The Everlasting Light

“Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light.” The baby was born. The angels rejoiced and glorified God. The shepherds came and found the baby, just as the angels had described him. While Mary pondered in her heart her experience of this strange birth, the shepherds returned to their flock, rejoicing at what they had heard and seen. Yes, we heard it all on Christmas Eve – together with a story about an angel that doesn’t occur in Scripture! Yes, Christmas Eve was wonderful! But where is the baby now? Why, on this first Sunday after Christmas, do we not hear more about him and his miraculous birth? Actually, perhaps some of you are heaving a sigh of relief. Perhaps you are like those who toss out their Christmas trees the day after Christmas, saying, “Thank heaven, we’re done with that for another year!”

“Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light.” Strangely, perhaps, we hear details of Jesus’ birth only in the gospel of Luke. The gospel of Mark, the earliest gospel, begins with Jesus’ adult ministry. The gospel of Matthew prefaces the birth with the wonderful story of Joseph’s discovery that Mary is pregnant, yet of the birth the gospel relates only that Joseph and Mary didn’t have sexual intercourse until after Mary had given birth. We also hear no birth story in the gospel of John, whose opening eighteen verses you just heard. Instead, the writer of this gospel asks us to ponder a much deeper mystery than that of the miraculous birth of a child. We are asked to ponder who it truly was that was born: a precious baby or something much more mysterious and awe-inspiring?

The opening words of this gospel plunge us right into that mystery: “In the beginning….” Do those words sound familiar? The original hearers of this gospel would have recognized them immediately. They are the very first words of the Hebrew Scriptures. The very first words of the book of Genesis, the first book in the Hebrew Bible, are “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Indeed, the very first word of the Hebrew Bible, bereshit, literally means “in the beginning.” The first hearers of John’s gospel would also have remembered that “in the beginning” the first thing that God created was light: God swept God’s spirit over the formless waters and said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God pronounced the light good.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The first hearers of John’s gospel would also have recognized the Greek word, logos, which we translate as Word. They would have known that in using that word the Evangelist was reminding them and us that the God in whom we put our trust was not like one of the Greek gods, not like those disdainful deities who looked down on the struggles, heartaches, joys, and fears of this world with supreme detachment. Rather, John was reminding his hearers that the God whom they and we worship was not only unknowable mystery but also the driving force behind all creation. This God was also the construction foreman, if you will, of the whole creation project. And, more miraculous still, this logos, this Word, this God, was so involved, so caring, so loving, so giving, that he deigned to join himself body and soul with humanity, he dared to “pitch his tent” among us.

And more. This construction foreman of creation, this activator of God’s light, this logos who was now inseparably joined to humanity, was the light of the world, that light that “shines in the darkness,” which the darkness has never extinguished. The Evangelist reminds us that John came to testify to that light and to prepare us to receive that light. Because the Word took on human flesh and moved into our neighborhood, into the neighborhood of every living being, we who live in the light that he brought are not only children of God but have received from God more grace than we can ever fathom.

My friends, this is why we celebrate the birth of that baby. We celebrate Jesus’ birth, because, even though we are frail, limited, broken human beings, we do not live in total darkness. Even into our “dark streets” the “everlasting light” penetrates. The light that came into the world with Jesus still shines on us wherever we are. And where are the dark streets in our lives? Do you need me to name them? There are dark streets wherever there is war and conflict: in Iraq, Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan, the West Bank; on the streets of Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, in Boston, Newtown, Connecticut, and Aurora Colorado, in shopping malls in Nairobi and Logan, Ohio. There are dark streets wherever there is enmity and conflict. There are dark streets wherever there is estrangement: especially within families, between parents and children, or among siblings. There are dark streets wherever there is addiction. There are dark streets wherever there is sickness, or when people are unemployed, homeless, or despairing.

“Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light.” The baby was conceived, born, executed, and raised to life again. Now we, who are privileged to be members of his body, are filled with his light. The Word now becomes flesh within us. We too are called to spread the tiny flame of the everlasting light that we carry into the dark streets around us. We too are called to join with others and create new communities of love that continue his ministry into a dark world. For another miracle happens: when the Light of the World shines on the children of God, a new community comes into being. Now we suddenly see those around us as friends. Now we find the night sky dotted with the lights of the homes of neighbors. Now we see a community of love ready to reach out to those in need. When the Light of the World shines on us, we see the truth of Mother Teresa’s reminder: “It is Christmas every time you let God love others through you – yes, it is Christmas every time you smile at your brother and offer him your hand.”

This is a true story. It ran in the New York Times the day after Thanksgiving.1 There was a thirty-three year old cabbie who tied his shoulder-length hair in a ponytail. About five years ago, the cabbie “prayed to God for guidance on how to help the forgotten people of the streets who exist in life’s shadows.” He heard God tell him, “Make eight pounds of spaghetti, throw it in a pot, give it out on 103rd Street and Broadway with no conditions, and people will come.” He did, they came, and now he goes from door to door giving people food to eat.

God is probably not asking us to rush to New York and give out spaghetti. Today, we at St. Peter’s give dinners to the hungry every month. Like the New York cabbie, we offer people dinner with no conditions. And people come. This month we are also offering hats, scarves, and gloves. To what other ministry might God be calling us? Might God be calling us to offer spiritual sustenance to those around us? Is there anything else people need from us besides a free dinner? What else might God be inviting us to act on “with no conditions?” How are you personally and we as a parish being called to be living lights for others?

“Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light.” Let us pray,

Holy One, sender of the Word made flesh,2
So many in our world still wait in darkness and long for your light.
In the midst of darkness, enkindle our hope.
As we long for lasting peace in the midst of war, be with us.
As we long for families to be reunited, be with us.
As we long for enemies to be reconciled, be with us.
As we long for cures, healings, and freedom from addictions, be with us.
As we long for decent jobs and economic security be with us.
As we long for love and community, be with us.

Fulfill the deepest longings of your people and dispel the darkness in our hearts and in our world. Teach us to take your light into the dark places of our world. And let your Word ignite the hope the world needs to bring to life your love and justice. Amen.

1. www.educationforjustice.org

2. Adapted from “Advent Prayer Service,” Education for Justice, www.educationforjustice.org

Are You the One?

What’s going on here? Why did the writer of the Gospel of Matthew show us John the Baptist sending his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Wouldn’t Matthew’s readers think that John already knew for certain who Jesus was? The gospel accounts showed John and Jesus as cousins. The community of Jewish Christians for whom this gospel was written very likely knew that Jesus had been one of John’s disciples. Moreover, the gospel had already told them that when Jesus asked John for baptism along with everyone else, John said, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” And after Jesus was baptized, the gospel tells us that a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Was the gospel writer trying to suggest that, lying in prison, John suddenly doubted his cousin’s identity?

Actually, there are at least three questions embedded in this story. The first question is the nature of the relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus, a live and important question for Matthew’s audience. It’s possible that John was a member of the Essenes, an influential ascetic community that wrote and preserved what we now call the Dead Sea Scrolls. Even if he was not an Essene, John was a powerful prophetic voice as Jesus was beginning his own ministry. Many in Jesus’ time wondered how to regard the two of them. The gospel writer voices the consensus the early church reached as to John’s part in salvation history. Quoting from the prophecy of Isaiah, the gospel writer avers that John was a great prophet, perhaps the greatest of the prophets. Even so, quoting from the prophet Malachi, the writer suggests that John’s role was that of a forerunner or messenger, one who prepared the way for the coming of the Messiah, now known to be Jesus.

The second question in this passage is the question of what kind of Messiah Jesus actually was. During Jesus’ lifetime, many Jews had expected God’s anointed one to be a military leader, a “shoot from the stump of Jesse,” i.e.., another David who would free them from the Roman yoke. From their experience of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection, the early church gained a new understanding of God’s Anointed One. Jesus’ answer to John’s disciples reflects that new understanding. Notice that the gospel writer does not have Jesus answer their query directly. Rather, Jesus asks John’s disciples to look around them, see with their own eyes, and draw their own conclusions as to his identity. Then he alludes to the prophet Isaiah. He indirectly claims the Messiah’s mantle by suggesting that, because of him, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” To drive home his point, he tells them that all who understand this new definition of God’s anointed one will be blessed.

And the third question in this passage is an implied question: is it all right to have questions and doubts? The answer? Absolutely! John must surely have had questions about Jesus’ identity. The earliest followers of Jesus struggled for several centuries to come to terms with the impact of his life, death, and resurrection. Ever since, underneath social coercion to conform to the church, thoughtful, serious Christians have struggled with faith, have struggled with the nature of Jesus’ identity, have struggled with who God is, how to trust God, and how to love their neighbors. Having doubts and asking questions are part of the natural cycle of faith. In the end, struggling with questions is the only way to grow spiritually. If you are too content, you may be stagnating spiritually.

The value of struggling with questions is as true for the church as it is for individual Christians. In the early part of the nineteenth century, the Oxford movement within the Anglican Church struggled with reappropriating the liturgies, vestments, paraments, and icons of the pre-reformation church. Later on in the century, churches struggled with the call to support overseas missions. The mid-twentieth century brought us questions of liturgical renewal, the role of women, and the inequities faced by racial and ethnic minorities. Today, we struggle with the fate of our institutions, even as the church seems to be breaking out in new forms of witness and mission.

Fortunately, for us, we are in the right place to ask all kinds of faith questions. The Anglican Church has never been a confessional church. Lutherans, for example, are expected to subscribe to the twenty-eight faith statements of the Augsburg Confession. Presbyterians and other members of Reformed Churches subscribe to the Westminster Confession. Anglicans and Episcopalians have no such confessions. Anglicans and Episcopalians are not expected to hew solidly to certain theological perspectives. What about the Nicene Creed, the affirmation of faith that we recite in our liturgy, you may ask. Agreed upon in the fourth century, the creed is the normative statement of faith for the whole church. Whether any individual understands or even accepts every word of it is another matter. Whether, if we were creating a creed today, we would make exactly the same statements as the Nicene Creed is also an open question. The point is that we are part of a church that welcomes questions. I love the title of a Forward Movement pamphlet: “The Episcopal Church: A Faith for Thinking People.” My friends, that is who all of us are.

