The Best Christmas Ever

Children’s Sermon1
The Sunday school at St. Matthew’s had done the Christmas pageant the same way every year. It was always in the church, on the fourth Sunday in Advent. The play was put on mostly by the by the first and second-grade children. As the parents, grandparents, and older children crowded into the sanctuary, the younger children, all freshly scrubbed, gathered in the adjoining hallway.

The Christmas story unfolded in the expected way. The choir of older children sang a Bethlehem-type song, and in from the hallway, encouraged by the tense second-grade teacher, came the beaming Joseph and adorable Mary. Joseph had a striped dish-towel tied round his head with dad’s old tie, while Mary wore a blue veil that looked a lot like the material in the curtains in the first-grade teacher’s family room. Despite Joseph’s frantic waving at his mother in the back pew – and his mother’s waving back – and Mary’s veil slipping dangerously over her eyes, the expectant couple arrived safely at the stable, right between two rows of caroling children.

The innkeeper got his lines right – no fluffed lines this year – the baby Jesus was duly delivered and laid in the manger, and the shepherds made their entry complete with crooks and stuffed animals under their arms. (Well, there was one animal that did look like a lamb, but was the boy at the back carrying a monkey with red and white striped trousers? Oh well, the value of modern exegetical interpretation of scripture .…) The tableau was almost complete, Mary and Joseph right up front, shepherds watching their flock by night on Bethlehem’s plains, and the angelic carolers singing beautifully.

All was ready for the coming of the three kings. The pianist struck the appropriate chord. The singers launched into an impressive royal song. The hallway door opened, and out walked – two kings. “We three kings from Orient are,” they sang, not realizing that one had lost his way. The two kings headed straight for Bethlehem. There was no way these kings were going to miss the action. Their journey was well planned, down the side aisle, up the center aisle, and right into Bethlehem’s manger-square. They had rehearsed carefully, and they walked with style, slowly, in time to the music, and ready to present their gifts when the carol ended.

The two kings were doing fine and all was going well, until the hallway door burst open and, falling through it, came the third king – cloak flapping, present for the baby Jesus tucked under his arm, cardboard crown at a crooked angle, and LATE!

Well, this third king may have been tardy, and he clearly didn’t follow instructions, but he was still smart. Obviously there was no way he could get to Bethlehem by the time the music was finished and meet up with his two companions ready for the next scene. So he decided to take a short cut – right through the singers. Now that might have been OK if the singers had known he was coming, or if a teacher had been able to warn them, or he if hadn’t decided to run as fast as he could. But the singers weren’t ready, and the teacher didn’t move fast enough, and the king wasn’t going to walk.

So he ran. He tripped over a singer’s leg, fell, caught his shoe in the carpet, and arrived at the manger just in time to join his more sedate regal companions. But, having arrived, he couldn’t stop arriving. He continued to run, right into the stable, right up to the manger, and right into the lap of a very surprised Mary. The manger went one way, the precious gift of frankincense went another. A cardboard crown landed in Joseph’s lap, and the baby Jesus, freed from his swaddling clothes, rolled gently towards the first row of pews.

Adults ran to the rescue. The inventive pianist continued to play carols until a semblance of order was restored. Everyone sang the final carol. The star performers took their bow – to the most thunderous applause anyone could ever recall at a church Christmas pageant. And one tearful parent whispered that that year the children had given her one of the best Christmas presents she’d ever gotten!

Adult Sermon
Christmas pageants! Why do we do them? Why do we take such pleasure in seeing children – not adults like the real characters in Luke’s story but children – act out that sacred drama? And why do we set up – and bless – representations of the story in the pageants? For that matter, why are you even here tonight? Why do we leave our warm homes on a wintry evening and flock to churches?

Is it that we are certain – as if we had just heard a historical chronicle – that the gospel according to Luke depicts exactly how Jesus was born? You may indeed think so – and that’s OK. Or, you may not think so. You may question the historic details in Luke’s account – and that’s OK too. Scholars know that the supposedly historical markers that Luke embeds in his tale don’t square with other historical documents. And we know too that Luke and the other evangelists wrote their accounts from particular theological perspectives using particular rhetorical strategies. Whether it all happened exactly as they depict it, two thousand years later we will never know.

So why are we here? It’s not all a fairy story is it – although fairy stories do embody deep truths, more than we realize when we read them as children. Even so, we did not come out to hear a fairy story. We came out to hear the truth that Christians have proclaimed ever since the first hardy souls opted to join the band of Jesus’ followers that began to form after his resurrection. We came out to hear again the deep truth that the Word became flesh and became one with the human family. We came out to hear that God took the great risk of becoming human, of joining the divine life with the human body.

Could that be possible? Why would God want to take on a human body? Most of us dislike our bodies. We think we’re too fat, too thin, too short, or two tall. If we’re young, we think we’ll never be adults, and if we’re old, we mourn the passing of our youthful bodies. Worse, we know that we are mortal, finite, and fragile. And worst of all, many of us are firmly convinced that our bodies are sinful, and that flesh and spirit are at war with each other.

If nothing else, then, the Christmas story reminds us that in the tiny baby, whose birth angels announced to shepherds, the divine and the human are bound together inseparably. This holy story reminds us that our bodies are not wrong, or ugly, or sinful. How could they be, when God was pleased to join Godself to a body? This holy story reminds us that Spirit and flesh are not at war with each other, but are joined together in us as one treasured and beloved whole. How weak and needy we are, how slow we are to learn this truth. And so, God chose to be born as a beautiful child to remind us of who we truly are. For, ultimately, we too are infused with divine life. We too are part of the creation that, out of love, God blew into being, as God’s Spirit hovered over the waters of chaos. We too are part of the creation that God pronounced to be “good.” Spirit and flesh are joined together in us too. Lest we forget that truth, every reading of the gospel story and every Nativity scene provide us with compelling reminders that God and humanity are inseparably joined, not only in Jesus, but also in us – in all of us. And even more important, God is visible to us, not only in the Jesus whose birth we celebrate this night, but also in each of us – and in everyone we meet.

Now here’s a story for the adults. Frederick Buechner relates that, many years ago, he attended Christmas Eve mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.2 As he waited, the church filled up with a motley assortment of pilgrims. Finally, there was a sudden hush. Way off, Buechner could see the resplendently dressed Swiss Guards coming up the vast aisle. Then, slowly, slowly, the old pope, Pius XII it was then, came up the aisle. He was dressed in the plainest white cassock and skull cap. As he walked, he seemed to be scanning the crowd. Then he came up to Buechner. His large eyes, made larger by his thick lenses, peered into Buechner’s face. Then he looked into the faces of those around him, with such a charged look that Buechner was sure the pope was looking for someone in particular. “He was a man whose face seemed gray with waiting,” Buechner says, “whose eyes seemed huge and exhausted with searching for someone, some one…. I have felt that I knew whom he was looking for. I felt that everyone else who was really watching must also have known.”

Buechner goes on to remind us that, of course, the face of the one whom the old pope sought was not hidden at all. The one he was looking for “was at that moment crouched against some doorway against the night or leading home some raging Roman drunk or waiting for mass to be over so he could come in with his pail and his mop to start cleaning up that holy mess. The old pope surely knew that the one he was looking for was all around him there in Saint Peter’s. The face that he was looking for was visible, however dimly, in the faces of all of us who had come there that night … because we had come looking for the same one he was looking for….”

My friends, God and humanity are inseparably joined, in Jesus and in us. Never forget that. Let the gospel story and the crèche continue to remind you of that holy truth. As we celebrate the birth of Jesus, may we also see him in each other and in all whom we meet in this holy season.

1. Adapted from Tom Gordon, A Blessing to Follow (Glasgow: Wild Good, 2009), 33ff.
2. Adapted from Synthesis, Christmas Day, 2014, 2.

We are Witnesses

Above the altar of the hospital chapel of Saint Anthony’s Monastery in Isenheim in France, there is a painting of the crucifixion. The altarpiece was painted in the sixteenth century by an artist named Matthias Grünewald. In the painting appears John the Baptist. It is anachronistic, since the gospels tell us that John was murdered by Herod before Jesus himself was executed. Nevertheless the artist has placed John the Baptist at the foot of the cross. Holding open a book at his side showing a lamb bearing a cross, John points a long, bony finger towards Jesus.

Prophets! Once again, our Scripture readings point us towards prophets. Last week we heard the prophets call us to confession of our sins, repentance, and transformation of life. Last week, in John the Baptizer’s call in the Gospel according to Mark, we heard especially clearly our need to confess our corporate sins, and to work toward real amendment of life. This week, our Scriptures send us a different message. While transformation of life is always on God’s agenda for us, this week, this Gaudete Sunday bearing the pink candle of joy, we hear the prophets proclaim, point to, and witness to the wonders that God is working among us. Are we ready to hear that message?

Can you hear the joyful note in the voice of the prophet in our reading from the book of Isaiah? Here the prophet excitedly proclaims good news to those returning from exile in Babylon. Even though Jerusalem is in ruins, the prophet reminds the people of what God has already done for them, and yet again restates God’s promises. Can you hear that good news? Anointed by God, the prophet promises consolation for those who mourn, freedom for those in prison, voices to praise God, the will and the means to rebuild Jerusalem, and assurance that their relationship with God will last forever. Just as we might, the people joyfully respond to what they hear: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,” they say, “my whole being shall exult in my God….”

Even our psalm echoes that note of joy. Here too, the people are envisioned as having just returned from exile. Joyfully, the psalmist hears them declare, “Then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy.” Agreeing with their neighbors’ judgment that “The Lord has done great things for them,” the returning exiles witness to God’s deeds as they shout, “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad indeed.”

