Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church

The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

C12: Hosea 1:2-10; Colossians 2:6-19 & Luke 11:1-13

O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen [BCP, 832].

Lex orandi, lex credendi is the ancient Christian principle that the law of prayer is the law of belief. What we pray, how we pray is determinative of our theology, that is, prayer shapes belief. In our Gospel this morning, Jesus’ disciples ask him how to pray. He teaches them the now familiar Lord’s Prayer. A prayer that is so familiar that we often say it without thought. And yet this is the Prayer that Jesus has given us as a summary or model for all prayer. In Luke’s version the Prayer is a series of imperatives: do this, do that. It fits in to Luke’s description of Jesus’ ministry as a journey to Jerusalem.: “Don’t worry about what you will eat, God will provide the daily bread.” Matthew’s version is slightly longer and given in the context of the Sermon on the Mount. From this perspective, the Prayer is an extended teaching on living in God’s Kingdom. This morning I want us to look at the Prayer using the version with which we are most familiar.

Our Father, we begin by acknowledging our relationship with God and with each other. God is our creator, our parent, the one ultimately responsible for us and our well -being. If as parents we know how to take care of our children, how much better will God’s care be for us. But God is not just my God, but our God. We are related, brothers and sisters in God. As we are responsible for loving God, so we are responsible for loving each other just as we love ourselves.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name, we are called to sanctify God’s Name. Obviously we can’t make God holy, but we can reflect the holiness of God in how we live our lives. We begin by acknowledging God as God. God is the center of the universe and the center of our lives. We acknowledge God’s presence in our daily lives through prayer. We give thanks for the food we receive from God. We seek God’s guidance and direction in our activities. But above all we are called to adore and worship God, to acknowledge God’s holiness.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Here we confess our hope, our dream, the vision of the end times when the New Jerusalem will descend upon earth. We long for the restoration of our world to the way God intends for it to be. We are asking God to help us be followers of Jesus to complete his work here on earth in His holy Name.

Give us this day our daily bread. We are asking both for God to provide for us but also for us to develop grateful hearts. We learn to be thankful for what we have today and not to be anxious about tomorrow. We trust that God will and does provide all that we need.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. We can only receive forgiveness when we forgive others, otherwise we will never believe that we have been forgiven. Jesus is teaching us to be like God. When we forgive than we are making God’s Name holy as others experience the mystery and grace of forgiveness in their lives. When we no longer seek revenge, when we give up keeping score, we let God be God and we seek to repent and return to the Lord. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. With this petition we are acknowledging that ultimately God is in control of everything. But I know that I am not a saint like Abraham or Job, and so I ask God not to test my faith, not to lead me into a time of trial. On my own I all too easily can succumb to temptation, but with God’s grace, with prayer and recognizing God’s presence with me, I can avoid many temptations.

This is where the prayer that Jesus taught ends. This is the version that we use in the Office of Compline at the end of the day. But there seems to be something missing, something more to be said. And so the Prayer concludes with a liturgical formula expounding the glory, the holiness of God:

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. God is in control. The world is God’s and the power and glory of God will reign here on earth as in heaven for all of eternity. The prayer seems to come full circle as we acknowledge God’s holiness and the unity of heaven and earth.

There are many different ways to pray. We can sit in silence and listen for God’s still small voice. We can contemplate God’s Word as we read the Bible and let God speak to us through the words. We can ask God directly for what we need, for what we long for. The Prayer that Jesus taught us is a model for all our prayer. It teaches us to glorify god and to trust in God’s providence, God’s loving care for us.

And at last we say: Amen. Amen, so be it. We end where we start by letting God be our God, letting God be the center of our lives. We seek to conform our will with God’s will so that we can sanctify, make holy God’s Name in the world. So be it, Amen.

The 8^{th Sunday after Pentecost}

^{C 11: Amos 8:1-12; Colossians1:15-28 & Luke 10:38-42}

 ^{Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen [BCP, 100]. One of the most celebrated movies of all time is Orson Welle’s Citizen Kane. A thinly veiled portrait of William Randolph Hearst, the film uses Kane’s dying word Rosebud as a way of seeking the meaning of his life. Everyone knows that one word can not summarize an entire life and yet each character in the film speculates on its meaning. By the end of the film, no one has discovered the meaning of Rosebud, but the audience learns it as the sled named Rosebud is consigned to the flames of burning junk being destroyed. Rosebud symbolizes Kane’s lost youth. In one sense it is the key to his life and yet in another the entire film has shown the impossibility of summarizing a life in one word, with one symbol.}

How many movies are built around the dream of finding the key, the map to a fabulous hidden treasure? Like medieval alchemists we dream of finding the magical substance that will transform lead into gold. But today when physicists can change lead into gold, they now search for a grand unified theory that will tie everything together from the atomic level to the vast expanse of interstellar space. It seems to be part of our human nature to believe there is such a theory, that there is a key to the entire cosmos. I think that we long for this theory, this certainty, especially today when everything seems to be in flux.

