February 9, 2020

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3 Epiphany

Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 112; 1 Corinthians 2: 1-13; Matthew 5:13-20

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

 

            “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”   That’s a verse from the Bible, not an original statement coined by me.  It comes out of the book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible, chapter 9, verse 10.  We have a stained glass window in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd which the design is based upon this very book from Proverbs.  The window is, fittingly titled “Wisdom” and in it wisdom is personified, as a woman.  Is there any question that women are smarter than men.  We all know that. 

There’s a Grateful Dead song entitled “Man Smart Woman Smarter”  - there’s a great line “women today, smarter than the men in every way.”  Anyway – I digress.  As you leave church today, stop by the chapel, and look at the window.  It’s beautiful.   “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  What does that mean?  What do you think it means?

The Hebrew word translated as “fear” in Proverbs is yir-aw’  In this particular verse, the word yir-aw’ doesn’t mean “to be afraid of or scared” – that’s what I think of when I hear the word fear.  Rather, yir-aw’ means something very different.  It means reverence.  Perhaps another way to read Proverbs 9:10 is this: “The reverence of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom.”

Why am I talking about Proverbs this morning, when none of our readings are from this book?  That’s a great question.  I mention Proverbs this morning, for two reasons.  First, I know I need to be reminded that reverence of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom, it is the beginning of everything.  I need to be reminded of that – daily, sometimes hourly – sometimes every minute.  Because I forget. And when I forget I casually make the mistake in thinking that my job is the beginning of all wisdom, or my family, or something else.  That’s not a good place for to be in, and it isn’t a good place for you either.

Secondly, I mention Proverbs 9:10, as a way to introduce us to one of the readings that we did hear today, a part of the letter written by the Apostle Paul to a Christian community in the city of Corinth.  Although Paul doesn’t mention Proverbs 9:10 in his letter, I get the sense that this understanding of reverence before God permeates word.

Preaching on the epistles is not easy, by the way.  Reading them isn’t that easy, either.  Whenever I read the epistles in the New Testament, it’s like I’m reading someone else’s mail, which we kind of are.  Paul’s letter to Corinth was intended to be instructional and also to remind the people worshipping in this community of something integral which they seem to have forgotten: reverence.  Yir-aw’.

It seems that the community at Corinth thought pretty highly of themselves.  Paul sees their arrogance from a mile away, and quickly calls them on it.  Elsewhere in the letter Paul scolds them for thinking they are so smart, and reminds them, in part of the letter we will hear next week that as smart as they think they might be, spiritually they are babies.

Paul understands the wisdom of God.  He speaks to them not from a place of self-satisfied professionalism, but rather from a place of deep reverence and trust in the Holy Spirit.  He does this not to impress, but rather, as he says, so that the people in this church in Corinth would learn not to rest on their strength, but upon the strength of God. 

It’s a powerful message, and probably was not very popular.  Who, after all, enjoys being criticized?  If Paul wrote a letter to St, Andrew’s and I knew it was full of criticism, I’d probably let it sit unopened at the bottom of my mail stack, or tell Bradley to deal with it. 

And yet – what Paul is saying in this part of the letter is relevant to all of us.  I believe he writes to encourage, and remind, all of us to seek God’s wisdom which is greater than any wisdom you or I might have.  Paul says this wisdom is secret and hidden, but is available to us through the Holy Spirit.

How do we get it?  We receive God’s wisdom when we learn reverence and humility.  Those are hard lessons, aren’t they!  Lessons in humility are rarely pleasant, but they are necessary.  Where is reverence lacking in your life?  Perhaps you should go to that place where reverence is necessary.  Perhaps there, you will find God’s wisdom.  Perhaps there God is waiting patiently to meet you again.  AMEN.  

February 16, 2020

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6 Epiphany

Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3: 1-9; Matthew 5:21 - 37

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

            So in today’s Gospel reading we hear Jesus talking about lust and adultery – Happy Valentine’s Day! The reading itself also seems severe – “if your right eye causes us to sin we should cut it out, and if our right hand causes us to sin, we should cut it off.  Understand that Jesus is using hyperbole here.  He’s not really telling us to pluck our eyes out or cut off arms, even if those are the means in which we sin.  If I were to take this verse literally, I would be standing here today with a patch over my right eye and a stump for where my right hand used to be.  I think most of us would.  What an interesting looking congregation we would be!

            But Jesus is making a point, and it is a point all of us should be paying attention to.  There is a lot that is in this Gospel reading today – unfortunately too much for one sermon – unless you all want to hang out here for two hours.   So I am choosing to pick one small part of this Gospel.  And it’s from the very last paragraph today.  And it’s a teaching Jesus gives on swearing – not cursing.  Swearing.  “Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.”

            Have you every sworn a promise to another person or maybe to yourself, and invoked God’s name?  Have you ever said something like “I swear to God I will never cheat again.”   “I swear to God I will pay all that money back – this time.”  Any of that sound familiar? 

            It is this kind of promise – this kind of oath we swear to another person where we invoke God’s name – that’s what Jesus is talking about this morning.  Promises come cheaply these days.  We are gearing up for another presidential election cycle (God help us all), in which we are about to be inundated with promises candidates will make about things they will do, if elected. Depending on your political persuasion, you might have feelings that those promises either turn out to be true or more often are discarded or forgotten once elected.

            During the time of Jesus, making a public oath was a common practice.  People would make oaths, or promises, and they would call down curses upon themselves should their pledges prove false: “may God punish me severely to me if I do not not return the ox I am borrowing to ploe the field.”  We all know human nature, and our tendency to not fulfill the promises we make.  We’ve all promised something, and been unable to deliver on the promise. 

