November 15, 2015

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Pentecost – Proper 28

Daniel 12: 1-3, 14-25; Psalm 16; Hebrews 10: 11-14, 19 -25; Mark 13: 1-8

THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

So I typically write my Sunday sermon on Mondays. Mondays tend to be rather quiet days at the church, and they are a perfect time at least for me to thing and reflect upon the scriptures that are appointed for this day. This, by the way, is a peak behind the curtain for any of you who might lose sleep over such things as when I find time to write these things. I am spilling all my secrets now! I didn't write my sermon on Monday of this week however because of a funeral that was here that took up much of the day.  

So I instead wrote this morning’s sermon on Friday of this last week. I was happy with it because it tied into this morning’s Gospel about Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple, and it gave me a chance to offer an alternative interpretation to last week's Gospel about the poor widow offering her two copper coins to this temple that would be destroyed.

I left town Friday evening to go on a Cub Scout camp out and all seemed right at least with my small insignificant world until a news update on my phone pinged, and I read in my tent next to my sleeping son the horror that befall nightclub in Paris in which over one hundred and twenty people were murdered in the name of religion - the most violent act in Paris since World War II. This came one day after another attack in Beirut where two suicide bombers killed 43 people and wounded more than 200.

Whatever meaning the sermon I wrote two days ago had, it washed away like a current drifting from the shore into a sea of helpless darkness. So I started again, typing out new words – these words -  on my phone yesterday afternoon, a small attempt to shine a light in a world that has grown dark once again.

Friday morning I attended a breakfast for the Monarch School, where my oldest son James attends. It is a school for children with neurological differences. A teacher spoke that morning about a field trip she took with her class room to the Rothko Chapel in Montrose. The chapel is a dramatic building, featuring many dark paintings of black landscapes created by the abstract expressionist painter and Russian born Jew, Mark Rothko. The effect these dark monolithic paintings create when you walk into this space is overwhelming. It is like walking into a universe, and as you stand in the midst of that darkness, you are meant to feel small. The teacher recalled how that day one of her students, a boy, stood before the dark painting as something about it captured his curiosity. After a while, his back toward his teacher, the boy turned around, looked at his teacher, and smiled. His teacher shed a tear watching this young boy with so many challenges stand in front of the darkness and smile into it.  

We are to do the same. The Christian life is defined by being ashamed or afraid of the darkness which surrounds us. In two weeks we will begin the season of Advent where our response to the gathering darkness of the winter solstice is to create light. Two weeks from today we will make advent wreathes for our homes so that we can remember that Christ, the true light of the world, is coming into it. The collect we will pray together the first Sunday of Advent will remind us to put on the armor of light so that we might go into a world darkened by hatred and violence and transform it.

In spite of our ability to do the worst, God refuses to give up on us. God stubbornly refuses to let go of Paris, Beirut, and any other place on the world where the tragedy of violence and life lost has occurred again.

God is living and active in Paris, in Beirut, and in every place darkened by human violence. The darkness is real, but it is nothing more than a speck in the light. Theologian and author Anne Lamott asks us, “What are we to do now? We are to do the next right thing.”

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds us to take courage during times like these, writing  “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid.  Follow God into the darkness, and you will redeem it.  AMEN.

January 25, 2015

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III Epiphany

Jonah 3: 1-5; Psalm 62: 6-14; 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31, Mark 1: 14-20

THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

We are all disciples. The word disciple simply describes a person who is still learning, and that is all of us.  An apostle is something else - an apostle is a teacher. If we are all learners, disciples, we are also all apostles, teachers because we are always teaching others through our actions and our behaviors. We teach and we learn.  

This morning we are introduced to for disciples (students) who would later become apostles (teachers). They are Simon, Andrew (for whom this church is so named), James, and John. They were fishermen in Galilee. Not particularly well-educated or sophisticated, but they were good fishermen.  When Jesus saw them, he called them to be his students, his disciples, and they followed. They left their families, their jobs, and followed Jesus in an act one author calls “drop everything discipleship,” meaning they dropped everything to follow Jesus.

Their devotion to the point of leaving everything behind reminds us that there is a cost to following Jesus. Like the four disciples, we also have to leave things behind in order to follow. And while that might seem scary, it is the most liberating thing we will do.

    In the end, the cost of following Christ for Andrew, Simon, and James was one they paid with their lives. But they are not alone in their sacrifice.  Many of us when we hear the word “sacrifice,” think that it means to give something up.  But that is not the full meaning of the word. The full meaning of the word “sacrifice” comes from a Latin word that means to make sacred or to make holy.  So if we speak of “sacrificing” our lives in order to follow Christ, what we are really saying is that our lives are holy, our lives are sacred, our lives are given meaning because we have become disciples, students, and apostles, teachers.  

This week our nation honored the legacy and sacrifice of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Like the disciples, Martin Luther King heard his Lord calling him to a sacrificial life a holy life that was one of costly and risky discipleship. But looking back on his life, can any of us dare say that there is a better way to live? As the film Selma so appropriately depicts, the cost of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life was an inner wrestling with doubt and struggle.  His life was not easy, and he was not perfect, but because of Gandhi’s influence of non-violent protest, Martin Luther King Jr. forever changed the racial landscape of our nation.  In one sermon delivered at Episcopal National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., King proclaimed that he could see the Promised Land where children of all races played together, and that one day his people would be free at last. A few days after preaching that sermon, King was murdered by an assassin’s bullet in Memphis, Tennessee. The cost of his dream was his life, and in his sacrifice, he followed in the footsteps of Jesus, who did the same.

Because he died before some of us were born, I will offer a more modern example of Mother Teresa, who spent her life caring for sick and dying on the streets of Calcutta, India. While her reputation as a loving and holy woman is undeniable whose life was sacrificially lived, she was also human. She was a real person who struggled with doubt, and who felt at times abandoned by God, as she wrote in letters published after her death. Yet she continued loving, dressing the wounds of the dying, in spite of the fact, that she often wondered if God ever listened, let alone answered her prayers.  In spite of her doubt, she continued in her holy, sacrificial, work. And that is why she is a saint. She heard a call, and through struggle and adversity and in the presence of God’s absence, she endeavored to labor on, just as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Simon, Andrew, James, and John did before her.

The mantle of their discipleship is now upon our shoulders.  We are the disciples and the apostles of this age. The disciples, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa – they all had a dream. What is yours? AMEN.