What do you hear and see in the depiction of John the Baptizer in the Gospel according to John? For sure, not John the accuser calling for confession and repentance. Instead, like the John depicted in the Isenheim altarpiece, we see and hear a witness pointing to Jesus. This gospel, the fourth and latest gospel, is a gospel of signs, of signs of the true identity of Jesus and of his oneness with God. We see those signs of Jesus’ identity most clearly, according to the evangelist, in Jesus’ “I am” statements: “I am the light of the world, I am the true bread,” etc. In this reading, the Jesus who will provide all these signs has not yet begun his public ministry but is as yet hidden among the people. In a sense, John the Baptizer is the first sign of Jesus in his “I am not statements.” As he denies that he is the Messiah, Elijah, i.e., the Messiah’s forerunner, and the Prophet, John points towards Jesus’ coming. In so doing, he prepares others to recognize Jesus and to understand who Jesus might be. He is, as he tells us, Jesus’ forerunner, the first witness to Jesus’ true identity.

Did you hear a call to witness in our reading from Paul’s first letter to the Christians in Thessaloniki? Does Paul call those early followers of the Way to point their fingers at Jesus and proclaim his true identity to their neighbors? Directly, no, since the Thessalonians were probably more worried about surviving Roman persecution or lasting until Jesus’ return, an event they believed was imminent. Even so, if you were listening carefully, you might have heard a call to indirect witness to Jesus’ identity embedded in Paul’s letter.

What do we make of these ancient calls to proclamation and witness? Are we called to be God’s witnesses? Or is the role of witness reserved for Isaiah, the psalmist, John the Baptizer, the writer of the fourth gospel, Paul, the Thessalonian Christians, the creator of the Isenheim altarpiece, and a few assorted saints? If you receive our e-news or attend an evening Eucharist, you know that many other people, those whose lives are commemorated in Holy Women, Holy Men, have been – and are – called to point to Jesus and to his impact on their lives.

My brothers and sisters, we too are called to be witnesses. In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus applied to himself the self-description of the prophet Isaiah – and rightly so. But these words also apply to us. Say to yourself, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me.” Believe it: we too are called to speak God’s consoling word – among our family and friends, in hospitals and nursing homes, as we distribute diapers, and as we serve our Loaves and Fishes friends. We too are called to rebuild the broken places in our world – when a family is burned out of their home, when the land is despoiled, when we liberate concentration camps or welcome refugees, and when we reassure those around us, whoever they are, that God’s covenant includes all of us, and that all of us are God’s beloved children.

Like John the Baptizer, we too are called to be a sign of the coming of Jesus. It’s possible, isn’t it, that someone might say of us, “There was a woman sent from God whose name was N,” or “There was a man sent from God whose name was N.” And when someone asks you, “Who are you,” you too can answer, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” It indeed may feel like a wilderness out there, yet we too are called to take John’s role and point to Jesus. We too are called to remind others that Jesus is coming – even in the midst of this frenzied “holiday” season.

And how do we, as Jesus’ twenty-first century followers actually do that? Are we called to tell others that “the Lord has anointed me?” Are we called to remind others that one is coming after us whose sandals we are not worthy to untie? For some, the answer to those questions would indeed be “yes.” However, our reading from the letter to the Thessalonian Christians gives us another answer. Perhaps we can proclaim Jesus, we can point to the reality of his impact on us, in the way that we live. Perhaps this is our witness: to show forth God’s praise, “not only with our lips but with our lives.”

And how are we to do that? Actually, Paul’s counsels are quite clear. We are to be joyful, not “happy clappy” joyful, but, rather confident in God’s promises and God’s love. We are to “pray without ceasing.” This does not mean saying “Our Father” or “Hail, Mary” every spare minute. It does mean understanding our relationship with God as the very ground of our being and seeking to be in touch with God wherever we are. A practice you might adopt to foster a deeper sense of your life as grounded in God is to do a nightly recast of your day: take just a few minutes to ask yourself, “Where was God in this day for me?” We are to be thankful, for all that God has given us, for those elements in our day or life that made us feel loved and affirmed, but also for those times in which we felt tired, ashamed, angry, and unloved. God is in those moments as well, teaching us and supporting us. We are to trust that the Holy Spirit is at work in us, we are to listen to the prophets among us, most especially when they tell us what we don’t want to hear, and we are to carefully consider all that we see, hear, and do. In short, as William Brosend tells us, we witness best to the reality of Christ when we live lives that are joyous, prayerful, Eucharistic, Spirit-filled, prophetic, and tested. As we live out our calling as followers of Jesus, each of our lives will look different. Even so, all of us can trust that God will empower our witness, because, “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.”

Are you ready to be like John the Baptizer in the Isenheim altarpiece? Are you ready to be a witness for Jesus? Then, as you prepare to welcome him as a tiny baby, hear the prayer of another witness:

Winter God, in the darkest time of year
you brought in starlight,
angel song, and baby cries.
Stay with me as I journey to new birth
and celebrate this time of saints,
psalms, and prayer.
In the silence and stillness,
Fashion my prayer into a carol of praise
and focus my life so that I may act as a
Herald of Christ, the child of peace
and the prophet of justice. Amen.1

1. Based on Larry J.Peacock, Openings, (Woodstock, VT: Skylight Paths, 2014), 351.

Give us Grace

“Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer….”

Does God still send messengers to “prepare the way for our salvation?” Do we even need salvation? If so, from what? Today’s Scripture readings give us vivid portraits of those sent to the ancient Hebrews and to Jesus’ followers, of those sent to proclaim God’s justice, God’s promises, and God’s consolation. What do we hear in these readings?

In our reading from the middle of the book ascribed to the prophet Isaiah, we hear words of judgment and consolation spoken in the sixth century BC to the exiles from Jerusalem, just as their exile in Babylonia was about to end. Writing to a dispirited people longing for return and restoration, the prophet alludes to the sins that caused their exile and reminds them of their frailty as human beings. But the prophet has more to say: he also reminds them, and by extension us, that God will strengthen them, and that God will provide the means for their return to Jerusalem. Best of all, the prophet invites the people to trust in God. He reiterates God’s promises to them and assures them that God’s love for them – and for all people – will endure forever.

Our psalm, especially in the verses we don’t say, i.e., verses three through seven, echoes the prophet’s message. Questioning God’s deep and justified anger with God’s people, the psalmist offers the hope that God will restore both the people and the land. Using vivid images of a restored creation, the psalmist offers a vision of God’s Shalom, a state so much more than “peace,” a way of life in which humanity and all creation live in harmony and in accordance with God’s will.

The writer of the second letter attributed to the apostle Peter echoes the messages of the prophet and the psalmist. However, instead of Isaiah, the writer draws on the message of the prophet Malachi, the last of the Hebrew prophets. In today’s selection from Second Peter, we especially hear echoes of the opening verses of Malachi 3: “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” Reminding us that the Lord’s return is certain, but that we can never know when it will occur, the writer of Second Peter suggests how we are to live while we look forward to that day: we are to both wait patiently on God, trusting in God’s promise, and at the same time work actively to bring God’s day nearer.

Does our reading from the Gospel according to Mark fit with these readings emphasizing the prophetic messages? Without fanfare, without a genealogy, without a story of a miraculous birth, the evangelist here begins by announcing “the good news of Jesus Christ.” However, the evangelist bids us prepare ourselves to hear that good news by reflecting again on the prophetic message, spoken here by John the Baptizer. Make no mistake: the preaching of John the Baptizer – as Jesus’s preaching will also be -- is clearly grounded in the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Bible. The evangelist doesn’t quote exactly the text from Isaiah that we just heard, but rather conflates it with phrases from both Exodus and Malachi. Even so, the message is clear. To prepare for Jesus’ coming, John calls the people to self-examination, reflection, and confession. And notice: John doesn’t call only isolated individuals to repentance but an entire community. And the community responds: “And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” Again the message is clear. While John is not worthy to untie Jesus’ sandals, it is only when people have heeded John’s message, have faced God’s judgment, and have turned their lives around that they can be ready to receive Jesus and his gifts.

“Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer….” The message is clear: our collect and the readings from Scripture urge us to heed the warnings of the prophets and examine ourselves, so that we may be ready to receive God’s salvation and restoration. Is that ancient message relevant to us twenty-first century people? From what do we need to be saved, and to what do we need to be restored? As soon as you turn on your radio or TV, or open your newspaper, smart phone, or tablet, you know the answer to that question. Our world is just as violent and unstable as the world of the Jerusalem exiles or the hearers of the preaching of John the Baptizer. We are mired in what feels like an endless war in Afghanistan, terrorists kill journalists, aid workers, and teachers, deadly viruses devastate Africa, this country still deals with a history of racial injustice despite years of struggle, and we still have the poor very much with us – in our county, our country, and the world.

Sin clearly abounds in our world. And yet, the beautiful verses from our psalm, especially the psalmist’s promise that “truth will spring up from the earth and righteousness shall look down from heaven,” forcefully reminds me of the deep sin of which we twenty-first century humans are personally and collectively guilty: our trashing of creation. In our insatiable demand for energy produced by the burning of fossil fuels, our extractive economies have truly raped the earth. Strip mines, mountain-top removal, the Alberta tar sands, prime agricultural land destroyed in Guatemala and Nigeria, fracking operations in North Dakota threatening water systems: where will it end? And worst of all, as virtually every atmospheric scientist tells us, we are raising the temperature of the earth by releasing carbon into the air when we mine and burn fossil fuels. Make no mistake. Climate change is real. By the end of this century, many of our national parks will be unrecognizable or even non-existent, as glaciers disappear, coral reefs dry up, animals are forced out of their native habitats, and hurricanes tear away our coasts – all because of global warming.

