Acts 16:25-40
Morning Prayer
“What must I do to be saved,” the jailer begs to know from Paul and Silas. But what exactly is it that the jailer perceives that he needs to be saved from? Because salvation is such a crucial theological concept for Christians to grasp, it is easy for us to assume that’s what the Jailer was asking. How can I be saved from my sins? How can I be born again? But are those really the questions running through the mind of the jailer. The Greek word sozo did mean, “to be saved.”
But it could simply mean salvation as rescue from a dangerous situation. And while Paul and Silas keep the jailer from suicide, his life-threatening dilemma remains. Clearly, Paul and Silas’s God does not want these men kept in chains. So of course, he frees them. But as far as he knows, the magistrates will send for the prisoners in the morning, and the jailer was ready to kill himself rather than face the wrath of Roman law. So what does it mean for him to “be saved” this night, not knowing whether he would live to see the next night?
I imagine that in the Jailer’s home, Paul and Silas told him that the One who he just acknowledged as his “Lord” himself had passed through imprisonment, torture and crucifixion, and had come out on the other side of death. And if death was not the final word for Jesus, neither would it be the Jailer and his family. Yes, the jailer was saved that night, from the self-abasement that led him to nearly throw away the gift of life, and the fear of those who falsely claimed the power of life and death.
Two thousand years later; can we speak to the everyday dangers that our neighbors face, not with platitudes, but with wisdom that helps them see beyond their fears to the Lord of life and death?
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Thursday, 12th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 16:16-24
Morning Prayer
There actually three kinds of “forces” that Paul and his companions find themselves confronting today. First of course is that force called “divination,” the ability to discern the work of spiritual forces in this world. Our fortune teller can do that, which is why she calls Paul and his friends “servants of the Most High God;” except that what she means is that they are servants of Zeus or some other Greek God. Little wonder that Paul gets annoyed.
After she is freed from that spirit, comes the next “force” – Profit – the desire to gain power and security by surrounding oneself with all the comforts, pleasures, and protection that one can pay for. The former fortune-teller’s handlers have seen all that put at risk by Paul. And in their insecurity and anger, they strike back.
Finally, there is the force of the “polis,” the city-state of Philippi, to which all the people belonged to and looked to for security in numbers. The Philippians were also very conscious of being part of an empire, the greatest yet known to humanity. Politics is also a force in our world, the desire to find comfort and protection for oneself in the safety of greater numbers – of people and soldiers. And if the price of such protection is the loss of one’s freedom and independence; that is a price people have been willing to pay in a hostile world for centuries.
“Forces” don’t have to be personal demons in order to control us. Whenever fear, greed, lust, envy, anger, dominate our minds, those attitudes become forces that lead to destructive actions, and distract us from the unmerited grace of God that is the only comfort and power in this world which we can trust.
Morning Prayer
There actually three kinds of “forces” that Paul and his companions find themselves confronting today. First of course is that force called “divination,” the ability to discern the work of spiritual forces in this world. Our fortune teller can do that, which is why she calls Paul and his friends “servants of the Most High God;” except that what she means is that they are servants of Zeus or some other Greek God. Little wonder that Paul gets annoyed.
After she is freed from that spirit, comes the next “force” – Profit – the desire to gain power and security by surrounding oneself with all the comforts, pleasures, and protection that one can pay for. The former fortune-teller’s handlers have seen all that put at risk by Paul. And in their insecurity and anger, they strike back.
Finally, there is the force of the “polis,” the city-state of Philippi, to which all the people belonged to and looked to for security in numbers. The Philippians were also very conscious of being part of an empire, the greatest yet known to humanity. Politics is also a force in our world, the desire to find comfort and protection for oneself in the safety of greater numbers – of people and soldiers. And if the price of such protection is the loss of one’s freedom and independence; that is a price people have been willing to pay in a hostile world for centuries.
“Forces” don’t have to be personal demons in order to control us. Whenever fear, greed, lust, envy, anger, dominate our minds, those attitudes become forces that lead to destructive actions, and distract us from the unmerited grace of God that is the only comfort and power in this world which we can trust.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Feast of Mary & Martha of Bethany
Morning PrayerJohn 11:21-33
The Gospel reading set aside for this feast is actually that familiar story of Mary sitting at Jesus’s feet, Martha’s complaint, and our Lord’s gentle chiding of Martha. I actually dealt with this story from the Gospel of Luke back in May. I actually think that this section from John’s Gospel more fairly conveys the varied gifts of these two sisters.
Mary was the passionate one. She defied the social conventions of her time, and planted herself at Jesus’s feet, among the men, daring to be a student and apprenticed preacher of Jesus’s message. Later in John’s Gospel, Mary spends an extravagant amount of money to honor Jesus with perfumed nard, anticipating his death and quick burial before his body can be properly prepared. And when Jesus finally shows up at their home in Bethany – after waiting two days before he started for Bethany – it is Mary, passionate in her grief, who first refuses to meet Jesus. Then when Martha tells her that Jesus is asking for her, it is Mary who falls at Jesus’s feet and declares, “If you had been here, my brother would still be alive!”
Mary’s passion tugs at Jesus’s heart. But it is Martha who makes him proud. There is no reason to doubt Martha’s grief. She says the same thing as Mary to Jesus. And yet, amid her grief, she also professes her faith and trust in Jesus. Indeed, in John’s Gospel it is Martha who is first to declare that Jesus is the Messiah.
Mary is passionate in her devotion. Martha is steadfast in her faith. They are both to be honored equally, as are all the Marys and Marthas of today’s world.
The Gospel reading set aside for this feast is actually that familiar story of Mary sitting at Jesus’s feet, Martha’s complaint, and our Lord’s gentle chiding of Martha. I actually dealt with this story from the Gospel of Luke back in May. I actually think that this section from John’s Gospel more fairly conveys the varied gifts of these two sisters.
Mary was the passionate one. She defied the social conventions of her time, and planted herself at Jesus’s feet, among the men, daring to be a student and apprenticed preacher of Jesus’s message. Later in John’s Gospel, Mary spends an extravagant amount of money to honor Jesus with perfumed nard, anticipating his death and quick burial before his body can be properly prepared. And when Jesus finally shows up at their home in Bethany – after waiting two days before he started for Bethany – it is Mary, passionate in her grief, who first refuses to meet Jesus. Then when Martha tells her that Jesus is asking for her, it is Mary who falls at Jesus’s feet and declares, “If you had been here, my brother would still be alive!”
Mary’s passion tugs at Jesus’s heart. But it is Martha who makes him proud. There is no reason to doubt Martha’s grief. She says the same thing as Mary to Jesus. And yet, amid her grief, she also professes her faith and trust in Jesus. Indeed, in John’s Gospel it is Martha who is first to declare that Jesus is the Messiah.
Mary is passionate in her devotion. Martha is steadfast in her faith. They are both to be honored equally, as are all the Marys and Marthas of today’s world.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Tuesday, 12th Week of Ordinary Time
Paul, Silas and Timothy were on quite the odyssey. “Forbidden by the Holy Spirit,” they were somehow unable to preach the Good News in the “province of Asia,” or modern-day southern Turkey. Okay, let’s just move a little further north into Bithynia. But “the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” So finally there they were on the Aegean coast in Troas. What now?
Remember that Paul and Timothy were Asians. This land was their home. It was familiar. Any military commander can tell you that to win the battle, you need two things: the element of surprise, and an accurate knowledge of the land on which you’re fighting. They knew this land. Yet circumstances, or perhaps some inner conviction, were frustrating their best laid plans. And here they were on the Asian coast with nowhere to go.
That is, until Paul, perhaps looking out on that expanse of water, heard a voice from the other side: “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Yes, there was Macedonia, on the other side of the Aegean, in northern Greece, on the continent of Europe.
The distance between the two continents was more than the Aegean Sea. For these men of the East, the psychological barrier was even greater. They knew no one in Europe. They had no knowledge of the land. They were the ones likely to be surprised. And yet, they obeyed the vision. Sure enough, when they reached the Philippi, they couldn’t find the familiar town synagogue where they always preached first. Somehow they found a place by the river, which seemed to serve as the “place of prayer” for the few Jews and Gentile God-fearers there. But sure enough, the person who needed their help, and who would become their helper, was there – Lydia. Perhaps it was her prayer that reached Paul in Troas.
I have plans and dreams for what this Parish might be. So do you all. Some of those plans may take off like gangbusters. Others may fall flat, “forbidden by the Holy Spirit.” We all need to cultivate that life of common prayer, where in the combination of dialogue and silence we may hear a still small voice rising in our hearts saying, “Come over here and help us.” May we all have the grace to hear that cry for help.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Monday, 12th Week of Ordinary Time
Morning Prayer
Acts 15:36-16:5
“Tempers flared, and they ended up going their separate ways” (15:39)
The above is from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible, The Message. That actually communicates better the original Greek word used here, from which we get "paroxysm." This wasn’t just a disagreement. It was a shouting, heaving argument. I don’t know whether to find consolation in the fact that even the first Christians had these arguments, or to mourn that even they were not immune to such unchristian behavior.
We at Christ Church certainly have not been immune to such flaring of tempers, and separate ways. Nobody likes conflict. And yet conflict is inevitable, in the Church, and outside the Church. So, the first step in dealing with conflict, I believe, is not to fear it. That which we fear we avoid. But avoidance simply represses the conflict, and gives the accumulating steam no place to go until it finally explodes. Conflict is one of those areas where I truly believe that the peace of Christ, which surpasses all understanding, will guide us through to resolution if we just trust in it.
But what about the time when the conflict results in flared tempers and separate ways? What good is the Church then? What sort of witness can we offer a broken world when our own behavior simply mirrors that brokenness? Look again at Paul and Barnabas. They each went their own ways. Instead of one mission trip, there were now two. John Mark would be given a chance to prove himself. Paul would discover a new helper in Timothy. And if you come back tomorrow, you’ll see how God used this argument and separation to still increase his kingdom of peace, love and unity.
Christians are as human as anybody else, just as much in need of grace as every other sinner. The difference, hopefully, is that we are always humbly open to God’s grace and power to make good what we screw up.
Acts 15:36-16:5
“Tempers flared, and they ended up going their separate ways” (15:39)
The above is from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible, The Message. That actually communicates better the original Greek word used here, from which we get "paroxysm." This wasn’t just a disagreement. It was a shouting, heaving argument. I don’t know whether to find consolation in the fact that even the first Christians had these arguments, or to mourn that even they were not immune to such unchristian behavior.
We at Christ Church certainly have not been immune to such flaring of tempers, and separate ways. Nobody likes conflict. And yet conflict is inevitable, in the Church, and outside the Church. So, the first step in dealing with conflict, I believe, is not to fear it. That which we fear we avoid. But avoidance simply represses the conflict, and gives the accumulating steam no place to go until it finally explodes. Conflict is one of those areas where I truly believe that the peace of Christ, which surpasses all understanding, will guide us through to resolution if we just trust in it.
But what about the time when the conflict results in flared tempers and separate ways? What good is the Church then? What sort of witness can we offer a broken world when our own behavior simply mirrors that brokenness? Look again at Paul and Barnabas. They each went their own ways. Instead of one mission trip, there were now two. John Mark would be given a chance to prove himself. Paul would discover a new helper in Timothy. And if you come back tomorrow, you’ll see how God used this argument and separation to still increase his kingdom of peace, love and unity.
Christians are as human as anybody else, just as much in need of grace as every other sinner. The difference, hopefully, is that we are always humbly open to God’s grace and power to make good what we screw up.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Sermon for the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Paul's prayer is that we may know the love of Christ even though it is beyond all knowledge. All knowledge from the most dogmatic traditional to the most extreme skeptical will fail. To know the love of Christ is to know ourselves as we are known and loved by our Creator.
