings cannot live without hope. But Isaiah in his time understood something that I don’t think Alexander Pope understood: Isaiah understood that hope is often misplaced. Hope might well up naturally in the human breast, but that does not mean that True Hope wells up naturally. In Isaiah’s day, people’s hope was placed in bad kings; their hope was placed in wicked Egypt to save them from wicked Babylon; their hope was placed in idols of all sorts.

A culture with misplaced hope is a culture that is on life support. Individuals and communities can go through the motions and seem to thrive on false hope, but they cannot go on truly living on that false hope. No one really supposes that an artificial respirator is a genuine replacement for real, healthy lungs.

Isaiah understood that true hope needs to be cultivated. Hope is not something that “just happens” to someone; it is a virtue that must be put on. Our minds must be trained in the habit of hope.

But how do we train ourselves in the “habit of hope?”

We do so by eating well. Athletes discipline themselves by carefully watching what they eat. We must do the same.

We prayed this morning that we would “inwardly digest” the words of the Holy Scriptures. Sound strange? The prophet Ezekiel was commanded to eat a scroll; Jeremiah was told to do the same; St. John on Patmos was told to do the same. We don’t just want to see the words of Scripture with our eyes: we want to hear them with our ears; we want those words to get into our stomachs and into our nerve endings. We are fully trained in the “habit of hope” only when we are absolutely drenched in God’s story of the world.

So “hope springs eternal in the human breast” only for those who are well-fed. Those who subsist on a bad diet—on anything other than the Word of God—are not going to be sustained by a true hope.

Think about it. Those who have a diet that does not consist of God’s word and God’s story are easy prey for the plethora of false words and false stories and false hopes that abound in our culture.

Several decades ago, Francis Shaeffer named the great false story and false hope of our time: he called it the myth of personal peace and affluence. The typical American storyline goes like this: I have a right to a peaceful and pleasurable life. But for some reason, I am not experiencing it right now. Maybe I didn’t marry the right person. Maybe I didn’t go to the right school. Maybe I got into the wrong profession. Maybe I didn’t pick the right stocks at the right time in order to ride the right economic wave.

“Hope,” for this kind of person, means that “getting it right” is just around the corner, if only I can manipulate the circumstances just right. C.S. Lewis says of this kind of person, “Most of the bored, discontented, rich people in the world are of this type. They spend their whole lives trotting from woman to woman, from continent to continent, from hobby to hobby, always thinking that the latest is ‘the Real Thing’ at last, and always disappointed.”

Just a casual glance at our magazines and popular programs reveals that our culture’s hope is firmly rooted in the myth of personal peace and affluence. And that myth is shriveling up and dying right before our eyes.

So as this false myth and false hope die, are we as Christians ready to offer a real alternative—the only true alternative? Or are we also on life support, having swallowed the same junk food as the rest of our culture?

Are we truly trained in the way of hope…in the habit of hope? And how can we know that our training is well under way?

First, understand that hope needs an anchor. There must be a fixed point in the future that we can look at and say, “that, right there, is the object of our hope.” Not something vague and fuzzy, but something specific and concrete. The author of Hebrews puts it this way:

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

The “anchor” of our hope is this: Jesus has risen from the dead, and he will return to raise us from the dead as well. Our future resurrection is the anchor that binds us to God’s purposes. We confess this week in and week out—so often, that we might forget the importance of the words we say so regularly: “…and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” Our hope in the resurrection of the dead means right now that our labor—every single thing that we do to the glory of God—is not in vain. When we are drenched in God’s story of the world, when we look to the resurrection as the anchor of our soul, God uses even our smallest labors to bring about new life.

Second, we must understand that, if hope is a habit that must be trained, that bad habits will inevitably drive out good habits. And the bad habits that keep us from hearing the voice of God are more numerous today than they ever have been. C.S. Lewis, in his essay, “The Seeing Eye,” comments on how easy it is today to avoid the voice of God:

The avoiding [of God], in many times and places, has proved so difficult that a very large part of the human race failed to achieve it. But in our own time and place it is extremely easy. Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you’d be safer to stick to the papers. You’ll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.

Third, if we are to be trained in the habit of hope, we must begin looking for signs of life in places where we are not used to looking. Our age has trained us to look only for the big and the dramatic stories, and to ignore the little signs of life that appear all around us. But all around us, babies are being born. Sinners are repenting. Injustices are being addressed. Peace is being made between once-warring brothers. God’s word is being studied and lived out. These are the kinds of things that the news media will never pick up on. But acquiring the habit of hope means that we see these signs of life happening all around us; and we can point to those things and say, “yep, right there, that is proof that God’s word is going out; that is a foretaste of God’s new creation. God’s word is producing fruit, just like He said it would.”

In the movie of the Lord of the Rings, not long after Pippin and Gandalf had commented on the dead Tree of the Kings, the city of Minas Tirith was under siege by the legions of Mordor. Things were looking grim: for the first time ever, an enemy was able to break down the gates and pass through the outer defenses. The steward of Gondor had gone raving mad. Even Gandalf the White could not hold back the hordes of evil indefinitely.

Little did everyone know, however, that on the river just a little ways to the south, the rightful King of Gondor was on his way. When his return was imminent, a small, almost imperceptible flower blossomed on the Tree of Kings. No one noticed it. But it was a sign that the King’s return was close, and the signs of his return were there for those who cared to look for them, for those who were truly holding on to hope.

May we also hope in our rightful King. May He find us always ready, waiting, and watching for signs of new life as we eagerly anticipate the resurrection of the dead.

Let us pray.

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

Parish luncheon

2008-11-30T11:21:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,

We look forward to our lunch together this coming Sunday. There always seems to be more than enough food to go around.

Many thanks to Sue Siko for putting together the food list. If you haven't signed up yet, and just want to get a sense of what is and what is not being brought up, here is what we have so far:

Klacynski's: entree, dessert, and world-famous mac 'n cheese
Siko's: entree, bread
Griffiths: salad and veggies
Gardner's: (place settings)
Hunter's: salad and bread
Foreman's: dessert
Finochiaro: bread
Doughty: beverage
Hopkins: beverage, pretzel salad
Mitchell: soup (ministrone)

Service for December 7 (Second Sunday in Advent)

2008-11-30T11:14:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,
Here is who we have lined up for next week:

Synthia prep and playing: Barbara Webb
Refreshment prep: Millie Klacynski
Communion prep: Nancy Hunter
Old Testament: Carey Callaway--Isaiah 55
Epistle: Chad Klacynski--Romans 15:4-13
Nursery: Amanda Gardner

Many thanks for your willingness to serve!

Homily: 1st Sunday in Advent, Sunday, November 30, 2008

2008-11-30T11:07:00.000-08:00

Advent I: The Way of Humility

During the last few hundred years, the Western world has been subject to so many scientific revolutions—one right after another—that it is hard to stop and consider what the implications are for each new discovery.

Take, for instance, the scientific issue of the movement of the earth relative to the sun. Imagine how difficult it would have been if you had lived during the age of men like Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. Every day, for thousands of days, you had witnessed the sun rise, and you had witnessed the sun set. It had always been this way in your lifetime, and had always been the same during your father’s lifetime, and his father before him, and so on to the very beginning of creation. It was just natural to conclude that the earth was at the center of the universe, and that the sun revolved around the earth.

And then, these astronomers come along and have the gall to tell you that what you think you are seeing is not quite accurate. Based on their advanced observation and precise calculations, they tell you that in fact, the earth really revolves around the sun. You would probably find yourself saying, “look here, don’t tell me that what I’ve been seeing every day for years is not actually what it is. I don’t care what your high-flutin’ calculations tell you—I know that the sun revolves around the earth.”

But the evidence was overwhelming. In light of the discoveries of these astronomers, the Western world was forced to re-imagine what the universe was like. The maps inside our heads had to be re-written. And if you worked in the field of astronomy, or in any field related to astronomy—like sailing or farming—you had to thoroughly consider their discoveries and change the way you did business.

The funny thing about the so-called “Copernican revolution” is that it has not changed the way we speak about morning and evening. Language is a stubbornly conservative thing: in spite of the fact that Copernicus told us otherwise several hundred years ago, we still speak of “sun-rise” and “sun-set.”

Today, what is needed is not so much a re-working of our map of space. What is truly needed is that we re-work our map of time.