My brothers and sisters, this is not God’s design for us and for our “big blue marble.” If God is angry with us, it is surely because of the way we have treated God’s creation. Our total disregard of the consequences for the earth of our behavior is the state from which we desperately need salvation – if there is even to be a planet to which Jesus might eventually return! As contemporary theologians remind us, we are not separate from nature, but rather part of a web of creation that includes the entire cosmos. And we have been part of that web since the beginning of creation. Did you know that scientists tell us there are no new atoms, only the same atoms undergoing continual changes of state. All of us have bits of stardust in us! And, if we share atoms with plants, and animals, and water, and air, then we are called to live harmoniously within that web of creation. In the end, we cannot “conquer” nature, we can only be its steward and guardian.

At this point, perhaps we should all get up, go over to the Ohio River, and confess our sins against the earth. Isaiah, Malachi, Psalmist, John the Baptizer, where are you? If Scripture convicts us of our sins, perhaps Scripture also gives us hope, hope that God will fulfill God’s promises, and restore God’s creation. And what are we to do in the meantime? We are to heed the warnings of the prophets among us, and forsake our sins. In our day, those prophets will probably not arrive wearing camel skins and eating locusts and honey. They may be scientists politicians, or community activists, whose warnings about the fate of the earth, most especially about climate change, we can actively heed. Right at this very moment, world leaders are gathered at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Lima, Peru, to address all the behaviors that have contributed to climate change, and to craft strategies that will enable nations to cooperate in scaling back some of the worst changes. Pray that these discussions may bear fruit and urge your elected officials to support their agreements. Closer to home, educate yourself about the plans to build an injection well in Racine, in Meigs County, for water used in fracking, and a receiving dock in Portland, also in Meigs County, for the purpose of receiving out-of-state fracking wastes and dumping them in Meigs, Vinton, and Athens counties. Learn about what these developments will mean for our watersheds. Join with others and learn how we may decrease our reliance on fossil fuels and increase our use of sustainable energy sources.

“Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer….” May God indeed give us grace to heed the warnings of prophets both ancient and contemporary, change our ways, and learn to treasure the creation that is God’s enduring gift to us.

Grace to You

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

It was about 54 AD. About eighteen months previously, Paul and others had founded a Christian community in the primarily Roman seaport of Corinth. After crossing the Aegean Sea and settling in Ephesus, Paul continued to write to the fledgling Corinthian community, advising them on their new life together. Then reports reached Paul about conflicts and divisions within the Corinthian community. There were conflicts between those who ate meat dedicated to the Greek and Roman gods and those who refused to eat meat from shrines, between those of higher social status and those of the working classes, between those who were married and those who remained celibate, and between those who had followed Apollos, one of the other evangelists, and those who had followed Paul. Worst of all were the reports that some of the Corinthians were aggravating others by claiming to have – and even boasting about – special spiritual gifts. Sighing, Paul called in his scribe and began to dictate yet another letter.

As was his wont, Paul began his letter by giving the Corinthians a theological grounding for understanding who they were as a community. Although he would address all their various conflicts specifically, he first wanted to make sure that the Corinthians had a theological foundation for their life as a community committed to Christ. And so, after greeting them, Paul reminds them that it is God who has brought them together as a community. In this reminder, he implies that, as a Christian community comprising a disparate group of people, not related to each other by blood, marriage, class, or ethnicity, they differ from almost every other human community. More important, they have been enriched with gifts by the grace of God. This grace now active among them is a dynamic power, given to them so that they may bear fruit as a community. Because grace is the source of their gifts, there is no room among them for boasting or division. Most important of all, as a community grounded not in human power or authority but in the grace of God, they are now an odd people in the midst of a divided world.

It is fitting that we hear such a reminder, that we are grounded in God’s grace, at the beginning of a new church year. It is fitting that the church reminds us, as we begin the holy season of Advent, that we are all here by God’s grace. The world around us – and I risk sounding like a Grinch for even saying it – has frantically begun preparing for, even celebrating, Christmas. Stores and online sites bid us celebrate Jesus’ birth by maxing out our credit cards, while we try to escape smiling Santas, decorated trees, and sentimental Christmas music. It’s enough to make me sympathize with old Scrooge and mutter, “Bah, humbug!”

We are not preparing for Christmas – not yet. We have entered a different season. In Advent, the church has given us a slower, more reflective time, a time when we can pause, turn toward God, and remember who we truly are. Our readings from Scripture, even our collect, remind us that we are an odd people, who, unlike the world around us, are actually living in more than one time zone at once. The prophet Isaiah wrote early in the fourth century BC to a people who had returned from exile in Babylon to find Jerusalem in ruins. We hear the prophet’s reminder to them – and by extension to us -- of all that God had done for them in the past and his anticipation of God’s help, both in the present and in the days ahead. The writer of the Gospel according to Mark similarly wrote during a time when Jerusalem was in turmoil – and indeed would be destroyed by the Romans shortly after the writing of this gospel. In today’s reading, we catch up with Jesus just before his arrest and execution. We hear Jesus’ prediction of God’s future intervention in the world and the eventual consummation of God’s reign. We too then hear Jesus bid his friends to stay alert in the present and wait patiently for God to complete God’s work.

Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Corinth helps us to live faithfully in all three time zones. Reflect on your own lives and remember all that God has done for you personally. In fact, there’s no better spiritual exercise than to take the time at the end of the day and reflect on how God has been present to you in your day or to that point in your life. Then walk around this church, read the windows and the plaques, look at the pictures in the hallway, and remember all that God has done for this parish. God has blessed this place and the people who have worshipped here for more than 150 years!

More important, as we continue to hope for the coming of God’s reign, and as we commit ourselves to living faithfully in the present, we remember who we are as a community now. Like the Corinthian Christians, we have been brought together by God. Look around you. What a motley crew we are! We range in age from three to nine-ty three. We are of different ethnicities, different classes, different genders, and different sexual orientations. We have converged on this place from different parts of the country, maybe even the globe. God has given us many spiritual gifts: some are musicians, some are preachers, some are readers, some can tell others of their Christian journey, some are devoted in prayer, and some are the hands of the parish reaching out in service and ministry. Most important, all of us are grounded in grace, grace that bears fruit in good works. And what a wonderful day to celebrate that grace, as we continue a ministry in Loaves and Fishes that this parish has given to the surrounding community for over ten years. And, yes, we are called to be different from the rest of the world. Like the Corinthian Christians, we too are called to be an odd people in a divided world.

Yet, for all that, it’s all too easy to despair as we look around us. The divisions in our world are all too apparent. However you get your news, whether by newspaper, or television, or via tablet or smart phone, or even if you try to escape all the news media, we are bombarded by news of Israelis and Palestinians, terrorist bombings, violence against women and gays, and poverty in the US – no wonder food banks are thriving. Once again the deaths of John Crawford in a Dayton Walmart, Tamir Rice in a Cleveland park, and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, remind us of the deep divisions in our world, our sad history as a nation, and our complicity in fostering racial and ethnic conflict.

Just when even I am ready to despair that God’s reign will ever be realized, I open the newspaper and God’s grace leaps out anew. Out from the Columbus Dispatch this week came the story of the Revs. Gerald Rice and Doug Duble.1 Twelve years ago Pastor Rice looked out at his predominantly black congregation and felt the Lord telling him that it was time to make his church more diverse. “I felt a real burden in my heart that our church was predominantly African-American, but that was not God’s heart for us to be,” he said. Meanwhile, Pastor Duble accepted the call of his predominantly white church, making sure the congregation understood his multicultural vision. A member of Rice’s congregation introduced the two. As they became friends, they realized they shared the same vision and began planning and dreaming. Two years later, the two congregations came together to form the nondenominational Judah Christian Community. Now, ten years later, the congregation numbers over 300 regular worshipers, about 65 percent black and 35 percent white. Bringing the two congregations together took time. Overcoming differences in worship style, music, and even dress, required effort, and some members in both groups were not ready to compromise or change. Now the congregation attracts those who are drawn to the mix, who have come to value the multicultural community. Most important is the love that permeates the community, love of God, and love of each other. “Every Sunday is like a celebration in our ministry,” Rice said. “The joy and love show in here, it’s just incredible. If you like being hugged, you will be hugged in this church. You will be hugged, and you will be welcomed.”

In Advent, we continue to hope that God’s grace will enable us to overcome our divisions and conflicts, that God’s grace will continue to bear fruit in us, that we may “do all such good works as [God has] prepared for us to walk in,” and that God’s reign has already begun in us and is even now coming closer. Grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

1. JoAnne Viviano, “Church has proved it’s serious about diversity,” Columbus Dispatch, November 28, 2104, B6.

And the Righteous Will Answer

Have you ever been to one of the great Gothic cathedrals? Notre Dame or Canterbury or Westminster Abbey? If you have, or even if you’ve seen pictures of them, you know that they are literally sermons in glass and stone. In the great cathedrals, all the architectural details, all the windows, and all the sculpture are designed to tell us something about God and what God has done for us. Though not medieval, the Washington National Cathedral, the cathedral church of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, is also such a sermon in stone. Episcopal priest Frank Logue tells us that the entire building is designed to point us towards God and to remind us of God’s mighty works. As with the medieval cathedrals, the focal point of the national cathedral is the high altar. Behind the high altar the huge reredos depicts Christ in glory surrounded by over one hundred figures. But look closely: nearest the glorified Christ stand who? The great angels? The most exemplary saints? The apostles? The martyrs? None of these. Closest to the glorified Christ, at the very heart of this great cathedral, stand six allegorical figures, figures of people who are hungry, thirsty, homeless, naked, sick, and imprisoned. You can’t miss the theme of the sermon: it is they, the poor, the needy, the weak, and the victims, whom Christ first embraces in paradise.