It’s not every day that one of our readings from Holy Scripture isn’t a story, or a poem of praise like the Psalms, or an exposition of Christian doctrine. What we have from Paul this morning is a straight-up prayer. That’s pretty simple, except that this is Paul speaking. And “Paul” and “simple” don’t generally go together. Boiled down to its essence, Paul prays that the Ephesians will know the love of Christ, which is beyond knowledge. “Paul” and “paradox” do go together quite nicely, which you either love or hate. How can we know something, which, basically, is unknown?
To answer that question requires us first to refine the question. What exactly is “knowledge?” If you think about that question for just a short time, then it becomes obvious that there are different ways of “knowing” something, and different types of “knowledge.” There is the knowledge that is handed down from generation to generation, called tradition. The latest generation may have forgotten exactly why the first generation came up with the truth they have inherited. But the latest generation trusts that what was learned in the past is a sure guide for the future. That is, until a new situation arises which our ancestors never anticipated.
Then there is scientific knowledge. If you can observe it, then you know it’s true. Except that scientists have shown that the very act of observation can affect the object you’re observing. Then there is ideology, in which we deduce certain political principles from our experience, and then impose that ideology on the world around us. The belief that this is “The Way the World Works” sometimes colors their memory, so that most Republicans think that the budget deficits increased under Bill Clinton, while Democrats believe that the economy shrank under Ronald Reagan.
So, all those kinds of knowledge can’t be what Paul is talking about. What he is not talking about is “objective” knowledge: the knowledge of objects outside of ourselves. That’s mostly the kind of knowledge that we seek. But that kind of knowledge is simply another form of power-grabbing. The more we know about the world around us, the more control we can exercise over it, or more likely, the easier we can convince ourselves that we control it.
None of this is what Paul prays that his readers might “know?” He prays that they might know the “love of Christ.” Love is knowledge. In fact, Love is really the most difficult knowledge to attain. Objects can be observed. Words can be studied. Things outside of ourselves can be seen, touched, counted. But we can only know the love of Christ in the one place we can’t see, touch, count – our inner selves.
When you’re young, who you are is an open book full of blank pages, just waiting for you to write in. When we’re young, we can try on different selves, hoping one will somehow “fit,” will feel right. When we’re older, we have filled that book with our writings. But others have written in our book. Things have happened to us that we didn’t plan, or ask for. Those are pages that we prefer not to read: pain inflicted on us, pain we have inflicted on others. And yet here we are this Sunday, hearing a prayer that we might “know” the “love of Christ.” To know the love of God in Christ Jesus is to know ourselves through the eyes of the One who made us, who knows every single page of our book, and still loves every single one of us.
To know anything of God raises the question of Revelation – the God beyond all knowledge revealing himself in such a way that we can claim to know the unknowable. The Bible gives us stories of how God has revealed himself in objective ways – burning bushes, divided waters, the Word made flesh. It’s safe to say that most, if not all of us, will never observe such revelation.
But Paul assures us that we can receive God’s revelation in our hearts, if we can screw up our courage, and open that book to those pages that we would rather not read, because Jesus is there, in all his love for you and me. There is no revelation more powerful than to “know” ourselves as the one who made us knows us, and loves us.
To know that they were fully known and fully loved was Paul's prayer for the Ephesians, and I can think of no better prayer for us today.
It’s not every day that one of our readings from Holy Scripture isn’t a story, or a poem of praise like the Psalms, or an exposition of Christian doctrine. What we have from Paul this morning is a straight-up prayer. That’s pretty simple, except that this is Paul speaking. And “Paul” and “simple” don’t generally go together. Boiled down to its essence, Paul prays that the Ephesians will know the love of Christ, which is beyond knowledge. “Paul” and “paradox” do go together quite nicely, which you either love or hate. How can we know something, which, basically, is unknown?
To answer that question requires us first to refine the question. What exactly is “knowledge?” If you think about that question for just a short time, then it becomes obvious that there are different ways of “knowing” something, and different types of “knowledge.” There is the knowledge that is handed down from generation to generation, called tradition. The latest generation may have forgotten exactly why the first generation came up with the truth they have inherited. But the latest generation trusts that what was learned in the past is a sure guide for the future. That is, until a new situation arises which our ancestors never anticipated.
Then there is scientific knowledge. If you can observe it, then you know it’s true. Except that scientists have shown that the very act of observation can affect the object you’re observing. Then there is ideology, in which we deduce certain political principles from our experience, and then impose that ideology on the world around us. The belief that this is “The Way the World Works” sometimes colors their memory, so that most Republicans think that the budget deficits increased under Bill Clinton, while Democrats believe that the economy shrank under Ronald Reagan.
So, all those kinds of knowledge can’t be what Paul is talking about. What he is not talking about is “objective” knowledge: the knowledge of objects outside of ourselves. That’s mostly the kind of knowledge that we seek. But that kind of knowledge is simply another form of power-grabbing. The more we know about the world around us, the more control we can exercise over it, or more likely, the easier we can convince ourselves that we control it.
None of this is what Paul prays that his readers might “know?” He prays that they might know the “love of Christ.” Love is knowledge. In fact, Love is really the most difficult knowledge to attain. Objects can be observed. Words can be studied. Things outside of ourselves can be seen, touched, counted. But we can only know the love of Christ in the one place we can’t see, touch, count – our inner selves.
When you’re young, who you are is an open book full of blank pages, just waiting for you to write in. When we’re young, we can try on different selves, hoping one will somehow “fit,” will feel right. When we’re older, we have filled that book with our writings. But others have written in our book. Things have happened to us that we didn’t plan, or ask for. Those are pages that we prefer not to read: pain inflicted on us, pain we have inflicted on others. And yet here we are this Sunday, hearing a prayer that we might “know” the “love of Christ.” To know the love of God in Christ Jesus is to know ourselves through the eyes of the One who made us, who knows every single page of our book, and still loves every single one of us.
To know anything of God raises the question of Revelation – the God beyond all knowledge revealing himself in such a way that we can claim to know the unknowable. The Bible gives us stories of how God has revealed himself in objective ways – burning bushes, divided waters, the Word made flesh. It’s safe to say that most, if not all of us, will never observe such revelation.
But Paul assures us that we can receive God’s revelation in our hearts, if we can screw up our courage, and open that book to those pages that we would rather not read, because Jesus is there, in all his love for you and me. There is no revelation more powerful than to “know” ourselves as the one who made us knows us, and loves us.
To know that they were fully known and fully loved was Paul's prayer for the Ephesians, and I can think of no better prayer for us today.
Friday, July 24, 2009
St. James Major, Apsotle & Martyr
Matthew 10:16-32Saturday, July 25, is the feast day of the Apostle James, often referred to as “Major” to distinguish him from the other James among the Twelve, the “son of Alphaeus,” who is known as “James the Minor.” Of course, they were both members of the Twelve, both called by Jesus to a special position of leadership in his Church. But it is also clear from the Gospel that Peter, and James and John the sons of Zebedee, held a special place among the Twelve. All three were present with Jesus at his raising of Jairus’s daughter, his Transfiguration, and at Gethsemane.
Jesus nicknamed James and John, “Boanerges,” literally, “Sons of Thunder.” And they earned that nickname. Perhaps it was that zeal that led to James’s beheading by King Herod, described in Acts. As he went to his death, I’m sure that James remembered what he and John had asked of Jesus. They had asked to sit at Jesus’s right and left when he came in “glory.” What Jesus promised was that they would share his cup and baptism, in other words, his death. I believe that as he went to his death, James understood that he actually was sharing in Jesus’s glory.
The Rembrandt portrait to the left shows James at prayer, before he is to die, and knowing that no thunderous strength of his will save him. But that James, perhaps, learned humility does not negate his passion for Jesus’s message. The Church needs both. We need people who are bold and courageous in standing up for Jesus in a hostile world. We also need those whose gifts tend more toward reflection and contemplation, which will help guide the aim of those who fling their lightning bolts at the forces of evil. May our Church never be bereft of both gifts.
“O gracious God, we remember before you today your servant and apostle James, first among the Twelve to suffer martyrdom for the Name of Jesus Christ; and we pray that you will pour out upon the leaders of your Church that spirit of self-denying service by which alone they may have true authority among your people; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Thursday, 11th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 15:1-21
Yes, Peter had experienced the Holy Spirit at work among the uncircumcised Gentile Cornelius and his household. But it was one thing to welcome the odd Gentile. It was quite another to welcome whole churches like the ones which Paul and Barnabas had founded, teaming with uncircumcised Gentiles. Was Cornelius just the exception that proved the rule? Understand that as far as the children of Israel were concerned, there was no difference between the command of circumcision and the command not to murder. All 630 commandments of the Law found in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy had been given by God to Moses. It was not for human beings to pick and choose the ones that were no irrelevant.
Arguing against imposition of the Jewish Law on Gentiles, Peter points to the Holy Spirit as his authority. He has to; he can’t cite Jesus. Jesus may have commended the faith of another Roman soldier. But he himself said that he was sent to the lost sheep of Israel. And while he may have also called his disciples to spread his message to the ends of the earth, he never specified the relation of the Law to the new covenant sealed by his blood. This would not be the last time that the Church found itself pushed into new directions by those who insisted that the Holy Spirit was doing a new thing in a new situation that hadn’t existed in Jesus’s time.
But won’t that make the Church subject to every random wind of fads and falsities? If you let go of circumcision, what’s to stop the Church from eventually giving the thumbs-up to prostitution? James, the brother of Jesus, a devout Jew observant of the Law, settles on the compromise. No circumcision, but avoidance of idol worship, observance of the Jewish food laws, and avoidance of sexual immorality.
Today, we don’t think of certain foods as clean or unclean. But remember one of the “Four Marks of the Church” – Fellowship, or Communion. I have stressed the importance of community as part of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And communities come together most often over food. How could the Gentiles consider themselves part of the Body of Christ if they couldn’t share table fellowship with their new Jewish brothers and sisters?
To the pure, such compromises invite scorn and charges of inconsistency. In truth, this is how the Church discerns the Holy Spirit at work. Does it nurture Christian community, or destroy it? Sometimes, the Holy Spirit does do a new thing, but not at the expense of community that first defined itself in Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago.
Yes, Peter had experienced the Holy Spirit at work among the uncircumcised Gentile Cornelius and his household. But it was one thing to welcome the odd Gentile. It was quite another to welcome whole churches like the ones which Paul and Barnabas had founded, teaming with uncircumcised Gentiles. Was Cornelius just the exception that proved the rule? Understand that as far as the children of Israel were concerned, there was no difference between the command of circumcision and the command not to murder. All 630 commandments of the Law found in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy had been given by God to Moses. It was not for human beings to pick and choose the ones that were no irrelevant.
Arguing against imposition of the Jewish Law on Gentiles, Peter points to the Holy Spirit as his authority. He has to; he can’t cite Jesus. Jesus may have commended the faith of another Roman soldier. But he himself said that he was sent to the lost sheep of Israel. And while he may have also called his disciples to spread his message to the ends of the earth, he never specified the relation of the Law to the new covenant sealed by his blood. This would not be the last time that the Church found itself pushed into new directions by those who insisted that the Holy Spirit was doing a new thing in a new situation that hadn’t existed in Jesus’s time.
But won’t that make the Church subject to every random wind of fads and falsities? If you let go of circumcision, what’s to stop the Church from eventually giving the thumbs-up to prostitution? James, the brother of Jesus, a devout Jew observant of the Law, settles on the compromise. No circumcision, but avoidance of idol worship, observance of the Jewish food laws, and avoidance of sexual immorality.
