Sunday, July 3, 2022

Proper 9

2 Kings 5: 1-14; Psalm 30; Galatians 6: 1-16; Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

We hear today an excerpt from a letter written by the Apostle Paul to churches in Galatia.  At the time, Galatia was a region located right in the middle of the modern-day country of Turkey.  Years before Paul wrote this letter, he had travelled throughout this region of Galatia, and during his travels there, he started several churches. 

That all sounds good, but the problem with Paul starting churches was that he would leave them after some time, and he would travel somewhere else and start a church in some other city.  While Paul started a number of churches all around the Mediterranean, it is difficult to assess how healthy any of those churches really were. 

If you read his letters to these churches he established - and you can read them, they are called the Epistles, and they are found in the New Testament – you will see, to probably no one’s surprise, that there was a lot of conflict in Paul’s churches.  It might be argued that this conflict was also exacerbated in these churches due to Paul’s absence because he was traveling and starting new churches elsewhere.

Nevertheless, when you read (or hear) Galatians, as we have today, we are hearing the Apostle Paul at his angriest.  Paul is angry because people in the churches he helped establish are now rejecting what he had taught them about God and about Jesus.  In his letter to the churches in Galatia, Paul is upset because people in these churches have begun to follow other teachings, teachings which Paul considers to be false, and this is related to an important, yet difficult for us to appreciate debate at the time.

The debate centered around the relationship between people who grew up following Judaism, and who came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah – God’s anointed king.  On one side of this debate you have faithful Jews who believed Christ was the Messiah.  On the other side of the debate, you have people who believe Jesus is the Messiah, but these are people who are not Jewish, they are Gentile – non Jews – who also have come to believe that Jesus was God’s Messiah.  The question which both groups had to wrestle with, and this is the question that fuels Paul’s anger in Galatians is this:  If you are not Jewish, but you come to believe that Jesus, who was Jewish, is God’s Messiah – does that mean that you need to begin practicing Judaism and following the Torah?

It was a big question at the time, and a controversial one.  Here is what Paul (who was Jewish) thought: his answer was a resounding “no.”  If you were not Jewish and you followed Christ, you were not obligated to become Jewish yourself.  In the Galatian churches, after Paul left, people began to teach that yes, if you followed Christ, you must become Jewish, if you were not already.  This was the debate that fed the conflict in Galatia, and subsequently (and sadly) agitated the Galatian churches Paul invested so much hard work in. 

Paul lamented that this debate was infecting the Galatian congregations as he was away, and that is the reason he writes this strongly-worded letter to the Galatians.

Was Paul’s letter successful?  Did the Galatian community stray further away from Paul’s teaching, or did they embrace it more?  Unfortunately, we don’t really know.  That is one reason why the Epistles are challenging (at least for me) to preach on – we don’t often know how communities received these letters. 

Nonetheless, the letters are important, not only for historical value, but because they are the foundation Christian understanding and theology –  most of the Epistles were written years before the Gospels were written. 

Like the Apostle Paul, I am going away – for vacation, not to start another church.  I do not share Paul’s concern that problematic teaching or preaching will occur during my absence.  If anything the preaching will probably improve while I am away!  I look forward to leaving, for time away, but I also am looking forward to coming back. 

That’s one thing I’m not sure Paul did much of – returning to the churches he left. 

But I get to, and for that, I am grateful.  AMEN.

Sunday, June 19, 2022

Proper 7 – Commitment Sunday

1 Kings 19: 1-15; Psalm 42; Galatians 3: 23-29; Luke 8:26-39

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

In our Sunday morning Bible Study class, we are reading through the book of Exodus, which tells the dramatic story, of God’s deliverance of the Hebrews from their enslavement in Egypt – a powerful story of emancipation we recall this weekend as we honor Juneteenth today.  After their delivery out of Egypt, Moses and the Hebrews encamp at the base of a tall mountain, called Sinai.  It is to the top of this mountain that Moses summits, where he meets God, and receives the ten commandments.  One of the commandments God delivers to Moses is “Thou shalt not murder.”  

It is to this specific commandment Elijah – God’s chosen prophet, turned a deaf ear to.  We are told in today’s reading from 1 Kings that Elijah slaughtered the  prophets of Baal by the sword, perhaps while  thinking “yeah, God probably didn’t mean for us to take that commandment seriously.”  Why did Elijah do this?  He did so because of revenge, never a good motivation, but it was Elijah’s.  Elijah was taking revenge upon Jezebel, Queen and wife of arguably the most wicked king in Israel’s history - Ahab. 

In the chapter that precedes the one we heard today, Jezebel murders the prophets of God.  And Elijah decides “well two wrongs don’t make a right, but I’ll give it a chance anyway,” and he proceeds to murder the prophets of Baal.  Now who was Baal?  Baal was Yahweh’s competition.  While Yahweh might have lead the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt, it was Baal who controlled the weather.  Weather back then was extremely important for people like farmers, and shepherds who depended upon seasonable weather to raise their crops and their herds.  This will be a stretch for all of us, but imagine you lived in a humid environment with a stifling heat wave and no sign of rain on the way.  I know, it’s a stretch. 

Who are you going to pray to?  The answer is easy – Baal.  And it was Baal’s prophets who served as mediators between the people and this weather god.  Elijah murders them and Jezebel’s response to Elijah’s revenge, is to issue a threat for his life.  Elijah flees, and ends up going to place familiar to him – Mt. Horeb.  Horeb was a holy mountain of God – elsewhere in the Bible it is called Sinai – the mountain where Moses went centuries before and received the ten commandments, one of which Elijah wasn’t so good at following.

Nevertheless, upon this holy mountain, Elijah waits for God.  All kinds of things happen on the mountain: wind, earthquake, fire, and Elijah does not observe God’s presence in any of that.  It is only in the silence where Elijah eventually hears God speak to him.  Although not included in today’s reading, Elijah receives direction from God to anoint new kings over Israel and a new prophet (this occurs later in chapter 19 if you wish to read the rest of the story).

It’s not until things get quiet that Elijah hears God.  Our lives are really noisy.  And in my experience, the more noise, the less I hear God’s voice.   When I stop hearing God’s voice, I lose direction, and I am lost. 

It might seem that none of this has very much to do with a parish capital campaign, which is a very noisy thing – there’s emails, signs, people talking, cards in your pews.  And yet, this is where we are – Commitment Sunday – this is the day we formally wrap up our campaign, and probably more exciting for all of you – you will stop hearing me, and others, ask you for money, for about four months until October when we do it again for our annual stewardship campaign. 

In your pews are cards that look like this – I want everyone to grab one, and fill it out right now.  Fill it out even if you have already pledged, fill it out even if you don’t intend to pledge.  All of us are doing this together – now.  We’re going to take a minute and do this.  

Now that your cards are filled out, hold onto them, and bring them with you to the altar on your way to receive communion.  You will see that there is a basket here, and all of us will place out forms into the basket just like this.  After communion, we will bring the basket to the altar, and offer it to God. 

As we close out the campaign today, we will transition into the implementation phase.  There will be much more to say about this at a later date, but for the time being, know that an implementation committee, called the Capital Project Committee, consisting of parishioners, will assemble in August to begin scheduling our upcoming capital improvement projects.  I am pleased today to share that David Rennie, a lifetime member of St. Andrew’s, will serve as chair of this committee.

I close today with a word of gratitude to St. Andrew’s staff, its clergy, the members of its Vestry, our consultants, and the members of our Campaign Executive Committee for their collective hard work on this campaign.  I believe this campaign is a historic milestone for St. Andrew’s.  I also believe that what we are committing to today will impact our community and neighbors for the good for generations to come. 

I believe we are following God’s command to live.  To honor life, to create new possibilites, to step out in faith – all of that we are doing in this Holy space, where God speaks to us.  We are making our promise – upon this card, and giving it to God.  We are following God, not the other gods of the world today -modern day equivalents to Baal from centuries ago.  We are not following false Gods of selfishness, arrogance, or certainty – we are following the true God who calls us toward love and generosity.  We are establishing God’s legacy at St. Andrew’s for decades to come.

I can’t wait to see this next chapter at St. Andrew’s begin.  AMEN.

Sunday, June 12, 2022

Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15; Psalm 8

The Rev. Clint Brown

The doctrine of the Trinity is like the phenomenon of Time. If I were to stop you on the street and say, “Excuse me, what time is it?” what would you do? You would probably take out your watch and say, “Well, my good man, it’s a quarter to one,” and feel confident that you had satisfactorily answered my question. But if I were to stop you and say the same words but in a different order, “Excuse me. Time, what is it?” you would probably stare back blankly for a moment and think, well gosh, I want to give you an answer, but I don’t know how. It is the same with the doctrine of the Trinity – it is in that class of ideas that are easy to name but surprisingly difficult to explain. It is for this reason that there is always some good-natured ribbing among clergy about who gets to preach on Trinity Sunday. (Yes, that’s me.) But how does one take what, in many ways, is an intellectual abstraction, and speak something helpful out of it?