Are you surprised? Were you surprised that Jesus depicted the final judgment as a test of how we treated others, especially of how we treated “the least of these?” Jesus warned us, didn’t he? He told us that when he returned to begin his reign over all creation we would face a test. Not on whether we understood and professed every iota of the Nicene Creed. Not on whether we had read and understood the sermons of John Chrysostom or John Donne. Not on whether we had the most beautiful sanctuaries and vestments. He would test us, Jesus told us, on how visible our faith was, on how we had treated those who were poor, sick, hungry, oppressed, or in prison, on whether we had actively attended to their needs or ignored them. He would remind us that faith isn’t faith until it’s actualized, until it’s made concrete in the ways that we live out our lives. Even if we don’t always know exactly who the beneficiary of our good works is, even if we’re not always sure that those whom we help are part of the “deserving poor,” Jesus tells us that when we use our faith to benefit others, we show our love for Jesus himself.

Didn’t we already know that? Didn’t the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures tell us that? And hadn’t the writer of the Letter of James repeated the same message to his hearers when he asked, “What good is it to profess faith without practicing it?” What good is it if you ignore the needs of the naked or the hungry? Like Jesus, hadn’t James also warned us that “without good deeds faith is useless?” Or, as James Forbes, the former pastor of Riverside Church in New York City, put it, "Nobody gets to heaven without a letter of reference from the poor."

So Jesus’ parable – and the sermon in stone – remind us that whether we like it or not, God will ultimately hold us accountable for how we have lived our lives and how we have used God’s gifts to us. This Sunday, the very last Sunday of the liturgical year, as we recognize and give thanks to God that we are accountable to Christ rather than to any secular authority, perhaps this is a good time to pause and look at our own lives. How would you do on Jesus’ test? What do your datebook and checkbook say about you? Are you merely an admirer of Jesus, or do you truly try to do what he did? Does he nourish you in Scripture and sacrament? More important, does receiving Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist change the rest of your life? Do you notice the needs of only your closest family and friends and ignore the needs of those on the margins of your social circle? Do you know who “the least, the lost, and the left behind” in our world are, and are you concerned about them? Do you see Jesus in others, even in “difficult” people, in people you don’t like, in people who have hurt you? Do you look beyond the charitable handout and try to make a difference in the systems of injustice and inequity that trap people in poverty, disease, and disaster? Do the needs of our brothers and sisters in other countries have any claim on you?

Jesus isn’t posing these questions to us only or even primarily as individuals. All the pronouns in the parable are in the second person plural. So Jesus’ questions are also addressed to us corporately, to us here at St. Peter’s as a parish. And the questions are similar. This is a parish with many God-given gifts: physical plant, talented people, and financial resources. How are we using these gifts? If we were to lock the doors and all go our separate ways, would anyone miss us? Take a minute and think about it: where do you yearn to bring the good news to the wider community? Where does Jesus want us to go? If money were no object, and we had all the people we needed, what are we as a parish called to do in this community? What tugs at your heart? Do you think we need more money or more people to truly live out our faith? If we have the will to try to befriend the “least of these,” Jesus’ sisters and brothers whom we see around us, might not God provide the resources that we need?

Or, conversely, perhaps you find it hard to take this gospel seriously. We so easily blame the poor for their poverty. If they really wanted decent healthcare, education, housing, and a living wage, we think, they could get it. Jesus is just offering us pie-in-the-sky, isn’t he? The truth is that when we commit to following Jesus – not just admiring him, or giving intellectual assent to statements about him – we profess that the dispossessed, those on the margins of society, are the ones we are charged to care for. Most astonishing of all to us good folks is that, according to Matthew, if we really want a transformative, face-to-face experience of Jesus’ presence, we will find him in the faces of the poor. Like Fritz Eichenberg, the Quaker artist whose woodcuts frequently appeared in Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker newspaper, the truth is that if we truly seek Christ we will find him in the breadlines.

Are you beginning to feel that I am judging you and putting you on the spot? Do you fear the separation of the sheep and the goats depicted in Jesus’ parable? Where’s the good news? My brothers and sisters, here’s the good news. That Jesus holds us accountable for what we do means that our lives have consequences, and it matters to God and to those around us how we live them out. Our lives may be short, our scope of action may be limited, but our lives still matter. That Jesus also holds us accountable as a parish for how we use God’s gifts means that our life together as a community of faith also has value and meaning. It does – or it should – mean that our being here helps to advance God’s reign!

As we ponder Jesus’ last words to us, we come back to the question we have been wrestling with for the last several weeks, ever since, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus began his last sermon in Jerusalem. And that question is, how do we live in this middle time between Jesus’ death and resurrection and the full inauguration of his reign on earth? The answer is both simple and complicated. We heard Jesus himself give the answer to the question: “You must love the Most High God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. That is the greatest and first commandment. The second is like it: You must love your neighbor as yourself.” Love God, love your neighbor: that is how we live in the middle time.

So what are you afraid of? Are you afraid of getting your hands dirty, of not knowing what to say, of wondering if someone will ask you about your faith? Are you afraid you might lose your faith when you listen to the needs of the poor? Put yourself on the line. Do more than write a check – although checks are always welcome! Tutor children. Join Deacon Carolyn and visit a nursing home. Come to Loaves and Fishes. Help deliver the meals to the First Holzer apartments. Sit down and talk with our diners, or just greet them. Think about others in your neighborhood – or your world – who are among the least, the lost, and the left behind. See them as those beloved of God and think about how you might begin caring for them.

Jesus was a great preacher. Here are his last words to us. If we want to live in his realm, both now and when his reign on earth is complete, we need only ask ourselves the most practical of questions. Did we feed the hungry? Did we shelter the homeless? Did we care for the sick and the imprisoned? And we will answer….

Faithful Disciples

What does it mean to be a faithful disciple? We are now in the last weeks of the liturgical year. Three weeks from now it will be the first Sunday in Advent, the beginning of a new liturgical year. The long growing season of Pentecost that began on June 15th is now drawing to a close. Soon we will exchange our green paraments and vestments, which symbolize our growth in faith, for blue ones. What have we learned in the long season about being a faithful disciple?

Our Scripture readings for this morning give us hints as to how we might answer that question by speaking to how we are to look at the past, how we regard the future, and how we are to live in the present. Together, our readings also remind us in the strongest possible terms that, both as individuals and as a gathered community of those committed to Jesus, we face choices in our spiritual lives, choices that challenge us to live intentionally.

Our first reading, from the Old Testament, comes from the book of Joshua. This is the sixth book of the Hebrew Bible, coming immediately after Deuteronomy, the last book in the Torah. Unlike the Torah, whose five books embody Jewish law, Joshua is the first of a series of books that lay out the history of the Israelites, through kings David and Solomon and on through the exile in Babylon and the subsequent return to Israel. In the book of Joshua, Moses has died, and Joshua is now the leader of the community. As we pick up the story Joshua and the people have followed God’s commands: they have crossed the Jordan, displaced the indigenous peoples, and settled in Canaan.

Now gathering the assembled people, Joshua provides a summary of their history and a way of understanding who they are in relationship to God. He reminds them of God’s initiative in leading Abraham from his original home beyond the Euphrates and of God’s promise to Abraham to make of him a great nation. Joshua then reminds the people that God has delivered them from Egyptian oppression and sustained them in their long trek. Having experienced all that, they now face two choices. The first choice is whether or not to renounce any former gods, whether they were gods of their ancestors or gods of their Egyptian neighbors. Second, and more important, they are called to choose whether to honor their past by remembering all that God has done for them and committing themselves, as individuals and as a community, to God’s commandments.

So here is our first lesson in faithful discipleship. We are to remember all that God has done for us, and we are to give up all the old gods, idols, and loyalties that come between us and God. Most important, we are to consciously and intentionally commit ourselves to God’s way.

Our second lesson in discipleship comes from Paul’s first letter to the Christian community at Thessaloniki. This was Paul’s very first letter. He wrote it before 50 AD, i.e., about twenty years before Mark wrote the first gospel. At the time he wrote it, Thessaloniki was the capital of Macedonia, and one of the crossroads of the ancient world. These first Christians believed that they would see Jesus return in their lifetimes. However, as Christians began to die, those remaining began to worry that those who had died would not be part of the Resurrection when Jesus returned. In this letter Paul answers their concerns in two ways. First, he reminds them of what has already happened: Jesus has died and has risen. He reassures them that those who have already died will indeed share in Christ’s resurrection. In his reassurance he uses apocalyptic language that would have been familiar to them, i.e., intentionally symbolic language that was not meant to be taken literally – despite what believers in “the rapture” may think. Second, and more important, Paul asks the Thessalonian Christians to look ahead with hope, and to embody their trust in God as a group of believers.

So here is our second lesson in faithful discipleship. We are to regularly gather as a community to encourage either other in spiritual growth. We are to remember all that God has done. We are to trust that God has done and will do a new thing, and that, most important, we are to ground ourselves in the hope that our lives with God will continue on the other side of death.