I often catch snippets of the Thomas Jefferson Hour on the radio when I am out visiting parishioners on Tuesday. Last week during a break there was an ad for a show on later about how facts don’t change the way people believe about something. People will change or ignore the facts to conform to their beliefs. It was a wonderful moment for me because in 30 seconds, I witnessed the transformation of 300 years of Western philosophy from the “just the facts ma’am” of modernity symbolized by Jefferson to the denial of meta-narratives and the possibility of objective facts in the desire based post modernity of today. It was a moment of delicious irony because Jefferson couldn’t believe that people would blatantly ignore facts that contradict their beliefs. It’s the same incredulity that marks the modern neo-atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens who believe their fact-based books will change people’s minds about Jesus and Christianity. But what Jefferson and contemporary critics of Christianity fail to understand is that faith in Jesus is based on a relationship with Jesus not upon historical facts. This isn’t a denial about the facts the historical Jesus but rather a recognition that our knowledge of Jesus isn’t based only on facts of history but rather a living relationship with God who is present and active in our lives today. Just as the meaning Rosebud is inadequate to summarize the life of Charles Foster Kane, so the facts alone fail to capture the meaning of who Jesus is for us today.

But the truth is that Jesus is the key to our lives. Instead of seeking to define Jesus, by faith, we allow Jesus to define who we are. Jesus is the key to our lives, to the cosmos itself. This is the mystery that Paul shares this morning in his Letter to the Colossians [1: 15-20; NRSV]:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.Jesus is the ruler of all creation. In Orthodox iconography this is Jesus as the Pantocrator, the rule of all creation. In many Orthodox churches the icon of Christ as King of kings, Lord of lords is painted in the dome of the church, so that we see Christ as ruling both the heavens and the earth. He is the goal, the destiny of our lives. In Jesus we see and experience the fullness of God’s love for us and all creation. He is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega.In the confusion of our times, when suspicion and mistrust and radical relativity characterize how we view life, Jesus is the missing puzzle piece that pulls all of life and creation into view and into harmony. While we may no longer create churches with mosaics of Christ the Pantocrator on the ceiling, I want to suggest that we see Jesus in terms of those computer mosaics where photographs of hundreds of people are arranged to reveal a composite image of a person. Jesus is that image produced by us as the Church, as the body of Christ. Each of us has a small but significant role to play in making this image known to the world. After all this abstract thinking about Rosebud and post-modernity I want to close with a small, but practical suggestion. As we see Jesus as the center of our lives and of all life, of all the cosmos, we can adopt the practice of our forebears in the faith and live our lives to the glory of God. Bach use to write Ad Gloriam Dei on his compositions. Seeing God as the center of life, we can simply do everything to the glory of God, recognizing that all that we do can be to and for the glory of God. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

The 7th Sunday after Pentecost

C:10: Amos 7:7-17; Colossians 1:1-14 & Luke 10: 25-37

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves: Lead them and us from fear to truth; deliver them and us from prejudice and hatred; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen [BCP, adapted 816].

Sometimes in order to understand an idea, philosophers will try a thought experiment, taking an idea and imaginatively pushing it to its logical consequences to see if the idea still works. Jesus’ own parables might be seen as thought experiments as he helps others to see the world from God’s perspective. But today, I want to invite you to imagine Jesus as an old man living in a retirement home, telling his parables over and over again to the residents and staff. “Have you heard the one about the man who was going down to Jericho?” “Yes, Jesus, we’ve heard it several times, thank you.” Sometimes like the staff in a nursing home, we’ve heard Jesus’ stories so many times that we don’t hear them anymore. Instead of listening to Jesus we’re tuning him out and listening to ourselves instead. Can we hear the story of the Good Samaritan as if for the first time? While I think the thought experiment works for us, it doesn’t work for Jesus. Aside from the fact that it’s hard to imagine Jesus as an old man, I find it even harder to imagine Jesus as boring. The fact is that he isn’t boring because the attention isn’t on him, but upon others. When he tells a story, he isn’t talking about himself, but us. Jesus is a holy person because of his humility. The heart of saintliness is humility.

In his biography of a Benedictine monk, Father Joe, Tony Hendra describes what it means to be a saint:

That poor, weary, once-powerful word—bowed and enfeebled by abuse—is not used lightly. “Saint” does not mean merely dedication, or selflessness, or generosity, though it subsumes all those. Nor does it mean the apogee of religious devotion, though it can subsume that too—sometimes. There are many pious people who believe themselves to be saints who are not, and many people who believe themselves to be impious who are.