Because 2,000 years ago, something happened that is much more profound than any scientific discovery. Scientists are always adjusting our ideas of space, but 2,000 years ago, God adjusted our idea of time. But like our stubborn language which still refers to “sun-rise” and “sun-set,” our culture has still not caught up with the implications of what happened.

We have heard several references to “time” so far this morning. In our Advent collect that we will be praying for the rest of the season, we pray “now in the time of this mortal life.” And then in our Epistle lesson, in Romans 13, St. Paul says, “Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake up from sleep.”

When our Jewish forebears thought about time, their map was pretty straightforward. In the beginning, you have Creation—good, but quickly fallen. We now live in darkness. In the end, we will see the judgment of God, when He will come and rescue the world from sin and death. Then, all will be light.

When God took on human flesh 2,000 years ago, He changed the map of time. No longer was it a simple matter of beginning and end, darkness and light. When Jesus came, what our Jewish forebears thought would happen at the end of time, now was brought into the middle of time. By his birth and life and death and resurrection, Jesus did in the middle of history much of what Jews expected God to do at the end of history.

Think of it like this, then: Since Jesus came into this world, we live in that time between dawn and sun-rise. The light of God has already come, but the full glory of that light has not yet been made known. Dawn is the time of day when the sun’s light is bending over the horizon, giving all creatures notice that the full light of day is coming. Dawn is an advance notice that the sun is soon going to rise in its full power.

So our “map” of time looks like this: Creation-Fall at the beginning, the First Advent in the middle, and the Second Advent at the end. We live, right now, between the two Advents. We live between the dawn and the full rising of the sun.

Anyone who has served in the army will tell you that the period of time between dawn and sunrise is a time both of great danger and great opportunity. Dawn, you see, is the time of the day that the enemy is most likely to attack. And so, in all our training exercises, soldiers make a regular discipline of getting up early, just before dawn, in order to man their weapons: if you are an infantryman, you are in a defensive position and have your rifle at the ready; if you are a tanker, as I was, you have your tank crew up and awake, manning the weapon systems just in case there is an attack. And then, after those first few critical minutes pass, the platoon leader gives orders for everyone to start preparing themselves for the rest of the day: clean up your gear, change your socks, clean your weapons. Soldiers are disciplined to get all this done well before sunrise.

This is the kind of discipline that St. Paul is talking about in Romans 13. He says:

Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand.

Soldiers know that the time period between dawn and sun-rise is crucial; Paul is telling us the same thing. Wake up! he says. It is not dark anymore. The dawn of Jesus Christ has come; and the full light of His day is coming. So stop acting like it’s nighttime, and act like it is daytime. True, the full light of day is not yet here—that will come with Jesus’ Second Advent—but you are to act, right now, as though that full light of Jesus is a reality.

This time between dawn and sun-rise is a time of warfare, says Paul, so you had better be ready and put on the armor of light. And then, a little later on, he says that we need to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

But what, exactly, does it mean to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ”? Sure, it is clear enough that this is the spiritual equivalent of cleaning your weapon and changing your clothes and getting your gear together…but still, what does it mean?

Here, it is helpful to distinguish between the different kinds of spiritual disciplines that are emphasized during the seasons of Lent and Advent. Lent and Advent are both seasons of preparation; both are, in a sense, penitential seasons. They employ the same liturgical color.

But again, the emphasis is different. The emphasis of Lent is putting off; the emphasis of Advent is putting on. In Lent, we seek God’s grace to take away those burdens that weigh us down during the journey; in Advent, we seek God’s grace to be properly equipped for the journey. In Lent, the focus is negative; in Advent, the focus is positive. In Lent, we seek grace to be rid of vices; in Advent, we seek grace to acquire virtues.

So our Advent focus is “putting on” the Lord Jesus Christ. But again, what does this mean?

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” We understand instinctively what it means for Jesus to be the truth. We understand reasonably well that Jesus is the life. “Putting on” truth and life is fairly straightforward.

But what on earth does it mean that Jesus is the “way”? If we are going to “put on” Jesus, we are going to have to come to grips with this notion that Jesus not only is just the “truth” and the “life,” but He is also the “way”.

It is not enough to simply believe that Jesus exists—many pagans believe that. Rather, for us to “put on” Jesus means that we must walk as Jesus walked. During this crucial time between the dawn and the sun-rise, we must not simply be good, moral people: we must be the kind of people God calls us to be, and we can only do that if we walk in the “way” of Jesus. A true disciple is not one who simply studies what his master said and taught; a true disciple actually does what his master does. If Jesus is the “way,” and if we are to put on Jesus, then we must do what He did.

Consider, then, Jesus’ way of humility. Our collect draws our attention to this aspect of Jesus’ life: that He “came to visit us in great humility.” If we are to “put on Jesus,” then we must follow Jesus in his “way” of humility. Humility not an optional supplement to life; it is, rather, the means of life. The word “humility” comes from the Latin word humus, which means “earth” or “soil.” Just like a plant cannot live without being firmly planted in good soil, so too we cannot truly live apart from being rooted in true humility.

As Tim Keller recently noted, humility is the most shy of virtues: once you begin talking about it, it leaves the room. Humility is one of those virtues that you cannot obtain by direct effort; once you try to get it, you immediately lose it. And once you examine your heart to see if you have it, you lose it as you congratulate yourself for being a diligent seeker. Not only is humility shy, but it is slippery as well.

Imagine the absurdity of someone who is highly successful—say, a Donald Trump—announcing to the world, “I have built an empire of money, I have built an empire of real estate, and now, I am going an empire of humility. And like everything else I do, I am going to be better at it than anyone else. Just watch me.” We might snicker at the idea of it, but let’s face it—that’s the American way. We might not have the same kind of bravado as a Donald Trump, but we still approach the acquisition of virtue just like we approach the acquisition of any asset or commodity.

But humility is not something that Jesus strove to obtain; it is something he was.

If we are going to be humble, we will not get it by direct effort. Jesus was humble because He knew the story of God’s people, and his place in that story. Wendell Berry once quipped that “minds need to be re-minded,” and we would do well to re-mind ourselves that God has always accomplished his will through lowly means. When we see how God works through lowly means, one of the fruits of living within that story will be humility.

Consider the following:

Consider: In a world of great empires—Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome—God chose the Jews to be his people. They were not smarter, more advanced, or more powerful than any of those empires. Yet God chose them. Humility.
Consider: Moses, the great liberator of the people, spent 40 years in the wilderness before returning to Egypt. And then, after leading these stubborn people through the wilderness for another 40 years, did not even get to enter the Promised Land himself. Humility.
Consider: We often think of Joshua as a great military commander. And yet consider how he was instructed to conquer Jericho: by marching around the walls, blowing trumpets, and shouting. Not by Joshua’s might, not by Joshua’s power. Humility.
Consider: when Gideon was putting together his army to liberate God’s people from the hands of tyrants, God whittled down his army from over 30,000 to 300. God wanted to give them no room to boast that their own hand had saved them. Humility.
Consider: Isaiah is perhaps the greatest prophet in the Old Testament, preaching to five different kings the great message of God’s salvation. And yet, from the very beginning of his ministry, God told him: the people won’t listen to you. Your words will plant seeds everywhere, but you will never see the fruit. Humility.
Consider: God’s people were taken captive by the Babylonians, handed over to the Medes and Persians, conquered by the Greeks, and conquered again by the Romans. In the midst of all these setbacks, in a year when Caesar Augustus shows his powerful hand by calling for a world-wide census, Jesus was born in a far-off, insignificant town and laid in a manger. Humility.
Consider: Jesus had the ability to turn rocks into bread. He had the ability to jump off the Temple and call angels to rescue him. He had the ability to call 10,000 angels to save him from brutal death. And yet He walked the path of suffering and death to save his people from their sins. “Not my will, but thy will be done.” Humility.

So how do we “get” humility? How do we walk in the way of Jesus? How do we “put on” the humility of Jesus? Not by direct effort, but by considering the works of God: how God has always, always worked through lowly means to accomplish his will. When we know God’s story, and our proper place in it, then humility will be the natural fruit. Our eyes will be taken off ourselves and onto the greatness and goodness of God.

God is not interested in the ways of money; God is not interested in the ways of power; God is not interested in the ways of winning friends and influencing people. God is interested, as the prophet Micah said, that we “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

You might ask, “but has any human being, other than Jesus himself, demonstrated this kind of humility?”

