April 5, 2020

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Palm Sunday  - Year A

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

Crowds greet Jesus today as he enters Jerusalem. They find branches and cloaks to lay in his path, and they sing and shout and cheer, they greet him with “Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” The crowds are ecstatic to see Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth, coming into Jerusalem.

I can’t help but think of how different today, the start of Holy Week is, from the end of Holy Week. Over the course of this week, as the crowd that greeted Jesus sees what it means for Jesus to be king, as they see the risk that is involved in claiming allegiance to Jesus, as they witness firsthand what happens when the Kingdom of Jesus meets the kingdoms of Herod, Pilate, and powers in charge of this world, the crowd starts to thin out. Eventually, even Jesus’s closest friends and followers leave him until he dies all-but alone on Good Friday – with only his mother and John the Beloved Disciple keeping watch at the cross.

The crowds begin to thin as they realize that Jesus isn’t the kind of king they expected or wanted. This happens with a lot of movements: there’s an incredible amount of passion and energy at the start, at the promise, at the hope – but as reality sets in things begin to fizzle. The crowds wanted Jesus when it meant was waving branches and singing songs, but the crowd didn’t want Jesus when things got hard, when all hope seemed lost, when Jesus didn’t act like or look like a king should.

Now, it’s not that the crowds were especially wicked people – they were simply realists. They read the writing on the wall. They knew what it meant for someone to be handed over to death on a cross, it meant the entire power of the Roman Empire was going to kill them and make an example out of them. Jesus was going to be hung up as an example to anyone who would be silly enough to think they were a king. The crowds that welcomed Jesus knew that victorious kings don’t get killed. Jesus didn’t meet their expectations, so the crowds moved on.

We have the same temptation: the temptation to move on when Jesus doesn’t meet our expectations, when Jesus doesn’t act in the way we think Jesus should. We have our boxes, and when Jesus doesn’t fit in them or stay in them, we find fault with him and go on our way.

Jesus challenges us and our expectations. Will we accept Jesus on his terms, in his way, or will we try and fit Jesus into our box? The church, for 2,000 years, has done a marvelous job of putting Jesus into all sorts of boxes, of trying to stifle him, of making him into a mascot. But God can’t be trapped – and Jesus, despite our best attempts, is still alive, still at work, still willing to be our king if we’re willing to let him define the terms. The crowds abandoned Jesus as Holy Week drug on because they were limited by the box they put Jesus in.  According to their box, the dead don’t rise again, killed kings aren’t victorious, death is the end. But Jesus doesn’t fit into that box.

As we begin what is undoubtedly the most interesting Holy Week I have ever experienced, I hope we will keep our eyes open to the ways in which Jesus is breaking out of our boxes, and inviting us to know him on his own terms, not on ours. If we are going to follow Jesus, we have to give up some control, we have to let go of what how we think Jesus will act, and open ourselves up to the possibility that God is still at work, even when everything seems to the contrary. Rowan Williams puts its beautifully when he write “God is not at the end of his resources, when we are at the end of ours.”

Holy Week invites us to re-familiarize ourselves with the central events in the history of our salvation. We are invited to re-hear the story of Jesus’ victory over death and the grave, of the ways in which he has defeated sin through the power of his cross. We are invited to become reacquainted with Jesus Christ, the king who surprises us. We are invited to stick with Christ, to let get of our expectations, and wait to see what Jesus is up to. Amen.  

March 29, 2020

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5 Lent  

Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11: 1-45

The Rev. James M.L. Grace 


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

                Good morning.  I want to begin this morning just by saying I miss you.  I miss seeing you all here in this building.  I miss our conversations at coffee hour.  I miss hearing a choir sing.  As I gaze out at row after row of empty pews, I feel a vacancy, a kind of emptiness that maybe you all feel too.  I miss you.  This has been a hard week for all of us.  We have members of our church who have lost employment, some who have lost hope, some who have lost faith. 

            To that point I want to share a story with you.  A person once asked the buddha, “if Buddhism is so simple can you explain it in one sentence?”  And the Buddha said, “I can’t, but I can explain it in three.”  And so the person said, “okay, three, go ahead give me the answer.”  And the Buddha said “1.  Everything changes.  2.  Anything can happen at anytime.  And 3 I am not exempt.”  In other words, this is all temporary, nothing is certain, we are not excused.  That’s heavy.  That’s a lot of reality.  Some of us choose not to accept that much reality, because it can be painful, so we find ways to avoid it.   A pandemic is a form of reality that evokes a spiritual response, because a pandemic forces us to live with the knowledge that we will one day die. 