A saint is a person who practices the keystone human virtue of humility. Humility in the face of wealth and plenty, humility in the face of hatred and violence, humility in the face of strength, humility in the face of your own genius or lack of it, humility in the face of another’s humility, humility in the face of love and beauty, humility in the face of pain and death. Saints are driven to humbling themselves before all the splendor and horror of the world because they perceive there to be something divine in it, something pulsing and alive beneath the hard dead surface of material things, something inconceivable greater and purer than they are [Tony Hendra, Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul [NY: Random House, 2004] 4].

It is this gift of humility that Jesus seeks to share with the lawyer and us in his story of the Good Samaritan. In a word, Jesus wants us to become saints.

Like the rich young man, the Lawyer lacks one thing, humility. How often have I been like that lawyer? Proud of my knowledge of the Bible. Easily doing philosophy or theology instead of being a good neighbor? It’s easy to focus on ourselves, to be the center of attention. Instead of seeing people as people to see them as categories. That’s what Jesus does with this story. We see a priest, a Levite, a Samaritan. We see categories instead of persons. Through this tale, Jesus invites us to practice humility, to see the face of Christ in each person whom we meet, rather than not seeing the divine, but only a category, a type.

I know how often I have failed to be a good Samaritan. My sins of omission usually occur when I am focused on myself instead of others. If we truly love God then we will truly love our neighbors. Too often we keep our love of God and our neighbor theoretically, making it political instead of practical. The question isn’t who is my neighbor? It isn’t about justifying oneself and being prideful. The issue is humility and love, recognizing how Jesus loves us, as people, not as categories. There are no ins or outs for God’s love. Jesus invites the Lawyer, invites us, to imagine ourselves as poor, as no longer the center of attention. What does the world look like when we are no longer the center of attention? When we live our lives for others? Like us, the Lawyer knows what God expects from us: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, with all our strength, with all our mind and our neighbor as ourselves. But what does such a life look like? How do we actually do this? Like us, the Lawyer is well practiced in keeping such discussions theoretical and so he poses his question, “Well, who is my neighbor?” But Jesus won’t buy into this type of theoretical evasion; he keeps it simple and practical as he tells the story of the Good Samaritan.

Instead of waiting for a car accident, we can choose to be a good neighbor by choosing to listen to other people. Take time to pay attention to your spouse, your co-worker, a friend. Instead of focusing on yourself and what you will say next, empty yourself and listen to what the other person is saying. Step out of your routine to help someone else. Join us at the soup kitchen. Go and visit a lonely neighbor or someone in the nursing home. It’s not hard to be a saint, but it takes practice. Go and do the same. Amen.

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

C9: 2 Kings 5:1-14; Galatians 6:1-16 & Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Evangelism

O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you, bring the nations into your fold, pour out your Spirit upon all flesh, and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen [BCP, 257].

Yesterday, our youth group returned from their weeklong mission trip to Worton, Maryland. They spent the week painting, building ramps, replacing roofs and sharing Bible study with the residents whom they assisted. Like the apostles they came back filled with joy at what they were able to accomplish in the Name of Jesus. Sadly, we rarely give our young people a task and the responsibility to complete it on their own, but every year on the mission trips they accomplish more than they thought possible as they work together with teenage Christians from all over the United States to help maintain the homes of the poor and the elderly. These mission trips are a win-win situation for both our young people and the people whom they assist.

In our Gospel this morning, we see Jesus commission 70 disciples to be his apostles to share the good news of the approach of God’s kingdom. In a word they bring the gift of God’s peace, Shalom, to the people and towns whom they visit. There is a certain irony in Jesus’ instructions regarding preparation for the mission: “Take no purse, no bag, no sandals” and the hours we spend getting ready for the mission trip. Not to mention all the stuff that we take from hammers and air mattresses to candy and cell phones. No doubt things are more complicated for us today, but Jesus’ message of ‘just go and do it’ remains true today. Our teenagers will tell you that they had no special instructions but to just go and be Christians for the people they worked for. They learned on the job how to paint or build a ramp and how to read the Bible with other people. The biggest requirement was a willingness to go and they are already talking about their trip next year.

I have no doubt that if they could have, the disciples would have found an excuse for putting off their mission trip. Well, Jesus we need to go home and pack and check in with the family and our bosses. With a couple classes in evangelism and maybe some practice in one on one interviews, we should be ready to go in maybe a month or two. Oh and where are we going so that we can make room reservations and perhaps save on transportation costs? But Jesus was smart enough not to let this happen. He gave them the commission and then immediately sent them out to do the work they had been given to do. They went two by two to support and encourage each other and get the job done.