The answer is, yes, there was one who has, one very close to Jesus: Jesus’ own mother, Mary, is our model of what it means to walk in humility. Mary knew the story of God’s people: study her song, the Magnificat, and see how many echoes of Scripture it contains. And when the angel announced to Mary that she had been chosen to bear the Messiah, she was afraid, she was startled, she was overwhelmed…yet her response to God’s call says it all: “let it be to me according to thy word.”

If there is a battle cry for humility, that is it: “let it be to me according to thy word.” It is the attitude that says, whatever God calls me to do, I will do. I do not have to understand all the details. I do not need God to show me all the math. I do not need to get the credit. God has called me to do his bidding, and that is enough. Humility.

We live between the dawn of the First Advent and the sun-rise that is the Second Advent. We need to be well equipped for the fight. Our pride will kill us unless put on Jesus Christ, and walk in his way of humility.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with
thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

Service for November 30 (First Sunday in Advent)

2008-11-26T04:32:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,

Here is the breakdown for our service this Sunday:

Communion preparation: Nancy Hunter
Synthia preparation and playing: Barbara Webb
Nursery: Kristie Martin
Old Testament Lesson: Bart Martin
Epistle Lesson: Chad Griffiths

The two things we still need are:

a liturgist to assist Ed
someone to come in a bit early to prepare the coffee

Many thanks for your willingness to serve!

Homily: Sunday Next Before Advent, Sunday, November 23, 2008

2008-11-24T06:08:00.000-08:00

When I was growing up, the book of Daniel was, to me, the most interesting and the most puzzling book of the Bible. On the one hand, you have all those unforgettable stories: Daniel refusing to eat of the king’s table…Daniel interpreting the king’s dreams…Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego going to the fiery furnace because they refused to bow down to the giant statue…the writing on the wall which spelled out imminent doom for the Babylonian kingdom…Daniel being cast in the lion’s den for continuing to pray to God even after the law forbade him to do so.

And then, on the other hand, you have the second half of the book containing a series of prophecies that were all but impossible to understand: visions of four beasts, a ram and a goat, seventy weeks, the abomination of desolation. I never understood them as a child; and as I listened to other so-called Bible experts expound what they thought those prophecies meant, it was abundantly clear that they did not really understand Daniel’s prophecies either.

So I always felt like I knew and understood Daniel the private man—what Daniel was like on the inside—what Daniel was like in the privacy of his prayer closet. But I never really understood Daniel the public man—what his strange and symbolic prophecies meant for the world.

And then there is the prophet Jeremiah. If I always understood Daniel the private man, but was confused by Daniel the public man, in the case of Jeremiah it is the opposite: it is easy to understand Jeremiah the public man, but understanding Jeremiah the private man is much more difficult. As children growing up in the church, you probably heard much about Moses and David and Daniel…but probably never much, if anything, about Jeremiah. Who is this man, we wonder, and what makes him tick?

I bring up Jeremiah this morning because our lectionary is full of readings from Jeremiah this last week of the Trinity season. If we were celebrating Holy Communion this morning, we would have had a reading from Jeremiah in place of the Epistle lesson; and here, in Morning Prayer, the lectionary gives you a choice of lessons, three of which are from Jeremiah.

So I had to puzzle over this question throughout the week: what does Jeremiah have to do with the Sunday Next Before Advent? What is it about Jeremiah the prophet that the Church has decided over the years to showcase his prophetic ministry on the week before the season of Advent begins?

The reason, I believe, is this: Jeremiah was announcing the end of one kingdom, which was to be replaced by another kingdom. Jeremiah’s calling was to announce to the people of Jerusalem that their time was up—God’s judgment was imminent. It would not be long before the armies of King Nebuchadnezzar would come and destroy the city and the beloved Temple. That was Jeremiah’s negative message—and, not surprisingly, the people of Jerusalem did not particularly care for it.

But Jeremiah’s positive message was this: yes, even though the world that we know is about to come to an end, God is going to do something new. He uses a number of different images to convey this: the seeds that are planted and die will grow into something grand and glorious; the vessel of pottery that is being destroyed will be reworked into another vessel; from the bare, ugly stump that Jerusalem is about to become, out of that will come a shoot—a branch—which will bring true life to Israel.

Next week, as the season of Advent begins, we will all be commissioned to be little Jeremiah’s.

The season of Advent (when you really think about it) is a highly, highly subversive time of the year. We the Church, like Jeremiah before us, are announcing to the world that the world’s true King is coming, and therefore all the kings who oppose him are fakes and frauds. If the world only knew what it was we were proclaiming during Advent, they would have us all put into prison and silenced.

That is just what the authorities did to Jeremiah. Jeremiah proclaimed that Judah was like a piece of ruined pottery; and that God was going to mash the pottery together and form something new. And the people of Jerusalem attacked him verbally and then ignored him.

Then Jeremiah took it one step further. Judah is like an earthenware flask, he said: he held up that flask, and smashed it to the ground, and said, so too will God break this people and this city. This was too much for a priest named Passhur, who had Jeremiah whipped and put in the stocks.

And then, undaunted, Jeremiah took it even further. He had said not only that Judah is like a piece of ruined pottery, fit to be remolded; not only is Jerusalem like an earthenware vessel, fit to be smashed to pieces. But now, the Babylonians are crouching at the door of Jerusalem, said Jeremiah, and if you do not surrender to them, you will be destroyed.

You can just imagine how the people of Jerusalem reacted to that. Imagine an American proclaiming that we should surrender to the Germans in the Second World War, or giving in to the Soviets during the Cold War, or giving in to the demands of terrorists today. It would be unthinkable. And it was unthinkable for the leaders of Jerusalem to surrender to the pagan hordes.

Yet that is exactly what Jeremiah told them to do. The result? Jeremiah was accused of being un-patriotic, and he was threatened with death.

No one likes to be told that the age they are living in is the end of an era. Our age certainly does not want to hear it, but hear it they must. The Christian scholar R.J. Rushdoony put the matter this way:

…the economic, political, religious, ecological, and educational crises of the modern world are increasing. Every age has its problems, and many eras have had more difficult problems than the modern age, but the test is the ability of a culture to cope with its problems. The modern age has lost even one of the most elementary abilities of any culture, namely the ability to discipline its children and maintain its authority. Without this elementary ability, a culture is very soon dead. The modern age gives every evidence of approaching death. This is a cause, not for dismay but for hope. The death of modernity makes possible the birth of a new culture, and such an event is always, however turbulent, an exciting and challenging venture. The dying culture loses its will to live. A new culture, grounded in a new faith, restores that will to live even under very adverse circumstances.

Rushdoony wrote those words about 40 years ago—biblically speaking, that is a whole generation. What was true a generation ago is more true today: the recent headlines in the newspapers are more than likely only the beginning of sorrows.

But when we mark the season of Advent, year in and year out, think about what we are proclaiming: the kingdoms of this world are dying, and they are being displaced by the kingdom of God. The reign of death that we see all around us is being replaced by the reign of life. We might not make that proclamation in the same public and bold manner employed by Jeremiah (he was, after all, one man called for a special purpose), but in a very real, yet subversive, way, we are doing the same thing.

The question then is, what kind of people ought we to be, given the fact that we are proclaiming the imminence of a new kingdom, with a new King?

What kind of people ought we to be? Well, what kind of person was Jeremiah? Certainly he was bold—he never backed down. He got discouraged, but he never tired. He “got in the face” of the leaders of Jerusalem, and yet he is rightly known as the “weeping prophet” who took no perverse delight in the destruction he was proclaiming.

But that is Jeremiah, the public man. What do we know about Jeremiah, the private man? Again, we know a lot about Daniel—who he was, and what made him tick. The book of Daniel has a lot of biography in it. But we don’t know a whole lot about Jeremiah, even though the book he left us is 52 chapters long; in those 52 chapters, there is relatively little biography. We hear lots of stories about Daniel from childhood, but none about Jeremiah. What do we know of Jeremiah’s interior life?

What would we see if we were able to look into Jeremiah’s room and observe what he was doing when away from the public eye?

This is what we would see: we would see a man at prayer.

Too often, we think of prayer and action as two completely different things; but in the life of Jeremiah, we see that prayer and action are vitally linked together. You don’t get the boldness and tirelessness of Jeremiah’s actions without a corresponding boldness and tirelessness in Jeremiah’s prayer.