Today, we don’t think of certain foods as clean or unclean. But remember one of the “Four Marks of the Church” – Fellowship, or Communion. I have stressed the importance of community as part of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And communities come together most often over food. How could the Gentiles consider themselves part of the Body of Christ if they couldn’t share table fellowship with their new Jewish brothers and sisters?
To the pure, such compromises invite scorn and charges of inconsistency. In truth, this is how the Church discerns the Holy Spirit at work. Does it nurture Christian community, or destroy it? Sometimes, the Holy Spirit does do a new thing, but not at the expense of community that first defined itself in Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Feast of St. Mary Magdalene
John 20:11-18There may be no women treated worse by history than Mary Magdalene. For more than a millennia, she was wrongly identified as an adulteress and prostitute. Now in our time, her image continues to be sexualized as books like the DaVinci Code try to dress her up as Jesus’s wife. Lost in all this is the power of her witness to Jesus, crucified and risen.
Around 600 AD, Pope Gregory the Great conflated 2 stories close together in Luke’s Gospel: 1) Jesus’s forgiveness of the sinful woman who anointed his feet with her tears, and 2)the mention of Mary Magdalene being healed of seven demons by Jesus, then becoming one of his women followers. Thus was born Mary Magdalene, the repentant prostitute. This image was reinforced by centuries of painters who could get away with painting nude women by naming the subject Mary. But in the Eastern Orthodox Church, this conflation never happened, and that ancient church has never seen Mary in that way. In fact, Orthodox Christians hold her as equal to the 12 Apostles.
The truth is that there may have been no disciple more faithful to Jesus, in death and life. When all the men who Jesus had chosen as his apostles had abandoned him (save the beloved disciple), Mary Magdalene did not. She accompanied him to his cross, and did not turn away from the stomach-turning sight of Jesus nailed to that cross, and dying a horrible death. While the rest of the disciples were wallowing in their grief, it was Mary Magdalene who led some other women to Jesus’s tomb. And it was to Mary Magdalene that the risen Christ first appeared. And it was Mark Magdalene who was sent to the rest of Jesus’s disciples, as the “Apostle to the apostles,” to proclaim the greatest news of all time.
Mary Magdalene was faithful to her Lord in good and bad. Pray for us, Mary that we may be faithful to Christ’s people in good or bad.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Tuesday, 11th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 14:8-23
I hate to tell you all this, in case you haven’t figured it out already. Speaking the Good News is as likely to get you into trouble as bring you unalloyed happiness. First, Paul and Barnabas, find a simple healing to be the source of a huge misunderstanding. When they make it clear to the locals in Lystra that they’re not Zeus and Hermes, they only bring suspicion on themselves. Remember that scene in Return of the Jedi, when the Ewoks are about to cook our heroes as an offering to the newfound god, C-3PO? Even when the robot tells the Ewoks to cease, they are still intent on their celebration of a god among them. And they don’t much care what their “God” thinks.
The pagans in Lystra could understand the Greek Gods visiting them. But mere men healing people? What’s these guys’ game? And then, here come some zealous Jews from Antioch, intent on undermining Paul’s and Barnabas’s mission. And so, this mob seizes Paul and throws him out of their town, stoning him as he goes. This wasn’t a trial and execution, just a passionate mob that, thankfully, had enough before actually killing Paul.
Letting the Word of God speak through you is as likely to make you enemies as friends. And even your friends are as likely to hurt your cause as your enemies. So what do you do? In a sense, Paul followed the advice of General Oliver Smith, commander of the 1st Marine Division in the Korean War. When they were forced to retreat during the Chinese offensive in 1950. “We’re not retreating, we’re just advancing in a different direction” (It wasn’t MacArthur who said this, contra Sarah Palin).
Notice that after some time away, Paul and Barnabas make their way back to Lystra, and Antioch, where the seeds they plated under duress have blossomed, and just require a little more work. So, 2000 years later, where do we need to speak boldly, in such a way as to risk misunderstanding, even by those who would be our friends? Where do you fear making enemies? That’s probably where Jesus is.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Monday, 11th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 13:44-52
Paul and Barnabas have preached to the synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia (not the Antioch from which they started their mission). Now, they are preaching to the whole town. And the Jews, it is said, “were filled with jealousy.” But the Greek word translated here as jealousy is actually zelou, from which we get “zeal.”
Too many English translators of the Bible have simply assumed selfish motives on the part of the Jewish people in this story. Perhaps some were jealous to see so many Gentiles turning to these upstarts and strangers. But I suspect that many also were still nursing the slights, the insults, and attacks that they, and their ancestors, had suffered at the hands of the pagan nations. And now who they were being welcomed into the worship of the one God without being made to grovel in shame at the feet of those they had oppressed. Who were Paul and Barnabas to be so presumptuous as throw the doors open?
Some years ago, H. Richard Niebhur wrote a book called Christ and Culture. In that book he examined the five different positions that Christians had taken toward the secular culture in which they had lived. They range from the extreme of total opposition to total accommodation, and alternatives in between. For those faithful Jews who had found themselves in constant tension with the surrounding culture, Paul’s message seemed to signal a loss of what had made their faith distinctive. In some of his personal letters to the local churches he founded, Paul would find himself having to pull his Gentile students back from the prevailing culture.
In a world where many forces would be our Lord – greed, pleasure, ideology, etc. – we must always be ready to make clear that “Jesus is Lord.” And yet, Jesus continues to come to us, in the form of the Holy Spirit that blows like the wind into our lives from unexpected directions. Let us hold fast to our Lord, even when he blows new people, and new ideas into our midst.
Paul and Barnabas have preached to the synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia (not the Antioch from which they started their mission). Now, they are preaching to the whole town. And the Jews, it is said, “were filled with jealousy.” But the Greek word translated here as jealousy is actually zelou, from which we get “zeal.”
Too many English translators of the Bible have simply assumed selfish motives on the part of the Jewish people in this story. Perhaps some were jealous to see so many Gentiles turning to these upstarts and strangers. But I suspect that many also were still nursing the slights, the insults, and attacks that they, and their ancestors, had suffered at the hands of the pagan nations. And now who they were being welcomed into the worship of the one God without being made to grovel in shame at the feet of those they had oppressed. Who were Paul and Barnabas to be so presumptuous as throw the doors open?
Some years ago, H. Richard Niebhur wrote a book called Christ and Culture. In that book he examined the five different positions that Christians had taken toward the secular culture in which they had lived. They range from the extreme of total opposition to total accommodation, and alternatives in between. For those faithful Jews who had found themselves in constant tension with the surrounding culture, Paul’s message seemed to signal a loss of what had made their faith distinctive. In some of his personal letters to the local churches he founded, Paul would find himself having to pull his Gentile students back from the prevailing culture.
In a world where many forces would be our Lord – greed, pleasure, ideology, etc. – we must always be ready to make clear that “Jesus is Lord.” And yet, Jesus continues to come to us, in the form of the Holy Spirit that blows like the wind into our lives from unexpected directions. Let us hold fast to our Lord, even when he blows new people, and new ideas into our midst.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Sermon for the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Our brother Anglican, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, can tell you a lot about breaking down the kinds of walls described in today's reading from Ephesians. In the years of apartheid and tyranny, when blacks were 3rd class citizens in their own country, Tutu was a leader in the movement of non-violent resistance. I once heard him tell the story of when he led a meeting of this resistance in a church. Suddenly, the rumbling of engines was heard from outside. Looking out the windows, they saw armored personnel vehicles full of police with rifles pointed at them. What to do? Tutu calmly led his brothers and sisters outside, and on his order they waved to the soldiers and shouted, "Hi!" For whatever reason -- conscience, befuddlement -- the police held their fire. Slowly, but surely, the walls which enslaved black and white in oppression and hatred fell down.
The dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile was actually higher than the wall in South Africa. It had been added on to for centuries. As the Jews remembered the conquests, the forced exiles, the returns and yet more conquests, they added brick upon brick to that wall. The more they isolated themselves from contact with the rest of the world, the more offense the Gentiles took at this small, stubborn tribe.
And so "Paul" speaks to Jew and Gentile in Ephesus, begging them to see that Jesus Christ has broken down that wall of hostility in his own human flesh. How? He may not say it explicitly, but our author clearly means the cross, for which Jew and Gentile are equally responsible. For centuries, we Christians evaded our responsibility by calling Jews, "Christ killers." Certainly their leaders, acting on their behalf, engineered Jesus's execution. But you know who the "Christ killers" really are? You and me. It was Roman soldiers, Gentiles acting on behalf of all Gentiles, who hammered nails into Jesus' hands and feet, and hung him up to die.
We are all responsible for Jesus's death. And today, when we erect walls of misunderstanding, suspicion and accusation, we just keep trying to put another brick in that wall and another nail on that cross. But if we will just look up from our bricklaying, we will see Jesus, patiently breaking down the bricks we have laid. Because we are all equally responsible for Jesus's death, then we are all equally forgiven. And in that mutual forgiveness, we are, as "Paul" writes, reconciled to God and each other. No longer separated by a wall of bricks, we ourselves are joined to each other in one building, Jesus Christ himself being the cornerstone.
Or is Jesus the keystone? Our author could have meant either, or perhaps both. The keystone is what made it possible to construct spacious arches in the ancient world. The wider apart the two sides of the arch are, then the sooner those two sides will collapse under the downward force of gravity. But put a keystone in the middle, and that stone will absorb the downward force and disperse it back to each side toward their respective bases.
There are forces in the Church, perhaps as many as the opinions that are deeply held in this unruly family called The Episcopal Church. But when those competing forces come together at the top of the arch and threaten to collapse it, there is Jesus the keystone who pushes our opinions right back at us and asks, "Are you that sure you're right?" And so we remain a holy building, held together by Christ Jesus the keystone.
In keeping with the spirit of Archbishop Tutu, the theme of our just concluded General Convention was "Ubuntu," an African philosophical concept that means, "I am who I am because of you, and you are who you are because of me." Contrary to our sometimes exaggerated individualism, none of us has chosen to be ourselves on our own. Who I am and who you are is a combination of choices, some made by us, and some made for us. That's pretty scary. Does it mean that in any conflict or disagreement I have to give in, that I have to surrender myself?
That's not what happened in Anaheim last week. Resolutions were passed, which honored different forces, different opinions, on the issues facing our church. And General Convention agreed that the only opinion that counts is Jesus's. One of the most important resolutions passed was a statement of principles for interfaith dialogue. And at the heart of our principles is this one simple statement: "Jesus is Lord." That is what Paul said to the Corinthians. And that "opinion," my fellow bricks, is the keystone. If we can agree on that, then the rest of the pieces will in God’s good time fall into place, and the arch will remain secure.
Let us not place brick on top of brick in a high wall of hostility. We are called to build an arch, reaching towards each other to seek mutual understanding. So, keep reaching. Jesus the keystone is waiting in the middle for us.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Friday, 10th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 13:13-25
“Of this man's offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised.” (Acts 13:23)
This is the first and only time in Acts that Paul describes Jesus as “Savior.” Of course, around here, that word gets thrown around a lot. Is Jesus Christ your personal Lord and Savior, by whom your sins are forgiven? Is salvation about your getting right with God? That’s not at all what Paul is saying here, to his Jewish brothers in the synagogue.