So what keeps us grounded as Christians? How do we keep growing and evolving in our understanding of who God is? What do we do when we wonder, “Are you the One?” Anglican spirituality is essentially liturgical. It is grounded in worship and fulfilled in worship. More to the point, Anglican spirituality is grounded in a life shaped by Scripture and mediated to us through the cycles of the liturgical year. Think about it. Day by day, if you read Morning or Evening prayer, or even the Forward Movement meditations, you encounter two or three lessons from Scripture. And not just any random Scripture, but Scripture that is chosen to help us hear a vast part of the Word of God in a logical, orderly way. Similarly, week by week, in the Eucharist, we hear four readings from Scripture, again artfully chosen to enable us to understand who Jesus is and what the good news is.

More to the point, our pattern of readings has remained largely the same for nearly a millennium. If you look at the Epistle and Gospel readings for Advent, for example, you will find that they are the same readings that were used not only in the medieval English church but also in a lectionary that goes back to the fifth century. Each of our texts reflects on the other, and all are chosen to help us deepen our understanding of the one in whom we have put our trust. Anglican reformers saw no need to change the ancient pattern; they only wanted us to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the Scriptures, so that we would be able to “embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope” which we have in Jesus Christ. As Anglicans, we grow spiritually as we hear and meditate on that proclamation year by year. In truth, we never hear the same Scripture twice, i.e., every time we hear a passage from Scripture it speaks to us afresh. As we mature as Christians, we ask questions, we ponder, chew, and hopefully grow in our understanding.

I invite you to reflect on your own understanding of Jesus and his importance in your life. Are you too asking John the Baptist’s question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Did you begin as a young person with clear ideas about God, Jesus, and the church? What changes have taken place in your understanding of God or Jesus? Do you wonder what you really believe? If pressed against a wall and asked to defend your faith, could you do it? Are you here in church because you think you should be here, or because you really trust God’s faithfulness and want to commit your life to Jesus? How does the way you live reflect your commitment to Jesus? In this time of waiting and expectation, as we prepare once again to ponder the mystery of the Word moving into our neighborhood, you would do well to find a few moments of quiet and meditate on these questions.

My friends, this is good news: it’s always OK to ask John the Baptist’s question. We will rarely get a straight answer to the question. Just like he did with John’s disciples, Jesus will ask us to look around and see the evidence for his presence among us. When we do arrive at some answer, it will always be temporary and tentative, and it will reflect only the next stage in our growth as disciples. But every time we ask that question – “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” – we can be assured that our questions are, in the end, God-given and will eventually lead us deeper into the heart of God.

Written for our Learning

“Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

Do you recognize this collect? In our present prayer book we hear it on the next to last Sunday of the Church year. This year we heard it on November 17th. However, in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, it was the collect for today, the Second Sunday in Advent. As a prayer, it actually dates back to 1549 and our very first Book of Common Prayer. It reminds us that study of Scripture must be an integral and ongoing part of our lives, so that we may truly understand what God has done and is continuing to do for us.

It’s not surprising that the church heard this collect on the second Sunday of Advent. As a prayer, it reflects the first words of the portion of Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians that we just heard: “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.” The “scriptures,” of course, that Paul was talking about were the Hebrew Scriptures, since Paul’s letters antedate any of the Gospels, and since the writings that we now call the New Testament were declared canonical only in the fourth century. Now at the end of his letter, in his final exhortation to the Roman Christians, Paul reminds them that the covenants and promises that God made to the Israelites now, through Christ, also include the gentiles. More to the point, he tells them that diligent study of Scripture will enable them to maintain their hope of Christ’s coming, as they work out their differences and learn how to live in harmony with one another.

Paul challenges the Roman Christians to remember their scriptures by embedding references to those very scriptures in his exhortation. Quite likely, the “steadfastness” which he commends to them alludes to the endurance of Christ, especially his endurance of insults, shame, and death. Many think that in the allusion to Christ’s endurance, Paul echoes Ps. 69:9, a verse that for Christians describes Jesus’ travail: “It is zeal for your house that has consumed me; the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.” To emphasize God’s inclusion of the gentiles in God’s promises, Paul alludes to Psalm 18:50: “For this I will extol you, O Lord, among the nations, and sing praises to your name.” He also quotes Psalm 117:1 “Praise the Lord, all you nations! Extol him, all you peoples!” Finally, Paul quotes the end of the passage from Isaiah which we just heard: “On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.”

Paul’s acknowledgement of the importance of the Hebrew Scriptures finds an echo in the Gospel of Matthew. We are now at the beginning of the first year of our three-year Revised Common Lectionary, a set of readings from Scripture that Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, and other denominations share. Between now and next Advent, most of our Gospel readings will come from the Gospel according to Matthew. Written after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, possibly in Antioch, this Gospel was most likely composed for a community of Jewish Christians. As such it highlights the Jewish origin and identity of Jesus and his earliest followers. For Matthew, Jesus is God’s anointed. He is a teacher as exalted and as authoritative as Moses, who was considered to be the author of the Hebrew Law.

What is more important, Matthew takes great pains to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of both the law and the prophets, and that in him all of God’s promises are fulfilled. To drive home his point, Matthew opens his account of Jesus’ life with a genealogy that firmly establishes Jesus as one of David’s descendants, thus alluding to the “stump of Jesse,” i.e., David’s father. Thereafter, he often either directly quotes from the Hebrew Scriptures or alludes to passages from Scripture. In the twelve verses we just heard, Matthew has embedded references to Abraham, and to the prophets Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. A few examples. He alludes to the prophet Isaiah to characterize John the Baptizer: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’” With John’s ascetic lifestyle, wearing camel’s hair and eating honey, he alludes to the way of life of traditional prophets, especially that of Elijah. His calling the Pharisees and Sadducees a “brood of vipers” is an indirect allusion to the passage from Isaiah we heard today, in which the asp and the adder were acknowledged as former enemies of human beings. At the end of the passage, the “chaff,” an allusion to the wicked who will be destroyed in fire, is a recurring image in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Paul of Tarsus knew the Scriptures. The writer of the Gospel according to Matthew knew the Scriptures intimately. Do we? Do we have any sense of the historical contexts of our various books of Scripture? Have we encountered Jesus’ own understanding of his mission, as the Gospels characterize it? Do we know what the content of our hope as Christians really is? Do we have any clue as to what the “reign of God” or the “Kingdom of Heaven,” that has now come near us, really is? Do we know what Scripture has to tell us about living together in harmony?

Scott Gunn, the editor of the publication Forward Day by Day, tells us that a “recent study revealed that Episcopalians are about the most spiritually content people around.” For Gunn, this is not good news. People who are spiritually healthy, he suggests, are not content with what they learned of God in confirmation class, especially when that event was decades ago. Rather, he tells us, “People who are spiritually healthy want to grow and learn, to always look for the next step in their journey.” That includes us. You say you’ve already read the Bible from cover to cover? You say you’ve been going to church as long as you can remember, and you’ve heard these passages from Scripture hundreds of times? Scott Gunn reminds us – and I would strongly second his observation – that “every time I study any passage in the scriptures, even one I’ve read dozens of times, I grow and learn.”1

Advent is a time a think about the promises and prophecies that God has made to us and to all people, prophecies we hear first in the Hebrew Scriptures and prophecies that are restated in the Christian scriptures. Advent is a time to wonder who the one more powerful than John the Baptizer really is. Our understandings of Jesus and God should change and evolve as a result of our life experiences. Ideally, Advent is a time to take stock, and to see whether we are growing in an appreciation of God’s love and mercy, towards ourselves and towards all people. Advent is a time to make a fresh start and a new commitment, a commitment to renewing our cooperation with God and to hearing again what God is telling us through Scripture.

So here’s my challenge to you: let’s study the Scriptures together. It’s a new Church year. Let’s make a new year’s resolution to study the Bible together. Here are some possibilities. They’re not mutually exclusive. One is an online study of a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. A second is a face-to-face bi-weekly meeting to do the same, i.e., to study the Gospel of Matthew. For example, we could meet two Tuesday afternoons a week. Another would be a period of Bible study either before the Eucharist or after coffee hour. Yet another possibility would be to make 2014 our year for the Bible Challenge, in which we commit to reading the entire Bible during the calendar year. During our potluck, I will ask you how ready you are to renew your commitment to letting Scripture instruct you.

Studying the Bible is not an end in itself. We don’t get special treatment or brownie points from God because we can quote Scripture. The Sadducees could quote the Torah, and the Pharisees knew both the Torah and the other writings. Even the devil could quote Scripture, as we learn from the stories of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.

So here’s the good news. Our Scriptures are a gift from God! They were written, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to reinforce our trust in God and our hope for the realization of God’s future. They equip us to live holy lives and to share the good news with others. Most important, they enable us to show forth our praise of God, “not only with our lips, but in our lives.” May God enable us to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” our scriptures, and may the Word that we hear become flesh in us.

1. Forward Day by Day (Cincinnati: Forward Movement, 2013), Thursday, December 5.

Put on the Armor of Light

“… the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light ….”

Why do we light candles on a wreath of greens? Although the Advent wreath has been part of our tradition as Episcopalians for a long time, no one quite knows its origin. Some think that pre-Germanic people used wreaths with lit candles during December as a sign of hope for the warmth and light of spring. Others think that Scandinavian people lighted candles around a wheel and prayed to the god of light to turn “the wheel of earth” back toward the sun and bring back longer and warmer days. By the Middle Ages, Christians had adopted this tradition and used Advent wreaths to help prepare for Christmas.