One way to begin is with an observation made by the great Thomas Aquinas who pointed out that the Trinity is actually no more difficult or mysterious a concept than God. Reason has already broken down just as soon as we use the word “God.” How do we really know exactly what we’re talking about when we say the word “God.” And yet, we know that we can say some things about God and I feel confident that if I say the word “God” there will be enough correspondence between what I’m thinking and what you’re thinking to speak intelligibly. So we can proceed to talk about the Trinity if for no other reason we are all adrift alike. All we are ever doing when theologizing about the Trinity is making our best stab at it.

So then let us proceed to a working definition. The doctrine of the Trinity: it is the belief that God, though one, is also somehow three. It is an idea that did not come down to us fully formed from heaven, although it is implicit in Scripture; rather, it is something we have worked out based on our experience. And it is important to note that God did not suddenly become a Trinity just because we said so. The Trinity is simply our best attempt to describe what is and has been eternally true of God. Its seeds lay in a significant problem for the first Christians, in that how could they, as good Jews, know in their bones that Jesus was God yet remain committed to their monotheism. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, how were they to make room for the Holy Spirit, whom Christ himself suggested co-equality with when he commanded the apostles to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). While the details are utterly fascinating, this will not be a sermon about how all that got worked out, but, as promised, what I will do is suggest two ways that the doctrine of the Trinity actually matters to you.

And the first is an idea latent in a lot of thinking about the Trinity but really only brought to full form by the Lutheran Robert Jenson. “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” he writes, is the name of the Christian God, what we might call the proper name of God. We may say, “Mary is coming to dinner,” and be answered with, “Who is Mary?” to which we must say something like, “Mary is the one who lives in apartment 2C, and is always so cheerful.” In general, proper names, Jenson writes, need these kinds of identifying descriptions so we can be sure we are talking about the same thing. “Yahweh,” the God of Israel, was the one who rescued Israel from Egypt, and the Christian God, “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” is the God revealed through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” is the Christian name for God, just as “Yahweh” is for Jews, “Allah” is for Muslims, and the “Cosmic Power” or “life force” is for the spiritual but not religious. The Trinity matters to us because, in Jenson’s words, it “summarizes faith’s apprehension of God”[1] and stands as a kind of condensed narrative of our history with God. We invoke the Trinity in our liturgy and our prayers so often because this is the name for the God “with whom we have found ourselves involved.”[2]

Secondly, the doctrine of the Trinity does something quite marvelous when it reminds us not only the God has a personal name, but also that God if personally disposed towards us. In other words, God’s very name underscores the primacy of relationship. It tells us that, remarkably, there is within the very life of God a relationship that has been carrying on like a dance from all eternity. In the beginning was the Relationship, and now that Relationship has reached out in love – for its essential nature is love – to relate to a cosmos of which you and I are a part. The Trinity is, therefore, a model for all relationships and of the importance of relationships, and especially that what happens in a relationship happens to each member of it. For the Trinity is the great bulwark that protects the doctrine of atonement, of how Christ’s death on the Cross makes possible our salvation. The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that whatever Christ has suffered has been brought into the very life of God and that Christ took with him into the experience of the Godhead the human experience of pain and death. The Trinity witnesses to the truth that God and the world are connected. God has and continues to be right down in and among us.

And so, to conclude, the doctrine of the Trinity answers both the questions “Who?” and “How?” To the question, “Who?” the Christian answers “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” And to the question “How?” the Christian answers, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” That is all we might ever be able to say, but that is enough.

[1] Robert W. Jenson, The Triune Identity: God According to the Gospel (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1982), 12-13.

[2] Jenson, Triune Identity, 13.

Sunday, June 5, 2022

The Day of Pentecost

Gen 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, (25-27); Psalm 104:25-35, 37

The Rev. Clint Brown

For a long time the prevailing wisdom had it that once we reached a certain age our brains stopped developing. What you had you had, so you had better make the most of your window of opportunity. But now we know that this is just not true. Neuroscientists tell us that our brains continue to develop throughout our lives. The word they have coined for this is “neuroplasticity.” We can with effort remap our brains. To learn a new skill we create new neural pathways; to undo bad habits we break existing connections. Why we believed the opposite for so long is actually counterintuitive. After all, the regular work of living requires us to adjust to new situations and people all the time. When we run over a pothole, we remember to avoid it the next time.  And it’s interesting what we can learn even about things or people we think we already know a lot about.

Take my friend Brenda. Cavan and I will get to visit her later this summer at her home in East Tennessee. She’ll be 82 years old this year and she shows no signs of slowing down. She lives alone. She still rides horses every chance she gets. She can proudly claim to be the most senior acolyte at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Johnson City. Oh…and did I mention that she’s a champion axe thrower? But even at that, despite all the years I’ve known her, she’s still full of surprises.

Once when we were talking late into the night, Brenda started telling me the story of her pet frog. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never known anyone who had a pet frog. Well, she said, this was a rescue frog. Brenda had saved it from her dad’s minnow bucket when it was still a little polywog. It was the summer of 1960 and during this particular summer the family was vacationing in Quebec, so, of course, this was – sorry I can’t help myself – a French frog. And as a French frog he was christened with the name Monsieur Jean-Claude Pierre de Fourchette. Monsieur de Fourchette grew into a fine and friendly frog and very attached to Brenda. In fact, so attached to her that he had a very peculiar tendency. Whenever Brenda cleaned house, he was wont to ride around perched on her head! Vacuuming the rug or unloading the dryer, there he was surveying his domain from his lofty perch. One day Brenda had a visitor come to the door, her landlady no less, and, you guessed it, Brenda had forgotten that Monsieur de Fourchette was on her head. The landlady looked up and down and up and down and made a great effort at trying to ignore what was so obviously unignorable, and finally blurted out, “Do you know you have a frog on your head!?” So, yeah, pet frogs are a thing and it just goes to prove that we’re always learning new things, even about people we know very well.

And, you know, it’s the same with God? Today as we the Church stand witness to baptism, we will take the opportunity to renew our own baptismal covenant. When the Celebrant asks, “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship…?” we will answer, “I will, with God’s help,” knowing full well that the reason for this is that there is so much to learn and unlearn as we walk the path of faith. The word disciple, after all, literally means one who learns. How are we to know what we are meant to do and how to do it? How are we to know what God wants? How can we learn the way that leads to eternal life?

The Christian tradition has an answer. The Christian tradition has long answered that there are two “Words” that have come down from heaven to tell us what we need to know about God. We encounter both in today’s service, divided as it is between the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Table. The first is the Bible, a written word, and the second is the Word made flesh, Jesus. In the Bible, we recognize the record of God’s dealings with a chosen people. During the Miqra this congregation has been intentional about honoring its importance by reading it through in its entirety as a community. From it we learn that there is one God, the creator of heaven and earth, who can be known to us. The Bible, however, is an imperfect word. To put it bluntly, it’s a very confusing portrait of God. Indeed, for many people it is the reason they have rejected God altogether. What kind of answer are we to give? What we say is that it has some important things wrong. It is wrong about its attitudes towards slavery and human sexuality and the status of women, to name just a few, but that’s okay. All that indicates is that it cannot be the final word for us. It doesn’t have to be outright rejected. What we Episcopalians believe is that the revelation of God did not end with the closing of Scripture.   

And that brings us to Pentecost. We believe that, through the ongoing work of the Spirit, we have learned some things too. The Day of Pentecost is the moment when the Christian witness is born, to tell the world that what was old is being made new and the Spirit is ever at work among us renewing the earth. Pentecost testifies to the fact that we are still on a journey, still reaching out to God…and God is still reaching out to us. What is the message of Pentecost? It is that there is always something new to learn.

Sunday, May 29, 2022

The Seventh Sunday of Easter

Acts 16: 16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17: 20-26

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

            If you are paying attention today, you will have probably noticed that our reading from Revelation jumps all over the place. We hear verses12-14, then skip over verse fifteen, then we read verse 16 and 17, then skip over verses 18 and 19, and then read verses 20 and 21. Whenever we skip over verses like we do today in Revelation, I want to know why. So I opened to Revelation chapter 22, which you all can do with the Bibles in your pews if you want, and read the whole passage, including the verses omitted in today’s reading: verses 15,18, and 19. It is ironic that verses 18 and 19 serve as a warning to anyone who would attempt to edit or take away, any of the verses in revelation, a warning the editors of today’s lectionary reading ignored, and removed the passages saying “don’t remove this” from today’s reading.  Curious.