Now, I have nothing against planning and logistics and training. They are important tasks, but sometimes they can become an excuse for not doing the work we have agreed to do. At every baptism we promise that we will proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ and that we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as our self. Now I understand that most of us wouldn’t be comfortable passing out bibles with the Gideons or preaching on a street corner like Paul our patron saint. But there are other ways of witnessing to our faith. Whenever we serve at the soup kitchen or visit someone in the hospital we can be intentional and ask Jesus to accompany us in our words and actions. We may not mention his name, but we can do it for him. All of us have opportunities to share with other people those moments in our lives when we knew the presence of God with us. Evangelism doesn’t need to be confrontational, if fact, I would argue that such tactics are the least successful for sharing the Gospel. Instead it is more important that we approach every person as Christ himself. Instead of trying to rehearse a speech, take time to listen to others and discover what is important to them. Then ask the Holy Spirit to give you the right words to share your faith. We don’t have to convince people of the truth of following Jesus, instead we need to be willing to enter into an honest conversation with non-believers. The truth will show forth in our willingness to listen to others and our trust that God is truth. We have much to learn from non-believers. We need to see them as children of God and not as projects for conversion. The hardest part of evangelism is not what others will think or say about us, but our reluctance to even talk about religion and faith. It’s more about our lack of faith in ourselves, than it is about evangelism.

People are hungry for good news. People long for peace in their lives. People are searching for God. People today are no different then they were in Jesus’ time. There are countless people who long to know about the kingdom of God. And God has chosen you and me to go and tell them. Don’t worry about how you will do it, rather trust that God is with you and follow the example of our teenagers who went forth and loved their neighbors as themselves in the Name of Jesus. Amen.

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

C8: 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Galatians 5:1, 13-25 & Luke 9:51-62

The Cost of Discipleship

O God our Father, the source of strength to all your saints, who brought your servant Dietrich Bonhoeffer through imprisonment and death to the joys of life eternal: Grant that we, being encouraged by their examples, may hold fast the faith that we profess, and that we may seek to know, and according to our knowledge to do, your will, even unto death; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

This year’s best picture Oscar went to the Hurt Locker. The film opens with a quote: “War is a drug.” and then shows how the main character is addicted to the adrenaline rush of war and combat. In his book, War, Sebastian Junger writes:

When men say they miss combat, it’s not that they actually miss getting shot at – you’d have to be deranged – it’s that they miss being in a world where everything is important and nothing is taken for granted. They miss being in a world where human relations are entirely governed by whether you can trust the other person with your life.

We are a long way from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we have members of our parish serving in both wars. For the most part our lives are so comfortable and routine that we lose sense of the importance of living life to its fullest. Yet this is the context to Jesus’ comments on discipleship this morning. He has set his face towards Jerusalem. Jesus knows that he is going to his death. He knows that it takes a full commitment to God to enter into the kingdom of God. God must come first before anything else, even family, home or occupation. Jesus warns his would be followers that there is no security. He doesn’t even know where he will sleep that night, having been turned away by the Samaritans. Either you follow Jesus completely or you don’t.

This is a hard Gospel for us to hear today because we tend to take Jesus for granted. We assume that we are all saved and we don’t have to do anything about it. Jesus died for everyone. Everyone gets into heaven. End of story. We focus on the outcome of salvation without doing the hard work of actually following Jesus.

Grace is a free gift, but it isn’t cheap and it needs to be applied to how we live each and everyday. In 1937, against the German Church selling out to Adolf Hitler and National Socialism, Dietrich Bonhoeffer addressed this issue of cheap grace in his book The Cost of Discipleship. Against the accommodation of the Church with societal norms, following society or in Paul’s terms the world instead of Jesus, Bonhoeffer denounced what he called cheap grace:

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate [NY: Macmillan, 1963, p. 47].

Against this cheap grace, Bonhoeffer talks about the cost of grace: Jesus’ death on the cross. We are set free at a price. The infinite love of God for us is a costly grace:

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God [47-48].

Bonhoeffer invites us to take life and our following Jesus seriously. It is what Paul is writing about in his letter to the Galatians. By the cross of Christ, we have been set free. Not to take our salvation as cheap grace, but rather to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We are set free to love each other. We are no longer slaves to our desires, to the powers and principalities of this world. We are free to say no to any and everything that keeps us from following Jesus. To live by the Spirit of God, to know the fullness of God’s love, joy, peace, kindness and generosity we need to be guided by the Spirit of God. We need to follow Jesus into the kingdom of God. Once we put God first, then everything else will fall into place. Instead of living on auto-pilot, buffeted and pushed by the forces of this world, we can take control of our own lives and live for Christ, who longs to live with us and in us, for us. Amen.

The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

The Sound of Silence

C:7 1 Kings 19 and Luke 8:26-39.

Almighty God, who has promised to hear the petitions of those who ask in your Son’s Name: We beseech you mercifully to incline your ear to us who have now made our prayers and supplications to you; and grant that those things which we have faithfully asked according to your will, may effectually be obtained, to the relief of our necessity, and to the setting forth of your glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen [BCP, 834].