These faithful children of the nation of Israel weren’t as interested in personal salvation as they were in the fulfillment of God’s promises to all the people of Israel—that all the nations would be blessed as Abraham was to be blessed—that the people brought out of Egypt by Moses would bring salvation to all the kingdoms of Earth—that David’s kingdom would always be that secure base from which salvation and blessing would flow throughout the world.
God’s promises were to one people, one nation, and ultimately to all peoples and all nations. Salvation is not personal. It is communal. Certainly, repentance and forgiveness is an essential part of that process, and that was the ministry of John the Baptist. But John was merely the forerunner of “Great David’s greater son.” Paul and Barnabas were saying to their brothers: God’s promise has been fulfilled; so stop waiting for God to save you all here in this little synagogue, and get out there and save the Gentiles.
So, salvation for you and me starts at Christ Church. Through the Eucharist on Sunday, we are nourished with Jesus himself, and reconnected each other as hands and feet of Jesus’s mystical body. Through our prayer and study, we teach and encourage each other in the faith. And so, strengthened and renewed, we reach out to those whom Jesus saves through us. And the new perspectives brought by new members helps us “established” Episcopalians to grow in our own salvation.
The theme of the almost concluded General Convention is “Ubuntu,” an African word meaning that who I am is a result of my relationship with you. In other words, I am who I am because of you, and you are who you are because of me. In church-speak, it means that I am not “saved,” without you, and you are not “saved” without me. Thanks be to God that in Jesus Christ, no one is saved alone.
“Of this man's offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised.” (Acts 13:23)
This is the first and only time in Acts that Paul describes Jesus as “Savior.” Of course, around here, that word gets thrown around a lot. Is Jesus Christ your personal Lord and Savior, by whom your sins are forgiven? Is salvation about your getting right with God? That’s not at all what Paul is saying here, to his Jewish brothers in the synagogue.
These faithful children of the nation of Israel weren’t as interested in personal salvation as they were in the fulfillment of God’s promises to all the people of Israel—that all the nations would be blessed as Abraham was to be blessed—that the people brought out of Egypt by Moses would bring salvation to all the kingdoms of Earth—that David’s kingdom would always be that secure base from which salvation and blessing would flow throughout the world.
God’s promises were to one people, one nation, and ultimately to all peoples and all nations. Salvation is not personal. It is communal. Certainly, repentance and forgiveness is an essential part of that process, and that was the ministry of John the Baptist. But John was merely the forerunner of “Great David’s greater son.” Paul and Barnabas were saying to their brothers: God’s promise has been fulfilled; so stop waiting for God to save you all here in this little synagogue, and get out there and save the Gentiles.
So, salvation for you and me starts at Christ Church. Through the Eucharist on Sunday, we are nourished with Jesus himself, and reconnected each other as hands and feet of Jesus’s mystical body. Through our prayer and study, we teach and encourage each other in the faith. And so, strengthened and renewed, we reach out to those whom Jesus saves through us. And the new perspectives brought by new members helps us “established” Episcopalians to grow in our own salvation.
The theme of the almost concluded General Convention is “Ubuntu,” an African word meaning that who I am is a result of my relationship with you. In other words, I am who I am because of you, and you are who you are because of me. In church-speak, it means that I am not “saved,” without you, and you are not “saved” without me. Thanks be to God that in Jesus Christ, no one is saved alone.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Thursday, 10th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 12:18-25
Accommodation and confrontation. Both are in ample supply in today’s reading from Acts, which is also the “midpoint” of this book. All the action up to this point has taken place, over a period of 11 years, in that part of the world that today we call, “The Holy Land,” Israel up the Mediterranean cost of present-day Lebanon, and as far north as Antioch, which today is in the far southern tip of Turkey. Most of the rest of Acts will take place wherever Paul is sent by God on his mission trips. The original 12 apostles have figured prominently in the story up to this point. From this point on, Paul steps forward as the principal “hero” of the story.
And today, for the first time, it is “Paul,” not “Saul.” Saul is Hebrew, Paul Greek. And Paul is traveling in prominently gentile country. But “Paul” is not a direct translation of “Saul.” The problem with that Hebrew name is that sounded much like a Greek word that referred to walking effeminantly, like a “sissy” to use a schoolyard term. And so, accommodating the culture in which he walks, Saul goes by a name that sounds like “Saul” but avoids the unhelpful connotation.
And while Paul is known today as the “Apostle to the Gentiles,” he never considered himself no longer a faithful Jew. Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel. And Jesus himself said that he had been sent first to the lost sheep of Israel. So today we see the beginning of a pattern repeated wherever Paul went. He goes first to the synagogue, and only he has won as many believers from among the chosen people, does he go to the Gentiles.
Of course, when you break through the barriers by which people create artificial divisions between themselves, you can expect opposition. When you begin to leave the familiar places you’ve known, and venture out to new lands, you can expect opposition. And on the island of Cyprus, Paul and Barnabas were just getting their feet wet in the unfamiliar. Barnabas, after all, was from Cyrpus. But opposition they meet from the magician Elymas, who was not so much an illusionist, but someone who claimed to understand the forces that move the world. And this isn’t like “The Force” of Star Wars, which its adherents understand is something you can’t control or manipulate, but flow with.
Elymas claimed to be able to control these forces, and use them for his own purpose. Today, people read horoscopes, pursue tarot cards readings, and play Ouija. Are the real “forces” there, or are they just illusions? I’m not sure. Are they demonic? Is that what made Elymas a “son of the devil.” Personally, if such “forces” do exist, it is not the forces that are “demonic,” or not. What is wrong is the attempt to use those forces to ward off the unexpected occurrences of life. What is wrong is to use such forces as a means to procure benefits for ourselves, rather than accept God’s blessings, which we can’t control but that come by God’s grace.
Paul accommodates the culture he is evangelizing. He accommodates the tradition of his people. But he is not afraid to confront the forces of the world to which we give power over our lives, and calls us to accept God’s unmerited grace, and abundant blessings.
Accommodation and confrontation. Both are in ample supply in today’s reading from Acts, which is also the “midpoint” of this book. All the action up to this point has taken place, over a period of 11 years, in that part of the world that today we call, “The Holy Land,” Israel up the Mediterranean cost of present-day Lebanon, and as far north as Antioch, which today is in the far southern tip of Turkey. Most of the rest of Acts will take place wherever Paul is sent by God on his mission trips. The original 12 apostles have figured prominently in the story up to this point. From this point on, Paul steps forward as the principal “hero” of the story.
And today, for the first time, it is “Paul,” not “Saul.” Saul is Hebrew, Paul Greek. And Paul is traveling in prominently gentile country. But “Paul” is not a direct translation of “Saul.” The problem with that Hebrew name is that sounded much like a Greek word that referred to walking effeminantly, like a “sissy” to use a schoolyard term. And so, accommodating the culture in which he walks, Saul goes by a name that sounds like “Saul” but avoids the unhelpful connotation.
And while Paul is known today as the “Apostle to the Gentiles,” he never considered himself no longer a faithful Jew. Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel. And Jesus himself said that he had been sent first to the lost sheep of Israel. So today we see the beginning of a pattern repeated wherever Paul went. He goes first to the synagogue, and only he has won as many believers from among the chosen people, does he go to the Gentiles.
Of course, when you break through the barriers by which people create artificial divisions between themselves, you can expect opposition. When you begin to leave the familiar places you’ve known, and venture out to new lands, you can expect opposition. And on the island of Cyprus, Paul and Barnabas were just getting their feet wet in the unfamiliar. Barnabas, after all, was from Cyrpus. But opposition they meet from the magician Elymas, who was not so much an illusionist, but someone who claimed to understand the forces that move the world. And this isn’t like “The Force” of Star Wars, which its adherents understand is something you can’t control or manipulate, but flow with.
Elymas claimed to be able to control these forces, and use them for his own purpose. Today, people read horoscopes, pursue tarot cards readings, and play Ouija. Are the real “forces” there, or are they just illusions? I’m not sure. Are they demonic? Is that what made Elymas a “son of the devil.” Personally, if such “forces” do exist, it is not the forces that are “demonic,” or not. What is wrong is the attempt to use those forces to ward off the unexpected occurrences of life. What is wrong is to use such forces as a means to procure benefits for ourselves, rather than accept God’s blessings, which we can’t control but that come by God’s grace.
Paul accommodates the culture he is evangelizing. He accommodates the tradition of his people. But he is not afraid to confront the forces of the world to which we give power over our lives, and calls us to accept God’s unmerited grace, and abundant blessings.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Wednesday, 10th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 12:18-25
Today’s scene from Acts was well known to the people of the region. The Jewish historian Josephus reports that Herod wore a gorgeous robe of fine silver. Imagine the sun shining on that robe. Imagine the robe glittering and sparkling in the eyes of his rapt audience as Herod moved about, spreading his pearls of wisdom. No wonder the crowd began to shout, “The voice of a god!”
I, and other scholars, believe that Herod was preparing to declare himself the Messiah, the Christ, the King anointed by God himself to redeem the people of Israel. Of course, what if the Jewish people had rallied around him? What then? Rebellion against Roman rule? They actually tried that in 66 AD, without any messiah. Four years later, that rebellion ended with thousands dead, Jerusalem burned to the ground, the Temple of God destroyed, and the nation dispersed. Jesus predicted it all. Herod played with fire, and got burned
Kingdoms and empires come and go. And don’t assume that our kingdom, however prodigally blessed and virtuous, will alone avoid that fate. We don’t need a King to enlarge our territory, to put up higher walls against our enemies who remain at the gates, clawing their way under. We need someone whose mere “word” carries power, but not the kind of power that overwhelms its enemies, or even manipulates them into doing what we want.
We don’t need human words. We need the “word,” which the prophet Isaiah described:
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. (Isaiah 55:10-11)
Here we are, centuries later, because as Luke wrote, “the word of God increased and multiplied.” Thanks be to God.
Today’s scene from Acts was well known to the people of the region. The Jewish historian Josephus reports that Herod wore a gorgeous robe of fine silver. Imagine the sun shining on that robe. Imagine the robe glittering and sparkling in the eyes of his rapt audience as Herod moved about, spreading his pearls of wisdom. No wonder the crowd began to shout, “The voice of a god!”
I, and other scholars, believe that Herod was preparing to declare himself the Messiah, the Christ, the King anointed by God himself to redeem the people of Israel. Of course, what if the Jewish people had rallied around him? What then? Rebellion against Roman rule? They actually tried that in 66 AD, without any messiah. Four years later, that rebellion ended with thousands dead, Jerusalem burned to the ground, the Temple of God destroyed, and the nation dispersed. Jesus predicted it all. Herod played with fire, and got burned
Kingdoms and empires come and go. And don’t assume that our kingdom, however prodigally blessed and virtuous, will alone avoid that fate. We don’t need a King to enlarge our territory, to put up higher walls against our enemies who remain at the gates, clawing their way under. We need someone whose mere “word” carries power, but not the kind of power that overwhelms its enemies, or even manipulates them into doing what we want.
We don’t need human words. We need the “word,” which the prophet Isaiah described:
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. (Isaiah 55:10-11)
Here we are, centuries later, because as Luke wrote, “the word of God increased and multiplied.” Thanks be to God.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Tuesday, 10th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 12:1-17
Today begins the confrontation of two kings: Jesus and Herod. Yesterday, I wrote of how Jesus’s disciples, by insisting on Jesus as the Messiah, or Christ, had become well known in Antioch as “King’s men.” Their king was Jesus.
Now the story moves back to Jerusalem, and we see King Herod Agrippa I, who really was a “king” only because the Roman Emperor Claudius had made him a king. Roman Emperors had made his father, Herod Antipas, and his father, “Herod the Great,” kings before Agrippa. The first Herod was “great” in the measure of his cruelty. Read in Matthew’s Gospel of the slaughter of the young boys in Bethlehem to get a taste.