            Jesus was aware of this, of course, and that is the reason for his teaching “don’t swear by heaven or Jerusalem or by God.”  This was common, by the way, where people would substitute something like “Jerusalem” or the “temple”, or heaven or earth, instead of God’s name – because it was a way of avoiding divine retribution if the promise was unfulfilled.  “I swear by Jersusalem I will return the ox I am borrowing to plow the field by sunset.”  They would avoid using God’s name in hopes of avoiding God’s punishment should the promise go unfulfilled.  It was a cop out, basically.

            In light of the widespread abuse of promises in society back then, Jesus said that it’s best to avoid them altogether.  If you have integrity, you can say, yes or no.  You don’t need to involve God because you have enough integrity to stand on your own.  Jesus simply says, “let your yes be yes, and your no be no.”   I don’t know about you, but my tendency, if I am saying no to a person, is to want to justify, defend, and explain my “no” response.  I’m sorry I can’t be at the meeting tomorrow because well you see I need to be at my kid’s school for an event and then we are meeting for dinner afterwards, and then we have to do homework…”  We don’t have to do all that.  We can let our yes be a yes, and our no, well, be a no.  Because people who follow Christ honestly and with humility, have an integrity about them – the kind of integrity where their “yes” or their “no” is enough.  No other explanation, or promise invoking God’s name is necessary.

            Though we are taught today not to invoke God’s name in promises we make – God has made a promise to each of us – a promise that cannot be broken or undone.  And the promise is this – God will always be with us, God will never forsake us, and we will never be alone.  That is love – a kind of love only God can offer, and it is given freely to you and me.  AMEN.

February 2, 2020

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The Feast of the Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ

Malachi 3:1-4, Hebrews 2:14-18, Luke 2:22-40

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

All of us who are baptized are called to be evangelists. In our baptismal covenant we promise to share the good news of Jesus Christ through word and deed. This is a tough order. The image of an evangelist that comes to mind may be folks who go door to door asking if we’ve ‘found Jesus,’ or perhaps we envision people on street corners passing out pamphlets and tracts, maybe we think of austere ministers loudly announcing who is going to hell and who is going to heaven. Evangelism produces all sorts of images in our mind, but I’m willing to bet the negatives outweigh the positives. As a result, I think many of us grow wary of sharing our faith with others out of a fear that we may appear like these evangelists we imagine. We worry how we’ll come off, how we’ll be received, we worry that we’ll appear like those Christians. These worries are real and they are fair – sadly, they don’t let us off the hook. Christians are called to share the Good News – Christ tells his followers to go out and make disciples – that generally involves talking to people. So what do we do?

Anna, I think, can help us. Anna doesn’t speak today, but she shows us quite a lot. She sees Christ in the temple with Mary and Joseph, and immediately she praises God and goes out telling others about the child she has found. Anna may very well be the first evangelist, and I think she’s a model for evangelism that we should pay attention to.

Anna enters into the Temple, she enters into the place where God is most powerfully present with the people. It is there that she meets God’s son. Finding Christ, encountering this baby, produces something in Anna that can only be called joy, a joy that can’t be contained, a joy that flows out of her as praise to God! This praise gives way to action. She goes and tells those who will listen about this child, she goes and shares the good news she has discovered with others. Anna’s evangelism is not dour, it doesn’t arise out of a need to damn others, it comes from her own encounter with Jesus, it comes from her own joy at finding Jesus.

This is the key to Anna and to her witness: she has found joy, and in finding joy she can do nothing else but share that joy. And we all do this! We all have joys and share those joys. A friend of mine, Isaac, works for the Sarah Duke Gardens in Durham, which is a huge garden that surrounds Duke University, it’s absolutely beautiful. He loves it. He loves the flowers and the trees. Since he started working there three years ago he’s become quite the gardener. He’ll often share about what’s been planted recently, or what’s blooming.  He’ll share little tidbits about flowers or trees, and he’s got an amazing gift to just see something and identify it. Here’s the thing, I don’t really like plants, or the outside. There are bugs out there and generally it’s not air-conditioned, so I personally don’t think a lot about flora and fauna. But it’s wonderful to hear him talk about them. It’s wonderful to see how the joy that flowers and trees and shrubs and mulch give him bubbles over. He doesn’t hide it.  Isaac loves gardening, gardening brings him incredibly joy, so he shares that joy with others.

I’ve got another friend who is a wood worker. He actually built me a kneeler for praying that sits in my bedroom. He loves projects and crafts, and while we were at school he would spend hours in his shop working on spoons and coasters and all sorts of thing. He just finished building two barstools for his kitchen, that are beautiful. He knows about types of wood and how you have to work with oak verses maple verses pine. My friend loves woodworking, woodworking brings him joy, so he shares that joy with others.

I have joys like that - generally they revolve around TV shows or musicals or food. Things that make me so excited that I can’t wait to share them with another. Recently, it’s been the show Cheer on Netflix, which is about as uplifting a show as you could imagine! It’ll make you want to quit your job and join a cheer team. You also have joys like too, joys that fill you so much that your cup runneth over! Maybe it’s your children, maybe your work, maybe a hobby or film or restaurant. Evangelism, true evangelism, evangelism that works, that invites people into relationship with God starts here. It starts from joy. The question this Gospel poses to me and to all of us is this: Have we discovered the joy of Christ for ourselves? Does Christ bring us the same kind of joy as gardening or birding or woodworking or watching Cheer on Netflix? 