“In the dialogue between God and man,” wrote the 20th century French Jewish scholar André Neher, “… silence is more than simply a pause, a hiatus without significance or content. It is as essential to the understanding of the revealed message as is a musical pause to the understanding of a piece of music. Silence is not an interruption of the word: It is its reverse, its alternative, its other face, or… to use the biblical metaphor, it represents the ‘hidden’ face of God as against the ‘visible’ face represented by the word.”

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/practices/Ethics/Talk_and_Gossip/Themes_and_Theology.shtml

André Neher’s The Exile of the Word: From the Silence of the Bible to the Silence of Auschwitz is one of the most fascinating books that I have ever read. Neher sees silence as the landscape of the Bible. Against the Word of God revealed in the Biblical text there are also the profound silences of God revealed in the stories of Abraham and Isaac or especially the Book of Job. Often silence better reveals God than spoken words. Neher sees today’s reading from 1 Kings as one of the most crucial texts in the Bible. Against the word of God spoken on Mt. Carmel is the silence of God on Mt. Horeb. I want to develop Neher’s insight but first some background.

In the chapter preceding today’s reading, we see Elijah defeat the priests of Baal on Mt. Carmel. Ba’al, which means Lord, is the pagan name for the god of agriculture or rain. Under King Ahab and the influence of his wife Jezebel, the people had turned from God to Ba’al. Following a long drought, the prophet Elijah challenges the 450 priests of Ba’al to a duel. Which ever God answered would be the true God. It reminds me of the debates today between the neo-Atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens, and defenders of the faith like Eagleton and Hart. The priests of Ba’al call for him to set their sacrifice on fire to no avail. After several hours and with taunting remarks, Elijah pours water upon his pyre and then prays to God to answer him and to send fire to consume the sacrifice. The fire of the Lord falls upon the wood and consumes the sacrifice. All the people fall on their faces and returning to the Lord, worship God. Elijah kills the priests and then it begins to rain, the drought is over. That’s where we pick up the story today.

Elijah hears that Jezebel has promised to kill him as he killed the priests of Ba’al. Elijah flees in terror and goes into the wilderness. Instead of celebrating his victory, he is literally running for his life. Depressed and forsaken, Elijah wants to just die. Instead God cares for him in the desert. God provides food and drink and gives him time to go to Mt. Horeb. Now Horeb may or may not be the same mountain as Mt. Sinai, but just as God spoke to Moses on Mt. Sinai, so God speaks to Elijah on Mt. Horeb. God asks Elijah what is wrong and Elijah complains about the futility of his ministry. Nothing he has done matters, He just wants to lie down and die. God tells Elijah to stand in front of the cave. There follows a terrific windstorm and then an earthquake and then fire. But God is not in the wind, nor the earthquake nor the fire. What follows is “the thin voice of silence.” Elijah steps out of the cave into the silence and realizes that God is there in that silence. The dramatic display at Mt. Carmel where God had sent down fire had failed to convince Jezebel that God was God. And Elijah himself had doubted in the power of God when he had fled into the wilderness. But now in the silence, in that sheer absence, Elijah knew in the core of his being the presence and power of God. His faith is reborn in this pregnant silence. It is the unspeakable darkness; the power and presence that precedes creation, the silence before God speaks the Word and things are brought into being. This is a moment of incredible mysticism; it is the dark night of the soul described by St. John of the Cross.

In the silence, Elijah discovers the living God whom he serves. God then sends Elijah out to consecrate new kings and his successor Elisha. As an aside, God mentions to Elijah that there are still 7,000 in Israel who have not worshiped Ba’al. In his depression, Elijah felt alone and abandoned. In the silence, he rediscovers God and that he wasn’t alone, there were thousands left who would support him.

Now moving from the sublime to the practical, I see this story as a lesson not just in faith, but also offering us a way of caring for each other when someone is depressed. First, God provides the physical sustenance that Elijah needs. He encourages him to eat and drink and he gives him the space apart that he needs but he doesn’t leave him alone. He remains a silent presence through out his journey in the wilderness. He doesn’t tell Elijah to buck up and get on with his mission. Instead he slowly and graciously restores Elijah to the goodness of life itself. There is a respect and loving caring that surrounds and protects Elijah. So often when we are depressed, when we feel life isn’t worth living, we give up on ourselves and yet that is when we need each other to sustain and encourage us. The truth is that we are never alone, there are thousands of saints praying for us in heaven and there are thousands of saints here on earth that we can turn to for help and guidance. When we are depressed we listen to the voices that tell us we are worthless, but that is a lie. We are of infinite value to God. Jesus died for us; we are worth that much. In the silence, we need to know that God is there for us. Just as Jesus healed the demoniac in Gerasene, so Jesus will heal us. Amen.

The Third Sunday after Pentecost

The Coolness of Respect

Almighty and most merciful God, we remember before you all poor and neglected persons whom it would be easy for us to forget: the homeless and the destitute, the old and the sick, and all who have none to care for them. Help us to heal those who are broken in body or spirit, and to turn their sorrow into joy. Grant this, Father, for the love of your Son, who for our sake became poor, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen [BCP, 826].