The third lesson in faithful discipleship comes from the gospel according to Matthew. Called “the great teaching gospel,” Matthew was written between thirty and forty years after Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. As you know, we’ve been hearing this gospel all summer and fall. As a vehicle for teaching, it is organized into five great discourses, which would have reminded its audience of Jewish Christians of the five books of the Torah. The five discourses of Jesus in this gospel begin with the Beatitudes, those hallmarks of a Christian community, which we heard again last week. Along the way, the discourses provide instruction on how to organize the community and resolve conflicts within it. The fifth discourse, which we are now hearing, ends with several parables, i.e., allegorical teaching stories, specifically addressing how Jesus’ followers should live while they wait for his return.

The parable we have just heard reflects the wedding customs of Jesus’ time, in which the groom and members of his family go to the bride’s house, collect her, and bring her to the groom’s house, where the wedding ceremony will take place. Meanwhile, the bridesmaids wait at the groom’s house ready to greet the happy couple when they finally show up. The bridesmaids can’t be sure when the groom’s party will arrive, since there may be many different ceremonies at the bride’s house before the couple can leave. They are expected to wait patiently and to be ready even if the groom’s party comes at an unexpected hour.

Can you hear what the evangelist is saying through this parable? The community of the faithful is called to wait patiently, attentively, and intentionally for Jesus’ return. They are take responsibility for their spiritual lives, and, in all that they do, they are to ensure that they are open to Jesus’ call wherever and whenever he appears. And what might that openness require of them? As faithful hearers of the gospel, they are to embrace the counter-cultural ethos of the Beatitudes, they are to love their enemies and forsake violence, they are to focus on heartfelt devotion to God rather than outward piety, they are to trust God to provide, and they are to attend to the needs of those around them.

And so here is our third lesson in faithful discipleship. While looking in hope to God’s future, we are to live fully in the present. We are to pay attention to our spiritual lives now, not procrastinating, not expecting that we can become holier at some later date, that we can borrow someone else’s holiness, or that someone else will bail us out. And we are to take seriously the lessons of Scripture about what following Jesus truly requires of us.

So, my brothers and sisters, here is the spiritual life in a nutshell. First, we are to know our story. We are to know what God has done for us, both individually and collectively. For most of us, that means looking at our own lives and seeing reflections in them of God’s grace. Actually, this is a good exercise for prayer or journaling: ask yourself, “Where do I see God at work in my life?” Second, we are to look ahead with hope to the eventual coming of God’s reign, committing ourselves to partnering with God in bringing God’s reign closer. For most of us, that means actively working for peace and justice in our communities, choosing that place or that issue, where we sense God at work and joining with others to follow God’s lead. Third, we are to live attentively in the present moment, ready to serve Christ wherever he turns up, whether it be in the face of a child, a Loaves and fishes diner, a fellow member of the parish, a friend, a family member, or even a complete stranger. And, most important of all, we are to live each day as if it were our last.

Methodist bishop Will Willimon tells the story of a funeral he attended at Baptist country church.1 The coffin was brought in. The preacher began to preach. He shouted, fumed, and flailed his arms. “It’s too late for Joe,” he screamed. He might have wanted to do this or that in life, but it’s too late for him. He might have wanted to straighten his life out, but he can’t now. It’s over …. But it ain’t too late for you! … Now is the day of decision. Now is the time to make your life count for something. Give your life to Jesus!” On the way home, Willimon told his wife how awful he thought the sermon was. “Can you imagine a preacher doing that kind of thing to a grieving family?” he asked her. “I’ve never heard of anything so manipulative, cheap, and inappropriate. I would never preach a sermon like that.” Willimon’s wife agreed. “Of course,” she added, “the worst part of all is that what he said was true.”

Dear people, can we live faithfully in the present, knowing that each day may indeed be our last, yet sharing the hope that God is bringing in a new heaven and new earth?

1. Related in Synthesis, November 9, 2014, 4.

Transformed by God

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” … and all the rest of Jesus’ “Blessed are” declarations. Such familiar words. Most Christians have heard them a zillion times. In fact, they’re so familiar that they can even be satirized. In the movie The Life of Bryan, the Monty Python crew shout, “Blessed are the Greeks” and “Blessed are the cheesemakers,” knowing their audience will catch the joke.

Although the Beatitudes, these “Blessed are” declarations are so familiar, we might be surprised to hear them today. It’s All Saints Sunday, the day when we thank God for those who’ve gone before us in faith, especially those who’ve been recognized by the church. It’s year A in our three-year cycle of Scripture readings, the year when most of our Gospel readings are from the Gospel according to Matthew. If a Gospel reading for All Saints is required, wouldn’t the parable of the Sheep and the Goats be more appropriate? Or perhaps we could hear about the saintly women who bankrolled Jesus’ ministry and were the first witnesses of his resurrection. Yet, every third year, on All Saints Sunday, we hear this passage from the fifth chapter of Matthew.

If you think about it, this passage is even a surprise in the world of the gospel itself. The very first words in Matthew’s gospel are, “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David ….” (1:1). Right away, we are set up to expect an encounter with the one who, like his ancestor David, would deliver Israel from Roman oppression. As the story progresses, we see aging King Herod so terrified about the birth of this Jesus that he orders the massacre of all boys in Jerusalem under the age of two. Then, as Jesus, as an adult, is poised to begin his ministry, along comes the fiery John the Baptist proclaiming of him, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (3:11). After hearing all this, we are sure we will meet the Jesus who will be a cross between David and Elijah, who will oust the Romans, and who will bring down God’s wrath on all the sinful.

So when Jesus makes his first public address – up on a mountain no less, like his forebear Moses – what do we hear? We hear that you’re blessed if you admit that you’re dependent on God, even for your very life. You’re blessed if you lament the current state of the world and long for the day when you can live in God’s realm. You’re blessed when you actively, hungrily and thirstily, pursue justice. You’re blessed when you engage in mission, in concrete acts of mercy and charity. You’re blessed when no one but God has a claim on you, and when you can do God’s work with gladness and singleness of heart. You’re blessed when you actively pursue peace. You’re blessed when you stand in the shoes of the prophets and speak out against hatred, war, and injustice, even though you know that speaking truth to power will bring down on you the wrath of the rulers of this world. You’re blessed if you’re prepared to suffer Jesus’ fate of execution as a common criminal. You’re blessed if you can hold fast to God’s promise, that God’s realm will become real, and that all of us will be part of that great community worshipping God eternally.

Jesus’ first followers must surely have gasped, hearing these words. They were expecting a conquering king. Was this the way of life to which God’s anointed one, their savior, was calling them? Do we too gasp when we hear Jesus’ declarations? Do we even hear them? Isn’t it much more exciting to worship superheroes? Don’t the leaders of victorious armies, even Super Bowl heroes, command more of our attention than a messiah who calls us to depend on God, engage in service to others, and actively work for peace and justice?

My brothers and sisters, God’s ways are always different from our ways. God always astounds us. God always does the unexpected. Eight centuries before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah warned his followers that, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (55:9). Jesus’ proclamation of the good life went against everything that his followers expected. And yet, throughout the centuries, a few have caught that vision, and have followed Jesus into unexpected places.

Today, on All Saints Sunday we remember especially those who gained public recognition for being willing to follow Jesus’ vision, to let God overturn all theirs and others’ expectations for their lives. The Episcopal Church, in its wonderful volume Holy Women, Holy Men, offers an entire year’s worth of such followers of Jesus. Some were officially recognized by the undivided church, and some have been added to our calendar since the Reformation. If you’ve ever come to a Tuesday evening Eucharist, you’ve helped us remember these extraordinary individuals.

And what a surprising and wonderful “cloud of witnesses” these holy women and holy men are! Take, for example, Benedict of Nursia, who in the chaos of the sixth century, when the Roman Empire had all but fallen apart, brought together a group of monks and wrote a rule for their common life. His rule, emphasizing work, prayer, and study, endures to this day. Read it sometime with Joan Chittister’s commentary. It will surprise and inspire you. How about Francis and Clare of Assisi? In twelfth-century Italy, they turned their backs on their families’ wealth to found communities dedicated to serving the poor. In sixteenth-century Spain, Teresa of Avila also abandoned her wealthy family to found communities dedicated to contemplative prayer. Closer to our own time, William Wilberforce heard Jesus’ call to defy his contemporaries’ expectations and vigorously worked for the abolition of the English slave trade.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Vida Dutton Scudder joined the Episcopal Church after hearing Philips Brooks preach in Boston. She too heard Jesus’ call, to risk her position as a faculty member at Wellesley College by supporting striking textile workers in 1912. For the rest of her life, she continued to pursue both justice for workers and world peace. Or how about an Albanian nun named Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu? When she began teaching wealthy girls at a school in the foothills of India, few would have predicted that Mother Teresa, as she came to be known, would spend her life on the streets of Calcutta, found numerous orders dedicated to care of the poor and dying, and be awarded the Nobel peace prize. Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Born into a secular family in Germany, he followed Jesus’ call, becoming a Lutheran pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and founding member of the Confessing Church. In April 1945, at the age of thirty-nine, Bonhoeffer followed his master and was hanged by the Nazis.

The cloud of witnesses to God’s power and grace also includes many who are not on our calendar. Msgr. William O’Brien, a Catholic parish priest in New York City, became painfully aware of how the “war on drugs” was failing the addicts in his parish. Against all the prevailing wisdom of the day, he founded Daytop Village in 1963, one of the first and most successful drug and alcohol treatment programs in the U.S.