Jeremiah didn’t just talk about God; Jeremiah talked with God. Again, that is all prayer is: talking with God about what we are thinking and doing together. Christians in America talk a lot about God: we have numerous, learned books in theology on our shelves that talk about God; we have numerous radio and television shows that talk a whole lot about God. And during seasons like Advent and Christmas, we talk even more about God.

This coming Advent season, if we are to see the world as Jeremiah saw it, if we are to be bold like Jeremiah was bold, we need to spend less time talking about God, and more time talking with God.

Think about prayer this way: when there is someone you really want to spend time with, very often you will go out to dinner with them. Whether it is your spouse, a special friend, or someone you are trying to get to know, you naturally go out to eat with them and set aside that time to talk with them. You are doing what you can to block out distractions and commune with them over a meal. Sure, the waiter will come and serve you, and you might strike up a conversation here and there with that waiter, but the important thing is to have a deeper-than-normal conversation with the person across the table with you. It is the kind of conversation you would not normally have out there in the street, in the hustle-bustle of everyday life.

That is what prayer is: it is like having a conversation with a good friend over a good meal. You share your life with your friend, your friend shares his life with you, and you go away changed and refreshed. When we talk with God, God hears us and shares his life with us. And we come away renewed and refreshed.

But too often, our prayer life is not like this at all. Too often, we treat God not as the person across the table from us: instead, we treat God like the waiter who serves us. When you need a refill on your drink, you call on the waiter; when your steak is not cooked right, you call on the waiter; when you want an extra serving of rolls and butter, you call on the waiter. And then, if the waiter did an adequate job, you give him a tip.

We often treat God the same way, as the great waiter-in-the-sky who exists to serve us at our beck and call. We have a financial need, and so we ask God to change our checkbook balance; we are suffering physically, and so we ask God to give us something that will make us feel better; we are dismayed and confused by various circumstances, and so we raise our hands to get God’s attention and ask him if we can get a new set of circumstances.

And in all this, it rarely occurs to us that God is not the waiter that we call upon when needs pop up. Rather, He is the one who is sitting across from the table, who wants to hear from us, all the time. Yes, he does want to hear about your financial difficulties; yes, he wants to hear about your physical difficulties; yes, he wants to hear about your life-in-general difficulties—but He wants all of you, not just a snippet of you.

Jeremiah had troubles and difficulties that make ours look paltry in comparison. Yet he was bold and persistent—bold and persistent only because for him, prayer was not something he did in a hit-or-miss fashion; rather, prayer for Jeremiah was a way of life.

We as the Church need to be faithful like Jeremiah; we need to proclaim to the world that a new King has arrived, and any kingdom in this world that stands opposed to him will fall. Advent is the time when we do this in earnest. But we will never live a life of boldness and persistence like Jeremiah until we live a life of prayer like Jeremiah.

How exactly do you learn to live a life of prayer? The Church has given us a wonderful set of resources over the years to help us to live this kind of life. In our particular tradition, we have the Book of Common Prayer: this book is not the fruit of the efforts of some faceless committee. Rather, over a long period of time, great men and women of the faith—those people who had explored the territory of prayer in an extraordinary way—learned what a life of prayer looks like, and passed their insights on to the next generation. The collected wisdom of many centuries is contained in that book.

This coming Advent season, I encourage you to use those resources that have been handed down to us. Set aside time for Morning or Evening Prayer—start small—don’t try to do both morning and evening if you know you won’t have the time for it. But follow the regular schedule of readings from lectionary that is found in the front of the Prayer Book. You will sit at the feet of Isaiah and Malachi and Jeremiah. You might be confused by what you read—and that’s to be expected! Pray over the text of Scripture; let the Holy Spirit be your teacher. You will be pleasantly surprised at what you learn.

Since Advent is the beginning of the Church year, I encourage you to start off the year right: learn from the school of Jeremiah how to live a life of prayer.

I will close by praying the prayer, For the Spirit of Prayer, found in the Family Prayer section at the back of the Book of Common Prayer, on page 599:

O Almighty God, who pourest out on all who desire it, the sprit of grace and of supplication; Deliver us, when we draw nigh to thee, from coldness of heart and wanderings of mind, that with steadfast thoughts and kindled affections, we may worship thee in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Anticipating Advent

2008-11-17T06:39:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,

Advent draweth nigh--a most wonderful time of the year. Just a few things to keep in mind:

Tentatively, we're planning on having a parish luncheon after the service on the Second Sunday in Advent, December 7. A congregational meeting will follow. We would like to have as many people as possible come. So if you won't be able to come, please let me know; and if there are enough people for whom it does not work, we'll reschedule.
Before the First Sunday in Advent, we will want to begin decorating the chapel. Let me know if you are interested in helping out.
Let Ed Hopkins know if you would like to order a copy of God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas. It's a wonderful book, with great contributions by some of the best Christian writers, like Eugene Peterson, Luci Shaw, and Kathleen Norris.
We will try to maintain good "Advent discipline" when it comes to music. What that means is this: traditionally, the well-know Christmas music did not break out until Christmas day and the "twelve days of Christmas." Until then, it is all Advent, Advent, Advent. That being said, in our culture it is impossible to avoid the Christmas music played on the radio, in the office, in the stores...in other words, it is a hard battle to fight if you want to insist on no Christmas music on Christmas day. So we'll just hold back the flood a little bit. I will ask Barbara to pick out the best Advent hymns for the first two weeks, and then maybe beginning the Third Sunday in Advent, start singing some Christmas music.
As mentioned before, mark your calendars for the evening of Saturday, December 13, when David Mitchel will be doing his dramatic reading of the Gospel According to St. John at the Appomattox Courthouse Theatre.

Service for November 23 (Sunday Next before Advent)

2008-11-17T06:36:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,

Here is what people have volunteered for so far for this coming Sunday:

Synthia prep and playing: Barbara Webb
Acolyte: Eli Callaway
Liturgist: Jack Gardner
Nursery: Cynthia Webb
Chapel prep: Jack Gardner

The coffee the last few weeks has been great...and so, if we want some more this week, we'll need someone to volunteer to come a little bit early and prepare it.

Thanks for your service!

Homily: 26th Sunday after Trinity, Sunday, November 16, 2008

2008-11-16T05:15:00.000-08:00

Just over two years ago, our nation was shocked and horrified by a tragedy that occurred just a few miles away from my hometown in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A deranged man named Charles Roberts entered an Amish one-room schoolhouse with a weapon, took hostages, and then shot and killed five of the Amish girls before turning the gun on himself. We’ve experienced a lot of school shootings in recent years, but this one took evil to a whole new level.

What equally shocked the nation was the response of the Amish community. If anyone had a “right” to be angry and bitter, it would be the parents and community leaders of this quiet, pacifistic community. They could have taken the opportunity to denounce the rest of the world, and re-affirm why they have chosen their cloistered lifestyle, removed from the evils of the modern world. But that is not what they did at all. Several parents and community leaders, without delay, made it very clear that they forgave this troubled man. They visited the man’s widow, parents, and in-laws. Thirty members of the Amish community even attended Mr. Roberts’ funeral—and not in order to protest. They saw this as their simple duty; they were simply acting out on what they and we pray: “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

The interesting thing to watch, then, was the nation’s response to the Amish community’s extension of forgiveness. Many were touched, many were confused, and an equal number with just downright angry. We heard things like, “Who do these people think they are, forgiving a creep like that? That man doesn’t deserve forgiveness! What kind of holier-than-thou people do these Amish think they are!?!”

The aftermath of the Amish schoolhouse shooting illustrated two things about our culture. It illustrated first, that we do not understand what repentance and forgiveness is. And second, it illustrated the central paradox of repentance and forgiveness: those most in need of forgiveness are the ones who are least likely to ask for it, and those who seem to need forgiveness the least are the ones who actually practice it. For the Amish, repentance and forgiveness are a way of life, even though they appear (outwardly, at least) to have very few sins to confess, and little need to forgive.

The rest of the Church could learn a lot from the Amish in this regard. Jesus taught us to pray, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” because he wants us to be the vanguard of his Kingdom; he wants us to show the world what it is like to be forgiven, and then to turn around and live out that forgiveness with others.