The other verse, verse 15 I will read together with verse fourteen, which begins [and you can follow along because this is printed in your bulletin]: “Blessed are those who wash their robes to that they will have right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. [the omitted verse fifteen begins here] Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” 

            If we read the verses as they are printed in your leaflet today, we have the image of heaven where resolution seems to be complete, judgment is past, there is a new heaven and a new earth, a new city of God, and all may partake of the tree of life. Beautiful, right? If we add in verse fifteen, the image changes. Even if there is no longer a boundary between God and human beings, verse 15 informs us that there are people outside the gates of the city: “dogs (a pejorative term used to designate a people as outsiders) and sorcerers, fornicators, idolators, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” 

            When I read who in the Bible is outside the gate – the idolators, the people who love falsehood – well, that includes me, and may include you. But I do not want to be outside the gate of the heavenly city – I want to be inside drinking from the water of life. How do we get into the city? We walk through the gates, because they are open to us if we want to pass through. But moving through the gate into the city to the tree of life will cost us. The price we must pay is the cost of discipline. Discipline of yourself is necessary before the power of God can be given to any of us. Before we drink from the water of life, we must first wash our robes and discipline our hearts.

Recently my email was hacked, and many of you all received an email from someone claiming to be me, asking you to give eBay gift cards for cancer patients. Throughout the pandemic, I have emailed several St. Andrew’s parishioners whom I have not seen and received no response. I have called them on the phone, no response. But when these parishioners receive a false email from me, they are one of the first to say “Hey, Jimmy, I think your email got hacked.”

And I am astounded because it took, a false email to get them to respond to me! I emailed them back “great to hear from you, can we meet for coffee and connect? I will buy.”  No response. There are many people who are not ready to walk through the gate, they want to remain outside, even though what is inside is so much better. I cannot push them through the gate. They will have to choose themselves, if they wish, that is their job.

God is the Great Allower – God welcomes us into the heavenly city if we choose, and God allows us to stay outside of it among the dogs if that is our preference. The good news is that none of us need to live outside the gates, none of us need to be outsiders, unless we choose that for ourselves. AMEN. 

Sunday, May 22, 2022

The Sixth Sunday of Easter

The Rev. Clint Brown

Most people are unaware that, during his lifetime, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was not the well-respected composer that he is today. During his lifetime he was much better known as an organist rather than a composer. Remarkable as it seems to us, if someone in Bach’s day had struck up a conversation about him at the local Kaffeehaus in Leipzig, they would probably have ignored his compositions completely and swapped stories about his going head-to-head and besting the celebrated Buxtehude or Pachelbel, or some other preeminent organist, like a kind of eighteenth century American Idol. If you did press them about Bach’s music, they would likely have said that it was embarrassingly old-fashioned and out of touch, much like the man himself they would chuckle. But I’d wager that if we weren’t so accustomed to being told that Bach is a musical genius, we would probably pass much the same judgment. You see, most of the reasons for saying that Bach is great are difficult to explain and appreciate because they require a great deal of technical knowledge about how music works, and, for most of us, that will just always be just beyond our grasp, but it all boils down to something called polyphony.

Bach was and is the absolute master of polyphony, which, in music, is the term for putting multiple lines of music together at the same time. Perhaps you have heard of the term “fugue?” Fugue is the most highly developed and rigorous of the forms of polyphony, and I say “rigorous” because fugue is not just the holding together of musical lines, not just doing so in a pleasing and harmonious way, but doing it while following the strictest set of rules – rules which must be obeyed or else what you have can be called something but not a fugue. And this, the experts tell us, is the place where Bach’s star shines brighter than any other in the musical firmament. It is not just that he creates skillfully and tastefully, not just that he captivates us with delightful sounds, but that he does so within enormous, self-imposed constraints. Even as we feel ourselves tugged by the beauty and power of this music, Bach has submitted himself, far below our level of comprehension and even awareness, to the exacting and strict requirements of law and order. So expert is he in this disguise of his tremendous labor, that this is the reason we say he is the perfect composer. We can enjoy the art without necessarily discerning the craft.

Toward the end of his life, Bach set himself the task of composing a thorough treatment, or, as he put it, a “chapter of instruction” on fugue writing. He called it The Art of Fugue, and the challenge he set himself was to subject a single theme to every possible fugal technique imaginable. It was to be an encyclopedic composition, a compendium of all that he knew, of all that was then possible, and as such a lasting testament to his ability. Towards the end of this work, which he unfortunately left unfinished at the time of his death, there is a remarkable moment. As the third and last subject of the final fugue begins, we hear the notes of Bach’s name. In the German musical alphabet, you see, B is B-flat, and A and C are like ours, and H stands for B-natural, so in the name of Bach we have a sequence of four notes: B-flat, A, C, and B-natural. BACH. It is, in other words, a musical autograph and now, at the climactic moment of the crowning achievement of his life, Bach writes his name, as if to say, “I am here.” I am here in this moment of creation, at this the most complex and technically challenging moment. I am here. Bach is here.

“Let us make humankind in our own image” (Genesis 1:26). The book of Genesis tells us that we must create. Bach creates. Michelangelo creates. Shakespeare creates. You and I create. The capacity to create is there in our nature in much the same way that Bach put his name in the fugue. God creates and, therefore, so do we. It is God’s nature written upon us. We here at St. Andrew’s are being called at this moment to our own creative effort, a capital campaign that we are calling “Our Hope, Our Vision, Our Legacy.” It is a moment meant to stretch us, meant to challenge us, meant to humble us with the thought that this church is not for our benefit alone but for the many generations we will never meet. The poet Rilke writes:

You must give birth to your images.

They are the future waiting to be born.

Fear not the strangeness you feel.

The future must enter you long before it happens. 

In the story of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in the Heights, we have our own chapter to write, our own part to play, our own melody to spin in a much larger symphony, and in this bold work we are promised the gift of the Holy Spirit. “And I will ask the Father, and he will send you another [Helper], to be with you forever” (John 14:16). Jesus reminds us today that we are not alone in this work. It is not all on us nor is it a work for which we are meant to congratulate ourselves. This is the Spirit’s work among us, and it is but a part of a much greater work that has spanned decades and will continue long after us. In this time and place, in this day and hour, our task is simply to be led forward in a new act of creation … to greater hope, greater vision, greater legacy. Amen.

Sunday, May 15, 2022

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148: 14-29; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

            “I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”  These beautiful words come at the very end of the Bible – we heard them in the reading from Revelation earlier, from chapter 21, and if you open up a Bible to Revelation, you will see the chapter 21 is at the very end.

            The Bible ends on a high note: there is a new heaven and a new earth, and curiously, John the author, writes, the sea was no more.  Why get rid of the ocean?  What’s wrong with fish and dolphins?  In the ancient mind, the sea represented chaos and death.  In the grand ending of the Bible – the conclusion of Revelation, the sea is banished, meaning all death and chaos are permanently deleted as God’s final word affirming the goodness of God’s love.

            At its heart, Revelation is a book about hope, it is about God’s vision, and it is about God’s legacy.  These themes of hope, vision, and legacy concerned the author of Revelation thousands of years ago, and these same themes concern us at St. Andrew’s today.  Hope, vision, and legacy are the themes of our capital campaign, which goes public today. 

            While this may be news for some of you, the beginning of this campaign started over a year ago, when a member of our Vestry approached me before a Sunday service with a concern about St. Andrew’s legacy – would St. Andrew’s still be around fifty years from now to share God’s love with people we might never know ourselves?  An appropriate concern, and one that led to many subsequent meetings at the Vestry and Finance Committee levels, and a year later, we are embarking on a capital campaign rooted in prayer and in Jesus Christ to solidify St. Andrew’s legacy in the Heights. 

            In this campaign, entitled “Our Hope, Our Vision, Our Legacy” we are raising $2 million to support necessary restorations and updates to our church to ensure that St. Andrew’s remains a spiritual home for people for generations to come.  Although going public today, the campaign actually started in March, and our Campaign Executive Committee, who includes, Alli Jarrett and Dianne Yeomans as campaign co-chairs, along with members Greg Caudell, Treasurer, Doug Pecore, Sr. Warden, Mary Eyubolu, Finance Chair, Catherine Runner, Jr. Warden, Nancy Simpson, previous Head of School, and Vestry members Eric Reed and Deb Perl have been hard at work quietly shepherding this campaign along the way.  I am also pleased to say that every member of the Executive Committee has made a commitment to the Capital Campaign.  Marla and I have made our pledge.  

            A closing word on Revelation.  Verse 5 of today’s reading: “the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.  The church next door is closing and selling their property.  I do not believe that is St. Andrew’s legacy, at least right now.   I believe God is doing a new thing at St. Andrew’s, and this is our moment to participate in what God is doing.  It’s not obligatory.  And in full transparency, this capital campaign is not in place, but in addition too, our stewardship campaign, and we will again be asking you to support our growing ministries in the Fall.   We get to participate in what is doing at St. Andrew’s  What a gift.  A gift that is trustworthy and true.  AMEN. 