Honestly, I don’t know how to answer that. I’m as nervous about talking about Christ with those outside those doors as anyone else – I’m worried about coming off as a fundamentalist or as pushy or as a weirdo. But I’ve known people for whom Jesus is a source of overflowing joy. Brother Mac, from the church I was baptized in, had that kind of joy. He knew Jesus. And he loved Jesus, and it just radiated from him. He was a joyful man, the kind of person you were just drawn to as though he were a magnate. You wanted the kind of joy Brother Mac had, the joy that comes from knowing Jesus.

Ms. Cathy, who worked at my seminary, had that kind of joy. She was funny and caring and loving and when she talked with you, it felt like a beam of love focused in on you. She had what I can only call a grounded lightness about her. She knew who she was and whose she was and that empowered her to walk through this world like she was walking on air. And when she prayed, you would have thought she was sitting and talking with her oldest friend. Ms. Cathy loved God, Jesus was her joy, and it was infectious. In a place where so much of life is about what you think about God, she was a reminder that thinking about God and knowing God are not the same thing.

These folks knew Jesus deeply and their joy invited others in. They didn’t have to stand on street corners or go knocking door to door to talk about Jesus, they just had to be honest, they just had to be themselves, they just had to talk about the thing they loved most in the world – it was all downhill from there.

This joy arises from encountering Christ. Unfortunately, there’s no telling when this encounter will happen! It wasn’t until she was in her twilight years that Anna had the encounter with Christ that led her to go out and share the good news! But I think more of us have had encounters with Jesus than we would admit, I think we often fail to recognize this though.

Few would have expected the salvation of Israel to come in the form of a small baby, but Anna recognized it. Years of praying, fasting, dwelling in the presence of God attuned her eyes and heart to recognize Christ when he showed up in the temple.  We have to train our eyes and our hearts through prayer, worship, and scripture reading to recognize Christ in our lives because Christ can be tricky – he’ll show up in the most unexpected ways. But when Jesus shows up unexpectedly, he comes bringing great joy – the joy of peace, the joy of love, the joy of forgiveness. Joy that swells up and runs over, joy that sends us out in the world sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, not as abstract dogmas or doctrines, but as a personal encounter with the source of life and love itself.  Amen.

January 26, 2020

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3 Epiphany

Isaiah 9: 1-4; Psalm 27; 1 Corinthians 1: 10-18; Matthew 4:12-23

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

Good morning – I feel like it’s been awhile since I’ve been here.  Maybe I need to reintroduce myself to you – I’m Jimmy, I’m actually the priest here, and occasional preacher!  It is wonderful to be back here, especially on the occasion of today’s readings.  I looked over the sermons that I have preached in years past for this particular Sunday, and I couldn’t find one I had preached on these particular readings, which means two things:

1.       I can’t reuse a sermon I’ve preached before.

2.      More importantly – we see a beautiful image of Jesus in the Gospel today, and that is what I want to focus on.

The Gospel of Matthew today puts Jesus in a region called Galilee, but before Jesus’ time Galilee comprised two of the Jewish tribes Zebulun and Naphtali.  So – a bit of geography.  Napthali and Zubulun were two of the twelve tribes of Israel.  On our pilgrimage to Israel later in December, we will be visiting these areas.  Naphtali and Zebulun were in the north western part of Israel.  

The geography is important, because this area, 700 years before the birth of Christ, was a battlefield.  The tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali were defeated by an invading Assyrian army around 700 BCE.  Why does this matter? 

It matters because of what happened following.  As a result of Zebulun and Naphtali’s fall into Assyrian hands, the area was repopulated by the Assyrians who were not Jewish.  So you have a historically Jewish tribal area, now being repopulated with people who do not proclaim Judaism as their religion.  What effect did this have on the practice of Judaism in the area?   

Not a great one.  The population of non-Jews in the area impoverished the practice of Judaism in Galilee.  Hence the region was called “Galilee of the Nations” or “Galilee of the Gentiles.”  Jews living to the south in places like Jerusalem – the spiritual epicenter of the Judaism – frowned upon Jews in Galilee, and tended to despise them.  Here’s an example – in John 1:46, the disciple Phillip chooses to follow Jesus and he goes and tells Nathanael “I have found the messiah – It’s Jesus from Nazareth” (Nazareth is in Galilee).  What does Nathanael say?  “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Not only does Jesus come from the “wrong place” - Galilee – it is to Galilee, where he returns in Matthew’s Gospel today.  It’s in Galilee – this place of misfits and broken people where Jesus has incredible success.  He recruits Simon and Andrew (this church’s namesake) to be his disciples and the Bible says that he “went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.”

Do you get the irony?  That Jesus’ ministry succeeds in the place so many others had written off.  Jesus was drawn not to Jerusalem, not to the temple and the priests and all that.  He was drawn to the places full of misfits and broken people.  That is good news for me.  Because I am a misfit and a broken person.  And I believe that Jesus is right there with me.  It upsets me to no end that much of what passes as Christianity these days is projecting an image of success, of outward morality or piety. 

If we take the message of the Gospel to heart, it means that Jesus will travel through the Galilee of our heart to find us, to reach us, and to love us.  For me, the message of the Gospel today is that when we fall, and when we fail, and when we are hurt – that is great blessing.  Why?  Our brokenness is a blessing because when we are broken our minds are open to receiving a God who loves us unconditionally.  A God for whom we don’t have to act or pretend.  We can fully be ourselves. 