But first, let’s back up and clarify, pointing out what repentance is not:
a) Repentance is not asking that God cut us slack. God is a holy God, and to ask him just to look the other way and give us a break when we sin is contrary to his character. “Cutting us slack” does not even begin to get close to the richness of repentance.
b) Repentance is not asking someone to be tolerant with us. Tolerance has become today’s thin and cheap substitute for forgiveness and true love. Tolerance says, “you and I are really different; and we’ll just agree to disagree and go on living as best we can.” That’s not even coming close to repentance.
c) Repentance is not the ticket you need to punch in order to earn favor with God. This is a shockingly common view of God: that he is up in heaven, looking down at us with a very cross demeanor, and we have to grovel and beg for forgiveness in order to earn his good graces. But that’s entirely backwards and upside-down: God’s grace is by definition not something that is earned. When a man or woman truly repents, they are not getting God’s grace; they are demonstrating that God has already given them grace.

What, then, is repentance, truly? The Greek word is metanoia, and it means to turn around, to return to God as the only source of true life. When we repent, we are laying down our weapons and giving up our rebellion. And when we repent, we are experiencing a little death—a death to ourselves. Jesus, though he had no need to repent, still showed us what this death to self looks like, when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “but not my will, but thy will be done.”

So notice where the prayer to “forgive us our trespasses” fits into the overall logic of the Lord ’s Prayer.
a) When we pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” we are seeking first the kingdom of God: our ambitions, our needs, our concerns, our anxieties all take a back seat and we hold up the Kingdom of God as our primary focal point. And when we do that, we find that all those other things—our needs, our concerns, our anxieties—all get sorted out in God’s way.
b) When we pray, “give us this day our daily bread,” we learn to renounce our self-sufficiency; God transforms us as we learn to rely on him and him alone for even our basic needs on a day-by-day basis. Through this prayer, he forms and fashions us into the kind of children he wants us to be. We learn not to lay up treasures on earth, but rather to lay up treasures in heaven.
c) But then, along the way, we fail: we fall short of the glory of God, and thus we repent so that we can be restored: “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Several weeks ago, during the Octave of All Saints, I spoke about the life of a Christian being a pilgrimage, and I’d like to come back to that now, because it very much applies to the issue of repentance and forgiveness.

Think of it, again, this way: on the left, we have the path leading towards the Abyss of Hell; on the right, we have the path leading to the New Jerusalem.

People who are heading down the path to the Abyss are dead people—like zombies. They are biologically alive and can move and think, but the Holy Spirit is not filling their lungs, the Holy Spirit is not flowing through their veins. They are dead as dead can be. They have what the Bible calls bios life, but they have no zoe life.

When a person first repents, what is happening is that dead person—that zombie—is given his first breath of life; real, life-carrying blood starts flowing through their veins. What causes this to happen? Certainly, nothing that the dead person did caused it, because dead people by definition can’t do anything. When a spiritually dead person takes in that first breath and then repents, that is simply the grace of God at work: an unearned, unmerited gift from God.

And when a dead person, heading straight for the Abyss of Hell, repents, what he is doing is turning around, laying down his old weapons, laying down his rebellion against God, turning his back on the Abyss. He begins to follow God’s Torah, the path of life towards the New Jerusalem that we are all called to follow. And when he does this, that old man begins to die as the life of Christ in him grows and grows. As Paul puts it in Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ—it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.”

But in this pilgrimage towards the New Jerusalem, there are setbacks and failures. We fall back into sin. We have not, in space and time, completely died to sin. Old habits and old loyalties still cling to us, just like the Israelites in the desert had a hard time shaking off the old way of life that was worked into them during their 400 years of captivity in Egypt. From time to time, we turn from Torah, from the path of faithfulness, and attempt to become captains of our own fate all over again. And when we sin, it is like an extra weight being put on our backs, a weight that pulls us down hill, back towards the Abyss.

Thus, the need for regular repentance. When we repent, we acknowledge that sin remains in our life; we acknowledge that we are weak in ourselves, and the desire to be captains of our own fate is still strong. But when we repent, God lifts that burden we imposed on ourselves; when we repent, that little part of us that wants to be independent of God dies a little more; when we repent, a little bit more of the life of Christ is put into us.

In our form of worship, we always set aside a time for the confession of sins: in Morning and Evening Prayer, it is among the first things that we do; and in Holy Communion, we ask for forgiveness right before we come to the Table. Many people have criticized this kind of liturgy, complaining that it reflects a too morbid few of human nature. But I for one will stand side-by-side with Archbishop Cranmer, and insist that he got the emphasis right. After all, when you consider the layout of the Tabernacle, what was the first piece of furniture your encountered when you entered the Tabernacle courtyard? The Laver, where hands were washed. And what is the last thing you do before coming to the any dinner table to eat? You wash your hands. That is what we are doing in our worship: we are acknowledging that, before we come and stand before a Holy God, we have to come with clean hands and pure hearts. And because we never achieve perfect cleanliness and perfect purity in this life, we do it over and over again.

A lot of people mistake this emphasis on repentance as morbid introspection. Far from it! When we confess our sins, and our minister, speaking on behalf of Christ, pronounces the Absolution, there is freedom. Your burden is lifted! You are free again to continue your pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem, unencumbered by your guilt and past sins.

And what we do in worship should be a regular pattern in our daily lives.

I remember once, when I was a teacher at a classical Christian school in Montana, one of the teachers introduced a little bit of old liturgy into a chapel service that was not at all liturgical in the sense that we know it. Among other things, he taught the students the prayer of confession that we know well. Afterwards, one of my students complained to me, saying, “Mr. Martin, I don’t understand why we were forced to pray that prayer. After all, I don’t have any sins to confess today.”

I had to gently but firmly point out to this young man that he just proved that he did, in fact, have at least one sin to confess: the sin of pride. C.S. Lewis very astutely points out that pride is such a vicious sin, that it works very hard and very effectively to cover up other sins. the devil uses the great sin of pride to defeat other, more minor sins. And then, when we are tricked into believing that we are without sin, the devil laughs: for he has succeeded in ridding us of a cold by giving us a cancer. Because we are so prone to self-deception, it is vital that we confess our sins on a regular basis, especially when we think we have no particular sins to confess.

Now, what about forgiving “those who trespass against us”? Again, the point here is not that we forgive others so that we in turn will be forgiven. Instead, what we are doing when we forgive others is that we are proving that we ourselves have been forgiven. When we forgive others, we are removing their burden from their shoulders.

Note: when we forgive someone else, we are not removing the consequences of that person’s sin. About ten years ago, you might remember the famous case of Karla Faye Tucker, the Texas row inmate who apparently experienced a genuine conversion to Christ while awaiting execution. Many people around the globe insisted that she be released from her death sentence; after all, if she was now a Christian and God had forgiven her for her sins, should we not also forgive her and let her off the hook?

But you see, this is missing the point: to be forgiven in this life does not mean that you won’t deal with the natural consequences of your sin. When we forgive someone else, we are not getting them off the hook; what we are doing is removing the burden of guilt, and saying to them, “I promise to not play the role of prosecuting attorney; I promise not to bring this sin to your remembrance again.”

If we refuse to forgive someone, we insist that they continue to bear the burden of their sins; we insist that their pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem be much more difficult than it has to be. When we do this, we are proving that we, too, are burdened by the guilt of sin; and out of envy, we want someone else to be equally burdened. This is the attitude that says, “If I am going to suffer under the weight of guilt, then, by golly, so are you!”

And that’s why the two phrases of this prayer go hand-in-hand: “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Those who forgive others are proving that they themselves have been forgiven by God; those who refuse to forgive others are proving that they themselves are still walking under the burden of unforgiven sin.

Now, what about those people who say, “Well, I know God has forgiven me, but I just can’t forgive myself.” First of all, we need to have compassion for such people: this is an understandable feeling, and I think we have all experienced it to some extent.

At the same time, it must be noted that a person who is not merely depressed but persists in “not forgiving myself” is ultimately guilty of pride—that vicious sin rears its head again. Our very existence depends on the mercy and pity of God. A person who can’t forgive themselves is in high rebellion against a God who shows pity: they don’t want God’s pity at all, and so they continue to stiff-arm the forgiveness that God extends.