And then there are those who could not be considered “saints” by any stretch of the imagination and yet were able to become instruments of God’s grace. Bryan Stevenson tells the story of his first visit to death row.1 He was visiting a convicted murderer. He began by apologizing to the man for being only a student. Continuing to apologize, he told the prisoner that, because no lawyer had yet been appointed for him, he would not be executed any time in the next year. Astonished, Stevenson heard the prisoner say, “Thank you, man. I mean, really, thank you!” Now the prisoner knew that he could arrange a visit for his wife and children without fear that he would have an execution date before they could get there. Then Stevenson and the prisoner began talking. Their lives were remarkably similar, and they ended up talking for three hours. When the guard finally signaled an end to the conversation, the prisoner asked Stevenson to come back and see him again. As Stevenson struggled to say something appropriate, the prisoner smiled. Then he astonished Stevenson. He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and, with a strong baritone, began to sing, “Lord, lift me up and let me stand,/ By faith on heaven’s tableland;/ A higher plane than I have found,/ Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.” It was an old hymn that Stevenson had sung growing up, and the prisoner continued to sing it as he was led away. Contrary to all Stevenson’s expectations, the prisoner had shown him generosity and compassion. Stevenson never forgot the man or the hymn.

And so, my friends, on this day of remembrance, on this morning when we remember those whose lives are known to many, and this evening when we remember those whose lives are known only to us, whom we loved and see no longer, we give thanks to God for surrounding us with a great cloud of witnesses. With that multitude that no man can number, we give thanks to the God of surprises, who works God’s transforming power in all our lives. Even now, God’s transforming power is at work in us, and we too can trust that we will join the saints in feasting at the heavenly banquet.

1. The High Road,” New York Times Magazine, October 26, 2014, 74.

Three-Cornered Love

Presbyterian pastor Richard Floyd tells of a conversation that he had with an old friend he had not seen in a long time.1 The friend was “bright and compassionate.” Floyd mostly agreed with her politics. And yet, for Floyd, something was missing in his friend’s approach to life. Floyd was deeply immersed in the Christian tradition, and so he often found himself reflecting on life issues from a three-cornered perspective, trying to see God’s viewpoint, his own angle of vision, and the viewpoint of his neighbors. His friend had had virtually no religious formation, and so, it seemed, she did not have this three-cornered perspective. “She could begin and end a topic,” he tells us, “with reflection on the self, without moving on to God or neighbor.” It was not because she was unusually self-preoccupied; she was simply reflecting the extreme individualism of our culture. How did this happen, Floyd wondered. What is more important, how do we begin to see the world around us in a three-cornered way?

Today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew invites us to begin looking at our lives in a three-cornered way. Remember that this Gospel was written after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, i.e., after 70 AD. It was written for a community that was in conflict with the Jewish religious leaders. Since the Sadducees, one of the two major Jewish sects of Jesus’ time, had largely disappeared with the destruction of the temple, almost all of the Jewish religious leaders after 70 AD were Pharisees, i.e., leaders of the other major sect. It was they who were concerned with preserving the distinctive social and religious lives of the scattered Jewish communities – and indeed they were largely responsible for the survival to this day of the Jews as a distinctive community. The followers of Jesus to whom Matthew was writing were in conflict with these leaders, partly because the new communities of Jesus’ followers included people of all classes, genders, and ethnicities. To encourage the fledgling community of Jesus’ followers, on the whole, Matthew, much more so than Mark or Luke, depicts the Pharisees negatively, often showing them disputing with Jesus.

The passage we just heard depicts Jesus’ third and last public confrontation with the leaders of the Pharisees. It was about two days before Jesus would be executed as a common criminal. A lawyer, i.e., a scholar trained to interpret religious law, asked a question: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Was it a trick question? Or could the lawyer seriously have been trying to discern what this Galilean rabbi actually thought? After all, many scholars had tried to discern which of the 613 laws in the Torah were more significant than the others.

Whatever the lawyer’s motive, Jesus answered his question in an unexpected, even radically startling way. First, Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:5. This is the second half of the Shema, the affirmation of faith that undergirds all of Judaism and is still recited in every Jewish worship service. The whole Shema reads, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord Alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Hearing Jesus recite the Shema, the religious leaders would surely have nodded their heads in approval. But then Jesus quoted Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Moreover, Jesus declared that this commandment was not only similar to the commandment in the Shema, it was equal to that of the Shema.

That loving one’s neighbor as oneself was equal to loving God is even more astounding when we look at what this section of Leviticus actually calls for. Loving one’s neighbor as oneself is not some warm, fuzzy platitude. It is a command with deep social implications. For, Leviticus 19 commands Jews to respect their parents, feed poor people and foreigners, not steal, lie, or swear falsely, not defraud the disabled, not slander their neighbor, and not harbor hatred or vengeance. And, even more important, Jesus’ followers knew that one’s neighbor was not just one’s family members or friends. One’s neighbor was everyone in need. Which commandment in the law is the greatest? Jesus told his hearers that the greatest commandment is to love God by loving one’s neighbors – all of them. And then, as if banging a gavel, Jesus capped off his unexpected teaching by declaring that this is what Scripture is all about; every revelation that you hear, this is what it’s about. This is the foundation of your life: love of God, love of self, and love of neighbor. All are equally important.

How did the religious leaders who heard Jesus meld these commandments into one react? We’ll never know – at least from Matthew. In Mark’s account, the Scribe who heard Jesus says these words praised Jesus and echoed his words back to Jesus, to which Jesus replied, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God (12:32-34).” And how about us? Those of you who remember the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, or heard it last month at Bruce Chapel, remember that at every Eucharist, we heard the priest repeat these words of Jesus: “Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God….” So how do we hear Jesus’ statement of the ground of our commitment to him? Are his words the foundation of all our decisions and actions? Does how we treat ourselves and God’s children reflect our love of God?

For many people in our culture, the answer would be “No.” Most of us see out of only one of the three corners of vision, our own. When we are faced with a decision, most of us ask, how does this suit me? What are my needs, rights, and desires? Does this step advance my own interests and the interests of my group, my ethnicity, my social class, my age-group, or my state? Will my privileged position be threatened by this action? Can’t you see this perspective in the polarization of our political life, where nowadays it seems as if no one, especially at the national level, is looking out for the common good? Can’t you see it in the way we’ve been trashing our planet, in our tendency to say, “I want what I want when I want it, regardless of whether I need it, regardless of whether the people who make it work in safe and healthy factories, and regardless of whether it can be recycled once I’m done with it?”

Where do we unlearn the habit of extreme individualism that is the hallmark of American culture? God willing, the church is one such place – as it was for Richard Floyd. The church can be our school in three-cornered love, if we study Jesus’ words and take them to heart. The church can be our teacher especially if we avoid two pitfalls. Often we try to avoid our extreme self-preoccupation by turning intently to God, by acknowledging our brokenness, asking for God’s healing and transformation, and cultivating habits of holiness and piety. Wonderful, so long as such habits of holiness and piety don’t blind us to the needs of our neighbor in the next house, the next county, or overseas. By the same token, we often try to get beyond our self-preoccupation by making our neighbor’s needs the only focus of our spiritual lives. When we do that, and especially when we act as if all depends on us and our own efforts, we run the risk of arrogantly assuming we know what’s best, or falling into despair when those in need resist or spurn our efforts.

Jesus calls us to have a three-cornered heart. In all our discernment, reflection, and practice, Jesus calls us to consider whether we are serving and loving God, ourselves and our neighbors. Jesus calls us to cultivate this habit of three-fold discernment in all our decisions. When we are making big decisions, e.g. choosing a vocation, or returning to school, or changing jobs, or relocating, Jesus calls us to ask whether our decisions reflect love of God, care for self, and love of neighbor. When we decide how to use our resources of time, talent, and treasure, and especially when we ponder how much to return to God, Jesus calls us to ask whether our decisions reflect love of God, care for self, and love of neighbor. Even in the small decisions we make in the course of a day, we can take a moment to ask ourselves, “In what I am now doing, am I serving God, am I helping myself, and am I loving my neighbor?” We can all do this: you don’t have to be a saint or a monastic to reflect on your decisions and actions from this three-cornered perspective. As Mother Teresa reminded us, “Holiness is not a luxury for the few; it is not just for some people. It is meant for you and me, for all of us.”

So here is my invitation to you this week. In the next decision that you have to make – whatever it is, big or small – stop, take a deep breath, and ask yourself, “God, myself, and neighbor? All three?” Then follow Jesus’ leading to grow in love.

1. He relates the story in Feasting on the Gospels (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2013), 200ff.

Rejoice in the Lord Always

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”

What does Paul have to rejoice about? It is 61 or 62. Paul is under house arrest in Rome. After tangling with mobs in Jerusalem, Paul had been arrested and imprisoned for two years at the fortress in Caesarea Maritima in Palestine. When he, as a Roman citizen, had asserted his right to appeal his case in Rome he was transported there under guard to await trial on capital charges. Confined to Rome, Paul is now unable to return to the Christian community at Philippi, a community he had helped to found several years earlier with the help of Lydia, a dyer of purple goods, and other prominent women. He is grateful that the community has not forgotten him, but, rather, has sent him gifts through Epaphroditus, one of its members.

After hearing the news Epaphroditus brought him, Paul’s heart is breaking for the Philippian Christians. They are at odds with their neighbors. Philippi was a Roman city in Macedonia, located on the Via Egnatia, the principle road from Asia Minor to Rome. Most of its citizens were Gentiles, descendants of Roman soldiers who had received land in Macedonia in return for service during Rome’s civil wars. Those who had become Christians were scorned by their neighbors. As Christians, they could no longer participate in the imperial cult, the worship of former Emperors, even though non-Christians considered such worship to be vital to the well-being of the city. Nor could they worship any of the many Greek gods whose temples lined the busy thoroughfares. More than that, the Philippians themselves are dispirited. The first flush of conversion, that delightful sense of finally having been found by God, seems to have worn off among them, and they now face the hard work of maintaining their commitment to Christ. Most heart-breaking of all, there is internal conflict in the Philippian community. Paul’s letter to them mentions Euodia and Syntyche by name, but there are probably others.