In my life, my honesty with God has created a landscape like Galilee where Jesus walks and proclaims the good news and performs miracles.  It’s not anything I’m doing – except – saying “Lord here I am.  This is what you have to work with.  It is what it is.”  And Jesus says “Yes!  Together we will walk Galilee, we will travel to unpopular places, meet with unimportant people, and you will have the greatest adventure of your life.

Thank God for Galilee.  Thank God for broken places.  Because it is in our flaws where God does the best work.  AMEN.

January 12, 2020

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The Rev. Bradley Varnell

I want to focus on someone we rarely talk about in the Episcopal Church: the Holy Spirit. To be fair, it is not just an Episcopal problem. The Holy Spirit has long been thought of as the “forgotten third” of the Trinity. Christians love to talk about the Father and the Son, but we can sometimes get squeamish when mention of the Holy Spirit comes up. Our lessons today each give pride of place to the Spirit in the life of Jesus, whose baptism we remember today.

John was baptizing people for the forgiveness of sins. He was inviting people to repent and turn to God, and washing them in the Jordan river of their past sins and failures in order for them to live new lives. Baptism is for sinners and John, it seems, doesn’t think Jesus qualifies. Jesus should be baptizing John, not the other way around. But Jesus is not deterred, he insists. So, he’s baptized, and as we heard the skies open, God announces Jesus as his son, his beloved, with whom he is well pleased, and the Spirit alights on Jesus.

Our readings from Acts and Isaiah fill out the scene at the baptism. The prophet Isaiah speaks of the servant of God upon whom God has put his Spirit in order that he might bring forth justice. While Peter in Acts preaches to Cornelius and his household, telling them that Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power after the baptism of John. Both these lessons urge us to see what’s happening in Matthew as a decisive, important moment in the life of Christ.

Some have interpreted Jesus’ baptism as him just setting an example or as a kind of pre-figuring of the cross and resurrection.  All this may be true, but it fails to take seriously what’s going on. Jesus isn’t just setting an example, he’s not just providing a template for what a sacrament will later look like, and he’s not just foreshadowing the end of the story. No, Jesus begins his public ministry today, Jesus is revealed to be the Son of God by the voice of the Father, and Jesus is equipped by the Holy Spirit to live out his human life in the power of the Spirit. Today, Jesus receives the Spirit in his flesh, in his human nature, and this Spirit is what enables Jesus Christ to do all those things that make his reputation spread. The healing of the sick, the raising of the dead, the casting out of demons, Jesus does these things through the power of the Holy Spirit, which he received at baptism.

Jesus was fully God, and fully human. In the baptism of Jesus we see his humanity on full display. Jesus’ humanity, which is the humanity of God, is anointed by the Holy Spirit so that his humanity might be a conduit of the grace and power of God. The Word of God takes on human nature and the Spirit of God empowers that human nature for its mission. All of this is done for the purpose of the glory of God. At the baptism of Jesus we see Son, Spirit, and Father coming together, we peek into the heart of God: we see the Spirit resting on the Son in order to empower the Son to do the work of the Father. Just after the scene in our lesson today, we hear how the Spirit led Jesus up from the Jordan to the wilderness, where he is tempted. Baptism, anointing, and out into the wilderness to begin his ministry.

All this happens, keep in mind, at the baptism of John, at Jesus’ participation in this washing away of sin that many have shared in. Jesus himself didn’t need this baptism, Jesus, as the letter to the Hebrews tells us, is without sin. Nonetheless, he chose to share in something that would identify him with sinners, that would put him in solidarity with sinners. Jesus chose to stand in the place sinners stood, to share in their death to sin.  Jesus stood with sinners, so that we sinners might stand with him. Jesus enters John’s baptism for the forgiveness of sin and transforms it. It becomes the site of his commissioning, of his sending out, of his anointing, of his empowering for ministry. Baptism is no longer about washing away out past, it is about being anointed for our future.

In just a few minutes, we will reaffirm our baptismal vows, as is traditional on the feast of Jesus’ baptism. These vows are beautiful and quite powerful, but they can obscure the deeper reality, I think, of what happens in baptism. Yes promises are made by us, but more than that promises have been made by God! In baptism, God has promised to wash away our sins, to wash away our allegiance to ways of life that are sinful and fallen, and to equip up with his Spirit to live in a new way, as a new people. In baptism, we turn our back on a world of death, and we are given God’s Holy Spirit to keep our backs turned, to live into the promises we have made – or that have been made on our behalf.

Jesus’ own life bears witness to the kind of new reality that is available to us in the power of the Spirit. We too, in virtue of our baptism, have been given gifts that testify to God’s Kingdom. This is key: Jesus’ acts of power weren’t about offering proof that he was god, they were about bearing witness to the inbreaking of God’s reign. You and I have been given the Spirit of God in our baptism for the same purpose. We are called to be the conduits of the grace and power of God in our world, making known through the acts and movements of the Spirit that God’s kingdom is breaking in, that it’s coming to bear on our every day lives. Sometimes, this may mean that the dead are raised! Other times, it may mean that someone who was unforgivable is forgiven. Both are miraculous, and both are possible because of the Spirit.

Jesus’ baptism shows us that Jesus is fully human, that he, like us, was anointed by the Spirit for mission in the world. We have not been given the Spirit of God to sit at home and twiddle our thumbs! We’ve been given the Spirit of God to go boldly out into the world, responding to the evil and sin all around us and within us, with the good news that sin and death have been dethroned, that they are no more.  Our baptism, like Jesus’ baptism, has empowered us to perform might acts of power that make known in our world that God is moving, that God is creating, that God is declaring new things. Amen.