One final thing: never, never use the grace of God as a license to sin. The fact that “God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” does not mean that we should “sin that grace may abound.” It is shocking how many Christians fall into this trap. Yes, God is merciful; yes, he does forgive sins. But again, the consequences of sin are severe; and even though God does forgive the penitent sinner, the consequences of sin make the pilgrimage much more difficult. The person whose brain is fried from years of doing drugs has to deal with it the rest of his life, even after the weight of guilt is removed; the man who was once addicted to pornography will fight against his old habits probably to the end of his days, long after God has forgiven him. Never fall into the trap of saying, “I will sin a little today, and God will forgive me tomorrow.” It reflects a naïve view of man, and it presumes upon the grace of God.

The bottom line is that repentance is not an onerous duty that we have to fulfill just to placate an angry God. Jesus says to us, “Come unto me, all ye who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Repentance is letting go of the weight of sin, and turning to our Lord and Savior who promises rest. When we forgive others, we are giving them an opportunity to experience the same rest that we are found in Jesus Christ. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” This is the path to freedom.

In closing, in invite you to turn to page 596 in the Book of Common Prayer. Here is a prayer that is part of the Family Prayer section, a short service that I highly commend to everyone for use in their own homes. Pray with me in spirit as I pray out loud the “Prayer for Grace to Reform and Grow Better”:

And lest, through our own frailty, or the temptations which encompass us, we be drawn again into sin; Vouchsafe us, we beseech thee, the direction and assistance of thy Holy Spirit. Reform whatever is amiss in the temper and disposition of our souls; that no unclean thoughts, unlawful designs, or inordinate desires, may rest there. Purge our hearts from envy, hatred, and malice; that we may never suffer the sun to go down upon our wrath; but may always go to our rest in peace, charity, and good-will, with a conscience void of offence towards thee, and towards men; that so we may be preserved pure and blameless, unto the coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

Thespian David

2008-11-15T08:10:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,

If you have the opportunity, you will want to make your way down to the Appomattox Court House Theatre to see David Mitchel perform in the play "Secret Service." I went to the opening show last night, and it was a delight; David's role in particular was a riot. David is a man of many talents, and I am always discovering new talents: I learned last night that he not only acts, but also plays the guitar and has a wonderful singing voice (I have never been able to sit near him in a worship service).

The next shows are as follows, all at 7 P.M. (except Sunday's show, which is at 2 P.M.):

Saturday, November 15
Sunday, November 16
Friday, November 21
Saturday, November 22

Also, mark your calendars now for David's dramatic reading of the Gospel according to St. John on Saturday, December 13. The Scriptures should frequently be read in large chunks, and so have someone of David's ability read the entire Gospel will be a real blessing to all of us (see Revelation 1:3).

Service for November 16 (26th after Trinity)

2008-11-13T05:50:00.000-08:00

Dear Saints,

Thanks for volunteering for the following roles this coming Sunday:

Synthia preparation: Barbara
Synthia playing: Barbara or Debbi
Refreshment preparation: Michelle and Phaedra
Communion preparation: Nancy
Liturgist: Peter
Old Testament reading: Carey
Nursery: Michelle

Thank you for your service to the household of God.

Homily: 25th Sunday after Trinity, Sunday, November 9, 2008

2008-11-10T05:03:00.000-08:00

Of all the common prayers that we pray regularly, one of my favorites is the Collect for Purity at the beginning of the Holy Communion service, where we pray:

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

When I was returning from Canada just a few weeks ago, when we came through security I was selected at random for a more thorough search: my bags were turned inside out, my pockets were turned inside-out, and the security officer frisked me and examined every square inch of my body to see if I was carrying anything suspect. I had nothing to hide, so it was not too harrowing an experience; however, I did not particularly like the experience either. I was under the inspecting gaze of another; I was treated as an object, and a potentially dangerous object at that.

Some things might slip past the gaze of a TSA officer, but nothing slips past the gaze of God, because God is the one “from whom no secrets are hid.” When you stop and think about it, it’s quite staggering what we are affirming in the Collect for Purity. Before God, every single thing about us is laid wide open—not just our suitcases and pockets, but everything: our secret thoughts, our hidden desires, our compromising motives. We have no hidden chamber or interior castle to which God has no access.

We can tell much about our spiritual condition when we consider this prayer: is it a source of terror to us, or a source of great comfort? Many people are like Jean Paul Sarte, the towering French intellectual of the past century who considered the possibility that a god might exist, and concluded that he cannot exist because to be under the penetrating gaze of a god meant that he would be a mere object, and thus not a true human. And so his logic was that God cannot exist, because Sarte wanted to maintain his humanity. And there are some, perhaps many Christians, whose thinking about God drifts in that same direction.

But for a Christian who is rightly related to God, this prayer is an expression of great comfort. We come to God with a complex, messy collection of motives and desires. We offer them up to God, acknowledging that most of the time we cannot make sense of them; and God in his mercy takes our every desire, begins to sort them out, and transforms us into the children He wants us to be.

In the prayer that Jesus taught us, we are offering up our desires to God in their most elementary form. We pray

Our Father, who are in heaven, hallowed by thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…

And then, the very first thing Jesus teaches us to pray for that concerns ourselves directly is simply this:

Give us this day our daily bread

Wow, that’s it? Of all the complex, messy desires that well up within us, Jesus teaches us to pray for… food? Why didn’t Jesus teach us to pray for something high and lofty, something “spiritual” or earth-shattering? Why this simple petition for the most mundane, low-level, ordinary need of human beings?

It is actually because our need for food is mundane, low-level, and ordinary that Jesus teaches us to pray this way. All our desires, starting with our desire for food, are a window into our souls, and are also a window into God’s purposes for the world.

To get a broader picture of what we are praying when we ask God to “give us this day our daily bread,” I want to look at three different biblical stories: first, the story of Ruth and Naomi; second, the story of the Israelites’ journey through the wilderness; and third, one of the stories of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances to the disciples.

So first, consider the story of Ruth and Naomi, the beginning of which was read earlier this morning. Naomi, her husband, and two sons are forced to move away from Judah to Moab because of a famine. Her two sons take wives from among the people of Moab, but shortly thereafter Naomi’s husband and two sons die. Now it is just her with her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah. Upon hearing that the famine in Judah had come to an end, Naomi makes plans to return to her home, and she insists that her daughters-in-law stay in Moab and find new husbands. That was Naomi’s primary longing, and she did not think it would be possible that her desire for her daughters would be realized if they followed her back home, and bound themselves to the Jewish customs with respect to re-marriage.

But we know the story well: Ruth insists on returning with Naomi; and in due time, Ruth meets her kinsman-redeemer Boaz, and they are then married. What we later find out is that Ruth becomes the great-grandmother of King David, the man after God’s own heart and ancestor of Jesus Christ.

Notice what God does here: he takes Naomi’s desire for food, and drives her into the land of Moab, where her sons marry. After the death of her husband and sons, Naomi’s desire is for her daughters-in-law to re-marry, and God takes up that desire, and transforms it for his kingdom purposes in ways that Naomi could not have possibly imagined.

And that is what God always does: He creates desires in us human beings in order that we will see how all desires ultimately point to him. C.S. Lewis, as usual, has something poignant to say in this regard:

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same.

So God creates us with desires, and God’s will is that we fulfill these desires in his way. When we pray to have a desire fulfilled in God’s way and in God’s time, we are offering up a prayer as a sacrifice. {we often think of a sacrifice as “giving up something that is really important to us”, and this is true, but it’s only a half-truth} God takes the sacrifices of his people, cuts them up on His altar, and offers them back to his people in a different—sometimes surprisingly different—form. That’s what Naomi discovered.

And that is what we discover when we offer up our desires to God as a sacrifice, for Him to do with as He pleases. It begins with our basic desire for food: “give us this day our daily bread.” We have a need for food, and we seek to have God fulfill that need; and in doing this, God transforms us from sinners who are always grasping and demanding, into saints who are receiving and always, always thanking.

Second, consider the story of the Israelites during their long trek through the wilderness towards the Promised Land. Even though life in Egypt was hard—they were under the crack of the whip as various Pharoah’s used Hebrew muscle to help build their spectacular kingdom—in a sense, life in Egypt was easy. All their needs were taken care of. They had homes, and plenty of food. They had what we today, in describing socialistic countries like Sweden, would call “cradle-to-grave security.”