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”

What do we have to rejoice about? On a personal level, none of you is in jail, as far as I know, or in danger of being incarcerated. However, like everyone else, you’re caught up in your daily lives, working, volunteering, raising children, renovating houses, going to school. You’ve experienced sickness and loss. If you’re of a certain age, you long to re-establish relationships with those who are distant or from whom you are estranged, you’ve watched your friends depart, and you’re coping with a body that many days seems to thwart your every intention. If you’re younger, you’re watching the aging process play itself out in your parents, grandparents, in-laws, aunts, uncles, and friends.

In this once-vital Episcopal outpost on the Ohio River, we ponder how, with such small numbers, we can continue to grow spiritually. We wonder what God really has in mind for us. We question how we long we can flourish in this community. In southeast Ohio, three hours from Cincinnati, we often feel cut off from the rest of the diocese. With the rest of the Episcopal Church, and other mainline denominations, we struggle to respond to the needs of a changing society. And in the world? Is there any cause for rejoicing in the world around us? The dread Ebola virus is ravaging West Africa. In our own country Enterovirus 68 has affected children, while 20,000 people die yearly from the flu. Our Loaves and Fishes diners remind us that we have not eradicated poverty, and that income inequality is again rising. The daily headlines remind us that people still die needlessly in car wrecks and on city streets. Islamic terrorism infects the Middle East, Russia menaces the Ukraine, and China seeks to control political life in Hong Kong.

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”

What is there to rejoice about? Much, Paul tells the Philippian Christians. First and foremost, he counsels them, they are to rejoice in the good news of God’s work in Christ. They are to rejoice because, even though they are now a community apart from their neighbors, they have been brought together as Christ’s own, and they have been joined to Christ. They are to rejoice, because God now calls them to continue nourishing a community whose life witnesses to Christ’s redemptive work. As they express their gladness, they are to remember that the good news of what God has done in Christ is for all: all our welcomed into Christ’s Body, and all are counted as God’s beloved children.

As members of Christ’s Body, they must also rejoice that God has given them examples of godly life to follow. The primary example is Christ himself. In a hymn that may have come from somewhere else, Paul reminds his Philippian friends that, Christ, though “in form of God …, humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” Paul also reminds them of Timothy, and of Epaphoditus, their own fellow Christian, who came to visit him. And, finally, Paul reminds them to follow his own example. He, who had all the markers of social status possible in the ancient world, gladly gave them all up in order to “gain Christ and be found in him.”

As they persevere in the Christian life, the Philippians must also remember that “the Lord is near,” that God is with them always in all that they do. They are to remember with joy God’s care for them always, not just on special feast days, not just on Sundays, but always. Their gratitude and joy in knowing Christ must permeate their entire life and must be the foundation of all that they do.

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”

What is there to rejoice about? Much, Paul tells us. First and foremost, we are to rejoice that God has brought us together. In truth, we are a motley crew, not unlike the Philippian congregation. We range in age from one to ninety-three (Hallelujah!). Some of us were born in Gallipolis, some of us were born back east or out west, some of us were born in another country. Some of us are quite well off, and others of us struggle to make ends meet. Some of us are students, some are teachers, some work at other professions, some are homemakers, and some are retired. Some of us were born into the Episcopal Church, and others of us were adults when we heard God calling us to this tradition. All of us are welcomed and valued. God has brought all of us here to give thanks for Christ’s work in us and for us, and to be sent out into the world to be Christ for the world.

We too may rejoice that we have examples of faith. We too have Christ himself. In our own prayers, in our daily devotions and in our corporate worship, we too can continually ponder what it means to humble ourselves and become obedient to the point of death. We too can rejoice in the all the examples we have of faithful commitment to Christ. Look around you! Don’t you see the saints among us? Or look at the calendar of the holy ones of the church. On nearly every day, we see examples of those who faithfully followed Christ wherever he led them. Do the names of Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, Teresa of Avila, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, or Ignatius of Antioch mean anything to you? They are just the people on our calendar for this coming week. I can assure you that all of them have fascinating and exemplary stories.

Rejoice that God is at work in the world, using us as God’s instruments to bring God’s realm closer. Rejoice that God is working through Episcopal Relief and Development to empower women. Today is actually the Day of the Girl. Through the Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action, ERD has started a new agricultural program in India. The program has brought women and girls together in unforeseen ways, allowing the mostly lower-caste women to support each other, grow food for their families, and learn new skills. Rejoice too that God is even working through those outside the Christian fold. Give thanks to God that people like Malala Yousafzai, a seventeen year-old Muslim, and Kailash Sathyarthi, a Hindu, are at work protecting children and their right to education. Both just won the Nobel Peace prize.

And finally, hear the command in Paul’s voice: “Rejoice!” Commit yourself to thanking God and rejoicing in the good news of God in Christ intentionally and regularly. Find a time for daily prayer. Come and be nourished in worship. Then take your joy out into the streets and share it with others. Or follow the poet Mary Oliver and sing. In a lovely poem, entitled “I Worried,” she says,

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.1

My sisters and brothers, rejoice, give thanks, and sing!

1. Mary Oliver, from Swan: Poems and Prose Poems. © Beacon Press, 2010.

We are the Tenants

Some years ago, my husband and I vacationed in eastern Ontario. We enjoy live theater, and so we were headed to the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake. As we drove towards Buffalo on I-90, we passed row upon row of what were surely young vineyards. Crossing over into Canada, we discovered, to our astonishment, that eastern Ontario had also become a wine-producing area. Between Shaw Festival plays, we visited the surrounding area. We learned that wine has been produced in Canada for almost 200 years. However, in the last thirty years the apple and pear orchards that had once been the mainstay of the Niagara economy had now all become vineyards that were producing very nice wines. When we sampled ice wine for the first time, we learned that producing wine is a very painstaking business. The vines must be lovingly tended, the wine must be carefully put in barrels to age, and finally, the wine must be bottled to be sold. Winemaking is definitely not a solo operation! However, with conscientious workers and managers, even small wineries can produce wine that equals or even surpasses the wine of better known houses. Although we were disappointed to discover that very little Canadian wine is exported to the US, several bottles of wine from the smaller wineries crossed back over the border with us.

We should not be surprised that Jesus chose the image of a vineyard to make a point about good stewardship. The vineyard is a common image in the Hebrew Bible. For example, the book of Proverbs praises a “woman of valor,” by noting that, “She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard” (31:16). Isaiah concludes a prophecy about God’s anger with Israel saying, “For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting….” (5:7).

What is more important, wine was an important part of the economy of Galilee. Despite the hard work involved in producing wine, even in Jesus’ time, anyone who owned a vineyard and who employed good managers and workers could expect a reasonably profitable product. Here, though, Jesus’ parable does not depict conscientious employees. Rather it depicts employees who deny the vineyard owner his rightful share of the wine. What’s worse, they are so greedy to get control of the production of the vineyard that they kill successive emissaries from the owner. In the end, they kill the owner’s own son, the rightful heir.

We should also not be surprised to learn that this parable occurs in all three Synoptic Gospels. Indeed, in Matthew it is the second of three parables that depict escalating conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities. Last week we heard the first one, the parable of the two sons, and next week we will hear a parable about those who refuse the invitation to enter God’s Realm.

Jesus’ earliest followers recounted these stories, because the church of the first century painfully questioned the relationship between followers of Jesus and the existing Jewish communities. The earliest Christians wondered why the majority of the Jews of their day declined to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, why followers of Jesus were unwelcome in synagogues, and why there was often conflict between Jesus’ disciples and leaders of the Jewish communities. Matthew’s version of the story is clearly allegorical. The vineyard is Israel, as in the Hebrew Scriptures, and God is the owner of the vineyard. The owner’s earlier emissaries represent the two groups of prophets, while the son clearly represents Jesus, who is killed through the collusion of the religious leaders and the Roman government. The verdict of the Gospel writer is harsh: old leaders have been replaced by new leaders, the followers of Jesus, the members of the New Israel.

Before we nod our heads in agreement, we need to avoid two mistakes when interpreting this parable. First, we must avoid the temptation of anti-Semitism. Instead, we must remember that only a few self-interested religious and civil leaders were responsible for Jesus’ death. We must also remember that Jesus preached to Jews, healed them, loved them, and was one of them. His first disciples were all Jews, as were most of his earliest followers. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, the God of love graciously incorporates Gentiles into the covenant that God first made with the Jews.

Second, however, we must also avoid thinking that this parable applies only to the time, place, and people to whom it was originally addressed. Scriptures continue to speak to us and contain truths for all times, places, and people. If we think that the parable applies only to first-century Jewish leaders, we’ve missed the point – by a mile – and we turn our backs on the challenge the parable addresses to us.

So what does the allegory in this parable say to us? My friends, we might not like to hear it, but we are the tenants. We are the stewards, managers, and workers in God’s vineyard. We don’t own the vineyard any more than the tenants in the parable did. Indeed, in truth none of us owns anything. Everything we have has been given to us on short-term loan by God. Everything we think we own has been entrusted to us by God. God expects that we too will produce good fruit with God’s gifts. Just as in the parable, at the end of our lives God will surely ask an accounting of us, judging us by what we have done with God’s resources.