January 5, 2020

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The Second Sunday After Christmas

Jer 31:7-14

Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a

Matthew 2:1-12

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

Over the course of the next year we’ll be hearing a lot from the Gospel of Matthew, so we will be hearing quite a lot about the “The Kingdom of Heaven,” which is one of the key teachings of Jesus throughout this Gospel – it is used thirty-two times over the course of Matthew’s twenty-eight chapters. The Kingdom of Heaven is the core of Jesus’ teaching. Though it isn’t mentioned today, our Gospel lesson is important in helping us understanding what exactly is at steak when Jesus speaks about “The Kingdom of Heaven.”  

Wise men from the east, most likely Zoroastrian astrologers, follow a star all the way from what is now Iran and find themselves standing before King Herod the Great, informing him that they are seeking the newborn King of the Jews. King Herod is not happy. Scripture says that he was frightened – and with good reason. Herod the Great has ruled Judea for over thirty-years, inaugurating the Herodian dynasty and supplanting the Hasmoneon family as kings of Israel. However, he is not popular. He is close to the Roman occupiers of Israel, and his rule is dependent on them, they are the ones who named him King of Judea. During his rule he has allowed non-Jewish forms of entertainment in Israel and seems less than committed to the religious rights, rituals, and uniqueness of the Jewish people. Though he claims to be a member of God’s chosen race, the Pharisees and Sadducees are less sure of his membership. On top of all this, his taxation schemes have put an incredible burden on the poor of Judea as Herod sought to finance his lavish building campaigns.

At the time of Jesus’ birth, Herod’s reign was coming to an end and the future was uncertain. Challengers to the throne were not uncommon and Herod had more than one of his sons assassinated in order to preserve his power. The last thing Herod wants to hear are some foreign astrologers who come announcing the King of the Jews. So Herod is afraid.

Herod helps the wise men out, sends them on their way, but requests that they return to him after finding out where this King is. The wise men travel to Bethlehem and find the newborn messiah with his parents and Scripture says they are overwhelmed with joy – a stark contrast to the fear of Herod. The wise men worship the messiah and offer him gifts, before leaving for their home country “by another road,” having been told by an angel to not to report back to Herod.

The wise men are faced with a choice between two kingdoms: the Kingdom of Herod and the Kingdom of Heaven. What Kingdom will they support? What King will they be accountable to? See, both Herod’s kingdom and the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom which Jesus was born to announce and to establish make equal claims. Both demand loyalty, both demand obedience, both demand everything we have.

 Over the course of time the church has often fallen into a way of thinking that says what belongs to the kingdom of heaven, what Jesus is concerned with, what Scripture addresses is our souls, our spiritual lives, the private interplay between us and God. The other stuff, our bodies, our minds, our political and social lives these belong to the Kingdoms of the world: to our nation, our family, our political party, our ideology, etc. etc. This kind of dichotomous thinking is why so many good, faithful Christians could support American slavery for centuries. Scripture’s witness to freedom, to liberation was spiritualized – Scripture didn’t actually want people’s bodies to be freed, it just wanted people’s souls freed. So, Christians felt no pangs of conscience speaking on Sunday morning of how in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, and then going home to plantations where there were in fact, enslaved and free.

Because we convinced ourselves that Jesus’ kingdom was just about the spiritual, good Christians and good slave owners, good Christians and good colonizers, good Christians and good Nazis, good Christians and segregationists. You see the pattern. But our Gospel today shows us that Jesus’ kingdom is as real as Herod’s, that it demands as much from us as any other kingdom of the world. Christ asks that we give our souls, our bodies, our minds to the Kingdom of Heaven, that we seek to conform our entire lives – not just the spiritual parts, not just the Sunday morning parts – to Jesus Christ. We are to live in our bodies and in our souls as citizens of the Kingdom of God. We are to be strangers in a strange land everywhere else.

This doesn’t mean we withdraw from society and establish communes. But it does mean that we, like the wise men, must make decisions. It means discerning what course of action is most faithful to the king we serve. The wise men didn’t protest, they didn’t make a display of subverting or ignoring Herod, faithfulness to Christ doesn’t require a scene. They quietly went to their own country by another road. To be loyal to Christ means we must be prepared to go against the grain, that we be prepared to travel “by another road.”

It means that we live lives that don’t serve

… the kingdom of America

…or the Democratic party

…or the Republican party

…or the Episcopal Church

…or kingdom of your family

or your friends

or your bank account

It means living and serving the Kingdom of Heaven and its King.

Jesus comes bringing the Kingdom of Heaven into our world, Jesus comes challenging the kingdoms of the world, exposing them for what they are: kingdoms built on violence and death.  Jesus’ ministry from beginning to end shows us that the Herods and Caesars and Pontius Pilates of the world, the religious and political powers of the earth will secure their kingdoms through violence if need be. Herod is confronted with the arrival of the newborn King, and just a few verses after the end of our lesson we learn that in response he orders the slaughter of the innocence. All boys two-years and younger in and around Bethlehem are to be killed. Herod takes precautions to get rid of any potential threat to his Kingdom – even if it means others have to die in the process.

Violence is deeply embedded in the kingdoms of this world, whether we think the violence is licit or not. Just a few days ago with the assassination of Qasem Soleimani we were offered an example of the way violence is used to ensure our security, our safety, the continued existence of our kingdom. My point isn’t that the assassination was the will of God or wasn’t the will of God, but simply that that kind of violence is part and parcel of a fallen world. Often times violence – physical or otherwise - will appear and will be the most prudential option available to us. In a broken, sinful world that makes sense. It makes sense that violence or its threat are the fundamental tools for securing our kingdoms.