            We are like Jesus, wandering through a desolate wilderness alone, facing temptation, and wondering exactly where God is in all of this.  At least that’s what people have asked me.  “Where is God now?” they ask.  I have no easy answers, no platitudes to offer, except to say that God is exactly where God needs to be: God is with us in all of this.  We are not alone.  We are not being punished. 

            But it does kind of feel that God has put the whole world in a cosmic “time out,” doesn’t it?  I do not believe that it is a coincidence that one of our readings this morning comes from the 37th chapter of Ezekiel.  I really don’t.  In the reading, we meet Ezekiel, who is placed by God in a valley of dry bones.  Actually, the reading says they are very dry, indicating that all of these bones were from bodies of soldiers who long had been dead.  Ezekiel sees nothing but death, nothing but despair, nothing but hopelessness.  And then God asks Ezekiel a very strange question, God says “Ezekiel, do you think these bones can live?”  And Ezekiel says, “God I have no idea – only you would know” (this is a very smart answer).  And their conversation goes on, and we know the rest of the story: the bones are animated, they join together, muscle and tendon and skin grow upon them and the bones become people again. 

            What does this mean?  Ezekiel was written during a tragic period of time in Israel’s history.  An invading Babylonian army had destroyed the city of Jerusalem.  The temple in Jerusalem, which was considered the hub of religious activity and piety, was razed to the ground.  The Hebrews, God’s chosen people, were forced into exile and lived far away in Babylon.  It is believed that the book of Ezekiel was written in Babylon, during this time of exile. 

            Their cities destroyed, their temple lost, the Hebrews looked around and asked the question many are asking today: “what is God doing?”  Imagine how scared they were.  In response to the anxiety of his day, Ezekiel proclaimed in a story we hear today, that God was rebuilding.  Bones long since dead were being reclaimed once again by God to rebuild new bodies and create new life.  It was Ezekiel’s message of hope, ultimately that as God rejoined these old bones, so to, would God rejoin Israel, now nearly dead, and make it live once again.  Ezekiel’s vision gave people hope.

            Many of us here today might feel that we are walking through a similar valley as Ezekiel.  You might feel just like Ezekiel – that your life has been overturned, and that like him, you’ve also been plopped into a valley of old very dry bones.  I certainly felt that way this week.  If that’s where you are, know there is nothing wrong with feeling grief, sadness, depression, or anxiety.  I felt all those feelings this week. 

            But here’s the thing, and I learned this from a person who I once confided many of my personal troubles in.  After running through a list of whatever my grievances and frustrations were at the time to this person, he only had one question for me.  He said, “Jimmy I hear you saying all that.  So where is the good?”  I didn’t like that he asked me that question, because it meant not only that I needed to see a positive, and at the time I was much more interested in just focusing on all the negative around me.  His question also meant also that I no longer could keep playing a victim (which felt so good!) once I started identifying where the good was. 

            So where is the good in all this?  Those of you with in church now, go ahead and write on this livestream where you are seeing good.  Write where you are seeing God.  Write how you are seeing God put things back together in your life as God once brought together old bones.  Because the good is that God is present, now, in all of this.  The good is that when we rebuild, perhaps we might rebuild things in a better way.  The good is that as our officials tell us to shelter in place, some of us are learning to shelter in peace.  The good is that we are pulling together.  The good is that even though we look around and see only dry bones around us now, things are growing and emerging and there is resurrection even now.  It would be easy to give up right now.  I hope to God you don’t.  I hope to God you don’t give up before the miracle happens.  Because it will.  It’s already happening now.

            Two weeks from today – we celebrate Easter.  We will join with many other people who affirm a simple belief that dry bones are not an end, but a prerequisite to something greater, something eternal, something miraculous.  Yes, it is Lent.  Yes, we are in a valley, and all I see, at least, are dry bones.  And yes, God will create something beautiful out of everyone.  AMEN.  