Dallas Willard likes to point out the sheer brilliance of Jesus, the intensity of his intellect. I’d like to point out the coolness of Jesus. When we think of who’s cool, who’s hip, we tend to think of people like Johnny Depp or Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall or perhaps Bugs Bunny. Their coolness comes from their disregard for what other people think about them or the people they associate with. They seem to exude confidence and a certain indifference for what others think or do. Each of them conveys a sense of self-reliance and yet paradoxically a sense of respect for other people whom others don’t see or look down upon. We see Jesus exhibit this quality of coolness at the dinner party at Simon’s house.

As I’ve said before there is an incredible sensual quality to this scene. A woman would not let down her hair in public, let alone pouring perfume and kissing the feet of a man. Jesus isn’t perturbed by her behavior, but you can feel the tension in the room, as everyone else is shocked and scandalized by this woman, this sinner. Jesus, as if reading Simon’s mind, asks Simon a question about forgiveness. Who would show more love, the one who owed more or less? Simon answers of course that one who owed more would show greater gratitude. Then Jesus, through his words, holds a mirror up to Simon so that Simon can see his own behavior. He failed to see the woman as a person. He only saw her as a sinner. He judged her and he judged Jesus because Jesus failed to stop this woman’s outlandish behavior. But this unnamed woman showed more hospitality than Simon who had failed to show basic courtesy to Jesus his guest. Simon had justified himself as holy at the expense of this woman and Jesus. Poor Simon, he thought that he was upholding community standards and then he is shown to be violating the same standards of proper behavior. Needless to say, when Jesus forgives the woman her sins, Jesus has gone a step too far for Simon and his guests. Only God can forgive sins, not this Jesus. While Jesus has given the gift of peace to this woman; he has certainly disturbed the peace of Simon’s household.

Now, as much as I would love to have that sense of cool exhibited by a Bacall or Bogie, I know that it’s not going to happen. But I can follow the example of Jesus and respect everyone with whom I come in contact. It’s so easy for us not to see people as individual persons with a history and a unique value. We see stereotypes: a receptionist, a homeless person, a salesclerk, a delivery person. Nameless, interchangeable bodies with whom we barely interact, with whom we often even avoid eye contact. So often, like Simon, we judge and categorize people without even being aware that we are doing it. But Jesus sees and acknowledges everyone. He knows people by name and respects them as the unique and valuable person whom God has created and for whom Jesus offers his life in order to given them and us the gift of forgiveness. We can follow the example of Jesus and see each and every person as a child of God. We all need forgiveness but we also all need recognition.

At every Baptism, we are asked the following questions [BCP, 305]:

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

To which we respond, “I will, with God’s help.”

With God’s help we can extend the courtesy of respect and dignity to all persons.

How many arguments and disagreements can be traced back to people feeling disrespected. How angry do we become when we are ignored or not shown the courtesy of respect? It doesn’t cost us anything to show good manners, to follow the example of Jesus and value each and every person with whom we interact. So often we portray the spiritual life in terms of discipline and sacrifice. But the life of the spirit begins with good manners. It is as simple a matter of smiling and recognizing others, holding open a door for someone and saying “After you.” When we recognize how valuable we are to God then we will begin to recognize and respect the value of all other people. Then we too can be cool like Jesus. Amen.

Second Sunday after Pentecost

C:5: 1 Kings 17:8-24 & Luke 7:11-17

The Kingdom of DeathWe thank you, heavenly Father, that you have delivered us from the dominion of sin and death and brought us into the kingdom of your Son; and we pray that, as by his death he has recalled us to life, so by his love he may raise us to eternal joys; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen [BCP, 224].

66 years ago today, the allied invasion of Normandy took place on this D-Day. Almost 400,000 men were involved directly in the invasion: 24,000 men were airborne, 160,000 landed on the beaches and close to 196,000 navy personnel in 5,000 ships. It was the largest amphibious invasion ever. It’s hard to imagine the sheer bravery of those men as they landed on the beaches and faced enemy fire from the cliffs above. While they were fighting for their country and to end the tyranny of National Socialism, in reality they were fighting for their fellow comrades in arms.

In a recent book entitled War, Sebastian Junger recounts his time, some 15 months, with an airborne unit in Afghanistan. I’m quoting from a review by Philip Caputo in The Washington Post:

An eight-man squad caught in a Taliban ambush suffers 100 percent casualties. Their sergeant is mortally wounded. A team leader named Sal Giunta takes over and saves the unit from annihilation. The action appears chaotic but possesses an underlying choreography that requires each man to make “decisions based not on what’s best for him, but on what’s best for the group,” Junger writes. “If everyone does that, most of the group survives. If no one does, most of the group dies. That, in essence, is combat.”