But Jesus comes bringing a different kingdom, a peaceable kingdom, a kingdom that does not need to use violence or coercion to stake its claim, that does not rise or fall on the political maneuvers of its rulers. Jesus comes and offers us a different way, he offers us a Kingdom secured only by God himself.  

In just a few minutes before we welcome Victoria into the household of God through baptism, you and I will reaffirm our baptismal vows. We will remind ourselves and each other that through baptism, we belong not to any king of this earth, but to the King of Kings. We will promise, with God’s help, to live our lives – our spiritual lives, our political lives, our personal lives – in light of Jesus Christ; to strive, by the grace of God, to be ambassadors of the Kingdom of Heaven to this world. Our job isn’t to create the Kingdom on heaven, we aren’t called to vote it into office, this Kingdom isn’t a code word for a “Republican majority” or a “democratic majority.” This Kingdom is totally and completely a work of God in our world.

Today is the last day of Christmas. And the message of Christmas is that Christ has come bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to a world filled with Herods. Like the wise men we have heard the good news of the birth of the King, and like the wise men we have to decide – will we serve this king? Amen.

December 15, 2019

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Advent 3

Isaiah 35:1-10

Canticle 15

James 5:7-10

Matthew 11:2-11

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

Advent is an altogether different season for the church. Unlike Easter, or Epiphany, or even Pentecost, Advent is a season that doesn’t focus on a past event in the life of Christ or the Christian community. Instead, it is a season that invites us to look forward. Traditionally, Advent has been a season of looking forward to and preparing for the four last things: heaven, hell, death, and judgement. In Advent, we focus on what is to come in our lives and the lives of the world. Today, I want to talk about my favorite Advent theme: judgement. At Christmas we recall Christ’s first coming in humility and vulnerability as savior, while in Advent we look forward to his second coming in power and glory as judge: the judge of the world, and the judge of you and me. 

Every week we, along with Christians from around the world affirm in the Nicene Creed that Jesus Christ will come “to judge the living and the dead.”  Judgement is one of the more unsettling articles of Christian faith. It sounds, well, judgmental, exclusionary, aggressive. Do we really want a God who judges?

Generally, we don’t mind judgement – especially if we’re judging others. What I’ve often found is that we don’t mind a God who judges the same people I judge. It’s when the idea of God’s judgement against me comes up that people get uncomfortable. I think it’s uncomfortable primarily because we see how judgement works in our world and we apply that to God. We see how one fault or indiscretion, one bad decision or flippant word can result in the harshest judgement. For many of us, the only kind of judgement we can imagine is aimed at retribution or punishment. And so when we speak of God’s judgement that’s what we have in mind.

Difficult as it may be, I think the judgement of God is one of the great hopes the Christian story offers the world. But it’s also a difficult thing to talk about and imagine. Can judgement really be good news to a world that is filled to the brim with judgement? Of course, the church over the years hasn’t helped – it has often peddled this kind of judging God. A God who sits on high gleefully hurling people into eternal damnation. But I don’t think that’s the nature of God’s judgement we find in Scripture.

Today’s New Testament reading, from the letter of St. James, is a helpful guide to thinking about the judgement of Christ. It’s a brief book – only five chapters long, and it can be easily read in one sitting, in about half an hour or so – and it is filled with talk about judgement. “See, the judge is standing at the doors,” our lesson reminds us. But St. James’ isn’t offering a generic reminder of the coming of God, he’s offering a word of hope. The passage immediately before our lesson today is important in helping us think through St. James’ words and what they might mean for us and our relationship to God’s judgement. St. James writes:

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your heart in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.

St. James then continues,

          Be patient therefore beloved, until the coming of the Lord…

  St. James writes his words to a community that has suffered oppression and injustice. A community of folks who have been wronged. He encourages them to patience…not because silence or passivity are to be lauded in the face of wrongdoing, but because Christ the judge is coming to right the wrongs committed against them. The judgement of Christ isn’t punitive or retributive, it’s rectifying and restoring. God’s judgement enables the people St. James address to be patient, to push through, to endure through their suffering, because at the coming of Christ they will ultimately, finally, and eternally be lifted up.

     The coming of the judge is Gospel, it’s good news because in the coming of God’s judgement the goodness and holiness of God encounters our sin and our brokenness, the world’s sin and brokenness, and overcomes them, transforms them. The good news of God’s judgement for the people of St. James’ letter is that at the coming of Christ the imbalance between rich and poor that is being experienced is overcome. The poor will no longer be victims of abuse because the justice of God means the poor will be lifted up, their wounds healed, their wrongs righted.

And the rich…what about the rich? They have “laid up treasure for the last days” and not the imperishable kind. God comes to judge sin and evil, to say “no” to those things that prevent us and our world from experiencing fully the love of God. As God says no to sin and evil, the poor, the victims of sin and evil are lifted up and those who have benefited from sin and evil, those whose lives are successful because others are being victimized – well, they will take a tumble. The judgement of God means, in the words of the Blessed Virgin, that the mighty are cast down from their thrones – but it’s because those thrones are built on the backs of others. The good news of God’s judgement for the rich is, I believe, that they will see the hurt they have caused. The rich are not cast down into hell, they are brought down, as it were, to stand face to face with the people they have harmed, and they will be invited to repent, to seek forgiveness. The grace of God rights wrong – but not without the participation of the wrong doers.