March 22, 2020

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4 Lent

1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5: 8-14; John 9:1-41

 The Rev. James M.L. Grace


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

 

            About three weeks ago I reported for my first volunteer shift for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.  There was some conversation on our committee about a virus making headway into the United States, and someone on the committee asked if they thought it would have any impact on the Rodeo attendance.  Seven days later, the announcement came that the Rodeo was shutting down early for the first time since it started in 1931.  A month ago, I never would have predicted this – where we are now. 

            Over the past week, I have reached out and talked to many of you. I haven’t made all my phone calls yet (I’m handling A-M of the phone directory, and am currently on “F”).  It has been so wonderful to hear your voice.  To share with you in your joy, your struggle, your hope, your uncertainty, but also your humor.  You have shared painful truths, you have shared your financial anxiety with me.  I get it.  I really do.  Because I share all of that with you.  But you also are sharing your humor, and what a gift that is! One of you shared with me that your grandson, upon learning that church was closed for the foreseeable future, said to his mother “Mom!  How will we get Jesus back?” 

            Look, we have find reasons to laugh, even in uncertain times like this.  We all feel scared, we all feel lost.  I spoke with a colleague of mine, a priest in a different city this week, and he asked “should I be happy now?  I don’t even know what to feel.”  I don’t how I should feel, either. As my wife and I keep saying to each other, we are in uncharted territory.  It’s new for all of us. 

            We see empty stadiums, empty restaurants, juxtaposed with images of hospitals crammed with people in Italy and in other parts of the world.  The world seems less familiar – it seems more strange – it appears more scary, at least to me.  What do we do? 

            I believe we have an answer, and it comes to us in something called the BIBLE – which stands for “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.”  I didn’t make that up.  It’s the 23rd psalm.  What a masterpiece.  What a gift to read that psalm today.  I want to read it again. 

            “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his names sake.Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.  Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.  Thou preparist a table before me in the presence of mine enemies, thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

            With all the uncertainty and ambiguity in the world, I daily get on my knees and ask the Lord to lead me and to guide me in all that I do.  I am just a sheep who chooses to surrender my need for control,  my need to explain, my need to understand.  I am just one sheep in much larger herd, doing my best to listen to the shepherd’s voice.  Christ is my shepherd.  I surrender my life, to follow him. 

            I am choosing to accept and surrender to God’s plan.  Notice I did not say the word “understand.”  I don’t understand God’s plan, I can’t explain it.  But I trust it.  I trust God now more than ever with the chaos going around us. I am able to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, fearing no evil because I know my shepherd is with me.  We are going to get through this.  God is with us and God will see us through it. 

            A pandemic is not the end of the world.  Suffering is not the end of the world.  Author and priest Henri Nouwen writes these words on suffering, which I share with you today because they mean something to me, and I hope they mean something to you:

“  I really want to encourage you not to despair, not to lose faith, not to let go of God in your life, but stand in your suffering as a person who believes that she is deeply loved by God. When you look inside yourself, you might sometimes be overwhelmed by all the brokenness and confusion, but when you look outside toward him who died on the cross for you, you might suddenly realize that your brokenness has been lived through for you long before you touched it yourself.

 

Suffering is a period in your life in which true faith can emerge, a naked faith, a faith that comes to life in the midst of great pain. The grain, indeed, has to die in order to bear fruit and when you dare to stand in your suffering, your life will bear fruit in ways that are far beyond your own predications or understanding. . . .”

 

Believe that good will come from this, and it will.  Centuries ago, when the Great Plague hit London, Isaac Newton, then in his 20s, practiced a form of “self quarantine” at his home.  Away from college, Newton thrived.  He later called his year away from his professors annus mirabilis the “year of wonders.”  He did a lot during his time at home from school because of the plague.  He wrote papers that would later become early calculus, and he also discovered the principle of gravity.  Look for the good and hold onto it.  The Lord is OUR shepherd, he will watch over us, in all things and through all times.  AMEN.

March 1, 2020

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Lent 1 – Year A

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

Today’s lesson from Genesis is the first story we have in Scripture of shattered trust. Adam and Eve are in the garden and the serpent appears, tempting them to do the one thing God said not to do: eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. And they do it! The result is a tragic, immediate awareness of their own nakedness. They see themselves as exposed, as vulnerable, as capable of being hurt. Before there was no knowledge of this, no thought in their mind that someone or something might mislead them. They were like children, who see only good. They were like children, who knew the word of God and knew, in their bones, that whatever God said was true and good and beautiful and right. God could be trusted, the God who created them, who brought then out of the dust of the ground, willed and desired only their best!