There is no evidence that Jesus’s disciples were plotting in any way against Herod, or Caesar for that matter. But by claiming the title of God’s Anointed for Jesus, these “Christians” were acclaiming him as a King. Thus, it makes sense that Herod would strike against this movement. Note that James, the brother of John, was not stoned, as Stephen was for offending the Jewish leaders’ religious authority. James suffered the death of those convicted of rebellion.
As he went to his death, I’m sure that James remembered what his mother had asked of Jesus on his and John’s behalf. She asked that her sons sit at Jesus’s right and left when he came in “glory.” What Jesus promised was that they would share his cup and baptism, in other words, his death. I believe that as he went to his death, James understood that he actually was sharing in Jesus’s glory.
Jesus is not a King untouched by defeat, who destroys his enemies and conquers territory. He endures defeat, survives even death, and turns the hearts of his enemies. Just ask Saul. Jesus is not a “winner,” who divides the world between winners and losers. He always offers peace, and lets his enemies judge themselves. That judgment will be made clear tomorrow.
Today begins the confrontation of two kings: Jesus and Herod. Yesterday, I wrote of how Jesus’s disciples, by insisting on Jesus as the Messiah, or Christ, had become well known in Antioch as “King’s men.” Their king was Jesus.
Now the story moves back to Jerusalem, and we see King Herod Agrippa I, who really was a “king” only because the Roman Emperor Claudius had made him a king. Roman Emperors had made his father, Herod Antipas, and his father, “Herod the Great,” kings before Agrippa. The first Herod was “great” in the measure of his cruelty. Read in Matthew’s Gospel of the slaughter of the young boys in Bethlehem to get a taste.
There is no evidence that Jesus’s disciples were plotting in any way against Herod, or Caesar for that matter. But by claiming the title of God’s Anointed for Jesus, these “Christians” were acclaiming him as a King. Thus, it makes sense that Herod would strike against this movement. Note that James, the brother of John, was not stoned, as Stephen was for offending the Jewish leaders’ religious authority. James suffered the death of those convicted of rebellion.
As he went to his death, I’m sure that James remembered what his mother had asked of Jesus on his and John’s behalf. She asked that her sons sit at Jesus’s right and left when he came in “glory.” What Jesus promised was that they would share his cup and baptism, in other words, his death. I believe that as he went to his death, James understood that he actually was sharing in Jesus’s glory.
Jesus is not a King untouched by defeat, who destroys his enemies and conquers territory. He endures defeat, survives even death, and turns the hearts of his enemies. Just ask Saul. Jesus is not a “winner,” who divides the world between winners and losers. He always offers peace, and lets his enemies judge themselves. That judgment will be made clear tomorrow.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Monday, 10th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 11:19-30
“And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians” (v.25b)
In Acts, when the first disciples of Jesus the Christ refer to themselves, they call themselves, “The Way.” It wasn’t “Christians” who first called themselves, “Christians.” That was the nickname given them by their neighbors in Antioch. And at this point, “Christ” wasn’t Jesus’s last name. It was the title his followers referred to him by – Jesus the Christ. So, what did it mean for the Antiochenes to call Jesus’s disciples “Christians?” What they perceived was that these men and women believed that Jesus was, in Greek, Christos, “anointed,” in Hebrew, messiah.
Essentially, the Jewish people had gleaned from their prophets that this man to come, anointed by God, would be a powerful king who would save Israel from her enemies, and would perfect the people’s worship of God at a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem. But Jesus has predicted the Temple’s destruction. And he had died the humiliating death of crucifixion at the hands of Israel’s enemies. How could he possibly be this “Christ,” this king that his disciples kept saying he was so much that they become known as “king’s men?”
Only the outrageous claim that he had risen from the dead, and that he had appeared to over 500 witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:6), could be the foundation of their insistence that Jesus was , in all truth, The Christ, the King of life and death, the King of success and failure.
The world mostly measures power, wealth, success, in terms that we can see, or count. And Jesus’s power over death was seen by those who he chose as his witnesses. But first he had to endure failure and death. And 2,000 years later, his power is not measured by the wealth procured, or the territory conquered. His power is measured by the hearts changed, the relationships built on the foundation of steadfast love. Most truly, Jesus is the King, the King of love.
“And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians” (v.25b)
In Acts, when the first disciples of Jesus the Christ refer to themselves, they call themselves, “The Way.” It wasn’t “Christians” who first called themselves, “Christians.” That was the nickname given them by their neighbors in Antioch. And at this point, “Christ” wasn’t Jesus’s last name. It was the title his followers referred to him by – Jesus the Christ. So, what did it mean for the Antiochenes to call Jesus’s disciples “Christians?” What they perceived was that these men and women believed that Jesus was, in Greek, Christos, “anointed,” in Hebrew, messiah.
Essentially, the Jewish people had gleaned from their prophets that this man to come, anointed by God, would be a powerful king who would save Israel from her enemies, and would perfect the people’s worship of God at a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem. But Jesus has predicted the Temple’s destruction. And he had died the humiliating death of crucifixion at the hands of Israel’s enemies. How could he possibly be this “Christ,” this king that his disciples kept saying he was so much that they become known as “king’s men?”
Only the outrageous claim that he had risen from the dead, and that he had appeared to over 500 witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:6), could be the foundation of their insistence that Jesus was , in all truth, The Christ, the King of life and death, the King of success and failure.
The world mostly measures power, wealth, success, in terms that we can see, or count. And Jesus’s power over death was seen by those who he chose as his witnesses. But first he had to endure failure and death. And 2,000 years later, his power is not measured by the wealth procured, or the territory conquered. His power is measured by the hearts changed, the relationships built on the foundation of steadfast love. Most truly, Jesus is the King, the King of love.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Sermon for the 10th Sunday of Ordinary Time
God knew us as his children before we were born, and he knows what he has destined for us through Jesus Christ. To be baptized is to be let go of by our human parents, and set toward our destiny. And our destiny is passionate abandonment to God. And our journey toward that destiny should be a dance.
As we welcome Jackson Satterfield into the Household and family of God, let us not forget that someone welcomed him even longer than a time long ago, and in a place beyond any galaxy far, far away. The truth is that Jackson’s destiny was set long before his parents could imagine him in their lives. As we hear in the Letter to the Ephesians today, it was God who “destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ” (1:5).
Before that Big Bang of unimaginable power in which God said, “Let there be light,” He already had Jackson Satterfield, and each one of us, in his memory. Jackson, and each one of us, has a destiny, a purpose, determined by God. And as we baptize Jackson, we begin to gently nudge him toward the destiny that God has in store for him.
In this gentle nudge we give him back to the God who first destined him for adoption. We don’t physically immerse anyone in water, although that is the literal meaning of the Greek word baptizo. And as it is said in our baptismal prayer, to be baptized is to be “buried with Christ in his death.” To use the metaphor of water, we might say that to be baptized is to be drowned with Christ in his death, that we might rise with him to everlasting life. But for Jackson to rise, his parents must first let go of him. Already, Jason and Allison are beginning that long process of letting go. If God destined us for adoption before the beginning of space and time, then in truth each and every one of us belongs to God. We are God’s children, first and last, at our beginning and at our end.
Jason and Allison, along with Jackson’s godparents, Joel and Dorothy, have temporary custody of Jackson. All four of you are Jackson's stewards. I charge you to be good stewards of Jackson, bringing him up in the Christian faith and life. Even when he begins to boldly assert that he knows more about life than any of you, don’t let go of him. Just hold on loosely. And when you do let go, trust that he is on his way to whatever God has destined for him.
None of us knows our destiny. In those years when Jackson is beginning to break away, he will seem a mystery to you. The truth is that he will be a mystery to himself – as we all are – praying with God, sometimes wrestling with God, as he discerns what God has destined him for. And when he does begin to discern his destiny, watch out! He might look like King David in today’s Old Testament reading. Nothing up to this point has prepared us for the spectacle that David seems to make of himself. He has been a brave shepherd boy bringing down a giant with his slingshot. He has been King Saul’s best soldier. He has been an outlaw on the run from King Saul. He has been a powerful king and commander sweeping away Israel’s enemies.
But imagine another general named David – Petraeus – becoming President one day. He goes to the Episcopal Church’s own national Cathedral in Washington, and during the service, he starts dancing down the long center aisle. Leaping in the air as he high as he can, rocking and whirling from side to side without the slightest hint of inhibition. Imagine the First Lady looking at him, horrified, as would we all.
But that also is who this great King David was. The man whose name means “beloved of God,” also loved God, and knew that all his power and fame was dependent on the God who had destined him to found a kingdom that would last forever. Remember that through his adoption by Joseph, Jesus was a son of David, and came to fulfill David’s destiny. And so David, trusting in God’s chosen destiny for him, danced with all his might, with every ounce of passion in his soul, in total abandonment to God.
And in some way, that is the destiny to which God calls each one of us, including Jackson on his special day: a life of passionate abandonment to God. Some years ago, I was at a service where a number of young people confirmed the faith that their parents had professed at their baptism. Now, they were making this faith their own. And at this service, that Bishop delivered a warning to those like me and Laura whose children were younger. “You bring your babies and toddlers to the Church and you say, civilize our children!” But that is not the Church’s mission, this Bishop said.
And so I say today, the Church’s principal mission is not to tame your wild ponies. My mission is to open as many doors as I can for them, so that the light of God will shine in their hearts, and fill them with a passion for God, and a passion for God’s people. The Christian life in which we all promise to uphold Jackson today is not principally a classroom where he is to be lectured at for 13 years or so, until he recites a creed at his confirmation, even though he does have a lot to learn, and we are responsible for teaching them what we have learned. The best thing we can do for our children is to guide them, to hand them along to each other, until God blows into their lives and sweeps them away toward their destiny.
So, until God cuts in, let us resolve to teach Jackson, and all our children, how to dance.
As we welcome Jackson Satterfield into the Household and family of God, let us not forget that someone welcomed him even longer than a time long ago, and in a place beyond any galaxy far, far away. The truth is that Jackson’s destiny was set long before his parents could imagine him in their lives. As we hear in the Letter to the Ephesians today, it was God who “destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ” (1:5).
Before that Big Bang of unimaginable power in which God said, “Let there be light,” He already had Jackson Satterfield, and each one of us, in his memory. Jackson, and each one of us, has a destiny, a purpose, determined by God. And as we baptize Jackson, we begin to gently nudge him toward the destiny that God has in store for him.
In this gentle nudge we give him back to the God who first destined him for adoption. We don’t physically immerse anyone in water, although that is the literal meaning of the Greek word baptizo. And as it is said in our baptismal prayer, to be baptized is to be “buried with Christ in his death.” To use the metaphor of water, we might say that to be baptized is to be drowned with Christ in his death, that we might rise with him to everlasting life. But for Jackson to rise, his parents must first let go of him. Already, Jason and Allison are beginning that long process of letting go. If God destined us for adoption before the beginning of space and time, then in truth each and every one of us belongs to God. We are God’s children, first and last, at our beginning and at our end.
Jason and Allison, along with Jackson’s godparents, Joel and Dorothy, have temporary custody of Jackson. All four of you are Jackson's stewards. I charge you to be good stewards of Jackson, bringing him up in the Christian faith and life. Even when he begins to boldly assert that he knows more about life than any of you, don’t let go of him. Just hold on loosely. And when you do let go, trust that he is on his way to whatever God has destined for him.