Actually, it’s not hard to see why the Advent wreath became a Christian symbol, and why we still use it today. The greens of the wreath – evergreens – remind us of continuing life. The circle, which has neither beginning nor end, symbolizes the eternity of God, the immortality of our own souls, and the new life of the resurrection. The purple candles symbolize the prayer, sacrifice, and good works that are part of this season. The pink candle, which we light on the third Sunday in Advent, Gaudete Sunday, or Rejoice Sunday, symbolizes joy and hope, joy for the celebration of Jesus’ first coming and hope for his expected second coming to judge the world and renew creation. Finally, the light of the candles signifies Christ, the Light of the World, the light that dispels darkness, the light of the new day that is already dawning.

It is just this wonderful image of the light of the dawning of a new day that we heard in our reading from Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians. Unlike his other letters, Paul was not writing here to a community that he had personally founded. And this may well have been his last letter, as it sounds something like his “last will and testament.” If you read it through – and I encourage you to go beyond the snippets of the letter that we hear in the lectionary – you will discover that Paul spends much of it wrestling with the implications of the transformed – and transforming – way of life to which he understands disciples of Jesus to be called. Although Paul respects the way of life of the Jews around him, as a follower of Jesus he has come to realize that the ritual requirements and dietary restrictions of Hebrew law no longer bind followers of Jesus. Rather, Jesus’ disciples are called to a life epitomized by love.

We hear this call clearly in the verses immediately preceding our lection: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:8-10). Do you hear the commandment in this kind of love? Love here is not a sappy, sentimental, or romantic feeling; it is a way of behaving that wants only to benefit another person. Paul’s charge here then? As followers of Jesus we are called to a transformed way of life that is grounded in love.

In the piece of this wonderful letter that we just heard, Paul uses the images of night and dawn to emphasize his point. In effect, he is telling the Roman Christians – with some urgency – to get up and get dressed for a new day. Whether or not the second coming of Jesus is imminent – and it’s not clear what at this point in his life Paul believed about Jesus’ second coming – it is clear that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus brought about a turning point in time, a “new day.” From now on, Christians are called to dream with God of a new heaven, a new earth, a new way of being human beings made in God’s image. As those baptized into his body, the Roman Christians are now living in a new time. Just as those who were baptized took off their old clothes and put on new white robes, the Roman Christians – and we – have entered a new time, a time in which we are called to exchange the nightgowns and pajamas of the old life for the “armor of light,” for Sunday clothes, for the clothes of newly transformed people.

As we begin preparing to enter into that new day, as we lay out the armor of light, what, we might ask, are the night clothes that we must first take off? One way to answer that question is that we are told – commanded – to give up all those old habits that dull our senses and all those uncaring behaviors that destroy our relationships. Here’s another way of thinking about what night clothes we might remove. To put on the joy of the new day, the true joy of this season, first we might remove “the fears and pains that weigh us down, that we carry around like heavy wool coats, that we try to wrap up in festive themes” during this “holiday season.”1 Perhaps what we really need is an oasis of silence, a place to be quiet for a few moments, a place where we might open our hearts and share with God all that is really on our minds. .

Second, we might take off our feelings of isolation. Although our culture encourages our hyper-individualism, as Christians we are never only single cells. We are called to be members of a community, always in relationship with others, in families, workplaces, parishes, villages, and communities across the globe. While we are enjoying our full refrigerators and warm houses, this is the time to take off our blinders. This is the time to see that there are many people – some right here in this town – who have no parties, no warm clothes, no heat, and no reason for joy or hope. And third perhaps we might take off our guilt. Putting on the armor of light, the clothes of a new day, does not require us to be ashamed of what we have. Rather, we are always called to share with others some of the many gifts with which God has blessed us.

We too are included in Paul’s commandments. We too are called to take off night clothes and put on the clothes of a new day. What might that look like at St. Peter’s? Perhaps if we wish to live into a new day as a parish we might continue to ensure that our worship truly reflects our tradition and is true to the people we are today, in 2013. Our life as a Christian community in the Anglican tradition did not stop in 1549 or 1662 or even 1928. We must also continue to grow in our faith and Christian practice, both as individuals and as a parish. You have all continued to grow as people since middle school and high school. Has your understanding of your faith similarly continued to grow? More to the point, are we helping each other grow as mature, faithful people? Finally, we must also grow in our understanding of ministry. To what new ministries in this new day is God calling us? Do we have the courage to take off old ways of doing things and put on new responses to the needs of those around us? Are we far-sighted enough to see on the horizon God’s reign breaking in?

I spent the summer of 2006 doing a chaplaincy internship at Children’s Hospital in Columbus. Nine times during the ten weeks I was there I was called to be on call for twenty-four hours. One of those nine nights I waited with three generations of an anxious family while a newborn infant was in surgery. The prognosis had not been good. Indeed, after some time, the surgeon came out and told the family that the surgery had not helped, and that the infant would be taken off artificial life support. At the request of the family, I baptized the infant and waited with them until he died. Then we wept and prayed together. It was a long night. As I was returning to my little room on an upper floor of the hospital, the first streaks of dawn were already appearing. As I prayed one last time for the child and his family, I did so with a heavy heart, but also with the certainty that God would receive him, bless his grieving family, and eventually bring us all to that day when grief and crying are no more.

It’s still dark out. But the first streaks of dawn are already appearing on the horizon. We the followers of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, continue to pray for his coming, into our own lives today, and into the future of which he has already shown us a glimpse. As we light our Advent candles, as we enjoy their glow, we remember the light that is coming. We rejoice in God’s gifts to us, and, with the Roman Christians, and all of Christ’s faithful disciples, we put on the new clothes of that glorious day.

1. Catherine A. Caimono at faithandleadership.com (11/23/10), quoted in Synthesis December 1, 2013; and following. well.

Who is Jesus?

Who is Jesus? Who is this Galilean rabbi wandering the countryside teaching and healing? As John the Baptizer lay in Herod’s prison, he heard of what Jesus was doing. He sent his own disciples to ask, “Are you the One we’ve been expecting, or are we still waiting?” Do you remember how Jesus answered them? Jesus told them, “Go back and tell John what’s going on: the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the wretched of the earth learn that God is on their side.” Jesus then turned around and put the question to his own disciples. After asking them who other people thought he was, he looked his friends straight in the eye and said, “But who do you say that I am?” Perhaps speaking for them all, and perhaps speaking without even thinking, Peter exclaimed, “You’re the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Now, if Jesus were standing this morning where I’m standing and asked you that question, how would you answer? Do today’s lections give you any clues?

We’ve come to the very end of the church year. Next Sunday we will begin a new church year. Today we crown the church year by proclaiming that Christ is King. It’s an odd proclamation in a way. Our Scriptures are at best ambivalent about kings. Once the Israelites were settled in Canaan, they were governed by Judges. When the leaders of the people begged the prophet Samuel to anoint a king for them, he at first demurred and reminded them of all the ways that a king would tyrannize them. Nor does the proclamation of Christ as King have ancient roots. The lectionaries of previous prayer books list no such feast. Indeed, if we were still using the 1928 prayer book, today we would be observing the Sunday Next Before Advent and would be hearing the story from John’s Gospel about the feeding of the five thousand. As an observance Christ the King only dates from the Italy of 1925. Worried about the growing power of Fascism in Italy, and especially the government of Benito Mussolini, Pope Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King. For nations wracked by the Great War and likely facing another, the day proclaimed God’s reign over the entire world. The day also reminded Christians that their allegiance was to a divine ruler and not to earthly political leaders. In proclaiming Christ as King, we now join with Roman Catholics, as well as Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists, in acknowledging the Lordship of Christ in our lives.

But if Christ is our king, of what kind of king are we the subjects? Do our texts shed any light on that question? In our reading from the prophet Jeremiah, we hear words spoken to a people in exile. Jeremiah proclaimed God’s word before and during the sacking of Jerusalem and exile of the religious and political leadership in 586 BC. Throughout his prophecy he has especially harsh words for the political leadership, castigating them for provoking the Babylonian rulers. In today’s lesson, Jeremiah compares the kings, who have brought about the disaster of exile, to bad shepherds who have not properly cared for God’s flock. After attending to the bad shepherds, God promises that the people will return to Jerusalem, to their own “fold,” and that God will send good shepherds to lead them. Speaking through Jeremiah, God makes an even more startling promise, that God will raise up from David’s line a “righteous branch,” a true king who will be wise, just, and righteous. From very early on, Christians have understood Jesus to be that “righteous branch,” that wise, just ruler.

If Jeremiah gave us God’s promises about a ruler in the earthly realm, in a restored Jerusalem, Paul, in his letter to the church at Colossae, gives a vision of Christ that unites the human dimension with the cosmic dimension. In what must have been a fragment of a hymn, he gives us a vision of the majesty of Christ, who is the very image of God, who gives coherence to the created order, and through whom God unites all people. If we are indeed subjects of such a Christ, if indeed we have been transferred out of a life of darkness into this glorious kingdom, then we are called to an absolute commitment to Christ: we either accept Christ or reject him, we either are or are not loyal to him and to no other. Neither the Colossians nor we can be spiritual consumers, picking one element from column A and another from column B, following Christ’s lead when we feel like it and the call of worldly pursuits when we don’t.

Of what kind of king are we subjects? We’ve heard Jeremiah’s vision of a righteous shepherd and Paul’s vision of a cosmic Christ who reconciles all creation within himself. Then we come to the Gospel. Wham! We have Jesus on the cross, tortured, humiliated, and executed as a criminal. Is this the picture of a king? The inscription on the cross, which is supposed to let onlookers know for what crimes the person is being executed, declares “The King of the Jews.” The soldiers declare, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” We may be proclaiming Jesus’ absolute authority in our lives, we may be declaring ourselves to be his subjects, but for those who saw him in the flesh that day, he was anything but a king. He was powerless, his friends, except for a few stalwart women, had deserted him, and he was surrounded by a jeering crowd and brutal executioners.