Adam and Eve lived in a state of absolute and total trust in God. But the serpent introduces a new thought: what if...what if God can’t really be trusted? God had given to Eve and Adam everything in the garden, except for this tree. What if there was more that wasn’t being given? What if…God was keeping something from them? What if God was keeping the very ability to be like God from Adam and Eve? The Serpent planted this seed in the mind of Adam and Eve and it took root.

The fall of Adam and Eve, the fall of humanity, is often taught or talked about as though it was the result of a violation of a rule. Adam and Eve broke the rule and so God dished out the punishment for breaking that rule, but I don’t think that’s quite right. I don’t think the fall is a result of a rule-break, I think the rule-breaking is a result of the fall. The fall happens when Eve and Adam choose to trust in the Serpent and not in God. The Serpent said, in so many words, that God couldn’t really be trusted and when you entertain that idea that God is fundamentally, untrustworthy, everything else goes haywire. Why follow the rule of this possibly capricious, possibly withholding deity?

What I find especially tragic in the story of the fall, is that the temptation made to Eve by the serpent is a twisting of the truth. The Serpent says that, in eating of the tree, Eve and Adam will be like God, they trust the serpent, and in trusting the serpent they forget the word of God, they forget the truth of God. Remember back in Genesis 1, God has just created the earth and stars, the creatures of the sea and the ground and the sky, and he says “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…” From the very beginning, humanity was created to be like God. God created us to be as much like God as a creature can be.

Adam and Eve forgot. Adam and Eve forgot that they were already like God, that in their very bones they were like God, because God made them, and God gave them every possible good. Adam and Eve forgot, believing instead the Serpent. Eve and Adam are tempted by something they already had. To be like God, to desire to be like God isn’t a bad thing, it’s the greatest thing we could want to be. The first sin isn’t a desire to be like God, the first sin is forgetting what God has already given us and trusting in another instead of God. In trusting the serpent over God, humanity’s relationship with God and with everything else is broken. Doubt now exists – can we really trust God? Can we trust creation? Can we trust each other? The serpent sowed a seed of doubt that still exists in us. 

It’s interesting to hear the story of Jesus’ own temptation in light of the temptation of Adam and Eve. Today Jesus finds himself away from the cities and towns of Galilee and Judaea, in the wilderness, led there by the Holy Spirit after his baptism, and here, in a setting not too different from the garden, he is tempted by Satan three times. I think it’s interesting how Satan introduces the first two temptations: “If you are the Son of God…” turn these stones to bread, throw yourself down. Christ is being tempted to prove that he is the Son of God. But he refuses.  He won’t give in to temptation. We talk about Christ’s three temptations, and yes there were three specific ways in which he was tempted, but there was only one real temptation, the same temptation that got Adam and Eve: the temptation to doubt God and trust in another.

Keep in mind, the end of chapter 3 in Matthew’s Gospel is Jesus’ baptism. Do you remember what happens? Jesus goes to John, he is baptized, the skies open, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descends and God speaks. Do you remember what he says? God says “This. Is. My. Son.” At his baptism, God declares to everyone that Jesus is the Son of God, and now Satan comes on the scene wanting Jesus to prove it. Satan is tempting Jesus, just like he tempted Adam and Eve, tempting Jesus to doubt God. Tempting Jesus to imagine that God cannot be trusted.

But Jesus resists. Jesus’ will not stop trusting in God and in what God has said. Every temptation is met with a renewed statement of faith in God:

One does not live by bread alone…

Do not put the Lord your God to the test…

Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him…

Jesus is tempted, but Jesus at every turn trust in God. Do you see what’s happening? Paul helps us here, in the letter to the Romans which we heard from today, Paul sets up a contrast between Adam (and I would say Eve, as well) and Jesus. Through the one came death, through the other life. The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is a kind of undoing of the fall from grace into sin. Jesus trusts God, where Adam and Eve couldn’t. Jesus becomes the new Adam, the new human. Jesus trusts in God fully, totally, completely. Jesus trusts God even to the point of death, and that trust proven on Easter morning.