So of what are we the stewards? In church stewardship campaigns, it is common to suggest that we are stewards of our time, talent, and treasure. And indeed we are. God has gifted us with minutes, hours, nights, days, and years, with innumerable talents, and, in this country, with unimaginable economic resources. Yes, we must use God’s gifts of time, talent, and treasure wisely and productively. But I’d like to suggest a form of stewardship that we ignore to our peril, the stewardship of creation. God has given us this good earth, and God has given us the care of everything on it. And what have we done with God’s gifts? Polluted resources, global warming, shrinking rainforests, and overflowing landfills testify to the ways we have trashed God’s gifts. Worse, while so few enjoy so much, so many lack sufficient food and access to clean water. Theologians and scientists rightly shout out, “Beware, we are the wicked tenants.”

Yesterday was the feast day of St Francis of Assisi. A 12th century religious, Francis dedicated his life to living simply without possessions, to serving the poor, and to caring for all creation. The monastic order that bears his name, the parallel order for women, the Poor Clares, and the Third Order of Franciscans for lay associates, all still exist today. Francis’s movement still inspires today’s Christians. Third Order Franciscans in particular embrace a preferential option for the poor, non-violence, and a belief in the sacredness of creation. While one could say much about caring for the poor and speaking out against violence, I’d like to focus on our stewardship of creation, the responsibility that we share with Franciscans to care lovingly for the earth and all its creatures. Are we good stewards of creation in our personal lives? In our corporate lives? Could we all live more simply and less wastefully, so that, by God’s grace, our planet may begin to recover from what we have done to it?

Before you think, “I can’t do anything,” let me say this: big steps are good, but so are small steps. We do need to encourage our elected representatives to support legislation and government agencies that preserve state and national parks, protect the atmosphere, our farmland, and our forests, and clean up devastated rivers, lakes, and streams. But we also need to order our personal lives so that we too take responsibility for healing the vineyard in which we work. To do that, we must be in relationship: in relationship with creation, in relationship with our communities, and in relationship with God.

There are many ways we can foster our relationships with creation, with communities, and with God. I’m going to suggest just a couple of possibilities for each – if you’d like more I’d be happy to provide them. To heal your relationship with creation, identify habits in your life that are not sustainable for the earth and change them. For example, can you take reusable cloth bags when you shop? Can you support local farmers and reduce your consumption of food that has travelled thousands of miles? To strengthen your relationship with the community, can you get involved with an organization that is working for peace or for reduction of gun violence? Can you mentor a child, or teach someone to read? To strengthen your relationship with God, can you take time to be grateful for God’s gifts? If you have a smart phone, consider the app Five Good Things, which encourages you to note five good things about your day. How about pondering the answer to this question: what is the purpose of my life?

Ultimately, everywhere we go we are in God’s vineyard. God provides us the tools, the wisdom, and the means to produce good fruit in God’s vineyard. What we are asked to provide is the will to do what needs to be done to bear good fruit, and the will to work in the vineyard every day. When we renew ourselves at the holy table, and when we remember that we have what we need from God to produce God’s fruits, then we will be God’s faithful and worthy stewards.

God is at Work in You

“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

For some people, the word “enabling” gets a bad rap. Those who treat alcoholics or substance abusers often speak of “enablers.” “Enablers” are family members and friends who, thinking they are helping, actually make it easier for alcoholics and abusers to continue their abuse. Enabling behavior often involves rescuing an alcoholic or abuser from the consequences of addiction, thus allowing the person to comfortably continue in unacceptable or destructive behavior. In order to help, well-meaning family and friends must give up their enabling behaviors in order for the alcoholic or abuser to start down the road to recovery. Sometimes people who have had bad experiences with the church think of the church in this way, i.e., as an institution that has enabled negative and destructive behavior, from which they must dissociate themselves in order to be healthy. You’ve probably even met people who call themselves “recovering” ex-Christians. In fact, googling the phrase “recovering Christian” will turn up over 15 million pages!

More recently, the word “enabling” has begun to regain some of its positive connotations. For example, a company named Enabling Technologies provides Braille embossers for the blind. The Enabling Devices Company develops “assistive technology for people with disabilities” and provides such products as a jumbo remote control and a harness to help lift a heavy service dog. Many business networking companies include the word “enabling” in their name.

In his letter to the Christian community at Philippi, St Paul assures his hearers that God is enabling the church in this second, positive way. God, he assures them, is at work among them to create a true community grounded in Christ. Today we have had the second lesson from this letter, and we will hear it twice more, next week and the following week. Most likely Paul wrote to the Philippian Christians from prison in Rome, probably in the early’60s, i.e., towards the end of his life. He had probably founded this Christian community in the largely Roman city of Philippi about ten years before, and scholars think that the Philippians may have been his favorite community. Part of his reason for writing them is to reassure them about his own situation and to thank them for their gifts to him through one of their members who had visited him. The letter has a particularly joyful theme. We will hear that joyful note especially in the familiar words of our lection for two weeks from now: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”

Yet Paul has another concern: the ability of the community to reflect Christ through their bonds with each other. At the end of the letter he will allude to two of its leading women, who were apparently at odds with each other. So Paul, as he often does, grounds the specific instructions he will give in a deeper understanding of the work of Christ. Here, Paul urges his hearers to participate in the life of Christ, the life they have begun with their baptisms, by living together in unity and humility.

In the stirring words of a poem or hymn that the Philippians might already have known, Paul offers them Jesus as the supreme model of humility. He who was God’s own Son was content to be born as a human being and to endure an agonizing death on the Cross. Paul also assures his hearers that Christ’s saving action, his death on the Cross, has initiated the salvation of the entire world and the restoration of order and wholeness under Christ’s lordship.

It is hard to overestimate the astonishing claim that Paul makes here. First, he reminds the Philippians of Christ’s divine status by using the same word, which we translate as “Lord,” that the Greek version of the Old Testament uses for God. Second, and even more important, Paul is writing as a Roman citizen to other Roman citizens, i.e., to people whose culture venerated Caesar as Lord. In contrast to everything that their culture tells them, Paul triumphantly proclaims that “at the name of Jesus – not Caesar – every knee should bend,” and that “every tongue should confess” that Jesus Christ – not Caesar – is Lord. Most astonishing of all, Paul assures these Roman citizens that, as baptized members of Christ’s body, they can trust that God is at work in them, and that God has empowered them to cooperate with God in the working out of God’s will for the world.

My friends, Paul is also writing to us! We too been enabled by God “both to will and work for [God’s] good pleasure.” We too have been baptized into Christ’s body. God is at much at work in us as God was in the church at Philippi – even in our small parish on the Ohio River! Let me underscore that: the good news we hear here is not primarily for us as individuals. It is for us as a community: the “you” here is plural. The Christian life is not a solo pursuit – even for anchorites. It is a life lived in community. So Paul assures us that God is enabling the work of our parish, and that it is as a parish that we are called to work for the salvation of the world. How do we do that? Even if we trust that God is at work here, how do we cooperate with God in this work?

I’d like to offer a way of looking at our life together in terms of our behaviors as a parish, our practices, the ways in which we open ourselves to God’s leading. Vital living parishes are more than just a collection of individuals who happen to like Episcopal liturgy. Rather, like monastic communities, they are intentional about communal life, and they have ideals towards which they strive, not only on Sunday but every day.

As some of you know, we are completing an application for a grant from the diocesan Commission on Congregational Life. This group supports parishes that are truly pursuing vital missions. We have had such grants for two years and hope for yet another. As part of the application process, the Commission points to the seven Hallmarks of Healthy Congregations developed by the diocese. I’d like to share them with you. The first hallmark is a clear sense of identity. For myself, I believe St. Peter’s has a strong sense of identity. As I said in our application, “We are a small community of people committed to living out our baptismal ministry by growing in our relationship with God, worshiping and organizing ourselves according to the Anglican tradition, and sharing our love of God with the community around us. We are open and inclusive, genuinely and consistently welcoming all into our space.”

The second and sixth hallmarks are radical hospitality and extravagant generosity. For me, our welcome of anyone who comes inside our sanctuary and our support of Loaves and Fishes and Dry Bottoms exemplify our commitment to this hallmark. The third hallmark is inspiring worship. Worship is almost a given, for it is through worship that Christ is especially present to us, enabling us to grow spiritually and binding us together. We have a lovingly cared for sacred space and dignified worship in the Anglican tradition. And we also have a “growing edge.” We are deeply grateful to Nancy for all that she does for us musically. Yet, we too need to join the “faithful” and begin making our songs “exalt his reign?”. Can we figure out how to do that?

For the fourth hallmark, intentional faith development and formation for discipleship, Deacon Carolyn and I have committed ourselves to two new opportunities for spiritual growth: four sessions on the practice of prayer and ongoing Wednesday evening study of Scripture. Will anyone come with us? And the fifth hallmark, adventuresome, risk-taking mission and service? What might such adventurous mission and service look like for us? For example, does anyone want to help plan a mission trip? Finally, I do believe that we reflect the seventh hallmark, accountability and collaboration, in our partnering with other churches and in our many connections to the diocese.

The Hallmarks of Healthy Congregations do not exhaust all that we are called to be as a parish. As we worship together, we are called to be a community of prayer. As we learn together, we are called to be a community that is enriched by sacred Scripture. As we serve others, we are also called to do so with humility, grace, and unity. We are called to put aside animosities and conflicts that fracture our community and make it difficult for us to witness to God’s love. We are called to “have the same mind” in us that was in Christ. Most important, we are called to trust that we are not alone, that God is at work in us, both as individuals and as a parish, and that God is transforming us all more and more into Christ’s likeness.

O God, we give you thanks for the invitation that you make to us every day and every hour. We know that you are at work in us. Guide us as a community that we may be joined in heart and mind with you and all your faithful people, so that together we may truly show forth your praise. Amen.