Sunday, May 1, 2022

The Third Sunday of Easter

Acts 9: 1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5: 11-14; John 21: 1-19

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

He was the finest persecutor in the land.  When it came to threats, intimidation, and putting first century Christians in harm’s way, you could do no better than Paul of Tarsus.  Paul’s reputation as an intolerant religious zealot preceded him wherever he went.   Paul was known as far away as Damascus, in Syria – a place where an early disciple of Jesus, named, Ananias lived.  Ananias was aware of Paul’s threatening and vindictive behavior toward people who believed as he did. 

And perhaps it was this knowledge of Paul which was what made it so awkward for the visit Ananias had with the risen Lord.  Jesus, risen from the dead, appears to Ananias, and says, “hey, you’ve probably heard about this person named Paul – kind of a dysfunctional personality, he suffers from an extremely inflated ego and self-grandiosity, but let’s not get into that now.  Just so you know, Ananias, I blinded Paul on the way to Damascus, and I want you to go to him and lay your hands on him so he can regain his sight.” 

Ananias replies, “Lord I love you, but you’re crazy – I know what Paul has done and he will have me killed on sight.”  And Jesus says, “I know it seems that way, but I intend to use Paul for good to spread my name amongst the Gentiles.”  Well, that’s even crazier.  Paul was Jewish, he had no interest in speaking about God to non Jews. 

Ananias relents, he meets with Paul, lays his hand upon Paul’s shoulder, and says “Jesus has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”  And immediately, something like scales fell from Paul's eyes,  and he regains his sight.  Now.  Which was the greater miracle – that Paul’s sight was restored, or that Ananias trusted the Lord enough to meet with this angry, vile man, and tell him God loved him?

It is because of Ananias, that Paul’s sight was restored.  It is because of Ananias, that we have the letters in the New Testament written by Paul, which became the foundation of early Christian faith.  If there was no Ananias, there would be no Paul – I believe. 

There is more to the person of Ananias, however.  Why was he asked by the Lord to visit Paul and restore his sight?  Was it because God needed a person to do it?  Certainly not.  God did not need a person to blind Paul on his way to Damascus – it just happened.  So why the need for Ananias?  I suspect the answer is this – God did not need Ananias to help, but rather invited Ananias into this because it would help him.  God sent Ananias for Ananias’ sake, because it helped him, not because God needed a miracle maker.

We learn from Ananias that God calls us to hard tasks which demand our best efforts.  None of us, including me, enjoy this.  The author Scott Peck says that “the point of life is that it is difficult, that we struggle and that we grow.  The problem is that we struggle to accept that truth.” 

 A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a person in which I walked away a lot of anger.  Full disclosure: this is not a cryptic way of sharing about an argument I had with my wife – this was actually an argument with a parishioner.  I felt so justified in my position, and took it very personally when this person disagreed with me.  I felt like I was attacked.  Yucky feeling. 

The next day I was sharing about this argument with a friend of mine (who does not go to church here, and is not a Christian).  I was saying how I felt wronged by this person, how they attacked me, how unfair it was, and he interrupted me.  He said, “Jimmy, stop.  Calm down.  You feel this parishioner hurt you, right?” “Absolutely!” I replied.  He said “Jimmy, I haven’t figured out the God thing, and I’m not a Christian, but didn’t Jesus say in the Bible somewhere to pray for the people who hurt you?”  Marvel for a moment, just a moment, the person who isn’t even sure if God exists reminding the Episcopal priest of what Jesus says in the New Testament: pray for those who hurt you. 

Pray for those who hurt you, not because they need your prayers, not because God needs it, but because I need it.  Praying for those who hurt is perhaps the most liberating thing a human being can do.  It is what Christ did on the cross. 

So I am praying.  I am grateful to my agnostic friend, my Ananias, who reminded me of what Christians are supposed to do.  AMEN.

Sunday, April 24, 2022

Second Sunday of Easter

Acts 5:27-32; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31

The Rev. Jeff Bohanski

Pray with me.  Risen Christ, give us the grace to believe, like Thomas you know each of us by name.  Give us the grace to be open to your love as we are today.  Give us the grace to allow you to transform us into loving, sharing disciples of you.  Amen.

I will always remember the first time I had a senior moment in public.  I was at the 7:45 morning Service at Memorial Episcopal Church reading the Prayers of the People.  At that Service we had a custom of not only praying for the bishops by name, but we also prayed for our clergy by name. This one morning I got all the bishops’ names right, but unfortunately, I got only most of the clergy’s names.  I can still remember that cold fear I felt when I drew a complete blank on our deacon’s name.  That same deacon who was standing right there next me.  After what felt like an eternity, by the grace of God, I managed to feebly refer to her as, “Our beloved deacon.” 

In the Gospel that was read a few moments ago, we heard two stories.  First, we have the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples in a locked room without Thomas on the day of resurrection.  The second story happens, presumably in the same room, a week later.  This time Thomas is there. 

In the first story the doors are locked, and the disciples are in fear of the authorities.  Thomas is not there.  Three days earlier, Jesus had been crucified, he died, and he was buried.  Now, on the third day, reports have come in of women seeing and speaking with the resurrected Jesus, holes, and all.  Suddenly, that same Jesus appeared.  He is alive!  The crucified one was standing right in front of them! And what does Jesus do?  He met the disciples exactly where they were, in their fear.  He says, “Peace be with you.” With these words, the resurrected Jesus transformed the disciples, he empowered them, and he gave them a commission of ministry.  Where once there were fearful disciples, now there are peace filled, transformed, and empowered disciples.

In the second story, Thomas is there.  Jesus appears, again he extends his peace.  Then he turns and called Thomas by name.  Jesus comes to Thomas in his doubt, turns Thomas’ own words on him and invites him to put his finger in the holes in his hands and his own hand in Jesus’ side.  Like with the disciples, Jesus met Thomas exactly where he was.  In his doubt. Where once there was a doubt filled Thomas, now there is a faith filled, worshiping Thomas.

Both these stories are transformative stories.  The resurrected Jesus transformed the disciples’ fear into peace and strength.  Thomas’ doubt was transformed into faith and belief.  In both stories Jesus met the ones to be transformed where they were, not in a public worship place, not in a beautiful lily filled church, but where they were; in a room with closed doors where fear and doubt was found.  Jesus transformed their fear into peace, and their doubt into faith.  My friends, this resurrected Jesus is alive today and continues to call us by our names and invites us all to be transformed by his love. 

Lately I’ve had some conversations with people who don’t like to watch the news anymore because it makes them anxious and depressed.  I hear people tell me they find themselves binge watching something on a streaming service to escape the bad news to feel better.  I understand.  Many days I feel the same.  There is a lot of bad news out there.  There is the war in Ukraine, there is the unrest in the middle east, a news item we seem to have forgotten, inflation, the deaminizing of the other side of the political aisle, and the putting down of our gay, lesbian, and transgender siblings in our human community to name but a few issues. 

I’ve come to wonder if perhaps this is what the world wants.  I wonder if the world wants us, out of fear, to stop watching the news so we don’t know what is happening to our fellow human beings and we stop praying for them and the world.  I wonder if the world doesn’t want us to know each other’s names so fear can fester, grow, and spread so it can be used against us.

I wonder what the world would look like if we lived life like we embraced and bore witness to a resurrected Jesus who calls us each by our name and offers his transformative love. 

So, how can we bear witness to this love of the resurrected Jesus?  Perhaps, the first thing we could do is to pray.  Pray for God’s help.  Then I would invite us to pray and ponder the stories we heard in today’s Gospel.  Imagine you are in that room with the disciples and the resurrected Jesus suddenly appears to you, holes, and all. Where he meets you exactly where you are, in your doubt, fear, sadness, anger, or wherever you are and calls you by your name and says, “Peace be with you.  Believe in me.  Believe in my transforming love.”  What a sight that would be!

Then we could pray for one another and those whom we encounter in our lives.  Pray for other as they are not as we wish they were.  Pray for the grace to see the person we are having difficulty with as one who Jesus also calls by name, who Jesus also invites into a transformational loving relationship.

My prayer for each of us is as we go forth from this place today is that we remember that the risen Jesus is alive.  Like Thomas, he knows each of us by name.  The risen Jesus comes to us all where we are and invites us to be transformed by his love.  This risen Jesus then asks us to share that love with others and the world around us. Amen.

Saturday, April 16, 2022

Easter Vigil

Genesis 22:1-8; Exodus 14:10—15:1; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 6:3-11; Luke 24:1-12

The Rev. Jef Bohanski

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

My mother is a prolific knitter.  She makes afghans. She’s made a couple afghans for each of her five children and their spouses, three for each of her fourteen grandchildren – a baby size, a junior size, and an adult size.  She has also made countless afghans for friends, neighbors, and their extended families.  She tells me now she is beginning to make afghans for her great-grandchildren.  (The third one is on its way.)