In terms of their life with God, the Israelites were babes. God had to break them of their dependence on Egypt, and make them depend on God himself. Naturally, God trained the Israelites using the most basic need of all: Food! We all know the story well: God sent manna from heaven. All the Israelite families had to do was collect enough for themselves on a daily basis. What they were absolutely forbidden to do was to was to collect any manna for more than that day’s needs (with the exception of the day prior to the Sabbath). Any extra they collected would spoil and become rancid.

What was God doing here? Well, think of it this way: you have a young son, and you feed that child well and faithfully. The boy is strong and fit, and maybe has a little bit of baby fat that amply demonstrates that he is being very well fed. One day, as you are cleaning out his closets, you discover huge deposits of pasty oatmeal, unopened boxes of cereal, dozens of eggs, and many half-eaten sandwiches. You ask your son, “what on earth is all this food doing in your closet? What are you thinking?” And your son responds, “well, mom or dad, I figured that the economy is bad, and I had better be stashing away some extra food just in case you lose your job and you can’t afford to feed me. It’s better to just be safe and prudent, you know.”

Most parents, I think, would be horribly offended if they realized that their young son did not trust them to provide them food on a daily basis. They would logically conclude that there was a lack of trust between them and their child.

It was the same way for the Israelites. For 400 years, they had not be required to take their desire for food and turn it towards God; and so, day after day in the wilderness, God had to train them to trust in Him and Him alone for their daily bread.

And we are no different than the Israelites. We have a desire for food, and we crave the security of knowing where our food and other needs will come from down the road. And so we save money, we make plans…and if we are not careful, we end up looking not to God to fulfill our desires, but rather we look to other man-made devices in order to fulfill our desires. The Bible has a name for such man-made devices: they are called “idols.”

We have savings account and retirement accounts and insurance plans in order to hedge against future uncertainties. Some people, with more of a survival mentality, will store up many months or even years of food, just in case the whole economy and supply system come to a halt.

Now, is it wrong to plan for the future, to save money for needs down the road or to be prepared just in case our supply system gets bogged down? No, in themselves they are not wrong. The book of Proverbs is full of admonitions to plan for the future in a prudent way.

But one of the reasons Jesus teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” is that it is so easy to look at our plans and our assets to meet our desires, rather than looking to God who created those desires and wants to meet those desires.

In England, it used to be said (and perhaps it still is) that no one’s life, property, or reputation was safe as long as Parliament was in session. We could say the same thing here in America: no one’s life, property, or reputation is safe as long as Congress is in session. This cynicism on both sides of the Atlantic illustrates the fact that those who lay up treasures here on earth lead very precarious lives. It doesn’t matter how much money you have saved; it doesn’t matter how much food you have stored up; it doesn’t matter how many ingenious plans you have laid in place for every possible future contingency: all those things can be taken away from you in an instant.

And so, when we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” we are not laying up for ourselves treasures here on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, but we are laying up for ourselves treasures in heaven, where no thief can break in and steal, where no act of Congress can plunder us, and where no economic meltdown can de-capitalize us. Instead, we wake up every morning with the confidence that our Father in heaven will provide for us our needs for this day; and that when we wake up the next day, and the day after that, He will continue to do the same.
Third, consider one of the stories of the disciples after Jesus’ Resurrection that we find in John, chapter 21. Simon Peter tells his fellow disciples, “I’m going fishing.” The others join him for what turned out to be a wildly unsuccessful night of fishing. Morning comes, and Jesus, unbeknownst to the disciples, stands on the shore and asks them if they had any fish. They say, “no.” Jesus instructs them to cast the net on the other side of the boat, and they get more fish than they ever bargained for. John then recognized that it was Jesus standing on the shore; and then Peter, in his typical endearing rashness, dives into the water to get to Jesus first, while the rest of the disciples haul the fish ashore.

Now, I have often been perplexed as to why John included this story in his gospel. Many people have looked at this story, and have concluded that it is a story about how the disciples just didn’t get it: an earth-shattering thing has just happened—Jesus has come out from the grave. They should be out proclaiming the gospel, they should be out saving the world…but instead, in their clueless state, they go fishing. It proves that the disciples just didn’t get it.

Actually, I think that is reading way too much into the text. If anything, the fact that the disciples went fishing after they learned of Jesus’ resurrection shows that they did get it. They understood that, because Jesus rose again from the dead, everything is going to be different: and “everything” includes the every-day, mundane things of life, like eating.

Consider what Jesus does with the disciples when they come to the shore. He doesn’t rebuke them for wasting their time fishing; he doesn’t scold them for not “getting it.” Instead, the risen Lord simply says to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Jesus had risen from the dead, and therefore everything—including a meal—is transformed.

What we see here is that God is passionately concerned with the ordinary things of life. Sitting down for a meal three times a day is a powerfully transforming event in God’s kingdom. Our stomachs inform us that we have a desire for food; we pray to our Father, “Give us this day our daily bread”; He provides us with what we desire, and then Jesus is right there with us, just like He was with his disciples. Meals, when soaked in prayer and thanksgiving, become banquets in the presence of the King.

American culture has become noticeably anti-Christian in this regard. In our hustle and bustle, our family tables have been turned into something resembling a gas station, where you park yourself, fill yourself up with the fuel you need, and then off you go to some other pressing activity. You would think that with all our “time-saving” devices, like microwave ovens and pre-packaged meals, we would have loads of leisure time to sit and eat and savor the goodness of our God. But it rarely seems to work that way.

Let me encourage you, that if your family mealtimes have become frenzied and chaotic, that you take concrete steps to hallow the table. Yes, hallow it—make the family meal a holy event, because that’s exactly what it is. Meal times are training in righteousness, and we should therefore treat them as such.

We ask God for daily bread, and He gives it. We thank God, and eat. And we eat in the presence of the risen Jesus, who then slowly but surely, from one day to another, transforms our desire for daily bread into something that we could not possibly think or imagine. Naomi discovered this; and we will too. The Israelites, over a long period of time, discovered this; and we will also discover this, even if it takes 40 years of constant, daily repetition for the truth to sink in.

God has been very good to us and to our land; He has so answered our prayer to “give us this day our daily bread” that we are tempted to forget his blessing. But let us close now in thanksgiving; and I will lead us by praying the Thanksgiving For Plenty, found on page 80 of the Book of Common Prayer:

O most merciful Father, who of thy gracious goodness hast heard the devout prayers of thy Church, and turned our dearth and scarcity into plenty; We give thee humble thanks for this thy special bounty; beseeching thee to continue thy loving-kindness unto us, that our land may yield us her fruits of increase, to thy glory and our comfort; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Service for November 9 (25th after Trinity)

2008-11-03T07:08:00.000-08:00

Here is who is slated for Sunday, November 9:

Synthia preparation and playing: Barbara Webb
Refreshments: Holly Hawes
Acolyte: Eli Callaway
Nursery: Sue Siko and Cynthia Webb
1st Lesson--Ruth 1:1-17: Bart Martin
2nd Lesson--Luke 12:35-48: David Mitchell

Thank you all for your willingness to serve.

Homily: Octave of All Saints, Sunday November 2, 2008

2008-11-03T05:36:00.000-08:00

The eminently quotable G.K. Chesterton once quipped that, “Alone of all superiors, the saint does not depress the human dignity of others. He is not conscious of his superiority to them; but only more conscious of his inferiority than they are.”

Chesterton, as usual, is on to something. He was acutely aware of the fact that the notion of “sainthood” usually rubs us wrong. It does so for several reasons:

First, the notion of sainthood rubs us wrong because it suggests that there is a hierarchy in the world which distinguishes the superior from the inferior; “sainthood” suggests that there is an inner circle of elites and an outer circle of commoners. Put in common Christian terms, there are “Class A” Christians, the really “spiritual” ones, the “saints” over here…and then over there are the “Class B” Christians, the “carnal” ones, the normal, every-day, mundane sort of Christians.

Second, the notion of sainthood rubs us wrong because it brings to our attention the fact that those often dubbed “saints” are just plain weird. And quite frankly, the last thing in the world we want to be is weird. For instance, we revere men like Deitrich Bonhoeffer today, who stood up to the tyranny of Nazi Germany and paid with his life. But in his own day, he was considered by most people—including Christians—to be a dangerous and seditious man. He was “out of tune” with the present world, and so was considered irrelevant by many of his contemporaries. But now, with fifty years of hindsight, we can now say that, like many of the heroes of the faith listed in Hebrews chapter 11, that the world was not worthy of him.