None of us knows our destiny. In those years when Jackson is beginning to break away, he will seem a mystery to you. The truth is that he will be a mystery to himself – as we all are – praying with God, sometimes wrestling with God, as he discerns what God has destined him for. And when he does begin to discern his destiny, watch out! He might look like King David in today’s Old Testament reading. Nothing up to this point has prepared us for the spectacle that David seems to make of himself. He has been a brave shepherd boy bringing down a giant with his slingshot. He has been King Saul’s best soldier. He has been an outlaw on the run from King Saul. He has been a powerful king and commander sweeping away Israel’s enemies.
But imagine another general named David – Petraeus – becoming President one day. He goes to the Episcopal Church’s own national Cathedral in Washington, and during the service, he starts dancing down the long center aisle. Leaping in the air as he high as he can, rocking and whirling from side to side without the slightest hint of inhibition. Imagine the First Lady looking at him, horrified, as would we all.
But that also is who this great King David was. The man whose name means “beloved of God,” also loved God, and knew that all his power and fame was dependent on the God who had destined him to found a kingdom that would last forever. Remember that through his adoption by Joseph, Jesus was a son of David, and came to fulfill David’s destiny. And so David, trusting in God’s chosen destiny for him, danced with all his might, with every ounce of passion in his soul, in total abandonment to God.
And in some way, that is the destiny to which God calls each one of us, including Jackson on his special day: a life of passionate abandonment to God. Some years ago, I was at a service where a number of young people confirmed the faith that their parents had professed at their baptism. Now, they were making this faith their own. And at this service, that Bishop delivered a warning to those like me and Laura whose children were younger. “You bring your babies and toddlers to the Church and you say, civilize our children!” But that is not the Church’s mission, this Bishop said.
And so I say today, the Church’s principal mission is not to tame your wild ponies. My mission is to open as many doors as I can for them, so that the light of God will shine in their hearts, and fill them with a passion for God, and a passion for God’s people. The Christian life in which we all promise to uphold Jackson today is not principally a classroom where he is to be lectured at for 13 years or so, until he recites a creed at his confirmation, even though he does have a lot to learn, and we are responsible for teaching them what we have learned. The best thing we can do for our children is to guide them, to hand them along to each other, until God blows into their lives and sweeps them away toward their destiny.
So, until God cuts in, let us resolve to teach Jackson, and all our children, how to dance.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Friday, 9th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 10:34-48
“While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word (10:44).
I think that Peter might have been forgiven for saying, “Can I at least finish my sermon please?” Notice that neither Cornelius nor his family, his servants or friends, have actually indicated their agreement with Peter’s message. There is no assent, no profession of faith. But here comes the Holy Spirit, just as it came upon the disciples on Pentecost. It seems that it doesn’t matter what they actually think.
Of course it does. Cornelius has been preparing himself and his household for years, by his worship, prayer, and charitable giving, for this moment. But he must also have been a very anxious man. Yes, he believes in the God of Israel. Yes, he acts in accordance with the Law as much as is humanly possible. But circumcision, without anesthetic and a sterile environment, could kill him. For all his efforts to live as a Jew, he cannot be a member of the Congregation of Israel. How, then can he ever know that he is saved. I wonder if he gave his money away to the point of putting his family’s security at risk because of this personal anxiety.
Of course, we all have this anxiety to some extent. How do we know we are saved? Many recite the “Sinner’s Prayer.” And that is certainly an essential start. Peter doesn’t sugar-coat that message. When he says, “They put him to death,” he doesn’t just mean the leaders of Israel. He points the finger at Cornelius as well, for it was Roman soldiers, representing Cornelius and all the nations, who nailed Jesus to the cross. And how could such a crime ever be forgiven? The One who was crucified offers it to anyone willing to receive it. Having prepared Cornelius by a life of devotion to God, the Holy Spirit who has been preparing Cornelius comes to full bloom in his heart and tongue.
And so, day by day, we assist Holy Spirit as he prepares us by daily prayer, the reading and study of scripture, and actions that support others in their spiritual journey. Thanks be to God, none of that is necessary for salvation, since then our salvation would depend on our insufficient efforts. God is already saving us, step by step, and he is saving our world. Our task is to look around and ask, “Where?”
“While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word (10:44).
I think that Peter might have been forgiven for saying, “Can I at least finish my sermon please?” Notice that neither Cornelius nor his family, his servants or friends, have actually indicated their agreement with Peter’s message. There is no assent, no profession of faith. But here comes the Holy Spirit, just as it came upon the disciples on Pentecost. It seems that it doesn’t matter what they actually think.
Of course it does. Cornelius has been preparing himself and his household for years, by his worship, prayer, and charitable giving, for this moment. But he must also have been a very anxious man. Yes, he believes in the God of Israel. Yes, he acts in accordance with the Law as much as is humanly possible. But circumcision, without anesthetic and a sterile environment, could kill him. For all his efforts to live as a Jew, he cannot be a member of the Congregation of Israel. How, then can he ever know that he is saved. I wonder if he gave his money away to the point of putting his family’s security at risk because of this personal anxiety.
Of course, we all have this anxiety to some extent. How do we know we are saved? Many recite the “Sinner’s Prayer.” And that is certainly an essential start. Peter doesn’t sugar-coat that message. When he says, “They put him to death,” he doesn’t just mean the leaders of Israel. He points the finger at Cornelius as well, for it was Roman soldiers, representing Cornelius and all the nations, who nailed Jesus to the cross. And how could such a crime ever be forgiven? The One who was crucified offers it to anyone willing to receive it. Having prepared Cornelius by a life of devotion to God, the Holy Spirit who has been preparing Cornelius comes to full bloom in his heart and tongue.
And so, day by day, we assist Holy Spirit as he prepares us by daily prayer, the reading and study of scripture, and actions that support others in their spiritual journey. Thanks be to God, none of that is necessary for salvation, since then our salvation would depend on our insufficient efforts. God is already saving us, step by step, and he is saving our world. Our task is to look around and ask, “Where?”
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Thursday, 9th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 10:17-33
“And he said to them, ‘You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean’” (Acts 10:28).
To pick up from yesterday, Israel was called by God to be “holy” – set apart from the rest of the human race to be the sign of the one God who made all things, to stand against all those forces in the world that people supposed to be gods. Eating together was a powerful way of binding people together in community. Pork was one of the cheaper meats of the day. So for the Jews to refuse to eat pork, among other kinds of animals, clearly set them apart.
Salvation for the children of Israel was not an individual matter. It wasn’t individual Jews who were to be “saved.” It was the nation, a community, that would one day be redeemed by its Messiah. Cornelius openly worshiped the God of Israel. By his generous giving, he observed the Law of Israel’s demands for justice. He faithfully prayed every day to the God of Israel. But at the end of the day, he was a solitary worshiper of God. He could not pray together with those who had inherited their faith in Israel’s God. He could not be part of that community of God’s holy people.
Cornelius needed to know about Jesus, who had broken down the barrier between Jew and Gentile. But why couldn’t Jesus have appeared to him as he appeared to Saul on the way to Damascus? Because even knowing about Jesus Christ wasn’t enough. Cornelius needed to know about Jesus through the new community that he had formed, the community that is destined to bring all people into unity with God and each other.
Knowing one’s need for God’s grace is essential to salvation. A willingness to confess how we have fallen short is essential to salvation. Letting Jesus Christ in our hearts, and forming a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ is essential to salvation. But none of that is enough for salvation. Salvation means restored a restored relationship with God, and with each other.
By the end of today’s reading, two men, a Roman soldier, and Galilean fishermen, have miraculously been brought together. The stage is set for Peter to unfold the story of how Jesus saves. Tune in for tomorrow’s episode.
“And he said to them, ‘You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean’” (Acts 10:28).
To pick up from yesterday, Israel was called by God to be “holy” – set apart from the rest of the human race to be the sign of the one God who made all things, to stand against all those forces in the world that people supposed to be gods. Eating together was a powerful way of binding people together in community. Pork was one of the cheaper meats of the day. So for the Jews to refuse to eat pork, among other kinds of animals, clearly set them apart.
Salvation for the children of Israel was not an individual matter. It wasn’t individual Jews who were to be “saved.” It was the nation, a community, that would one day be redeemed by its Messiah. Cornelius openly worshiped the God of Israel. By his generous giving, he observed the Law of Israel’s demands for justice. He faithfully prayed every day to the God of Israel. But at the end of the day, he was a solitary worshiper of God. He could not pray together with those who had inherited their faith in Israel’s God. He could not be part of that community of God’s holy people.
Cornelius needed to know about Jesus, who had broken down the barrier between Jew and Gentile. But why couldn’t Jesus have appeared to him as he appeared to Saul on the way to Damascus? Because even knowing about Jesus Christ wasn’t enough. Cornelius needed to know about Jesus through the new community that he had formed, the community that is destined to bring all people into unity with God and each other.
Knowing one’s need for God’s grace is essential to salvation. A willingness to confess how we have fallen short is essential to salvation. Letting Jesus Christ in our hearts, and forming a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ is essential to salvation. But none of that is enough for salvation. Salvation means restored a restored relationship with God, and with each other.
By the end of today’s reading, two men, a Roman soldier, and Galilean fishermen, have miraculously been brought together. The stage is set for Peter to unfold the story of how Jesus saves. Tune in for tomorrow’s episode.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Wednesday, 9th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 10:1-16
Interesting how the most momentous, historical events can take place in the most ordinary of times. Cornelius sees an angel “at the ninth hour,” that is, at 3 pm; while Peter’s vision comes at “the sixth hour,” Noon. There were seven “hours” set aside at different parts of the day and night for prayer. Cornelius and Peter were simply doing what they did regularly, taking some brief time out of the day that had been appointed for prayer.
Just like any human love and friendship, it takes time to nourish and develop a relationship with God. That time may seem rather habitual, and when it becomes a “habit,” it can become easy to ask ourselves why we do it. The reason we do it is so that we can get into the habit of talking to God; and when God talks back, we will know how to recognize that this time, the prayer is very, very different. It may not be an angel. It may be voice within us that says something we never would have thought of on our own. However our visions come, they spring from a foundation of habit.
This tradition of prayer at a fixed hour continues in our “Common Prayer.” I try to make the riches of this common prayer available in person at 9 am in the church, and online. I hope you can find the time for this life of prayer. Sometimes, I wonder if I should offer Morning Prayer earlier, for those who could come by on their way to work. What do you all think?
Now we come to Peter’s earth-shaking vision. “What God has made clean, do not call common,” Peter hears his God tell him. Eating was always done in community. Classifying certain kinds of meat as “clean” or “common” was one way of ensuring that the community of Israel would remain “holy,” set apart from the peoples of the world who failed to perceive the one God.
But now Peter hears the Lord tell him that his distinctions between the “common” world untouched by the divine, and the world that God himself has “cleaned,” are not God’s. And what of our distinctions? Are there things that we have counted common that God calls clean? Or are there things that we have presumed clean that God does call common? These are crucial questions for which an answer is demanded of us as a church. Where do we find these answers? Here we come back to where we began: with the habit of common prayer?
Interesting how the most momentous, historical events can take place in the most ordinary of times. Cornelius sees an angel “at the ninth hour,” that is, at 3 pm; while Peter’s vision comes at “the sixth hour,” Noon. There were seven “hours” set aside at different parts of the day and night for prayer. Cornelius and Peter were simply doing what they did regularly, taking some brief time out of the day that had been appointed for prayer.
Just like any human love and friendship, it takes time to nourish and develop a relationship with God. That time may seem rather habitual, and when it becomes a “habit,” it can become easy to ask ourselves why we do it. The reason we do it is so that we can get into the habit of talking to God; and when God talks back, we will know how to recognize that this time, the prayer is very, very different. It may not be an angel. It may be voice within us that says something we never would have thought of on our own. However our visions come, they spring from a foundation of habit.