Mom’s baby afghans are blue, pink, or yellow.  The color of each junior or adult size afghan is chosen by the recipient.  If the recipient is lucky, she’ll take him or her to her favorite yarn shop and have that person choose the actual yarn itself. 

Mom’s afghans are easily identified in someone’s home. She uses the same pattern for every afghan she makes.  Her pattern is the cable twirl.  There are eight twirl cables that resemble two twirled ropes running down the length of each afghan. 

As I was preparing for the sermon, it occurred to me that Ezekiel’s reading, The Valley of Dry Bones, unites Jews and Christians in much the same way as the cable twirl pattern of one of my mother’s afghans.  Ezekiel’s reading is one of the readings used on the sabbath of Passover week. We use it every year on this night, the Easter Vigil.  (Passover and Easter always happen at the same time of the year, every year.)

Them dry bones!  Them dry bones!  In this, the third of four visions, Ezekiel experiences and prophesies to Israel that God will restore His people, Israel.  God will take them from their graves of exile and return them to the land of Israel.  God will put his spirt within them and they shall live on their own soil, and they shall know that God, their God has done that.  God will restore them.  And God did.

Them dry bones!  Them dry bones!  How often have you and I felt like them dry bones that have been laying there after a long battle and that have been picked over by birds and were left there to decay where they fell?  Like when you and I are hungry and need food, like when you and I are sick and need someone to take care of us, like when you and I are tired and we need rest, or when you and I were alone or troubled and we need someone to comfort us, or when you and I have been in prison of any kind, and we’ve needed someone to visit. 

Did you notice in Luke’s Gospel we heard this evening, on Easter Vigil, the most important Service of the year; Jesus was not there at the tomb at all?  We heard about the women from Galilee and the men in dazzling clothes, but no Jesus.  Where is Jesus?  The men in dazzling clothes tell us that Jesus is not with the dead, but among the living.  What does this mean, Jesus will be found amongst the living?  Luke will go on to finish this book and use the next book, The Acts of the Apostles, to tell about how the resurrected Jesus being among the living.

At our house, Victor and I have a disagreement about Salvador Dali’s last supper picture hanging in our office.  He doesn’t like it because Jesus’ posture reminds him of the 1983 movie, Sudden Impact where Dirty Harry, played by Clint Eastwood says, “Go ahead, make my day.” I like the picture because in this picture Jesus is translucent, while the people at table are deep in prayer.  This picture reminds me that the resurrected Jesus is there, at the breaking of the bread. 

I believe that Luke’s empty tomb tells us today that whenever the hungry are fed, the resurrected Jesus is there ready to restore dry bones.  When one is sick and someone is there to take care of that person, the resurrected Jesus can be found ready to renew dry bones.  I believe when someone is alone or troubled and someone is there to comfort that person, the resurrected Jesus can be found ready to refresh dry bones.  I believe that the resurrected Jesus will be here tonight with us at the breaking of the bread. 

This morning I was fortunate enough to be somewhere where I heard about someone who did not want a funeral service.  Mind you, I never met this person, but I did know and respect someone who knew and cared for the deceased.  Knowing that someone, I felt the need to hear about this individual who did not want a funeral service.  During the service, I heard how this person fed people, welcomed people and how this person entertained people.  I learned about how this person clothed people and how her clothes can be found across the United States.  Again, I have never met this person, but from what I heard, this person helped to bring the resurrected Jesus to people so he could heal many dry bones, if this person knew it or not.

I tell my children in school to monitor the world around them.  My prayer for us all this Easter Vigil is that we will all monitor the world around us.  I pray we take a moment to see where we can help bring about the resurrected Jesus so he can tend to the dry bones of those who are hungry, sick, lonely, and troubled. For as we look and find Jesus among the living, so will our dry bones be healed.  Amen

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Holy Wednesday

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 70; Hebrews 12:1-3; John 13:21-32

The Rev. Jeff Bohanski

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen

This evening I invite you to ponder two questions.  Question one:  What makes you able to say and own these in the words we say in the Nicene Creed, “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth?”  Question two: “What makes you able to authentically say these words “…he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.”

For me, I can say and own these words, “I believe in God, the Father, the Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth because of Donald Duck.  Yep, Donald Duck.  When I was a kid in middle school, I saw an old 1959 short movie produced by Walt Disney called Donald in Mathmagic Land.  (You can find this movie today on YouTube.)  The story is about Donald Duck who is on a hunting expedition where he finds himself in a strange land where all the trees are made up of square roots.  When he asks, “What kind of crazy place is this?” the narrator informs him that he is in a land of great adventure, he is about to take a journey into the fantastic world of mathematics.  In the movie Donald learns how math is found in music, art, architecture, nature, games, science, and the entire universe.  The movie ends with a quote from Galileo.  “Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the universe.”  As a middle schooler, this movie helped me to begin a lifelong journey with God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven earth because I knew then, like Donald, that if our universe is ordered by math, it must have been created by a great intelligence. 

What makes me able believe and to authentically say these words “…he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.” is because of the words in the Gospel we heard a few moments ago, “Jesus was troubled in spirit.”  These words tell me that Jesus was human.  He was troubled.  That means God really became one of us. These words make this mere human feel understood by God because they show me God in Jesus knows my pain.  God gets me.  These words give me hope.

The other day my class and I were headed out for Recess.  Recess for my class comes at a time in the latter part of the afternoon when the children and I need a break from each other.  The children have been in class for hours.  I have been working with them for hours.  That day as we were heading out, we met a class was coming in.  The teacher informed us that it was raining.  My children and I together let out a collective groan.  When the children heard me groan, they looked at me with great astonishment.  I simply said, “Yep, I understand your pain.  I want to be outside too. 

These words, “Jesus was troubled in spirit.” give me hope because I know the one who was troubled in spirit will one day also say to me, “Yep, I understand your pain.”

My friends, today is Wednesday of Holy Week.  It feels as if we are at the very top of a rollercoaster looking over the precipice.  We’ve been on this ride since Christmas.  At Christmas we celebrated the birth of Jesus with poinsettias.  The red of the flowers reminded us we were at the beginning of a ride that would only lead us to Holy Week.  We passed through the season of Epiphany where we saw glimpses of Jesus’ divinity.  Then Lent began with ashes and the reminder that we are but dust and to dust we shall one day return. In Lent were invited to ask ourselves how we manage to forget that even though we are but dust, we are never be left alone.

Tomorrow starts the Tridium, the three days where we pass through the anguish of Gethsemane, the pain of good Friday, the emptiness of Holy Saturday as we journey toward the joy of Easter. I invite you to journey through these days remembering that Jesus was also human.  Though he was also fully divine, he was also fully human like you and me.  He was troubled, as you and I are.  He felt sadness, betrayal, and loneliness as you and I do. 

My prayer for all of us these three days is that we embrace this human and divine Jesus who once walked, and still walks with us the path of human life.  Life, death, and resurrection.  I pray we all hold onto the hope that one day we will be met with the words, “Yep, I feel your pain.”  Have a good three days.  Have a good Tridium.

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Easter Day

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; John 20:1-18

The Rev. Clint Brown

Theme: We see what we expect to see.

 Now this morning you might think we have something very simple to do. After all, it’s Easter and we know the story and all we need to do is to say our “Alleluias” and to peek into the empty tomb to say for one more year, “Yep, still empty,” and move on. The problem is that while we can all be looking into the same tomb, are we all seeing the same thing? Because, in fact, there are at least three ways I can think of to look into the empty tomb and each of them has to do with our expectations of what we’ll find there. The truth is that you will only find what you’re looking for; you will only see what you expect to see.

One way to look into the empty tomb is to think of the Resurrection as a fabrication – a made up story – impossible to believe. I’m sorry, you say, I appreciate the fervor of faith and that this warms some people’s hearts and gives them something to believe in, but you just can’t rise from the dead. It’s an impossibility. That’s not nitpicking. That’s not being a party pooper. That’s just respecting the facts. One cannot build a life upon something which is so obviously mythological, no offence, so please don’t force me to. If Jesus lived at all and if he died by crucifixion, then death was as final for him as it is for you or me. It is much more likely that what we have here is some chicanery, if well-intentioned, on the part of his followers, who knew him to be a good and decent man and wanted others to know that, too, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that the world has been misled from the beginning.

Now this is all a valid point. If we are the victims of a massive deception, then that has implications. The religious leaders of the time certainly appreciated that if Jesus’ disciples were able to point to an empty tomb and say that he had risen, it could potentially destroy all that they were working to save. Matthew reports that they went to Pilate. “Sir, we remember what this imposter said while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise again’” (Matthew 27:64). And they requested that a troop of soldiers be placed at the tomb and that, in addition to the large stone rolled across its entrance, that it should be sealed (Matthew 27:62-66). If you look into the empty tomb and expect to see a hoax, perpetuated on us down through the millennia, then that is what you will see. Certainly, that has been one way to see it from the beginning.