What are we to make of this depiction of Jesus’ crucifixion? There’s no blood or gore in Luke’s account. But there is in Luke – and in Luke alone an – an astonishing conversation between Jesus and the second thief. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” the thief says. Kingdom? On the face of it, this is an absurd request. There the two of them are, stripped naked, bereft of every human relationship or possession, dragged outside the city walls, undergoing a brutally painful death, and knowing that they will be left hanging on their crosses as examples to any who would challenge the Roman rulers. And yet, astonishingly, we hear no despair or pain in this conversation. We hear talk of the future: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” “Today, you shall be with me in paradise.” Is Jesus really like one of those kings in his parables, able to show extravagant generosity to someone who asks for a boon? Does Jesus know something no one else knows? Is there more to the story than is apparent?

Perhaps. Perhaps there are a couple of clues in this story about what the kingship of Christ is really about. The first clue may be that, for now at least, his reign is hidden in suffering. He scarcely looked like a king on the day of his death, nor for most people does he appear to be one now. After centuries of ascendancy and alignment with the political powers, Christ’s cause appears to be failing. Churches have been undergoing a period of disestablishment, as theologian Douglas John Hall calls it. Church membership in Europe is virtually non-existent, and mainline denominations in this country are in serious decline. Wars stretch on and on, political leaders are assassinated, and gun violence, along with every other kind of violence, continues unabated. And yet, like the second thief on the cross, we carry a glimmer of hope. We can sense that selfishness, violence, and injustice are not the end of the story. Jesus’ answer to the thief allows us to see that eventually every knee will bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord. But for now his sovereignty is hidden in the suffering of the innocent.

And yet. Dark though this world may be, can’t we see the hidden majesty of our king for brief moments? Do we get glimpses of his mercy when someone recovers from illness? Is his grace apparent when relationships are healed, the hungry are fed, the grieving are consoled? Have we journeyed further into his kingdom when we take steps to right an injustice, make peace among those estranged, forgive each other, and allow ourselves to be forgiven? Do we walk in his footsteps when we speak a word of faith to those who are hopeless and suffering? If we strain our eyes, can we just see that there may be blessings ahead, even though the journey may be long and painful? Can we share our hope with those in despair?

Who is Jesus? Are we ready join the kingdom of the Crucified One? Are we ready to be transformed into his likeness? Can we see him already at work in the world?

Shepherd of Israel, hear our prayer,
as your Son heard the plea
of the criminal crucified with him.
Gather us into Christ's holy reign.
Gather the broken, the sorrowing, and the sinner,
that all may know
wholeness, joy, and forgiveness. Amen.

We Too May Trust

My brothers and sisters, here is the good news, right up front. You may be thinking that there is no good news in today’s lessons, but there is. This is the good news: despite destruction and chaos, despite natural disasters and unending wars, despite personal tragedies and sorrows, we Christians can still look to the future with hope. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection fundamentally changed history. God’s future has already been inaugurated, although we do not yet see it. We are living in the “middle time,” the time between Jesus’ resurrection and his Second Coming. Consequently, we are called to live faithfully in the present, as we press forward with the hope that our bond with God is eternal, that creation will be renewed, and that God’s future will be realized in God’s good time.

In their different ways, all our lessons lead us into a deeper understanding of that good news. Our first lesson comes from the book of the prophet Malachi. Malachi was written sometime in the late sixth century BC, after the Israelites had returned from exile in Babylon. The first temple in Jerusalem, which had been built by King Solomon, had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Although the temple now had been rebuilt, the post-exile generation was experiencing economic hardship and cultural dislocation. Earlier in Malachi’s prophecy, God takes the people to task for their inappropriate sacrifices. The people for their part complain that God neither rewards the faithful nor punishes the wicked.

Today’s lesson is Malachi’s answer to these charges. Speaking for God, the prophet looks to the future and assures his hearers that God has not forsaken God’s promises. He warns those who are unfaithful that they will be destroyed like the stubble left and burned after a harvest. We don’t know when that day will be. However, in that same future day, Malachi assures the faithful, those who have kept the covenant with God will be rewarded for their righteousness. They will be refreshed by the healing rays of the rising morning sun. Christians see these promises fulfilled in the redemption wrought by Jesus. On Christmas Eve we too will praise God as we sing, “Risen with healing in his wings, light and life to all he brings, hail, the Sun of Righteousness….”

Echoing Malachi, our psalm anticipates the fulfillment of God’s promises and celebrates God’s intervention in the world as an accomplished fact. “He remembers his mercy and faithfulness to the house of Israel, and all the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.” God has acted, and we are filled with joy.

Paul’s second letter to the Christians in Thessaloniki extends the message of the coming of God. Written in the early 50’s most probably from Corinth, the letter is addressed to a community in disarray and conflict. The main problem was that some members of the community were so convinced that Jesus’ return was imminent that they had stopped working and were instead mooching off others and spending their days gossiping with each other. Despite being an evangelist, Paul had continued to support himself by his trade as a tentmaker. Consequently, his response to those who would harm the community through idleness and gossip is firm. In the earlier part of the letter, he assures them that Christ will indeed return. However, he is clear that we do not know either the time or the place when Jesus will return. Consequently, Paul he goes on to remind the Thessalonians that all who are able most continue to ply their trades and live quiet and orderly lives. Most important, they must not “weary in doing right.”

As we hear this portion of Paul’s letter, we need to keep in mind an important caveat. Paul is most emphatically not saying that we are to let those who are unable to work go hungry. Indeed, throughout his letters Paul emphatically urges his hearers to care for the vulnerable members of the community, to remember the widows and the orphans, the sick and disabled. Here his point is to remind his hearers not to worry about the when or where of Christ’s second coming but rather to faithfully live their lives carrying out their duties conscientiously and working to build up the Christian community.

The message of the Gospel reading is similar. There are also some things to remember about Luke’s Gospel. The first is that it was written in the early ‘80’s AD. Peter and Paul were both dead, having been executed in Rome by Nero in 64. The temple had been destroyed, along with all the rest of Jerusalem, by the Romans in 70. Persecution of the followers of Jesus was in full swing.

As you know from our reading last week, after walking from Galilee, in Luke’s narrative Jesus and his followers are now in Jerusalem. It is just days from Jesus’ death. Jesus and his friends are standing looking up at the temple. Although it is the same temple to which Malachi had referred, it had been much enlarged by Herod Antipas and was actually quite beautiful. (It is the remaining wall of this temple that survives in Jerusalem today and is known as the Wailing Wall.) In a long speech, of which we have heard only the first part and an aside, Jesus is giving his followers a glimpse of the future. After predicting the fall of the temple and of Jerusalem, he throws out a few signs that the time is near. Then he backs up and warns his followers of persecutions that will take place before the destruction of the temple. Finally, in the part we don’t hear Jesus talks again about signs of the end. He reassures his followers that they “will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.” On that day, he tells them, they are to “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

When Luke‘s hearers heard this part of the Gospel, all that they had just heard had already taken place. Consequently, their conviction that Jesus was truly a prophet was strengthened. If he was right, they might have said, about the fall of the temple and of Jerusalem, then they could also trust his predictions about his final coming to redeem his followers. More important, hearing Jesus’ words about persecution, they could be reassured that all their own suffering – and the Book of Acts, the companion to the Gospel, details many incidents of persecution of Jesus’ earliest followers – was part of the continuation of Jesus’ mission through the lives of his disciples.

Like Paul, Jesus provides no details as to when, how, or where God’s reign will be consummated or when Jesus himself will return. However, he is clear about this: we are not to obsess over his return. Rather, we are to live faithfully in the present. We are to do the work that God has given us to do. We are to speak up about our faith, and we are to grow and mature as his followers. Even in times of war and destruction, chaos and natural disaster, personal tragedy and persecution, we are to turn to Jesus, and we are to trust in God’s goodness and love towards us.

Thomas Dorsey was born in rural Georgia in 1889.1 He was an excellent gospel and blues musician and a prolific song writer. As a young man he moved to Chicago. There he played the piano in churches, clubs, and theaters. In August, 1932, he left his pregnant wife in Chicago and traveled to St. Louis where he was to be the featured soloist at a large revival meeting. As he finished his first night there, he received a telegram. The telegram said simply, “Your wife has just died.” He rushed home. There he learned that his wife had given birth to a son but had died in childbirth. His son died the next day. Dorsey buried them both together in the same casket. Deeply grieving, he secluded himself and refused to see family and friends or to write any music.

Still in mourning, one day he sat down at the piano. He felt a sense of peace wash through him. He heard a new melody in his head, one he had never heard before. He began to play it on the piano. That night he testified, in the midst of deep sorrow, to his trust in Jesus’ love:

Precious Lord, take my hand,
Lead me on, let me stand;
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
Through the storm, through the night,
Lead me on to the light;
Take my hand, precious Lord,
Lead me home.

My brothers and sisters, the good news is that we too may speak these words. We too may trust God’s promises. We too may live in hope. We too may know God’s love. We too may work for the coming of God’s reign.

1. With thanks to Nancy Lynne Westfield, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 2010), 312.

A Call to Resurrection

Yehuda ben Yitzhak here, reporting now from Jerusalem. I’ve been following behind the itinerant Galilean rabbi, Yeshua ha Notsri, Jesus of Nazareth to you. If you’re just joining us, we’ve been walking here from Galilee. It’s been a long walk. Of course, Jesus’ healing people and stopping along the way to teach his disciples slowed us down some. We reached Jerusalem a few days ago. And what do you know? The crowds came out in droves to greet Jesus. They waved palm branches and looked like they were ready to crown him king, but he wouldn’t let them. Then when he came to the temple and saw the money-changers at their tables, Jesus got all red in the face. He started shouting, and he pushed the money off their tables. You can imagine how that went over! Since then, it’s clear that the religious establishment – to say nothing of the Roman government – has been spying on him and his followers. I think they’re looking for ways to trap him so that they can bring him up on charges – either blasphemy or fomenting rebellion, or both.