Adam and Eve and Jesus. All of them were tempted to doubt God, to doubt what God had said about them: Adam and Eve were tempted to doubt that they were already like God, made in God’s likeness. Jesus was tempted to doubt that he was really God’s Son. Adam and Eve gave into temptation. They doubted that God was dependable. Jesus didn’t give into temptation. Jesus trusted.

There are plenty of serpents and devils around still. We are still tempted every day by voices that that invite us to trust what they say instead of God and what God says. The voices come from our jobs, our families, our friends, our churches(!), our politics. They’re all over. They tempt us to think, to believe that God can’t be trusted, that God’s word to us and about us can’t be trusted. Lent is a time to make space, to give up on a few of those voices that tempt us to doubt. Lent isn’t about thinking how terrible you are. It’s about taking stock of all the voices in our lives, it’s about answering the question of who we will trust. Will we trust serpents and devils that say we can’t really believe God, that we can’t really depend on God to tell us the truth about ourselves? Or will we trust God? AMEN

March 8, 2020

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2 Lent

Genesis 12: 1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17; John 3: 1-17

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

 

            Does the church look any different to you all today?  Not really, right?  The paint is still the same color, the pews are where they were last week.  Everything pretty much looks the same in here as it did last week.  But the church is different this week than it was one week ago.  And if it doesn’t look different to you than it did last week, I would suggest that we aren’t looking close enough.

            See in this church last week, we read the Bible – the whole Bible Genesis to Revelation, from start to finish.  We read it right here.  Fifty volunteers read for about 80 hours – that’s how long it took, to get us through the Bible.  And so this church looks different to me now, as a result.  This looks like a church in which the word of God was read inside it.   Just like we are changed when we read the Bible, so to, I believe, this church is different as well.  It’s a bit kinder.  It’s a bit more open to where God is calling it.  It’s people are a bit more open to the Holy Spirit.  Look close enough, and you will see, or feel, the change I am speaking of.

            If I could summarize the entire message of the Bible, to consolidate all 66 of its books into one phrase, it would be this: “be not afraid, fear not.”  That’s it.  And that is a message I need to hear, every day – sometimes every hour of every day.  I need to remember that I do not need to be afraid because God is in control.  Everyday I turn my life over to God, and entrust my loved ones, my family, my children, to God’s care.  And when I do that, I’m not in fear.  When I forget that God is in control, and become confused and think that I am in control, that’s when I slip into fear. 

I have a simple definition of fear – an acronym which spells fear out to me: Future Events Appearing Real.  If I am not intentionally in prayer, and seeking God’s will, not my own, then fear is where I end up every time. Give me two minutes and if I am not connected to God I can catastrophize about the future and cook up the worst possible outcome of a situation and I can fixate on that. 

I can build an idol out of my fear and bow down and worship before my fear god very quickly.  I’ve had lots of practice worshipping my fears.  The Bible is very clear about idol worship – and if you don’t know where God stands on this topic, let me suggest to you that God does not like it very much. 

There is plenty of fear to go around right now.  But you know what?  The sun rose this morning.  And it rose for everybody.  We’re going to be okay.

That is the message of the Bible.  In our reading from Genesis today we meet a man named Abram, who at this point of the story lived in a region called Haran, which scholars think is right on the border of modern day Turkish/Syrian border.  It is in Haran where God calls out to Abram “go from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.”  It’s quite an ask, don’t you think? 

Imagine you are Abram, and God comes to you and says, “listen I know that you are comfortable, and that you are settled, but this is not the place I have prepared for you to live in.  It’s time to pack up and go somewhere else – another place I will show you.”  That’s kind of scary, isn’t it?  Very few people enjoy change, more or less moving, for that matter. 

Abram could have refused God’s command.  But he did not.  He packed his things, and settled into a new land, which would become Israel.  Abram’s new life following God’s command was not easy, and he encountered much in the way of struggle.  But Abram persevered, and today, is remembered for his faith and trust in the Almighty.

See, faith is the opposite of fear.  Abram did not fear, Abram believed.  And because of his faith, God tells Abram later, “Hey Abram, how would you feel about having a new name.  How does ‘Abraham’ sound?  Do you like it?” Abraham would become the ancestor of a multitude of nations.  But none of that would have been possible for Abram had he lived in fear.