Third, the notion of sainthood rubs us wrong because the great saints seem to experience a lot more trouble than anyone else…and quite frankly, we would all like to lead a normal, peaceful life with minimal disturbance. The 16th century Christian mystic from Spain, Teresa of Avila, often prayed to God about all the suffering she experienced; and she writes that God responded to her by saying, “This is how I deal with my friends.” Teresa, understandably, responded to God, “well, in that case you shouldn’t be surprised if you don’t have very many friends.” Who is this God who calls us to be his saints, only to reward sainthood with more suffering than normal?

Needless to say, the fact that “sainthood” rubs us wrong tells us that we are bringing too much baggage to the issue. We need to understand afresh what sainthood means, and we need to live afresh the implications of sainthood.

What, then, is a “saint”? There are many legitimate ways we could define a saint—a “believer,” a “Christian,” a “baptized Christian,” a “child of God”—but I am going to stick to one that is consistent with the text of Hebrews 11: a “saint” is one whose home is the New Jerusalem. Again, a “saint” is one whose home is the New Jerusalem. This definition allows us to do several things:

1. For one thing, it allows us to distinguish between different kinds of saints: there are the triumphant saints, those who have passed the veil of death and are in the presence of God, eagerly anticipating their resurrected bodies. And then there are the militant saints, those who are now alive and walk here on earth, but steer our course by the will of heaven. But whether we are talking about the triumphant saints now in heaven, or the militant saints still here on earth, what they have in common is that the New Jerusalem is their true home.

2. Another benefit of defining a “saint” as one whose home is the New Jerusalem, is that it uses the very helpful metaphor of a journey or pilgrimage. We see this in Hebrews 11, where, after discussing Abel and Enoch and Abraham, we read:

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

3. And then another benefit of defining a “saint” as one whose home is the New Jerusalem is that it helps us to answer the question, “why, if we are all ‘saints,’ do we give certain special Christians the designation of ‘Saint’: ‘Saint Matthew,’ ‘Saint Peter,’ ‘Saint Augustine,’ and others? The reason we honor certain “saints” with feast days is that these men and women have been used by God in extraordinary ways during their pilgrimages; and to help us in our pilgrimage, we use their lives as a sort of torch or streetlight to guide us, to show us the right paths to take on our own journeys to the New Jerusalem. As Chesterton said, these saints do not depress the human dignity of all the rest of us; rather, they act as a sort of public notice to show us the path of true human dignity in a world full of misleading billboards and false advertisements.

So everyone baptized into Christ is a saint, and saints are on a pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem. What do we learn from those who have gone before us? What is the point of that long 11th chapter of Hebrews, which goes on and on listing the great saints of the Old Covenant? Well, we see in the first few verses of Hebrews 12 what this should mean for us. There we read:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

How do we complete our pilgrimage with success? How can we join the great saints who have gone before us? A few things come to the surface in this verses:

1. First of all, in this journey we need to get rid of heavy burdens. That’s what sin is: it is a burden which weighs us down on a long, long journey. Those of you who are runners or cyclists or hikers know how big a difference even five pounds make over the course of many miles. Sin is the same way for us.

In all the theology classes I teach at New Covenant Schools, the question I hear more than any other is, “can I do ____ {fill in the blank with some sin} and still go to heaven?” I understand the question, but what I do when asked that question is to gently point out to them that it’s entirely the wrong question to ask. Behind the question, “can I do X and still go to heaven?” is the idea that God is sitting in heaven with a clipboard, making little marks every time we sin and shaking his head. And then, when we reach of certain undisclosed number of marks on our clipboards, God says, “sorry, you’ve reached your quota. No heaven for you.”

The idea of the long pilgrimage is much more helpful. Think of it this way: the right side of the room represents the New Jerusalem; the left side of the room represents the Abyss of Hell. The path to the New Jerusalem is an upward slope; the path to the Abyss is a gentle downward slope. When I sin, I am putting an extra burden on my back; and with that extra burden on my back, what direction am I more likely to take? Am I more likely to take the uphill path or the gently-sloped downhill path? Naturally, I will want to take the path of least resistance. Every time we sin, we add another burden to our lives, a burden which then makes it all the more likely that we will choose to walk the easy path to the Abyss and away from the New Jerusalem.

But we need to take this one step further. When I sin, not only am I adding another burden onto my back, but I am changing fundamentally who I am. C.S. Lewis puts this well, and I can do not better than to quote him:

“People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”

So first, on this pilgrimage of ours, we as saints must lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely to us.

2. Second, in this journey of ours we need patience. Lots of patience. The little steps in the right direction, over a long period of time, make all the difference in the world.

But here, we get into trouble if we have a wrong idea of what sainthood is. The fact is, we like to measure our success. School trains us to do this at a very early age—you are given a grade, in which your progress is given a precise number so that you know exactly where you stand.

So how do you measure sainthood? There are basically two ways to do it:

A. by the direction you are going, regardless of the speed; OR
B. by the speed you are going, regardless of direction

God’s measure is the first one: God is much more concerned with the direction you are going than the speed with which you are going. God would much rather us be patient, plodding, faithful endurance athletes who are always heading for the finish line.

But the world—and sadly, many Christians as well—measure sainthood and spirituality by the second standard: they want you to go really fast, regardless of the direction you are going. Who cares where you are going, as long as you get there really fast and impress a lot of people?

The faithful, plodding Christian can often be intimidated by these people. Here we are, taking one slow step at a time, and they are driving the spiritual equivalent of a Ferrari. These are the movers and shakers: they are going somewhere, they (seemingly) are making a huge impact for the kingdom of God.

But the true measure of sainthood is not how fast you are moving, but the direction you are going. So many people that we see driving the spiritual equivalent of a Ferrari are actually driving the on the wrong side of the road, down a dark highway with no headlights, straight for a cliff.

But God says, “run with endurance the race that is set before us.” God is looking for faithfulness, not velocity.

3. Third, all during our pilgrimage, we must keep our eyes fixed on Jesus Christ. In Hebrews 12, we read that we are to be always

looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Any pilot or navigator will tell you that, when flying a plane, the plane is actually off course about 95% of the time. At any given moment, the plane is usually not headed straight for its destination. Winds blow a plane off course; sometimes the pilot is not paying attention and drifts off course; sometimes the weather forces a pilot to take a different route. But the vast majority of the time, the pilot gets his plane to the airport he intends to. How does he do it when the plane is off course 95% of the time? It’s because the pilot knows his destination, and is constantly making small adjustments which properly orient the plane.

It’s the same thing with us. Most of the time, we are going to be slightly off course, whether because of sin or distraction or suffering of some kind. Only by focusing on Jesus are we going to be able to make our path straight again.

To give another analogy, military historians often speak of the “fog of war,” that state of utter and total confusion that falls onto the minds of soldiers and generals when bombs are going off, men are dying, and plans are going awry. During the heat of battle, in the midst of the thickest fog of war, men need a guiding principle, one single thing that will tell them what to do when everything is in chaos. For Napoleon, that single command which he gave to his corps commanders was this: when in doubt, always march to the sound of the guns. If you don’t know what else to do in the confusion of battle, always take you and you soldiers to the place where you hear the main part of the battle being fought, and you will not go wrong.

In our pilgrimage, Jesus gives us the same kind of guidance: he says “seek ye first the kingdom of God.” Jesus brought the kingdom of God, and he commands us to seek it before anything else. When everything in our lives is in a state of total confusion, and we don’t know what to do, that is our guiding principle: do that which most glorifies Jesus and promotes his kingdom.

4. Lastly, we need to remember always that on this pilgrimage, we need nourishment. We need food—real food. In a few minutes, God will be giving us exactly that. Yes, it is only a little piece of bread and a little sip of wine, but God tells us that it is food, indeed. Let us not think that this bread and wine are only signs pointing to the source of nourishment. This bread and wine are not just like billboards telling us that there is food coming up at the next exit—rather, this bread and wine is the food itself. It is a foretaste of the great Marriage Feast of the Lamb to come, but it is real food indeed.

So come: it is a long pilgrimage, and you need rest and refreshment. Come, and be fed at the table of the Lord. All the saints are welcome.

Let us pray.

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who dost enkindle the flame of thy love in the hearts of the Saints; Grant to us, thy humble servants, the same faith and power of love, that, as we rejoice in their triumphs, we may profit by their examples, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.