So who are these folks in the religious establishment anyway? A little background here, as we walk around Jerusalem with Jesus and his friends. Actually there are five different groups you need to know about.1 There are the temple clergy led by the high priest. They belong to the tribe of Levi and inherit their offices. Then there’s the Sanhedrin, the religious Supreme Court. They’re led by the high priest. The Sanhedrin usually has both Pharisees and Sadducees, parties who interpret Scripture differently and are both very influential among the rabbis. The Sadducees, you remember, hold only the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures as authoritative. They don’t believe in resurrection, because it’s not mentioned in the Torah. The Pharisees, on the other hand, accept the prophets and other writings. Most people think of them as reformers. They do believe in the resurrection of the righteous, although for them the righteous are those who keep every jot and tittle of the law and who separate themselves from Gentiles as much as possible. Finally, there are the scribes, the religious lawyers. Their job is to apply the Law of Moses to everyday life.

Jesus, of course, isn’t a member of any of these parties. As far as we know, he hasn’t had any formal religious training. He’s just a hill country preacher. It’s just astounding how well he can match wits with all these religious professionals and can make the Law understandable. And of course, he’s such a popular preacher. And it doesn’t hurt that he can drive home his point with a miracle or two! The religious leaders don’t trust him – of course they’re afraid of losing their influence – and the Romans are sure he wants to stir up popular rebellion. Folks, it’s a recipe for trouble.

Oh, Jesus and his friends have stopped walking. We’ve gathered in a square by the temple. The money changers seem to have set up their tables again, and there are lots of folks milling around. First, some Pharisees ask Jesus by what authority he is teaching. Now here come some Sadducees trying to test him. Since the Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection, their spokesman paints this ridiculous scenario about a woman having had to marry seven brothers. He probably means to ridicule those who do believe in the resurrection, but, really, what does he take Jesus for? An utter fool? Fortunately, Jesus doesn’t take the bait. He cuts right through the man’s assumptions, doesn’t he? He tells him and the other Sadducees that they don’t understand either God or the Scriptures. God is not God of the dead, God is God of the living. So everyone who is faithful to God will pass through death and, like Abraham and Moses, be united with God forever. And because they are united with God, obviously there’s no need for marriage.

Whoa! The Sadducees’ faces are bright red! That’s a stinging rebuke to those who think they are among the most respected members of the religious hierarchy. They are clearly outraged. Are they also just a little afraid of Jesus? Because the Sadducees only read part of the Scripture, they miss all the prophetic calls for justice and care for the poor. And since they don’t believe in the resurrection, or any kind of afterlife, they don’t think God will ever hold them accountable for how they live. No wonder they’re all so comfortably rich. Jesus talks a lot about caring for the poor, but these folks seem to care only about themselves. Did what Jesus just say change their mind any? I don’t know what will happen next, folks, but, you can be sure, when news breaks Yehuda ben Yitzhak will be here reporting it.

Where are we in this scene? Maybe we’re like Jesus’ friends, just tagging after him, confused and wondering what will happen next. Maybe, though, we’re not so different from the Pharisees and Sadducees. Maybe we’re like the Pharisees. Maybe we believe that all God wants of us is that we be good, decent folks and live a pure and personally upright life. Go to church, read the Bible, tithe, pray seven times a day, don’t cheat on our spouses or drink too much. Never mind those poor people who are too lazy to work and would rather live on government handouts. Never mind those of other faiths – they’re doomed. If we keep ourselves pure we’ll be saved.

In this country, perhaps we’re more like the Sadducees. Maybe we hear only the parts of Scripture that we want to hear. Maybe we miss the parts about caring for the widow and orphan, about making just provision for the alien in our midst, about pursuing peace, about caring for creation, about loving one another. Franciscan spiritual teacher Richard Rohr reminds us that page after page of the Gospels call us to “the work of justice and generosity toward the poor and the outsider.” Yet “most Christians have indeed been ‘cafeteria Christians’ when it comes to this. Usually they will markedly emphasize something else (often a sexual issue) to divert attention from what Jesus did not divert attention from.”2 Perhaps, like the Sadducees, we also think that we won’t be held accountable by God for how we’ve lived our lives, for “what we’ve done and left undone,” for “the evil we have done and the evil done on our behalf.”

Jesus has called us to lives that are better and richer. For us, to postpone accountability is to postpone discipleship. Heaven and hell are not something we experience only after death. We experience heaven and hell right here in this world, in our daily lives, through our choices to listen for God’s voice or ignore it, to love others or to isolate ourselves, to pursue justice, to care for those in need. Perhaps like the Sadducees, we let our wealth numb our consciences and blind us to the needs of others. While reassuring us that we are God’s forever, Jesus calls us to open our eyes and look around. Jesus calls us to read all of Scripture and to understand God’s preference for the poor and marginalized. Jesus calls us to give up our trust in following myriad rules of personal purity. Jesus calls us to give up our belief that it doesn’t matter how we live our lives. Jesus calls us to begin seeing our neighbors, all our neighbors, and all of creation through God’s eyes and to begin partnering with God in realizing God’s future.

Most of all, Jesus calls us to believe in resurrection, to believe that God has and will overcome every negation, including the ultimate negation of death. Because Jesus has risen we will rise because of him. Because Jesus has risen we can hope and trust in the future. Because Jesus has risen, we can experience resurrection here and now. And how do we experience that resurrection? When we see the poor lifted up out of poverty, when we see those who are lonely restored to community, when we see those who are sick brought back to life, when we raise our own voices against violence and injustice. Resurrection means feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, it means visiting those in prison and witnessing to the good news not only with our lips but with our lives. While we wait for the one who has died and risen, so that we too may experience full life with God, we are to press forward, devoting ourselves, our time, our talent, and whatever treasure we have, to sharing with others the experience of resurrection.

My sisters and brothers, this is the good news. Jesus has revealed to us a God who profoundly loves all of us, who calls us into a resurrection life of both deeper relationship and more faithful service, and who assures us that once we are joined to God our connection with God will never be broken. Thanks be to God.

1. With thanks to Pat Marrin, Celebration, Nov. 10, 2013 for much of the following.
2. Daily Meditation, Nov. 7, 2013 (electronic message).

A Great Cloud of Witnesses

Who are the saints? Are they those shadowy figures from a distant past, the ones depicted with glowing haloes in medieval paintings and Orthodox icons? Are they the ones officially declared as saints by the Roman Catholic Church, or the ones deemed worthy by the Episcopal Church of inclusion in Holy Women, Holy Men? Who are they, and why should we even think about them? When we have any number of sports heroes and headline-grabbing celebrities, why do we even need saints?

In 1373 in Norwich, England, a thirty-year old woman lay mortally ill. The parish priest placed a crucifix on her chest. All of a sudden she had an intense vision of Jesus on the cross. She immediately began to recover. As she recovered she had more visions. She decided to dedicate her life to trying to understand the gift that God had given her. By her own request, and with the permission of her bishop, she was enclosed in a small room on the side of the Church of St. Julian. The room had a window and a small door that led into the church, through which she could hear mass and receive communion. It also had a small window that face the churchyard, through which she could offer spiritual direction to others. With the help of a monk, she wrote up brief versions of her initial visions. She continued to meditate on her visions, and at some point wrote longer, more detailed versions of them. It is thought that she died about 1415 and may be buried near the church where she lived.

We don’t know much about Julian of Norwich, as she came to be called. We ourselves may not feel called to lead an anchorite’s life, as Julian and others like her felt called to do. But we can still read Julian’s book, either in the 15th century English in which she wrote or in modern English. Through Julian’s colorful and detailed visions, we get a glimpse of the reality of the Trinity, and we learn the importance of single-minded devotion to God. We come to know Jesus as our loving Mother, and we realize that we are first and foremost God’s most beloved children. We discover – if we don’t already know it – that we may – and do – sin, but, broken, dusty, and lost as we may be, we can never lose God’s love.

A century after Julian’s death, a thirty-nine year unhappy Spanish Carmelite sister also looked at a crucifix. Immediately she felt disgusted at how idly she and her fellow sisters lived and at how dull and lackadaisical their spiritual lives had become. She vowed to devote herself more seriously to a life of prayer. She then almost instantly had a deep sense of God’s love, almost lighting her up and transforming her from deep within her soul. She decided to found a new reformed community of Carmelite nuns, who would live simply, on alms and the work of their own hands, and maintain a rigorous rule of prayer. She went on to found sixteen other communities in Spain. As her prayer life continued to deepen, she had many other mystical experiences. In an age when few women wrote, she instructed her fellow sisters in the journey towards union with God in a book titled in English The Interior Castle. She also wrote an autobiography, and left a collection of mystical poetry.

We may not feel called to follow Teresa of Avila into a Carmelite convent. The Interior Castle is not easy reading. Nevertheless Teresa also has much to teach us. She stresses our need to know ourselves, both our strengths and our weaknesses. She reassures us that God is always with us. Consequently, she also emphasizes the importance of regular disciplines of prayer, even as she assures us that, “Prayer … is nothing but friendly intercourse, and frequent solitary converse, with Him who we know loves us.” Most important, Teresa also gently reminds us that attention to prayer and service of others are not mutually exclusive. Rather, prayer and service are integral to each other. All prayer must eventually lead to good works, Teresa tells us, while our service of others must be grounded in our prayer. Ultimately, we are called to be both mystics and prophets.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove knows well the fundamental connection between prayer and service of others. Not long ago, padding around the first floor of his house on a cold, dark night, he heard feet shuffling at his door and an insistent knock.1 Jonathan lives with his family in Walltown, a neighborhood in west Durham, North Carolina, in an intentional community called Rutba House. The house is named after a place in Iraq, where Jonathan and his wife had experienced hospitality while traveling as witnesses for peace. The front door knocker is engraved with the words, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” For the last ten years, Rutba House has been offering hospitality to all comers. Some stay for a few days, some move in virtually permanently. Some were once homeless. Some are fleeing abusive partners, some come straight from prison, and some are suffering from PTSD. Some are former drug addicts seeking a fresh start.