“But see, the judge is standing at the doors.”

God’s judgement is coming for you and for me, for our world and our communities. The judgement may be hard, but it will be good. In our Gospel today Jesus says that “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” These miracles are the result of the judgement of Christ. Jesus says no to all those things that oppressed the people, that kept them on the margins. Jesus said no, so that they might have life fully. Christ will come and say “no” to sin, evil, and brokenness in our world and in us. You and I will stand before Christ, and he will say “no” to all those things that keep us from experiencing the fullness of God’s life. The judgement of Christ will lift some up and cast others down – but whether we’re going up or going down, we will all be transformed, opened up to the life of God, invited to love one-another as God loves us.

The key to the judgement of God is remembering that God’s judgement is for us, not against us. Our God is a God who loves, who cares, and who acts. God’s judgement isn’t the retributive act of a small deity out to point out our flaws. God’s judgement is the act of God to restore, to heal, to make right what is wrong. Advent is a time to remember that one day the ways things are will give way to things were created to be. We wait for the day when, in the words of Isaiah, “everlasting joy shall be upon our heads, we shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” We wait for Jesus. We wait for the day of judgement.

Amen.

November 17, 2019

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Proper 29                                                                                                              

Isaiah 65:17-25

Canticle 9

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Luke 21:5-19

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

 

May only your word be preached, and may only your word be heard. Amen.

In our reading from Isaiah today the prophet reports the words of God to the people of Israel, newly returned from Babylonian exile. Israelites have come back to their homeland, but things are not like they were. Jerusalem and its temple have been destroyed. The people are back – but they have come back to a society in tatters, land devastated, cities and temples torn down.

God promised to bring Israel back to the land God had given them, but he is not finished. God has brought them back, but he has not brought them back to give them the glory of what was, he has brought them back to give them the hope of what will be. “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” says God, “the former things” the exile, the destruction of the temple, the destruction of Jerusalem, the suffering of the people “shall not be remembered or come to mind.” God promises a future where “no more shall the sound of weeping be heard” in Jerusalem, “or the cry of distress.” This future will be filled infants and the elderly who will live out full lives, “one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,” and “one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.”  The people “shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity.” God promises a future where all of creation – man and woman, adult and child, lion and wolf and lamb and ox will live fully and freely to be all that God has created them to be. The threat of life cut short – by death or exile or illness or suffering is done away with. In the midst of a shattered present, God speaks words of a future brimming with life.

I was thankful to have these words this week. As I sat down to write this sermon on Thursday, the first reports of the shooting in Santa Clarita, California were rolling in. It’s the fifth news-worthy mass shooting in the US since I came to St. Andrew’s just shy of four months ago. Hearing the story of another shooting brought home the reality that we, like the Israelites, live in a shattered world. We are living in a world that is sick, a world that is broken, a world that isn’t ok. A world where kids can get shot at school, a world where someone, a child, can be filled with so much hurt, so much anger, so much grief that he sees violence against others as his only option is not a world that’s alright.

God’s words come to us just as they come to the people of Israel. God promises us what he promised Israel: a world where the former things – the shootings, the bombings, the terrorist attacks, the natural disasters. Where the bullying, and the broken homes, and the abuse, and the suffering of life shall not be remembered or come to mind, a world where life will not be cut short, and where even the most natural of enemies – wolves and lambs – will come together. God promises us a world where “they shall not hurt or destroy.”

This world, a world where wolves and lambs lie down together, where weeping and distress are done away with, is the world that Jesus has brought into being. What was promised in Isaiah has come about in Jesus Christ. The crucifixion of Jesus is the testament to the nature of our world. When confronted by Jesus, by the love of God in human form, humanity decided to kill him. In the cross we see most fully and most completely how broken our world is. But the cross is not the end of the story: Christ is resurrected. In Christ’s resurrection the promise of a future beyond weeping and distress, beyond suffering is made concrete. Christ is our sure and certain evidence that God will not leave the world as it is. The Resurrected Lord is a testament that the shards of our world will be gathered up and knit together.

There is an obvious issue, though. There is still distress. There is still weeping. If I put a wolf in a pin with a lamb, good chances someone’s getting lamb chops for dinner. Christians live with a tension: on the one hand, we proclaim that in Christ the new world has dawned, that God’s future is made present. On the other hand, we also proclaim that this new world, that God’s future is not fully realized. Already and not yet. We might think of our predicament in theatrical terms. The first coming of Christ, his death and his resurrection is like the release of the first trailer for a long-awaited movie. It’s proof that the movie has been made and it builds anticipation of what will come, while not being the fullness of what is promised. The second coming of Christ, the full realization of God’s promised future in our world is the premiere. It’s the moment we’re all waiting for.

About that day and hour, as Scripture says, nobody knows.  We don’t know when Christ will return and when the future heaven and earth will be fully revealed. The premiere date is to be determined. So, we wait. But our waiting isn’t passive. We gather together each week, citizens of a world where death seems to reign, where weeping and distress are more common than we would like to admit or acknowledge, and we remember that this is not all there is. We remember that there is hope. That there is a promise. We remember what has happened in Jesus Christ. We remember that he has made us participants in his resurrection through baptism, we remember that Jesus shares his life with us every week through Holy Communion. We remember, and we tell the story, over and over again, of a God who loves our broken world and has set out to mend it, the story of a God who has become human, who has suffered as a human, who has died as a human, and who was raised to new life, a promise to all of us that God’s future will triumph even in the face of death.