Then again, like Peter, we may run to the tomb and breathlessly look inside and wonder just what in the world is going on? We notice the details. Despite the extra precautions, the tomb is definitely empty. The extra seals are broken. The massive stone is rolled away. The soldiers have fled. The cloth that had wrapped the head is, curiously, neatly folded up off to the side in a place by itself. None of those things can just happen by themselves. One thing Peter knows for sure is that he didn’t do it. Is this some kind of a sick joke? Who would do such a thing? Peter emerges from the tomb, looks over his shoulder, scratches his head, and shuffles back home in deep thought pondering these things. We, too, can check out the facts and yet still be puzzled by what has happened (20:6)…and the possibility begins to dawn on us that maybe, just maybe Jesus has been raised? But it could also be that this possibility is just so far outside the realm of our experience that it can’t be believed. In the empty tomb we can see a conundrum, a nut too hard to crack, so we leave it behind not quite knowing what to make of it. We can just ignore it. For a great many of us we leave the tomb scratching our heads and wondering about it, but then life goes on.

Finally, then, we can look inside the empty tomb and expect to see what the Church has proclaimed for two thousand years. Here is a validation. Jesus Christ was God Incarnate who came to dwell among us. He rose again, just as he said, and is neither a false prophet nor an imposter. Because he was resurrected, we can be sure that he was telling the truth. We can be certain now of our own resurrection. And the divine power that brought Jesus Christ back to life is now available to us to bring our spiritually dead selves back to life.[1] But only if we believe. And that’s the rub. You have to see in order to believe; you have to believe in order to see. Mary Magdalene hears a voice behind her and turns around. She expects the gardener and that is what she sees. A second time the voice speaks to her, but this time it calls her name. Then she knew. She knew the second time that turning around she would see Jesus because with Jesus she had a personal relationship. Only the second time was Mary’s turn a turn toward recognition, and that, friends, is the audacious claim of Easter. We are called to turn toward Jesus and to recognize in the empty tomb the unassailable proof that here is our Lord…our Savior…our God (John 20:28).

Today the empty tomb is set before you as a fact. We are all looking in. The question is, what do you see?... because we can all be seeing different things. You will only find what you are looking for; you will only see what you expect to see. Just maybe this Easter you have a turn you need to make, to face directly the one who is calling you by name. Perhaps as you peer into the empty tomb this year you will discover the God who is always looking for you looking back. We see what we expect to see. Amen.

[1] Bruce Barton et al., John, Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1993), 389.

Friday, April 15, 2022

Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10: 16-25; John 18:1 – 19:42

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr says this of the crucifixion: “the cross we Jesus’ voluntary acceptance of undeserved suffering as an act of total solidarity with the pain of the world.  Jesus embraced suffering, not as a punishment, but because he wanted to understand our pain – the pain of the world.”    The cross represents Jesus’ full and complete solidarity with the brokenness of the world, the inevitability of death, and pain that you and I feel.  There is no pain Jesus has not felt, there is no sin that Christ has not forgiven, there is no death Christ has not touched. 

One year ago I presided at the graveside burial at a local cemetery for my older brother, Randall, who was four years older than me.  When I arrived at the cemetery I saw his casket, his name, the year of his birth, and the date of his death.  It has been, to date, the closest I have ever come to seeing my own death.  The reality of death was unavoidable to me.  The hole dug into the earth, the pile of dirt beside the whole, all of pointed to the inevitability of mortality.

Presiding over the burial of my older brother felt like someone took a shovel, thrust it into my chest, and started shoveling out my insides.  I hated it.  I recognized then that I was going through a necessary death myself.  A death that I wanted to avoid feeling at all costs.  

 Spiritual teachers and saints far more intelligent than I have taught us for centuries that if we really desire life, we must first die a necessary death.  It is only through these necessary deaths, that our souls grow deeper.  Saints like John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila called these necessary deaths the dark nights of the soul.  They are often seasons of doubt, confusion, pain, or depression, anguish, intense feelings of vulnerability.  They are extremely uncomfortable, and they are unavoidable. 

Sadly, our society lacks even the most basic spiritual skills to deal with the kind of pain Jesus faced at the cross and the kind of necessary dying we must do ourselves.   The best mechanism our culture has to offer for spiritual pain is distraction.  It’s Tik Tok, facebook, the endless news cycle. 

Are you upset, angry, confused?  Don’t like how you are feeling?  There are pills you can take, there is an unlimited stream of alcohol you can put into your body, there are plenty of smart phone apps that will help you meet someone for a meaningless sexual trist.  You can take a trip, you can buy a car, you can get a new job, get a new spouse, have a new kid – and none of it will cure the pain which exists in every human soul. 

Jesus’ way – the one way – the way, the truth, and the life – is this: reality must be felt at all costs.  That is the reason for so many empty pews on Good Friday – reality is painful and hard.  Few of us are courageous enough to face the stark reality – Christ’s reality – which is that there are parts within each of us that should die, so that we can more fully live.  AMEN.   

Thursday, April 14, 2022

Maundy Thursday

Ex. 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

The Rev. Clint Brown

Theme: Foot washing circa 2022

Seeing God in the ordinary stuff of life. That is the classic definition of “What is a ‘sacrament?’” In the Eucharist, for example, we are presented with ordinary bread and wine, but we are made to understand that though like all other bread and wine in the world, this bread and this wine has become for us like no other bread or wine in the world. In them, beneath the form and substance of ordinary matter, we perceive Christ’s very own Presence. In St. Augustine’s memorable phrase, a sacrament such as this is what it is “because in [it] one thing is seen, while another is grasped.”[1] We are here tonight to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

We recall tonight the institution of the Eucharist or Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper. Different traditions have different names for it as well as different understandings of what it is that is happening and how, but all Christians agree that, symbolically, it represents the fact that, as Christians, we are united spiritually. That’s pretty extraordinary. Without being related by blood or class or by any other categorical measure, those who eat at this table are family. And, like family, when we get up from this table, it is expected that we should bear some resemblance to one another. It is supposed that this Sacrament will define us and reveal to us who we are and what we aspire to become. We are meant to be recognized as the people who live out what it communicates about brokenness and sacrifice. The ongoing challenge of the Eucharist, then, is to live into its meaning not just to receive it. As Paul would have it, to receive it “worthily” (1 Corinthians 11:27ff.) and as one of our prayers has it, to be delivered from the presumption of coming to it for solace only and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. In every sense, we are to metabolize this food, to ingest it, so that it actually becomes a part of who we are.

As a counterpoint to this great act of Christian devotion, tonight we will also commemorate the foot washing. C.S. Lewis writes: “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself [by which he means the Eucharist], your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat – the glorifier and the glorified, God Himself, is truly hidden.”[2] Here is the connective tissue between the Supper and the foot washing. Without our neighbor – the common connections between us – we cannot practice the sacrament of equal importance, the giving of ourselves. Here again is God to be seen in the ordinary stuff of life.

More than a few times in recent weeks I have remarked in conversation that the reason people don’t come to church is because there are Christians there. We Christians who are supposed to be known by extraordinary acts of compassion and care and self-denial, kindness, generosity, self-offering, and patience, are more often known these days for extraordinary acts of exclusion and fear of the stranger, for small-mindedness and self-preservation, and for judgment. The place that our neighbor holds in the ordering of our lives is getting smaller and smaller. The foot washing is the antidote for what ails us. Tonight we see Jesus washing the feet of his friends.

To our sensibilities is seems such an exemplary act. We can be profoundly affected by the humbling experience of washing another’s feet, getting down on our knees, lowering ourselves, experiencing its discomfort and embarrassment, but this is not actually Jesus’ lesson. It is not actually the foot washing that matters. The trick is actually to see it as something quite ordinary. In Jesus’ day, there were two very practical reasons to wash feet: firstly, to remove dirt; and, secondly, to be hospitable. Jesus’ primary lesson was to do the very common thing that was ordinarily given to do by servant as the commonplace thing to do as a Christian. It is the foot washing attitude that matters, of serving others in a commonplace stuff of life.

We can show a foot washing attitude anytime we take on a menial task or accept a lesser role. We can try not insisting so much on our “rights” or “privileges” so much, but opt, instead, to try seeing the world through the eyes of those for whom “rights” and “privileges” are just things written on paper, a far cry from how society treats them. We can stop ourselves from time to time from blowing right past others, and, instead, meet others’ needs before meeting our own. We can wash feet when we seek out a job that no one else will do and then cheerfully do it, or when we focus on the results being achieved and not on who is getting the credit. All these are ways to wash feet in the year 2022.[3]  

The Eucharist – the foot washing – two powerful and complementary images for the living of the Christian life. Perceive it, the things that are, and become it. Amen.

[1] Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 272

[2] Bruce Barton et al., John, Life Application Bible Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1993), 277.

[3] Bruce Barton et al., John, 389.