Sometimes Jonathan and his family get discouraged. They know they can’t help all in need. They know that some take their hospitality and their spare change and go out for another fix or another drink. As he listened to the knocking Jonathan knew that it could be Jesus knocking. It could also be drunken Greg, or Larry trying to sell him a stolen toaster, or Patrice wanting respite from her loudmouth husband. He knew that sometimes miracles happen, but sometimes they don’t. Ten years’ worth of stories flashed through his mind as he stood in his kitchen waiting. Another knock. He thought, “Is this Jesus, a guide from beyond, come to save me, however inconvenient his timing may be? Or is it the beginning of another long night in the ER?” He went to the door. He went to the door, he says, “because the Jesus I want to know is the Jesus who comes knocking at midnight, bringing his tired and homeless friends with him.”

A little after midnight, about four years ago, Steve Stone, the pastor of Heartsong Church in Cordova, Tennessee, received a telephone call from a group of Muslims in Kashmir, Pakistan.2 They had been watching CNN when a story about Heartsong Church aired. They were dumbfounded at what they saw. Pastor Stone had discovered that the Memphis Islamic Center had bought land next door to the church. Did he rush to the city council and protest the plans for an Islamic Center next door, as pastors in other cities had done? No. Pastor Stone put up a large red sign in front of his church that read, “Heartsong Church Welcomes Memphis Islamic Center to the Neighborhood.” The local Muslim leaders were astounded. They had hoped that their coming might be ignored. They never ever thought that they might be welcomed. They met with Pastor Stone. The two communities came to know each other. Children began to play with each other, and adults shared meals. They talked about their respective faiths with each other. While the Islamic Center was under construction, Heartsong allowed the Muslims to hold Ramadan prayer services in their sanctuary. They began to plan joint ministries to feed the homeless and tutor local children.

CNN picked up the story. The cooperation and mutual respect demonstrated by the two faith communities stood in sharp contrast to the controversy around the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” and the threatened burnings of the Qur’an that were dominating the news. As the Pakistani Muslims heard the CNN story, one man said, “I think God is speaking to us through this man.” Another man went right to the little Christian church near their mosque and proceeded to clean it, both inside and out with his own hands.

Who are the saints? They are Julian and other mystics. They are Teresa and others who have sought union with God through contemplative prayer. They are Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and all those who extend the hand of hospitality to those on the margins of polite society. They are Steve Stone and all those who take seriously Jesus’ command to love our neighbors as ourselves. They are all those who know themselves beloved by God and who strive to make God’s love real in the world. They are all those who inspire us and model for us the many ways of following Jesus.

As baptized members of Christ’s Body, we too are called to follow Jesus. We too are called to holy living. We too are called to prayer and holy silence. We too are called to welcome the stranger. We too are called to share God’s love with all our neighbors.

Almighty God, you have surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses: Grant that we, encouraged by the good examples of all your servants, may persevere in running the race that is set before us, until at last we may with them attain to your eternal joy; through Jesus Christ, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

1. “School for Conversion,” October 18, 2013.
2. Jim Wallis, On God's Side, (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2013), 138-9.

I Am Being Poured Out

I like old photographs. All of them have a story to tell, even our old family snapshots where everyone is frowning into the sun. I like them because all of them reveal something of the lives of people now long gone. With people who are unknown to me, or who lived long enough ago, I often wonder what their lives were like. What did they eat, how did they normally dress, what were their houses like? What kind of work did they do? What did they think about their lives? Did they wonder what future generations might think about them? I like old letters too, and they often provoke the same questions. Did you ever come across a cache of letters from distant relatives and find yourself wondering about their lives? If the letters date from the earlier part of their lives, you might get a sense of their first deep feelings for a life partner or their hopes and dreams for themselves or their children. If the letters are from a later period of their life, you may get a sense of the hard times they went through, the conflicts and illnesses they endured. Perhaps they were able to look back on their lives with a sense of satisfaction, knowing that they were leaving a legacy for the next generation.

Reading the second letter of Paul to Timothy is a little like finding a letter from a long gone relative or family friend. Scholars believe that the letter we’ve been hearing the last several weeks was written early in the second century. Most probably it was not written by Paul himself, but rather by a disciple of Paul writing in Paul’s name. As you’ve been hearing, the letter is addressed to a young pastor, Timothy, a third-generation Christian who is part of a community of disciples that included his grandmother and mother. Paul – let’s say Paul for convenience – is in prison, most probably in Rome. He has been deserted by his friends and now waits for what most certainly will be execution in the persecution of Christians instigated by Nero. Alone, languishing in prison, as he comes to the end of the letter, in the piece of it we heard today, he contemplates the meaning of his life, most especially the meaning of his allegiance to Jesus. His tone is passionate, and his words are bittersweet. What do we hear?

To begin with, we hear Paul’s sense of joy in having persevered and endured, often in the face of great obstacles. We know from the Book of Acts and from other letters that Paul was dragged before magistrates, imprisoned, and beaten. He had narrow escapes from dodgy places, covered long distances in his travels, and worked at a trade while preaching the gospel. From every perspective it was a hard life. Yet, using images of athletic competition, Paul can say confidently and joyfully, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” I have held fast to the community of followers of Jesus, and I have done my best to spread the good news about Jesus. More important, like a successful competitor, he feels sure of the laurel wreath, a “crown of righteousness,” that will be awarded not only to him but to all who have held fast to their allegiance to Jesus.

Second, Paul reminds Timothy that, although friends have deserted him, and he is now alone in prison, in truth he has never been alone. In all his struggles, especially his struggles to spread the good news, he has had a deep and abiding sense of Jesus’ presence: “the Lord stood by me and gave me strength.” And more: the Lord rescued him from all those who would do him harm. Even in his present dire straits, Paul is confident that he will meet Jesus who will “save me for his heavenly kingdom.”

Finally, Paul demonstrates a powerful sense of his ministry as a giving of self. He uses the metaphor of “libation.” “Libation” has a special meaning. Libation was the pouring out of wine or oil as a gift to a god. The amount poured out was finite, whatever the vessel containing the wine or oil could hold. Eventually it was all poured out. Paul has come to that point. Yet, he understands that his life has been an offering that has benefited others. Just as Jesus’ life was a precious self-offering that was of infinite benefit to humanity, so Paul is confident that he has given his life in a sacrifice that has enriched the lives of those to whom he has ministered. Concluding his letter, he urges the young pastor Timothy to regard his own ministry as a self-giving, as a sacrifice that will benefit those to whom he ministers.

Down through the centuries, many of those who followed Paul into ministry, who willingly adopted a life centered on spreading the good news of God’s reign, would also know that they had followed in Jesus’ footsteps and had given their own lives as sacrifice to God. One of those whose names might be familiar to us is C.S. Lewis. Clive Staples Lewis was born on November 29, 1898. He died on November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. For that reason, his death went largely unnoticed in the U.S.

What many people also don’t know about Lewis is that, like St. Paul, he wholeheartedly embraced Christian faith only as an adult. Although he had been raised in a church-going family in Ireland, at the age of fifteen he declared himself to be an atheist. He started his adult work as a scholar of English literature at Oxford. Slowly he came under the influence of George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, and other professed Christians. Yet, again like St. Paul, he fought against faith. He felt as if he came into Christianity like a prodigal, "kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape." He described his last struggle in his book, Surprised by Joy:

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

After his conversion, Lewis continued his scholarly work on English literature. But he also became a towering figure in Christian apologetics. Perhaps you or your children have read The Chronicles of Narnia, seven fantasy novels that appeal to children but also contain profound theological lessons for adults. Some of you might have read The Screwtape Letters, pungent letters from a senior demon to his nephew Wormwood that deftly skewer many of our human pretensions. Perhaps you’ve enjoyed his “space trilogy:” Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. Some of you might have read his poignant account of the death of his wife Joy Davidman in A Grief Observed. For many of us, Lewis’s Mere Christianity helped to make Christian faith more comprehensible and convincing. It is still regarded as one of the best books on Christianity of the twentieth century. Though his health began to fail in 1960, with his legacy of scholarly works, novels, memoirs, and apologetics, Lewis too could have said with confidence and conviction, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Lewis too had poured himself out as gift to God and had known Jesus’ continuing companionship in his life.

And what of us? Some of us are closer to the end of our lives than others. But all of us will die. God may not ask us to die as Jesus and Paul did, violent and unjust deaths. But all of us will eventually pour out the cup of life. Have we planned for that day? In practical terms, have you made a will? Have you provided for your dependents, and for the charities close to your heart? If not, why not? Do you have advanced directives? Have you appointed a healthcare power of attorney, and do your loved ones know what your wishes are for end-of-life care when you are no longer able to articulate them?

Most important, does your life have a purpose. Can you share Paul’s joy at having persevered in following God’s call? Are you living your life in the knowledge of Christ’s continuing presence? Do you take the time to acknowledge that God is with you, whatever the hurdles, troubles, persecutions, and setbacks? Are you using your resources or some part of your life to spread the good news and to partner with God in bringing God’s reign closer? When the end comes, will you be confident that you too have poured out your life in God’s service? Will you too be able to say, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith?”

All Scripture is God-Breathed

A priest asked a children’s Sunday school class, “Who broke down the wall of Jericho?”1 A boy responded, “It wasn’t me!” The priest was aghast. He turned to the teacher and said, “Can you believe this?” The teacher answered, “Father, the boy is trustworthy and honest. If he said he didn’t do it, then he didn’t do it.” The priest was shocked. He went to the chair of the Sunday school committee. The chair listened carefully. Then she said consolingly, “I’ve known the boy and his teacher for a number of years. I just don’t see either one involved with the incident.” In disbelief, the priest sought out the senior warden. The senior warden tried to do damage control. “Look, Father,” he said, “let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill. Let’s just pay for the damages to the wall and charge it to the maintenance budget.”