We all have a choice today – we can choose to build idols out of fear and go ahead and worship them.  We can do that, and be miserable.  Or we can choose faith, the opposite of fear, and turn our lives to God, and entrust God with every facet.  We can do that, and be happy, joyous, and free.  I’ve lived in fear long enough.  Today, I’m choosing to live in faith, remembering that God is in control.  AMEN.

February 26, 2020

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Ash Wednesday

Joel 2: 1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

 

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

 

I begin this sermon with words from Richard Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist and author.  You might be thinking to yourself "Richard Dawkins - isn't he that atheist who wrote "The God Delusion"?  Yes, he is.  While I would part ways with Dawkins on that book, I am in alignment with much of his work, including a book he wrote in 1998 entitled "Unweaving the Rainbow" which begins with these words:

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly, those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here, we privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

What a gift our lives are.  What honor there is in acknowledging that our lives are fleeting - momentary blips on a cosmic scale.  And yet - here we are today, on Ash Wednesday, pausing during our busy lives to ponder the curious fact that we are mortal.  Today is one of my favorite days of the year, which probably sounds odd, or morbid.    I love this day because of its simple acknowledgement of a truth many of us deny - which is that none of us are getting out of this alive!

 

As a follower of Christ for the last thirty years, death no longer frightens me in ways it used to.  I am at a point in my own faith journey where if tomorrow someone was able to prove unquestionably that the resurrection of Jesus never occurred - that it was, for example,  a simple legend told after Jesus' death to inspire his followers, I would probably say:  "Well, I guess that means we lose Easter, but could we still have Ash Wednesday?"  

 

Jesus embraced and honored his living, and his dying.  I cannot think of anyone other than Jesus who not only once lived a beautiful life but continues to live in a very real way.  Jesus is alive. but even so, I would not miss Easter, because we live in a culture that seeks to anesthetize itself to the natural process of dying.  As an American society, we have outsourced much of the dying process to hospitals and elderly care facilities.  We have enabled a multi-billion-dollar funeral industry to handle our dead.  All of this has produced a result where we are a death denying culture.  In our culture which denies death in so many ways, we need Ash Wednesday.  We need Good Friday, though attendance at both pales in comparison to Easter.  

 

I am guilty of this same denial of death.  To be honest with you all, I still struggle with the Latin phrase "memento mori," which means "remember you must die."  For a long time, whenever I was asked if I wanted to be an organ donor when I would renew my driver's license, I would answer "no."  Why?  The answer is simple.  I would not permit myself to think about my body on a table being opened.  Gross!  Like I would even be aware of it!  Of course, I wouldn't - I would be dead.  Perhaps I thought that if I would say no to being an organ donor in some way I could postpone death or deny its inevitability.  At some point, I don't know when, I went to the DPS to renew my driver's license.  I was asked if I would consider being an organ donor, again.  That time, I said yes.  I grew up.

 

Mortality is a part of living.  When we gather for a funeral service, we are gathering to do a couple of things.  We are giving thanks to God for the life the person lived.  We are gathering to grieve.  But more importantly at a funeral we gather to express our trust in God that death is not the end.  That God has a purpose for all of us, in our living and in our dying, and that purpose is holy.  You have a purpose, even if your life seems purpose-less.  God has a purpose for you.

 

I was reminded of God's purpose in living and in dying nineteen years ago when my brother in law died from a virulent form of leukemia.  His name was Granger.  Granger’s father is a Methodist pastor.  As the funeral plans were coming together, the family decided that they wanted to have Granger cremated.  I will never forget one day getting the call from Granger's father, asking me if I would accompany him to the crematorium to stand beside Granger's body in its final moments before entering the crematorium. 

 

I stood there beside Granger and his father in that crematorium.  His father said a few prayers.  While I don't remember the words, I remember the intent.  They were gentle prayers.  They were kind prayers.  In them were the words only a parent can say at a time such as that.  He entrusted Granger to God.  He believed that even at the moment before the body of his son was to be cremated, that Christ was present.  

 

I will never forget that day. I will never forget how even in those final moments; Granger's father saw so clearly the purpose of his son's life.  I will never forget the trust his father had that God's grace was fully present in that room, and that there would be a day when he would see his son again.  In that crematorium, beside the furnace which would soon consume his body, turning it to ash, I saw the resurrection.  At the end of life, I saw it begin again.

 

All of us go down to the dust, yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.  AMEN.

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.