This tradition of prayer at a fixed hour continues in our “Common Prayer.” I try to make the riches of this common prayer available in person at 9 am in the church, and online. I hope you can find the time for this life of prayer. Sometimes, I wonder if I should offer Morning Prayer earlier, for those who could come by on their way to work. What do you all think?
Now we come to Peter’s earth-shaking vision. “What God has made clean, do not call common,” Peter hears his God tell him. Eating was always done in community. Classifying certain kinds of meat as “clean” or “common” was one way of ensuring that the community of Israel would remain “holy,” set apart from the peoples of the world who failed to perceive the one God.
But now Peter hears the Lord tell him that his distinctions between the “common” world untouched by the divine, and the world that God himself has “cleaned,” are not God’s. And what of our distinctions? Are there things that we have counted common that God calls clean? Or are there things that we have presumed clean that God does call common? These are crucial questions for which an answer is demanded of us as a church. Where do we find these answers? Here we come back to where we began: with the habit of common prayer?
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tuesday, 9th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 9:32-43
In today’s reading from Acts, Peter is doing what his and the other Eleven’s successors do today: visiting the smaller communities that make up the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Our apostolic successor, Bishop Henry Parsley, will visit us on Wednesday, January 20. But Peter, it is said, “came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda.” At this point, Luke doesn’t refer to the community as a “church.” They are all “saints.” That is, they have been sanctified, made holy, literally “set apart” for the work of God. To be a saint doesn’t mean they are without fault and perfect in all things. It just means that they have been chosen by God. So have we at Christ Church also been set apart by God, which means that we too are Saints.
So, for what are the saints set apart? The surprising answer will be revealed later this week. But for now, there is a foreshadowing of that answer in today’s reading. When Peter says to the dead Tabitha, “arise,” note that he does not touch her. As I explained a few weeks ago; because she was dead, Tabitha’s body was “unclean” according to Jewish law. To avoid becoming “unclean” himself, Peter did not touch her. But Jesus, when he raised the daughter of Jairus, had no fear of being made unclean.
At this point, Peter is still a full adherent of the Law of Moses, and pointing to Jesus as its fulfillment. Starting tomorrow, his categories of clean and unclean, of right and wrong, will begin to crumble. Ironically, the saints who have been set apart by God will find that their mission is to no longer be set apart from the world, as though some people are holier than others, but to make the whole world holy. No longer will some parts of the world be considered unworthy of God’s presence. Join us for tomorrow’s episode.
In today’s reading from Acts, Peter is doing what his and the other Eleven’s successors do today: visiting the smaller communities that make up the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Our apostolic successor, Bishop Henry Parsley, will visit us on Wednesday, January 20. But Peter, it is said, “came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda.” At this point, Luke doesn’t refer to the community as a “church.” They are all “saints.” That is, they have been sanctified, made holy, literally “set apart” for the work of God. To be a saint doesn’t mean they are without fault and perfect in all things. It just means that they have been chosen by God. So have we at Christ Church also been set apart by God, which means that we too are Saints.
So, for what are the saints set apart? The surprising answer will be revealed later this week. But for now, there is a foreshadowing of that answer in today’s reading. When Peter says to the dead Tabitha, “arise,” note that he does not touch her. As I explained a few weeks ago; because she was dead, Tabitha’s body was “unclean” according to Jewish law. To avoid becoming “unclean” himself, Peter did not touch her. But Jesus, when he raised the daughter of Jairus, had no fear of being made unclean.
At this point, Peter is still a full adherent of the Law of Moses, and pointing to Jesus as its fulfillment. Starting tomorrow, his categories of clean and unclean, of right and wrong, will begin to crumble. Ironically, the saints who have been set apart by God will find that their mission is to no longer be set apart from the world, as though some people are holier than others, but to make the whole world holy. No longer will some parts of the world be considered unworthy of God’s presence. Join us for tomorrow’s episode.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Monday, 9th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 9:10-31
It’s one of those small things that are easy to miss, except that it’s really a major moment in this story. And it comes at verse 20: “And immediately [Saul] proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” Many times, Jesus has been called the “Christ,” or “Messiah” (both which mean “anointed”). This is the first time that any of Jesus’s disciples have called him God’s Son. What did they mean by this?
In the Old Testament, the beast known reference to being a son of God comes in the promise of God to King David, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son…my steadfast love will not depart from him…And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. (2nd Samuel 7:14-16). Sadly, it had all gone wrong. David’s kingdom had not been sure forever. Too many of David’s royal sons had failed to act in such a way as to deserve being called God’s sons. In a time when no one conceived of such ideas as democracy, the only kind of government under which people felt secure and free was that of a good king who protected his people as a shepherd protected his sheep.
So. God had made a promise to his adopted son. How was that promise to be fulfilled when David’s successors had failed to be good, protective shepherds? God’s own eternal Son came, as God’s perfect representative. As a human being, he was also the perfect human representative, representing the fullest experience of human joy and hope, human grief and anguish. As God, he triumphed over human suffering, so that no human experience of suffering and sin is beyond the power of God to redeem. In this world, we want protection from injustice, pain and grief. God’s own son did not shield himself from those things. He redeemed them.
In all this, those faithful Jews understood Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises made to David, which made him the “Anointed,” the Messiah, the Christ that has been long promised them. What Saul first began to grasp was that this “Son of God” had fulfilled Israel’s promises, while transcending them at the same time. What this might mean, practically speaking, we will begin to see later this week.
It’s one of those small things that are easy to miss, except that it’s really a major moment in this story. And it comes at verse 20: “And immediately [Saul] proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” Many times, Jesus has been called the “Christ,” or “Messiah” (both which mean “anointed”). This is the first time that any of Jesus’s disciples have called him God’s Son. What did they mean by this?
In the Old Testament, the beast known reference to being a son of God comes in the promise of God to King David, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son…my steadfast love will not depart from him…And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. (2nd Samuel 7:14-16). Sadly, it had all gone wrong. David’s kingdom had not been sure forever. Too many of David’s royal sons had failed to act in such a way as to deserve being called God’s sons. In a time when no one conceived of such ideas as democracy, the only kind of government under which people felt secure and free was that of a good king who protected his people as a shepherd protected his sheep.
So. God had made a promise to his adopted son. How was that promise to be fulfilled when David’s successors had failed to be good, protective shepherds? God’s own eternal Son came, as God’s perfect representative. As a human being, he was also the perfect human representative, representing the fullest experience of human joy and hope, human grief and anguish. As God, he triumphed over human suffering, so that no human experience of suffering and sin is beyond the power of God to redeem. In this world, we want protection from injustice, pain and grief. God’s own son did not shield himself from those things. He redeemed them.
In all this, those faithful Jews understood Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises made to David, which made him the “Anointed,” the Messiah, the Christ that has been long promised them. What Saul first began to grasp was that this “Son of God” had fulfilled Israel’s promises, while transcending them at the same time. What this might mean, practically speaking, we will begin to see later this week.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Sermon for the 9th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Maybe I’m over-reaching, but I wonder if you could trace all the problems in our world, our divisions, our arguments, our wars, to this one sentence: David captured the stronghold of Jerusalem and named it the City of David. “Jerusalem my happy home…There David stands with harp in hand as master of the choir: ten thousand times would one be blest who might this music hear.” But there is also this: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Luke 13:34). Today, we say O Jerusalem, city of three faiths worshiping the same God, claiming the same place as their holy place, unable to live there in peace.
Yet still the dream endures, in ways that David could never have imagined. How could he have imagined that another people would arise thousands of years later, and make their way to a New World. When John Winthrop told the first Puritan settlers that they would be “as a city upon a hill,” he meant that they were to be as Mount Zion, Jerusalem, and the Americans as a chosen people.
On the one hand, that sense of destiny has blessed us with the confidence to overcome obstacles that other people have just accepted in a fatalistic way. Looking ahead to having to fight two implacable enemies, with our Navy crippled and our Army undermanned, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made this promise to the U.S. Congress on December 8, 1941: There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us God.” Look at our history from one perspective, and you get this sense of inevitability, of ‘chosenness” about us.
But for what did we fight and win that terrible war? To be the richest country, or the most powerful? Abraham Lincoln once recalled reading the story of Washington crossing the Delaware river to attack the British at dawn in Christmas Day. Was it merely the independence of one nation that was at stake in that struggle, Lincoln asked. He called us the “almost chosen people.” There’s just enough sense of our destiny in that phrase, without giving us a blank check.
Of course, if Jerusalem is any sense a city on a hill, our happy home, the stronghold of God, it is that because of this almost chosen man who captured it and named it for himself. If the story of King David as we have it in 1st and 2nd Samuel, conveys anything to us, it is the sense of God choosing, not by any human category, but by grace. His story starts when God sends his prophet Samuel to the house of Jesse, where God promises to reveal one of Jesse’s sons, whom Samuel is to anoint as the future king of Israel, never mind the current king, Saul. Son after son parades before Samuel, from the oldest to the youngest, and yet Samuel keeps hearing God say, “No, not this one.” It is, indeed, the 8th son, who has to be brought in from the field, that God chooses, and Samuel anoints.
That is hardly the end of the story. But day by day, year by year, every obstacle in David’s way is removed, including Saul and his sons, until there is no one left but David, the one whose very name means “beloved of God.” And throughout the Old Testament, there are many whom God chooses and rejects, blesses and curses. But only of this man is it ever said that God loved him.
So that’s the end of the story. David ruled a happy kingdom in peace and power for 40 years, and lived happily ever after? If David was “chosen,” if we were “chosen,” it cannot be for our selves only. What were David and his city chosen for? The clue is in the verses that were omitted from our reading. The Jebusites holding Jerusalem taunt David and his men: This city is so secure we can defend it with our lame and disabled they say. Now sadly, it reads as though when David occupied Jerusalem that he expelled the lame and disabled. But as the story of this people moves through the centuries, their understanding of Jerusalem’s purpose will expand. “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,” the prophet Isaiah will write a few centuries later.
David was a shepherd boy, then a soldier in Saul’s army, then an outlaw on the run from Saul, then a fairly successful king of a decent-sized empire. But what God started through him was so much greater than he could possibly imagine. We have been a free people for a few centuries now, certainly much longer than the Greeks' Democracy or Roman Republic., but still a very brief time within the scope of human history. We’ve had our “American Century.” Rome had 800 years. If we are, as Lincoln said, “almost chosen,” it cannot be about our power, our wealth, or even our freedom. If we are as a shining city on a hill, it cannot be for our glory, but for God's glory. And the glory of God is a world of nations reconciled: one city of God, in peace and liberty with justice for all.
Yet still the dream endures, in ways that David could never have imagined. How could he have imagined that another people would arise thousands of years later, and make their way to a New World. When John Winthrop told the first Puritan settlers that they would be “as a city upon a hill,” he meant that they were to be as Mount Zion, Jerusalem, and the Americans as a chosen people.
On the one hand, that sense of destiny has blessed us with the confidence to overcome obstacles that other people have just accepted in a fatalistic way. Looking ahead to having to fight two implacable enemies, with our Navy crippled and our Army undermanned, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made this promise to the U.S. Congress on December 8, 1941: There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us God.” Look at our history from one perspective, and you get this sense of inevitability, of ‘chosenness” about us.