It’s a joke, right? Or is it? A Methodist pastor’s wife was preparing a Bible trivia program for the parish. She asked the chair of the parish council – a lifelong Methodist – to name a book in the Bible that tells of the birth of Jesus. He answered, “Uh, you better ask my wife that one. She’s the one who knows that kind of stuff.”

Is this the kind of knowledge of Scripture that the writer of the second letter to Timothy had in mind? Here is what he says to Timothy in The Message, a contemporary translation: “There’s nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.”

Most of us have Bibles in our homes. Every Sunday we hear four selections from the Bible. But do we really know what the Bible says? Do we know anything about the chapters and books that never come up in the Revised Common Lectionary? More to the point, do we allow ourselves to be shaped and transformed by what Scripture has to teach us?

And most difficult question perhaps of all, how should we regard Scripture? As most of you know, in both of my ordinations, I had to publicly sign a document stating that I believe “the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the Word of God and to contain all things necessary to salvation….” What does that mean for us in the 21st century? To begin with, we do not believe that an angel perched on someone’s shoulder and dictated the Scriptures, or that God spoke directly into someone’s ear, as if into a tape recorder. That is close to what Muslims believe about the Qur’an, which is why they insist that the Qur’an must be read in Arabic, its original language. We also do not believe that the Bible is a rule book, a constitution, or a law book – although the Torah laid out many laws for the ancient Jews. Nor do we believe that we can wrench sentences of the Bible out of context and use them as battering rams against each other in argument.

Anglicans, along with Catholics and many Protestants, understand that the sixty-six books of the Bible were written and edited over a period of about eight hundred years. The earliest Hebrew Scriptures date from the 8th century BC. The Hebrew Scriptures were edited and regrouped after the Exile, in the 5th century BC, and then again in the 1st century AD. The books that we now call the New Testament were written between about 49 and 110 AD. Other gospels and letters were also written. Did you know that there was a gospel attributed to Peter, a gospel of Thomas, and also many other letters? Actually, it wasn’t until the Council of Carthage in 397 AD that church leaders reached consensus on what constituted the Christian Scriptures.

All this is by way of saying that Anglicans recognize that Scripture was written by faithful communities that struggled to understand their relationship with God and God’s aims for the world. They especially struggled to understand who Jesus was and what his life, death, and resurrection meant for them. We believe that Scripture is “God-breathed,” or inspired, in that we believe that the Holy Spirit continually guided these communities of faithful Jews and followers of Jesus, helping them to articulate what they were experiencing of God’s work in them. We also believe that Scripture had power – and has power – to transform lives, to enable us to partner with God in bringing in God’s reign, and to help us to hold fast to a vision of God’s promised future.

Scripture is thus an important beacon in our lives, a beacon to which most of us should pay much closer attention. Yet Anglicans also put forth one caveat: we do not hold, as do many Lutherans, to sola scriptura, Scripture alone. Anglicans understand that people will differ in their understanding of Scripture, however faithful they may be. And so for Anglicans, Scripture is one of three foundations for our faith. The other two are tradition and reason. We understand that God also speaks to us both through the ways in which the Holy Spirit inspired us in the past to fashion our lives as Christians and through our God-given reason. Most important, perhaps, for Anglicans, it is a community of the faithful, using all three elements of faith, Scripture, tradition, and reason, in which we may discern God’s leading.

All of that sounds pretty heady, Mo. Leslie, you may be thinking. So how should we as 21st century Christians in the Anglican tradition engage Scripture? How can we know who broke down the wall of Jericho, or which books in the Bible tell of Jesus’ birth? To begin with, we might actually read the Bible. Do you read novels or magazines? How about reading the Bible as you would a novel? Truth be told, much of the Hebrew Bible is racier than many novels! There are good modern translations. The Message is very contemporary. Not sure what all those laws in Leviticus refer to, or where all those places are? Try a study Bible that amplifies the difficult parts of the text. Go for a commentary – there are lots of them available in hard copy or on line that are inexpensive and accessible, and that will enable you to understand the historical contexts of the various books. And ideally, we should be engaging in this kind of reading of the Bible together, so that we can learn from each other as a community of faith, not as solitary individuals.

We can do more than simply acquaint ourselves with the historical contexts of our Scriptures. The Bible is still very much a live document. It is a two-edged sword that will cut us to the quick if we take it seriously. One way to deepen your understanding of the Bible is to pray with Scripture. We have already experienced lectio divina here, i.e., reading, meditating, praying, and contemplating a word or phrase in a Scripture passage. At our last quiet day, we practiced a method of prayerfully reading Scripture developed by Ignatius of Loyola that involves imaginatively putting yourself into the text. For example, what would it feel like to actually be the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 and encounter Jesus, or to be Martha or Mary in Luke’s story? What do you think Peter felt when he recognized Jesus as God’s anointed one – and then when he betrayed Jesus? What is God saying to you through these stories? If you keep a spiritual journal, which I highly recommend, you can journal your reflections.

Similarly, we can let Scripture guide our actions in the social and political spheres. Those of you who are reading On God’s Side with me know that Jim Wallis’s understanding of the pursuit of the common good is deeply rooted in Scripture. Wallis argues that how we view Jesus profoundly colors our social and political views. He describes how the story of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 led to his conversion from an individualistic, pietistic faith to one concerned with justice for the poor and marginalized. By the same token, Wallis suggests that the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke’s gospel helped him to understand that in today’s world there are no “non-neighbors,” and that human trafficking and the supply chains for our consumer goods are issues with which earnest followers of Jesus must grapple. And you? What parts of Scripture influence you? Have you been transformed by any book or books of Scripture? In what way is Jesus a model for you and for how you want to live your life?

Scripture does not provide easy, one-size-fits-all answers to the many questions with which we struggle, or the decisions we face in our lives. Yet, Scripture is indeed God-breathed and still has the power to show us truth, expose our rebellion, correct our mistakes, and train us to live God’s way.

Praise we God, who hath inspired those whose wisdom still directs us; praise him for the Word made flesh, for the Spirit which protects us. Light of knowledge ever burning, shed on us thy deathless learning.

1. Based on Gregory L. Tolle, Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Lima, OH, 2006), 156-7.

Faith to Transplant Mulberries

Stephen Paget was a well-known specialist in breast cancer treatment in the latter years of the nineteenth and early years of the twentieth centuries. He was also a man of profound faith. He expressed his faith in several pamphlets that he wrote for Christian Scientists. In one of them, he used an intriguing image for faith. Imagine, he said, that you have reached a point in your life when you are playing a game of cards against Faith.1 You and she sit facing each other across the table. You must go first. You would love to know what cards she holds. But you hold a strong hand: you have the hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, and ice storms, all the chaotic destruction of nature; you hold the murderers, the rapists, the abusers of children, the human traffickers, the destroyers of the environment, the multitude of sinful human beings; you have drug addiction, alcoholism, mental illness, homelessness, disease, unemployment, all the misery of human existence.

The game begins. You play card after card, thinking to weaken or breach her defenses. Faith remains calm and undisturbed. You play the tsunami in Indonesia, the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Sandy. She doesn’t blink. You play the lives lost on September 11th, the deaths of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, the BP oil spill, the sinking of the Costa Concordia. She is unflappable. Your hand thins out. She has a hand too, and it’s stronger than yours. In fact, she has cards you will never beat. And she is a more seasoned and skillful player than you. Be careful to keep your temper, Paget warns. And remember that you’re not playing for money, you’re playing for love.

An unusual way of thinking about faith? Perhaps. But Paget’s image rings true, in that it reminds us that faith, and for us, faith in God’s promises, outplays any human disaster. What’s more important, faith can strengthen us wherever we are and whatever happens to us. All we need do is accept the companionship, guidance, and encouragement of faith.

Is that what the disciples needed? They were frazzled. They had been trotting after Jesus on his long, slow way to Jerusalem. He had told them stories about what to do with their wealth. What wealth? Hadn’t they given up everything to follow him? He had told them they needed to be accountable for what they were doing. He had thundered at them, “It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble.” He had warned them that they needed to rebuke and forgive each other as often as necessary. They were overwhelmed.

So the disciples said plaintively to Jesus, “You want us to do all this? Then increase our faith!” And the Lord barked at them, “You don’t have even the tiniest bit of faith. If you did you could move mountains. You’re just a bunch of worthless servants who can barely do what’s expected of them.”

Is that how you hear this story? Jesus putting the disciples – and by extension us – on a guilt trip? Let’s hear the story with different ears.2 Maybe, just maybe, Jesus didn’t bark. Maybe he smiled and said kindly, “Wait a minute. You don’t need more faith. Even this much faith” – and he held his thumb and forefinger almost together – “is enough to do everything I’ve asked you to do. You don’t need any more. Now it’s time to live your faith.”

And what about that story Jesus tells next? Can we hear him exaggerating just a little, as he so often does to make a point? Could it be that Jesus is describing a relationship between master and servant that is marked by mutual accountability and expectation? The master expects the servants to do their jobs, and the servants expect they will be protected, fed, and allowed to rest. If we can hear the story that way, then faith, of whatever quantity, becomes a constant companion in our life. Indeed, faith becomes a way of life, in which we serve God and each other, not out of a sense of duty, but because we know and love God, and because we trust God. Faith is not about believing in God. Faith is about believing God’s promises. Faith is trust in God, being in relationship with God, and seeing God in all the circumstances and people of our lives. Faith is knowing, in the words of Habakkuk, that there is still a vision for the appointed time, and that it will surely come.

So, Jesus tells his frazzled disciples, this life of faith is not about whether you have enough faith or not. Because of what God has done for you, you already have enough. The question is what do we do with our faith? Do we trust God to give us all that we need, and then use God’s gifts for the building up of God’s kingdom? Do we know that have a just and loving God? Do we seek a relationship with that God? Can we let go of our need to be independent and self-reliant? Can we trust that faith can’t be measured but has to be lived out in our daily lives?