Sunday, April 10, 2022

Lent

Luke 23:1-49

The Rev. Cn. Joann Saylors

When my niece and nephew were little, they were like most children when it came to their birthdays. They would look forward to their birthdays for months, planning the theme, the location, the guest list. And of course, the most important thing: what presents to ask for?  They would go back and forth, influenced by their friends, their parents, commercials. Throughout the process the excitement would continue to grow. The topic of the birthday gift worked its way into the conversation about five times a week. Anticipation would build and build, reaching a nearly unbearable pitch by the time the birthday finally arrived. The opening of gifts flew by in an instant.  It was THE BEST PARTY EVER and I GOT EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED.

But then the letdown.  That present looked a lot better in the commercial than it does in real life.  Putting 11,000 Lego pieces together takes concentration and patience, and that’s not fun at all.  The toy doesn’t work the way it was supposed to.  Another friend got something newer or bigger.  Whatever the reason, the gift they received didn’t match their expectations, and they’d failed to see it coming. Massive disappointment, and tossing the gift aside as the insatiable desire for the next present, the one that really will be perfect, started to grow.

How quickly they go from celebration to despair and anger.   The same jarring leap that I feel myself make every Palm Sunday.  As Fleming Rutledge, an Episcopal priest and renowned preacher, put it, “We start out in gala mood; Palm Sunday is always a crowd-pleaser. The festivity of the triumphal procession, the stirring music, the palm branches, the repeated hosannas all suggest a general air of celebration. It comes as a shock to us, year after year, to find ourselves abruptly plunged into the solemn, overwhelmingly long dramatic reading of the Passion narrative. It’s a tough Sunday. It begins in triumph and ends in catastrophe.”[1] 

It's that movement we get from our readings, the jump from “Hosanna”s for Palm Sunday to “Crucify Him!” in the Passion narrative. 

The people of Israel had been waiting so very long for the promised Messiah.  The pilgrims coming to town with Jesus were singing the so-called Hallel psalms, the ‘let’s go up to Zion’ songs, kind of like the songs my family used to sing while we hiked — ‘Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work we go’.  The Hallel psalms are full of Hosannas which means, “God saves,” and Hallelujahs which means, “praise Yahweh.”  They are ancient praise songs, and the pilgrims would have sung them whether Jesus was coming into town with them or not.  The line ‘blessed is he who comes (to Jerusalem) in the name of the Lord’ was what the pilgrims sang about and to each other every time they went up to Zion.  

But this time the songs were especially meaningful because THIS TIME their king really had come to town.  This time the ultimate son of David really had arrived.  All the talking and planning and waiting and anticipating was done, the King of Kings was riding into Jerusalem, and things were finally going to change.

But they didn't understand that God's plan wasn't going to unfold in the way they thought it would.  I wonder how they didn't realize something was awry.  Pilate was riding into town at the same time, on a great white steed, in a glorious Imperial procession.  That was how the rulers traveled – with great pomp and circumstance.  So how could the crowds not see how far their expectations for Jesus were from reality?  How could they not notice that this messiah, this one coming in the name of the Lord, was riding on a donkey, just a colt?  It would have been – should have been – ridiculous.  But no one saw.  No one realized that the gift they thought they wanted, a savior, would turn the world upside down not by military might but by hanging on a cross, They didn't realize because they failed to see.

Those who shouted “Hosanna” should have seen, but they did not, at least not most of them.  By Friday, the image of the lowly donkey had faded, if it had ever registered at all. 

If this gift wasn’t what we thought we wanted, if Jesus wasn’t the sort of superhero leader we expected,

if we couldn’t make him work the way we wanted to, we’d simply toss him aside.  “Crucify him!”  It’s easy for us to look back at the crowd and shake our heads, but we would have done the same.  We do the same.  We shout both lines today, because we are no different from the crowds gathered in Jerusalem.  We want clear and believable demonstrations of God’s power and kingly authority.  We want God to act in ways we expect, in ways we can control.

God acts – decisively and finally – by coming into the world, but he comes as a helpless baby who grows up to be killed on a cross.  That messiah looked a lot better in the commercial than it does in real life.  Following him takes concentration and patience, and that’s not fun at all.  Discipleship doesn’t work the way we thought it was supposed to.  The world promises lots of somethings that are newer and bigger.  Why should we serve this God instead?

We can stay in that place.  Disappointed, even angry that God hasn't intervened in the way we think is right.  We can turn our eyes away from the messy work that God is doing and dream instead of a God who just rushes in to fix things.  We can start looking for the next party, the next magic answer to our problems.But if we do that, we will be disappointed yet again.We can’t go from hosanna to alleluia without this terrible journey between.

Easter is our next party, a time when all possibilities are fresh again and the world is made new.  It is meet and right to be people who live in confidence that it will come again.  But we're not there yet.

We're here instead, on Palm Sunday, in the confusing space between “Hosanna” and “Crucify him!”  As we travel with Jesus through Holy Week, my prayer is for us to stay here, to see Jesus as he really is instead of limiting him to who we would have him be.  In his life and death, Jesus worked outside the margins of what was comfortable for people, calling his followers to step outside of our own comfort zones. 

And in this uncomfortable week we meet Jesus who is abandoned and betrayed. And Jesus who prays at the Mount of Olives that he might be delivered. Jesus who above all prays to obey his Father’s will. Jesus who is beaten and blindfolded, condemned and mocked. Jesus who forgives his tormentors. Jesus who forgives us for how we have wronged him.

When we know that Jesus, and commit to following him anyway, we walk with our Savior to the cross and beyond.  Which is where true joy will be found.  Because it is only when we live as Jesus lived and die to self as Jesus died, in the service of others, that our deep longing for God can be fulfilled and our disappointment in everything else put aside like so many torn scraps of wrapping paper.  

After the darkness and the pain, the light will come again. And we can enjoy the party, grateful for this gift we have been given.  

AMEN.

[1]Fleming Rutledge, “The New World Order,” in The Undoing of Death, Wm. B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, 2002, 11.

Sunday, April 3, 2022

The Fifth Sunday of Lent

Isaiah 43: 16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

Two Sundays ago, I walked outside my home early on a Sunday morning to get into my car and drive to work. On my driveway, I noticed a plastic ziplock bag.  Picking the bag up, I found several rocks and a piece of paper.  I took out the paper, unfolded it, and was shocked by what I saw – in my hands I was holding a propaganda poster for a white supremacist organization.  On the poster I read words of threat and of hate toward people of Jewish faith. 

I have three things I want to say about this incident - the first two involve my response, and the final is a word about our Good Friday service next week. 

My initial response to discovering this poster on my driveway Sunday before church was problematic – I was filled with self-righteous rage and anger.  On my way to conduct services here on Sunday morning, I said more than a few four-letter words directed to whomever littered our street with these posters.  Not the best mindset with which to enter worship.  It wasn’t pretty. 

After some time passed, I remembered that confronting hate with my own hatred would not solve anything.  At the same time, I could not find it anywhere in my heart to forgive my enemy – as Jesus instructs that we do.  I was at an impasse – I knew that I was supposed to forgive, but I could not find it anywhere in my heart.  I prayed, and I believe I received an answer.  The answer was this: to see whomever he or she was that distributed these flyers throughout our neighborhood as God might see them.  How do I do that?  The answer was this – to imagine the person distributing flyers of bile and hate throughout my neighborhood – as an infant, a baby.  A baby who had not yet learned hate, a baby of God wonderfully made who had not yet learned such flawed thinking that pollutes so much of our world today.  Thinking of the perpetrator as a baby, created in God’s image just like me, sinful like me, has opened a pathway for me to begin praying for this person or group, whomever they are.  I am reminded once more that the only way to confront hate purposefully, is through love.

My second initial response to this circumstance was also problematic.  Once I got in my car that Sunday morning, I stopped at the nearby CVS and threw the flyer in the garbage can, because that is what the flyer was to me, garbage, which belonged in a landfill.  I thought about calling the constable, but I chose not to, because I was preoccupied with Sunday morning’s work.   Such is the subtlety and banality of evil.  We let it slip in, we don’t react to it because it seems too inconvenient, we are too busy.  That was my response, initially. Until a conversation with my wife prompted me to a change my mind.  She told me I needed to call it in, that I could not be silent about this.  She was right. As she often is.  I called it in, and was told that many people had called in as well, thank God.  I have decided to use this sad moment to create some light, and have made a donation to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., in St. Andrew’s name.   

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor who was imprisoned by the Nazis for his attempt to take Hitler’s life during World War II, and who was martyred days before the Third Reich fell said this: “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself: . . . Not to speak is to speak.   Not to act is to act.”   