But for what did we fight and win that terrible war? To be the richest country, or the most powerful? Abraham Lincoln once recalled reading the story of Washington crossing the Delaware river to attack the British at dawn in Christmas Day. Was it merely the independence of one nation that was at stake in that struggle, Lincoln asked. He called us the “almost chosen people.” There’s just enough sense of our destiny in that phrase, without giving us a blank check.
Of course, if Jerusalem is any sense a city on a hill, our happy home, the stronghold of God, it is that because of this almost chosen man who captured it and named it for himself. If the story of King David as we have it in 1st and 2nd Samuel, conveys anything to us, it is the sense of God choosing, not by any human category, but by grace. His story starts when God sends his prophet Samuel to the house of Jesse, where God promises to reveal one of Jesse’s sons, whom Samuel is to anoint as the future king of Israel, never mind the current king, Saul. Son after son parades before Samuel, from the oldest to the youngest, and yet Samuel keeps hearing God say, “No, not this one.” It is, indeed, the 8th son, who has to be brought in from the field, that God chooses, and Samuel anoints.
That is hardly the end of the story. But day by day, year by year, every obstacle in David’s way is removed, including Saul and his sons, until there is no one left but David, the one whose very name means “beloved of God.” And throughout the Old Testament, there are many whom God chooses and rejects, blesses and curses. But only of this man is it ever said that God loved him.
So that’s the end of the story. David ruled a happy kingdom in peace and power for 40 years, and lived happily ever after? If David was “chosen,” if we were “chosen,” it cannot be for our selves only. What were David and his city chosen for? The clue is in the verses that were omitted from our reading. The Jebusites holding Jerusalem taunt David and his men: This city is so secure we can defend it with our lame and disabled they say. Now sadly, it reads as though when David occupied Jerusalem that he expelled the lame and disabled. But as the story of this people moves through the centuries, their understanding of Jerusalem’s purpose will expand. “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,” the prophet Isaiah will write a few centuries later.
David was a shepherd boy, then a soldier in Saul’s army, then an outlaw on the run from Saul, then a fairly successful king of a decent-sized empire. But what God started through him was so much greater than he could possibly imagine. We have been a free people for a few centuries now, certainly much longer than the Greeks' Democracy or Roman Republic., but still a very brief time within the scope of human history. We’ve had our “American Century.” Rome had 800 years. If we are, as Lincoln said, “almost chosen,” it cannot be about our power, our wealth, or even our freedom. If we are as a shining city on a hill, it cannot be for our glory, but for God's glory. And the glory of God is a world of nations reconciled: one city of God, in peace and liberty with justice for all.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Friday, 8th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 9:1-9
And so “Saul” the Church’s most feared persecutor became “Paul” the apostle who brought the Good News to the Gentile nations.
“If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” wrote Paul to the Philippians (Phil. 3:4-6). As he hunted down followers of Jesus Christ, Saul’s motives were as pure as the driven snow. He wasn’t acting for financial gain, or out of any desire to cause hurt. He truly believed that he was doing the will of God.
And then, in one literally blinding instant, Saul was forced into a 180° turn. He was absolutely sure that he was on God’s side. But now, to his horror, he realized that he and God were on opposing sides. He believed that he was totally in the right. But now he saw that he was in the wrong.
We all have convictions; beliefs on which we base our lives, like points on a map that help us stay oriented in a confusing world. But what if, in an instant, you realized in one second that your religious convictions or your political philosophy were completely wrong? How would you deal with the shock? Like a soldier in shock, who can’t see, even though the doctor finds nothing wrong with his eyes, Saul was paralyzed, in his body and soul. He had been judged. What way out did he have? The answer on Monday.
And so “Saul” the Church’s most feared persecutor became “Paul” the apostle who brought the Good News to the Gentile nations.
“If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” wrote Paul to the Philippians (Phil. 3:4-6). As he hunted down followers of Jesus Christ, Saul’s motives were as pure as the driven snow. He wasn’t acting for financial gain, or out of any desire to cause hurt. He truly believed that he was doing the will of God.
And then, in one literally blinding instant, Saul was forced into a 180° turn. He was absolutely sure that he was on God’s side. But now, to his horror, he realized that he and God were on opposing sides. He believed that he was totally in the right. But now he saw that he was in the wrong.
We all have convictions; beliefs on which we base our lives, like points on a map that help us stay oriented in a confusing world. But what if, in an instant, you realized in one second that your religious convictions or your political philosophy were completely wrong? How would you deal with the shock? Like a soldier in shock, who can’t see, even though the doctor finds nothing wrong with his eyes, Saul was paralyzed, in his body and soul. He had been judged. What way out did he have? The answer on Monday.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Thursday, 8th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 8:14-25
It’s interesting how a few Bible verses can be interpreted quite differently. Verses 14-17 of today’s reading are usually taken as the scriptural basis for the rite of Confirmation, where baptized Christians confirm the faith their parents first professed on their behalf. More evangelical Christians cite this verse as proof that getting dunked once isn’t sufficient to be “saved.” You must also be baptized in the Holy Spirit and be “born again.” But there is no indication in ch. 2 of Acts that the 3,000 who became Christians on the day of Pentecost were baptized twice.
What links the baptisms in Jerusalem and Samaria is the presence of the 12. They were the acknowledged leaders of the Church, the ones who could speak for all the believers, and who marked the boundaries of the Church. When they heard in Jerusalem of what Philip had accomplished in Samaria, they realized that something needed to be done to make it clear that this was not a private party, an isolated thing. The Samaritans needed to know that they were a part of something bigger than themselves, a Church that, as Jesus promised, would stretch to the ends of the earth.
In the Episcopal Church, bishops are seen as the successors to the 12. They represent the wider Church. Thus they must be present at confirmations, to remind those confirming their faith that they are part of something bigger than their little congregation. Of course, when a Christian, baptized in Christ, confirms their faith, and has the hands of the Bishop laid on them, they also become “Episcopalians,” as opposed to some other kind of Christian. So, just as their horizon of what constitutes “The Church” expands, they also mark out the boundary of their particular “church.”
Thus, “Confirmation” can be a very inclusive act, and exclusive at the same time. I like to think of the Church sometimes as an amoeba. That single celled creature has very flexible boundaries. It can adjust its outer membrane to new movements. Sometimes, it can even merge with another amoeba. But, it always retains its membrane, its individuality. The 12 faithful sons of Israel were flexible enough to recognize Jesus at work even among their longtime enemies, the Samaritans, and to join themselves and the Samaritans together.
As Episcopalians, may we be flexible enough to recognize the Spirit in unfamiliar places, while retaining the particular gifts God has given us in this reformed yet traditional, evangelical yet catholic, church.
It’s interesting how a few Bible verses can be interpreted quite differently. Verses 14-17 of today’s reading are usually taken as the scriptural basis for the rite of Confirmation, where baptized Christians confirm the faith their parents first professed on their behalf. More evangelical Christians cite this verse as proof that getting dunked once isn’t sufficient to be “saved.” You must also be baptized in the Holy Spirit and be “born again.” But there is no indication in ch. 2 of Acts that the 3,000 who became Christians on the day of Pentecost were baptized twice.
What links the baptisms in Jerusalem and Samaria is the presence of the 12. They were the acknowledged leaders of the Church, the ones who could speak for all the believers, and who marked the boundaries of the Church. When they heard in Jerusalem of what Philip had accomplished in Samaria, they realized that something needed to be done to make it clear that this was not a private party, an isolated thing. The Samaritans needed to know that they were a part of something bigger than themselves, a Church that, as Jesus promised, would stretch to the ends of the earth.
In the Episcopal Church, bishops are seen as the successors to the 12. They represent the wider Church. Thus they must be present at confirmations, to remind those confirming their faith that they are part of something bigger than their little congregation. Of course, when a Christian, baptized in Christ, confirms their faith, and has the hands of the Bishop laid on them, they also become “Episcopalians,” as opposed to some other kind of Christian. So, just as their horizon of what constitutes “The Church” expands, they also mark out the boundary of their particular “church.”
Thus, “Confirmation” can be a very inclusive act, and exclusive at the same time. I like to think of the Church sometimes as an amoeba. That single celled creature has very flexible boundaries. It can adjust its outer membrane to new movements. Sometimes, it can even merge with another amoeba. But, it always retains its membrane, its individuality. The 12 faithful sons of Israel were flexible enough to recognize Jesus at work even among their longtime enemies, the Samaritans, and to join themselves and the Samaritans together.
As Episcopalians, may we be flexible enough to recognize the Spirit in unfamiliar places, while retaining the particular gifts God has given us in this reformed yet traditional, evangelical yet catholic, church.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Wednesday, 8th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 8:1-14
Jesus had given his disciples their marching orders: “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). But up until this point in the story, they have stuck very close to Jerusalem, even more closely to the Temple. That makes sense. Take the Capital and you take the country. But perhaps there was also some reluctance in their staying in Jerusalem.
Samaria, to the north of Judea, had long been the enemy of Israel. They had apparently been settled in the land of Israel after the Israelites had been conquered and exiled. At a time when people assumed that there were many gods for many different countries, the new arrivals adopted the God of Israel. But when the Jews returned from exile, they considered the Samaritan version of Judaism a false version, and swore to have nothing to do with them. Needless to say, Jew and Samaritan had been hostile to each other for centuries since.
While the disciples of Jesus might have had their marching orders, they didn’t seem to have much of a plan on implementing those orders. But God has a way of breaking through our inertia. After Stephen’s murder, the authorities appear to have held the Greek-speaking Christians responsible, and chased them out of Jerusalem, while leaving the 12 Apostles alone. So now we have an enthusiastic group of Jesus’s disciples, like Philip, who can’t help but speak of the Good News wherever they go. And there is Samaria, just north of Judea, and you know the rest of the story.
Did God plan for Stephen to be killed? Absolutely not. We are not God’s puppets, and God does not pull us around as though we are on God’s string. But God is the Great Improviser. God had a plan for the early church. And when the enemies of Christ tried to it out, God knew how to work through the schemes of human beings to accomplish his will. As it was 2,000 years ago, so it is today. And whatever human beings do, or don’t do, to further God’s plan, God has a way of working with us in a way that brings his plans to full fruit, with us or in spite of us.
Jesus had given his disciples their marching orders: “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). But up until this point in the story, they have stuck very close to Jerusalem, even more closely to the Temple. That makes sense. Take the Capital and you take the country. But perhaps there was also some reluctance in their staying in Jerusalem.
Samaria, to the north of Judea, had long been the enemy of Israel. They had apparently been settled in the land of Israel after the Israelites had been conquered and exiled. At a time when people assumed that there were many gods for many different countries, the new arrivals adopted the God of Israel. But when the Jews returned from exile, they considered the Samaritan version of Judaism a false version, and swore to have nothing to do with them. Needless to say, Jew and Samaritan had been hostile to each other for centuries since.
While the disciples of Jesus might have had their marching orders, they didn’t seem to have much of a plan on implementing those orders. But God has a way of breaking through our inertia. After Stephen’s murder, the authorities appear to have held the Greek-speaking Christians responsible, and chased them out of Jerusalem, while leaving the 12 Apostles alone. So now we have an enthusiastic group of Jesus’s disciples, like Philip, who can’t help but speak of the Good News wherever they go. And there is Samaria, just north of Judea, and you know the rest of the story.
Did God plan for Stephen to be killed? Absolutely not. We are not God’s puppets, and God does not pull us around as though we are on God’s string. But God is the Great Improviser. God had a plan for the early church. And when the enemies of Christ tried to it out, God knew how to work through the schemes of human beings to accomplish his will. As it was 2,000 years ago, so it is today. And whatever human beings do, or don’t do, to further God’s plan, God has a way of working with us in a way that brings his plans to full fruit, with us or in spite of us.
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