Remembering and telling may not seem like a lot – but I think in a world filled with story after story of death and suffering, remembering and telling a story of life beyond death, life that overcomes death, life that cannot be contained by death is a radical, powerful act. Remembering and telling prevent us from succumbing to the narrative that this is just how it is and how it has to be. Remembering and telling kindles in us the ability to hope when hope is gone, when hoping seems stupid. Remembering and telling fires our spirits to imagine a world different, radically different, from the world as we know it now.

As we come to the table today, in the shadow of another tragedy, as we live with more proof that our world is not as it should be, come with hope: hope that God’s promises are sure, that God will not forsake us, that the God who has come once before will come once again, hope for the day when a new heaven and a new earth are made real, hope for a time when all we will know is the unsurpassable joy of the Kingdom of God. Come with hope, and then leave as messengers of hope for a shattered world, messengers that God has a future.

In the name of the One God who is Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

October 20, 2019

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Pentecost – Proper 24

Jeremiah 31: 27-34; Psalm 119: 97-104; 2 Timothy 3: 14 – 4:5; Luke 18: 1-8

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

 

Let us pray.  May only your word be preached, O God, may only your words be heard.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

            Other than the heat, the swarms of gnats and wasps, it was a lovely place.  I am describing a part of Big Bend National Park out in West Texas, where I spent part of last week on retreat with some other clergy friends of mine.  After a day of hiking in the West Texas desert, when it was time to set up camp, and enjoy a beautiful sunset, that’s when all those gnats and wasps arrived.

            The gnats were an annoyance, but the wasps were a bit scary, particularly because one of my colleagues was allergic to wasps.  So allergic, in fact, he brought an epi pen with him in case he was stung and went into anaphylactic shock.  He did not volunteer this important information until there were about four wasps on his arms and some swarming around his legs, so his timing wasn’t great.  And neither was his packing, as he said the epi pen which he brought just might have expired.  It was when he began explaining to me how to send an “SOS” message on his portable GPS that I started to have reservations about this trip.

            But, the sun set, and with its setting, the gnats and the wasps eventually found their way elsewhere.  The cool desert breeze returned, and the soft moon and gentle stars appeared in the deep blue sky.  We were fine.  Recalling that experience last week leads me to these words we hear in 2 Timothy this morning, where the author compels young Timothy, to be “persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable.”

            On my trip last week, I wore a bracelet, made of pipe cleaner and a few beads with letters on them which spell out the word “hope.”  I made it in Rhythms of Grace as one of our activities during that service, and I have worn it for several weeks as a reminder to carry hope with me no matter where I am.  No matter if the present moment is a favorable one, like right now, or an unfavorable one, like last week out in the desert with all those swarming insects. 

            The way I try to persevere in all situations, good and bad, is through prayer.  I keep a prayer list, and many of your names are on it, and I do my best to pray that daily.  But prayer is more than that – for me in my prayers, I somehow find a way to connect with God and that connection with God offers me hope, so that whether the time is favorable or unfavorable loses its importance, because what becomes most important to me, when I am praying faithfully and regularly, is being grounded with God, with having a real relationship with Christ.  That’s what matters, that’s what gives me hope, ultimately.

            The focus in 2 Timothy on persevering through favorable or unfavorable moments in life is also true for this church, at this moment.  It is not a secret that we are in our annual stewardship campaign, in which all of us are asked to prayerfully consider our financial commitment to St. Andrew’s for next year.  For many of us, an annual stewardship campaign might count as one of those “unfavorable” moments for which we are called to persevere through.  I am guilty of feeling that way, at times.

            I said from this pulpit two weeks ago that I would use the next few sermons to unpack a bit about our stewardship this year and explain why this campaign is asking more from all of us.  And so, I want to take a few minutes to talk about why this year’s pledge goal is significantly higher than in years past.  The reason is because of feedback I and other leaders in the church have received from many of you about an overall desire to see current ministries grow and new ones develop.  Ministries take people to lead them, and in a church of this size, it is more common for ministries to be staff led rather than volunteer led.  Don’t misunderstand me, there are plenty of volunteer ministries in the church, and there will always be.  That said, your Vestry has called for three additional staff positions for 2020 so that current, and new ministries can grow: they are, in this order, bringing our Director of Music and Organist to a full-time position, hiring a youth minister, and acquiring additional needed support in the office.  

            Over the coming weeks, I am going to talk about these in reverse order, beginning today with support in the office.  Admittedly, a conversation about needed office support staff does not make for a riveting sermon, I get that.  But you all also need to know that while we have a full-time parish administrator, there is much she is not able to do because the work demand has grown substantially in the last few years.  Our parish treasurer is a volunteer and is currently spending 6-10 hours a week pro bono on church work, but it is not enough time to complete all that needs to be done, because he has a full-time job.  We need additional, paid office support.  Because this person will be dealing with confidential and private information like social security numbers, compensation amounts, insurance and HR needs, it’s not appropriate to designate this position as a parish volunteer opportunity. 

            Now I am the first to admit that this position is not glamorous in the way that a full-time Director of Music and Organist or a youth minister might be, but the Vestry, your Finance Committee, and I believe this staff support is critical to establishing a strong foundation to support our current ministries as they grow and new ones as the emerge.   In following weeks, I will speak more about the full-time Director of Music and Youth Minister roles.

            Whether the moment is favorable or unfavorable – the need is great.  I believe tt is a favorable time to be at St. Andrew’s.  I believe it is favorable to Ponder Anew, What the Almighty Can Do.  AMEN.