In the book, Junger points out that it is this love for one’s comrade that makes one risk one’s own life for the group.

The main character, so to speak, is Brendan O’Byrne. Pugnacious and hard-drinking, O’Byrne is very tough — he humps up mountains carrying a machine gun as heavy as a jackhammer — but also gifted with an ability to articulate thoughts his comrades can’t or won’t. He confesses to Junger that he prayed only once in Afghanistan, for a dying medic to live. “But God, Allah, Jehovah, Zeus . . . wasn’t in that valley,” he says. “Combat is the devil’s game. . . . That’s why our prayers weren’t answered: the only one listening was Satan.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/07/AR2010050702254.html

The men realize the evil of war, but also that sense of each moment being important and the intensity of life lived on the edge. Junger writes:

When men say they miss combat, it’s not that they actually miss getting shot at – you’d have to be deranged – it’s that they miss being in a world where everything is important and nothing is taken for granted. They miss being in a world where human relations are entirely governed by whether you can trust the other person with your life.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7747039/Combat-zone-extracts-from-Sebastian-Jungers-War.html

Because of the men and women who served in the Second World War and in all the wars since, we have been isolated from the horrors of war here at home. 9/11 brought most of us a sense of the importance of life and of not taking the people we love for granted. We are fortunate that we don’t have to think daily about trusting another person with our life. Most of the time, death seems distant and abstract. It painfully hits home when we lose a loved one, but most of the time we don’t think about death and dying. We are incredibly fortunate and unlike most people in the world and throughout history.

Imagine if you can how it must have felt to Jesus. Here is the author of life itself, living as one of us, surrounded by the power of death. There is the crushing hunger and poverty of his people under Roman occupation; the people crucified along the highways as a warning to the populace not to support rebellion and all the diseases and illnesses that plagued the people. And now as he enters a village he sees the funeral procession. I imagine that he took this death, like all deaths, as an affront to God, as an outrage against the very goodness of life itself. Here is a woman who has already lost her husband and now she has lost her son. Economically, her life is over, but worse is the loneliness and grief that she faces alone. Luke says that Jesus had compassion for her. The term for compassion is the Greek splagchnizomai meaning moved in one’s innards, one’s bowels. It is a sense of deep and anguished feeling for and with the other person. As Elijah did for the widow in Sidon, as Jesus would later do for his friend Lazarus in Bethany, so now Jesus faces off with death and touching the bier, he commands death to set the young man free.

Jesus’ entire life was one long combat against death. His miracles of healing and his teachings about the kingdom of God gave hope to people crushed by the power of death. He personally squared off with death at the cross in order to free us from the tyranny of death. It is because of His love for us that we can completely trust him with our lives. As his followers we continue his work of healing and teaching about God’s kingdom of love against the forces of death. Just as D-Day symbolized the future victory of the Allied forces, so Jesus’ resurrection signals God’s victory over the kingdom of death. Today as American we remember those died for our freedom on the beaches of Normandy. But as Christians, we pledge ourselves to the kingdom of God and God’s work to end war, once and for all, so that all of us can experience life without the fear of death. Amen.

Trinity Sunday

Triune Faith

John 16:12-15

Almighty God, you have revealed to your Church your eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace to continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; for you live and reign, one God, now and for ever. Amen [BCP, 251].

As some of you know, I attended Mr. Jefferson’s University, which he founded as a secular institution against such religious schools like William and Mary and Princeton. In a private letter to theologian James Smith, December 8, 1822, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“The pure and simple unity of the Creator of the universe, is now all but ascendant in the Eastern States; it is dawning in the West, and advancing towards the South; and I confidently expect that the present generation will see Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States. The Eastern presses are giving us many excellent pieces on the subject, and Priestley’s learned writings on it are, or should be, in every hand. In fact, the Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.”

http://www.brunswickcounty.com/Thomas_Jefferson_and_the_Doctrine_of_the_Trinity-a-1150.html

Jefferson knew his Unitarianism was not yet a popular view in America, but he thought it would eventually become the norm. Jefferson instinctively mistrusted big government and organized religion. He put his faith in reason alone and a Triune God was far from reasonable. As he wrote to John Adams in 1813:

According to Jefferson’s logic if we can’t understand something we shouldn’t believe it. His rejection of the Doctrine of the Trinity is part of a long history from Judaism that banished Christians from their midst to Islam that reasserted strict monotheism following the centuries of internal dissension within the Church over the doctrine of the Trinity, to modern day Theists and to Atheists who put their faith in their reason alone and not in God.

The Sunday of Pentecost

Friends of Jesus

Acts 2:1-21

A Prayer to the Holy Spirit: O Heavenly King, the comforter, the spirit of Truth, Who art present everywhere and fillest all things; Treasury of Blessings and Giver of Life; come and abide in us and cleanse us from every stain, and save our souls, O Gracious One.