Those who can live this way make an exciting discovery. They discover that God’s blessings exceed “all that we can ask or imagine.” They discover that the God who expects much from us also promises much. They discover that the God who has given us all that we need, the rightful master of all of us, also came among us “not to be served but to serve” us (Matt 20:28, Mark 10:45), not to condemn us but to give us “life abundant.”

There was a small congregation in Tennessee that built a new church on a piece of land that had been willed to them by a member who had died. Ten days before the first service, the local building inspector came to tell the pastor that they didn’t have enough parking spaces for the building. If they didn’t double the size of the parking lot, they could not open. Where would they find the land for more parking? The only way was to move the mountain in the backyard of the church. So the pastor announced on Sunday that in the evening he would meet with everyone who had “mountain-moving faith.” They would pray for God to somehow move the mountain and provide enough money to pave a new parking lot before the dedication service the next week. That evening, twenty-four hardy souls showed up, of a congregation of three hundred. They prayed for three hours. Then, at 10 PM, the pastor said “Amen,” and assured them that they would open the following Sunday. “God has never let us down,” he told them, “and God will be faithful this time, too.”

The next morning, the pastor was working in his study. There was a knock on the door. The pastor said, “Come in,” and a rough-looking construction foreman came and stood in front of him. “Excuse me, Pastor,” he said. “I’m from Acme Construction. We’re building that new mall down the road, and we need some more fill dirt. Would you be willing to sell us some of that mountain behind the church? We’ll pay you for all the earth we take, and we’ll pave the exposed area for you for free, if you’ll agree right away. We can’t do anything more on our job until we get the fill dirt in and allow it to settle properly.”

The little church was dedicated the next Sunday. You can bet that more people had “mountain-moving faith” on opening Sunday than had had it the previous week!

God has given us all the faith we need. A mustard seed is about the smallest thing you can see with the naked eye. What is Jesus telling us? Even a little bit of faith can do great things! The disciples didn’t need more faith. We don’t need more faith. Any faith at all can do great works. All we need to do is stay in relationship with the giver of our faith, with the one who has already planted the fire of faith within us. We don’t need to be heroes. All that we need to do is to trust in God’s promises and, as conscientiously as we can, do the work that God has given us to do. “Transplanting mulberry trees may be a fascinating hobby for the gifted few. Living faithfully is a serious business that is accomplished daily by many in the love of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit.”3

1. Suggested by Patricia Sanchez in “Preaching Resources,” Celebration, October 3, 2010, 1.
2. As suggested by Kimberly Bracken Long, “Pastoral Perspective, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 142ff.
3. Donald S. Armentrout, quoted in Synthesis, October 6, 2013, 4

A Godly Investment Strategy

I hate today’s lections! I don’t want to preach on them! Do you even want to hear their message? As rich Americans, don’t we wish that the Revised Common Lectionary had chosen some other readings for today? Wouldn’t we rather hear about how God loves us, and how we’ll all get to heaven if we just believe the right things?

God loves us, all right, and Jesus has shown us the way to eternal life. Even so, today’s lessons sternly warn us that there is more to following Jesus than reciting the Nicene Creed. Can you hear God addressing you through the words of the prophet Amos? You have to be deaf not to hear Amos’s warning to the indolent superrich of 8th century Israel. It was a time of great prosperity. It was also a time of great income inequality when the lifestyles of the wealthy were in sharp contrast to the lifestyles of the poor. Worse yet, wealthy landowners were able to manipulate the credit system so as to amass great estates at the expense of small farmers. Enter Amos. “You who are at ease in Zion,” he thunders, “you who are sure your wealth will always support you, you who sit around idly, imagining that you are like King David, you will be the first to lose it all. As the music fades away, you will be the first into exile.” The message could not be clearer. The rich of Amos’s time didn’t want to hear it, and neither do we.

Our psalm for the day begins on a joyful note. We hear the psalmist declare, “I will praise the Lord as long as I live.” However, here again we hear the warning: neither politicians nor any “child of earth” can grant us security. The psalmist goes on to declare that the God whom we profess to worship cares for those who are oppressed, or hungry, or blind, or in prison. More to the point, we who profess to love this God, we who would honor God’s covenant with us, must imitate God, indeed must be God’s instruments, in caring for the stranger, the orphan, and the widow.

In the Gospel reading, rather than thundering at his hearers, Jesus tells a harsh story to the “lovers of money” and those who would follow their example. However, just as in Amos’s prophecy, Jesus’ story is filled with contrasts and reversals. The poor man, Lazarus, has a name, while the rich man does not. While the rich man dressed in purple and fine linen, Lazarus has only his rags and his sores. The rich man sits down to a groaning table, while Lazarus would be happy to have the leftovers in the trash. The rich man is buried, no doubt without all ceremonial, while Lazarus is carried away by the angels. However, at the end of the story, Lazarus, safely ensconced in Abraham’s bosom, now looks down on the rich man, who is forced to look up and beg.

What was Jesus telling his hearers in this story? Was Jesus condemning wealth as such? Was the rich man punished for being rich? If the rich man could invoke Abraham, then he was a member of the household of faith. As such, he too knew his Scriptures. He too had heard the prophets and the psalms. He too knew of God’s care for the needy and of his own responsibility to imitate God in caring for those around him. No, the rich man’s sin was ignoring the human need right in front of his eyes, and in failing to address it while he could. He was punished for not connecting the dots, for ignoring the connection between his identity as a child of Abraham and his responsibility to be God’s conduit of blessings to the world.

So what of us? We too sit “at ease in Zion.” We too live in a country – in a county – with deep income inequality. Currently, the richest sections of the US population now concentrate in their hands a greater portion of the national income than at any point in nearly a century, and income inequality is at near record levels. Walk any city in the US, or maybe even any small town, and you will find homeless people sleeping on heating vents and park benches, lines at soup kitchens and free dinners, and shelters full to bursting. Geralyn Wolf, the bishop of Rhode Island, spent a month of her sabbatical living on the streets as a homeless person. In her book, entitled Down and Out in Providence, she reminds us that poor people cannot “pull themselves up by their own boot straps.” Rather, many of the people she met had full or part-time jobs but did not earn enough to rent an apartment or even a room. Others were physically or emotionally handicapped. Some had lost their jobs in the recession. Government was doing little to help the people Bp. Wolf met, and some policies even actively made their situations worse.

What is our responsibility? Can we do a better job of imitating God than we currently do? The end of the letter to Timothy may provide clues, ways to respond to the prophets’ and Jesus’ warnings. The letter was most likely written by a disciple of Paul to a younger pastor when Christianity was still very much a minority religion. Even so, many of its lessons are still applicable to us. In this part, the writer closes his message by suggesting six virtues that Timothy as a pastor should pursue. The first three are addressed to God: righteousness, i.e., living in right relationship with God, godliness, i.e., choosing a lifestyle acceptable to God, and faith, i.e., trusting and obeying God. The other three deal with conduct towards one’s neighbor: love, i.e., self-giving love of others, endurance, i.e., holding fast to faith, and gentleness, i.e., humility towards others.

The writer then advises Timothy how to behave towards the wealthy. He is to remind of them of the fragility of their wealth, of their need to acknowledge that all they have comes from God, and, most importantly, of their responsibility to generously share their wealth. He is to help them to understand that this is the lifestyle that leads to “life that is really life,” the life that God intends for all of us, rich and poor. So here is our “investment strategy.” Here is the answer to the warnings of Jesus and the prophets: whatever our means, and especially if we are wealthy – and if we have food in the fridge, a roof over our heads, and more than two changes of clothes, then by definition we are wealthy – we are to be unfailingly grateful to God and generous to those in need.

Tom Gordon tells the story of Doug.1 Doug was an avid soccer fan. His team was the United, and he had begun going to matches as a small boy with his father and grandfather, who had both been season-ticket holders. After Doug’s grandfather died, his father kept up the tradition, and game days were always special treats for Doug. Doug looked forward to returning the favor when he was old enough to start earning on his own. He never got the chance: Doug’s dad died when Doug was just seventeen. After that, Doug lost interest in the United soccer matches for some years. Finally, though, he was working and had saved up enough for a season ticket.

The opening game was disappointing. United lost 3-2 on a debatable penalty. Instead of socializing with friends, Doug decided to go straight home. In the bus shelter he saw a poster asking for donations for drought-stricken Burkina Faso. Doug ignored it. Who cared about a tiny West African country? As he opened his newspaper, there was an ad soliciting funds for emergency food aid for Burkina Faso. Doug ignored it. At home, there was Burkina Faso on the evening news. Doug was moved by the pictures of the struggling farmers and dying children, but he didn’t open his checkbook. The next day was Sunday. It was a chance to see his sister’s family, so Doug went to the harvest festival at church. There was Burkina Faso again: 50p a day would provide meals all year for a struggling family, £25 a week would provide food for malnourished children and pregnant mothers, and £270 a month would support an agricultural worker. Was there a message here?

It took two weeks for Doug to decide. In fact, it was right after United won their next home game 2-0. It had been a good day. Doug began to wonder whether the people of Burkina Faso ever had good days. That evening he set up a direct debit to an international relief
organization – for exactly the same amount as the monthly cost of his United season ticket. Doug still enjoys United matches, but now his enjoyment is even greater.

What are riches?
What we have but did not earn …
What we own but did not create …
What we cherish but did not deserve …
What we value but did not achieve …

What is poverty?
What we need but do not find …
What we deserve but do not attain …
What we work for but do not receive …
What we hope for but never fulfill …

What is awareness?
What we see and choose to know …
What we listen to and choose to hear …
What we learn and choose to heed …
What we feel and choose to understand …

What is giving?
What we have and decide to share …
What we own and decide to give away …
What we cherish and decide to let go …
What we value for ourselves and decide to value for others … 2

1. Tom Gordon, “Riches,” in A Blessing to Follow (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications, 2009), 226-29.

2. Ibid., 229.