I begin with an illustration (literally): the following chart is an early map from the 1970s of ARPNET which is the precursor of today’s Internet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arpnet-map-march-1977.png

Even thought the Internet is less than 40 years old, already myths and creation stories circulate about its origins. One of the most persistent is that the Internet was created to allow for communications after a nuclear war. Instead of a centralized source to disseminate messages, messages would be sent in packets through multiple sources. If one was destroyed or went down, information would be routed in different directions around the roadblock. The myth was born out a report from the RAND Corporation which realized the potential of ARPNET in the event of war. The original researchers for the Defense Department were only trying to find a way around faulty switches and the scarcity of large research mainframes in our country. But the myth of the creation of the Internet as a response to nuclear war stuck precisely because it would work in the way that the Rand Corporation envisioned.

But just as the invention of the printing press has come to symbolize the birth of the modern age, so the Internet has come to symbolize the cultural transformation we are now undergoing in the postmodern age. Instead of authority residing in centralized institutions, authority now is more likely to reside with individuals who gather together for a common project. It is the authority of an AA meeting or the Tea Party, instead of that of the Church or of the Republicans or the Democrats. So what does all this have to do with the Gospel and the Feast of Pentecost? This sermon was born out an inappropriate image I had about Pentecost. So I beg your forgiveness in advance for this image but it struck me that the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus which enabled them all to tell the Gospel story in multiple languages all at once, resembles a computer hacker taking control of multiple individual computers to spread his or her message at once. The reason I think this is a poor image is because I don’t think God over-rides our free will in the way that a hacker can over ride a computer. The Holy Spirit is a gift that God gives to us. It is up to us whether or not we will receive and use this gift in our lives. But the image of the Internet does help us see how Pentecost is a different way of being the Church. Let me explain, but first some background.

Originally Pentecost was a Jewish holiday celebrating the first fruits of the spring harvest. Later the feast was given a religious meaning and celebrated as the anniversary of the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. In this sense it is the birth date of the Jewish people. By accepting the Law, the people led out of slavery in Egypt chose to become the people of God. By living out the Torah they revealed both the holiness of God and what the Kingdom of God looks like as a community of people who care for each other and for their neighbors. After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and followers for forty days until he ascended into heaven. He promised them that he would send the Holy Spirit to them to complete his work in the world and to greater things than he had accomplished. This gift of the Spirit came 10 days after the Ascension on the Feast of Pentecost. Jews from around the Mediterranean were gathered together to celebrate the feast when they heard in their native tongue the story of Jesus. Here was the first fruits of the Kingdom of God being made manifest as the division of people into multiple languages at Babel was being undone as everyone now understood each other and received the good news of Jesus’ resurrection in their mother tongue.

Now the explanation. Over time Judaism had become centralized at the Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus was considered a threat by the rabbis because he offered God’s forgiveness outside of the sacrificial system of the Temple. Now religious authority itself was no longer vested in religious authorities like priests and rabbis, but in common people, like the fishermen from Galilee and the woman who followed Jesus. The prophetic vision of the end times when all people would become prophets and speak the Word of God was being fulfilled. Now those with the Holy Spirit had a new heart and were living out the Law without the Temple and its authorities. A new age had begun. Like the Internet, there was no central authority; everyone was empowered to be in direct relationship with God. Just as God had become human at Christmas, so now at Pentecost, humans were given the heart of God to be like Jesus. With the gift of the Holy Spirit, God now dwells within us.

Without rehearsing two thousands years of Church history, I think we are now witnessing a return to this new old way of being the Church. For too long we have thought of the Church as bishops and priests and have downplayed the role and the authority of the laity. But you are the Church. You are the followers and friends of Jesus whom God has called to do Christ’s work in and for the world. At baptism, each one of us has received the gift of the Holy Spirit. We, like the first followers of Jesus, have the same power and ability to share the Gospel. We each have unique experiences of God acting in our lives. Our stories continue the spread of the Gospel throughout the world.

I want to end on a personal note. During Annual Council this year, I realized that if I want to change the system, then I need to change. It is easy to complain about the Diocese or the National Church. Sometime, it feels like we exist and contribute for them to do our ministry. But I realized I was doing the same thing here in the Parish. We are not the people of God for the purposes of the ministry of St. Paul’s. Rather, St. Paul’s is here to help you in your day-to-day ministries. Over the next year, I will speak more about this, but I envision the vestry and I going out in pairs to talk with you about your dreams, your passions, your ministry as Christians. As an Episcopalian, I know that we need bishops and priests, but we exist to serve you, not the other way around. At Pentecost, God bypassed the institutional system to empower all God’s people to be ministers of the Gospel. That’s the real work of the Church. That’s our work together as God’s people. All of us together, filled with the Holy Spirit will proclaim the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!