I close with a word about Good Friday.  While Good Friday, which commemorates Christ’s crucifixion, is a powerful day, it can also be a trigger point, as some use it to espouse a dangerous theology which promotes the view that Christianity is superior to Judaism.  It is not.  This idea of Christian superiority is to blame – in part – for the pogroms in Russia and the Ukraine, and the holocaust.  Jesus was not Christian.  Jesus was Jewish.  Jesus was not crucified by Jews, but by Romans.  Judaism is the very tree from which the branch of Christianity grows.  If we deny this, if we as professing Christians support positions which elevate Christianity as superior to Judaism, we are sawing off the very branch from the tree upon which we are sitting.

On Good Friday this year, St. Andrew’s will offer a new Good Friday liturgy which seeks to amend problematic language regarding Judaism and Jewish people.  This liturgy comes from the Seminary of the Southwest, and comes with Bishop Doyle’s support.   It is a beautiful service.  I cannot wait for us to participate in it together.  AMEN.

Sunday, Marrch 27, 2022

The Fourth Sunday of Lent

 Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

The Rev. Clint Brown

Theme: God is looking for you

Paul’s word for it was “reconciliation,” which means, then as now, the work of restoring the relationship between two parties who have had a falling out; but in Paul’s day it was a largely secular term. In Paul’s day, the more familiar use of the word was in the sphere of international relations. It was more akin to what we might call diplomacy or mediation. Reconciliation was quintessentially the work of an ambassador who was tasked with hammering out treaties and terms of trade between countries or people groups. With Paul the twist is that normally the responsibility for reconciliation lay with the one responsible for the breach, the rupture in the relationship, but here, in this illustration to the Corinthian church, contrary to normal expectations, Paul represents God as the reconciler. God, who is the injured party, is the one who accepts responsibility for having us back in God’s good graces, and whereas human demands for reparation are often punitive, onerous, and vindictive, God, Paul tells us, has offered all of humanity a blanket amnesty. If it were us, and the tables were turned, we would not likely pass such kindly judgment, at least not if our track record as a species has anything to teach us, and nowhere is the difference between us and God more poignantly or powerfully illustrated than in the famous Parable of the Prodigal Son.

We all know the story. By verse 16, the prodigal has hit rock bottom. We know this because he finds himself in a pig sty, no less, which for a Jewish person would have been a particularly offensive place to find oneself in. And as he watches with envious eyes the pigs munching on their scraps and would even be glad to fill his own belly with what they’re eating, it is the same word[1] that Jesus has used in the Sermon on the Mount for those who are to hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matthew 5:6); and, later, at the feeding of the five thousand, it describes the complete satisfaction of the crowds after having their fill of loaves and fishes (Matthew 14:20). All along all the prodigal has wanted is to fill his belly, and, all along, he has wanted the wrong thing. So very like us. And so, the Scripture says, he “came to himself” (v. 17). What a masterful “stroke of art to represent the beginning of repentance as the return of a sound consciousness.”[2] Swallowing his pride, he determines to return home. He knows he will not be returning as a son, however. By custom he is now dead to his family, as if buried and gone. As someone who has brought enormous shame on his household, particularly on his father, he is now to be treated as a complete stranger, not even to be acknowledged on the street. As he well knows, the best he can hope for is just what he says, to be taken on as a hired hand in his father’s house in order to at least subsist – which, to him, would be a vast improvement over the abject state he is in now. And so he returns home a far wiser individual than how he left.

And what happens? It is a complete reversal of expectation. While he is still far off, his father recognizes him and runs to him – runs to him, as if the father were the one in the wrong – and throwing his arms around his son he completely ignores all the disapproving looks of the neighbors for the smelly, dirty, unworthy louse they see crawling back with his tail between his legs. What he sees though, and what they do not, is the moral journey his son has taken, who has returned a different person. He was dead and now lives, he was lost and now is found.

Of course, the prodigal son is us, our deadness and lostness is just a matter of degree, perhaps. What are we to do with such extravagant grace? In the first place, there’s really nothing else for it but to take it seriously and accept it, and we do that by changing. Countless times when Jesus heals or in some other way restores the individuals he encounters, he says, “Go and sin no more.” It is not necessarily a free pass. It comes with strings attached. He is saying, go and make a fresh start. Don’t waste this opportunity by falling back into the same patterns and hates and sin. Go and show that you understand what I have done for you by amending your life. And, secondly, appreciating all that has been done for us, we are to become ourselves ministers of reconciliation. We are to practice the kind of forgiveness and reconciliation that has been lavished on us. Every strained relationship in your life – every wrong that you have done that needs to be righted – there is no better time than today to utter those most difficult words, “I’m sorry.” Because when the books are opened and the accounts are read, the only thing we will have been asked to be experts at is the quality of our relationships and our love.

To close, I wanted to point out that in Luke 15, in addition to the story of the prodigal, there are two other stories about something being lost: a man loses a sheep and a woman loses a coin. Jesus does not tell these stories as models of virtuous conduct. Jesus’s point is that no one in their right mind would leave ninety-nine sheep to wander around in search of one. Plain common sense dictates that you count your losses and not risk losing more. Or take the lady with the coin. While we might search for ten minutes – to get on our hands and knees and scratch around a little under the dresser or a few extra nooks and crannies – we also know we can’t waste the whole morning. What we do is recognize our loss – it stings a little – but we decide that it is not a very great loss, or at least not one from which we can’t recover. We haven’t lost something we can’t live without.

But not so with God. That is where human nature and the character of God are shown to be so radically different. Because God can’t live without us. God does go off to search for the one lost sheep, not desiring that any are left behind. God is the father, the Heavenly Father, running out to embrace you after you have “come to your senses” (Luke 15:17). In God’s mind there is no calculus to perform – no risk assessment to make – no judgment about whether you are worth the effort or not. You are. You are something God searches for constantly and intensely, and that is really good news in a world that that always seems to be in a rush to get ahead and to see after its own needs, even if it means putting you down and, all too often, leaving you behind. God is always looking for you, which means that the only way you can be lost is if you want to be. Amen.

Children’s Sermon: Practicing forgiveness and letting go of anger and resentment

[1] Gk. χορτάζω (chortazō). See Marvin Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, Vol. 1 (McLean, VA: MacDonald, 1985), 386.

[2] ibid., 387.

Sunday, March 13, 2022

The Second Sunday of Lent

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35

The Rev. Clint Brown

God is a meddler. The Bible is really just one long catalogue of God’s meddling, getting involved with us, inserting himself into our business. The Bible is the proof that God has never left us alone.

In the first place, God has chosen to create. Instead of nothing, there is something. It did not have to be so. God’s Nature is Perfection. God doesn’t need or require anything. God suffers no lack, God experiences no diminishment of any kind – and yet, look around. There is something, not nothing. Here we are; here is the universe with all its astoundingness and wonder. The only explanation – why we’re even here at all – is that God wished it to be so. God did the choosing in this, and God chose to create – you, and me, and everything that ever was or ever will be. And that means God is fully invested in you, in us, in the world in the same way as you are invested in your children, in your work, in anything you create. God meddles in all that’s important to God for the same reason you do – because God loves.

Which we see borne out today in a dramatic way in God’s choosing of a people. We speak of the Jewish people as the “chosen” people, and this is because God spoke to a specific person, Abraham, and told him that he and his descendants would be blessed and connected to God in a special way. It’s not that God has no use for any other people, but God chose a particular people in order to reveal Himself in a personal way – through whom He could directly relate to the world. And when this people found themselves in trouble, God delivered them from slavery in Egypt. And when this people turned apostate and rejected Him, God did not give them up, but sent prophets to turn their hearts. And when this people were taken into exile, God made a way for their return. And, in the fullness of time, from among this people there issued forth a Savior, a Son, born of a woman, born into the middle of empire, violence, and sin – born into our world. Proving, yet again, that God can’t leave us alone. And this despite how we much we would often like to be left alone, left to our own devices, left free to live as if God didn’t matter. God can’t seem to keep out of our business.

Every year as we journey from Christmas to Easter, we are reminded that the Christian God is not a hidden God. He is not a concept you need to tease out – an abstraction to cooly and dispassionately judge – but is someone staring right out at you from the place where he lay in a manger – and from a cross. The modern notion that deity is a philosophical concept to be tried on alongside others is quite alien to our tradition. Immanuel – God is with us – is what the Christian has to proclaim. God has come to live and die among us, to confront us directly with his reality, and that demands a decision.

Because God’s meddling is not something we can speak of in the past tense. You need to decide what to do with this meddling God today. No doubt you have experienced God’s meddling at some point in your life. You will have heard a voice within saying that maybe it’s all true? Maybe I should give in and let this Gospel change my life? That is God speaking to you. That is what you get when you have a meddling God who just won’t leave you alone, who won’t let you stay as you are. You can’t escape God, or God’s meddling, because God is the answer to the question. So thanks be to God – this meddling God – who has meddled his way right into history – who has demonstrated how profoundly he loves you – and who will be forever trying to meddle his way into your heart.

Sunday, March 6, 2022

The First Sunday in Lent

Deuteronomy 26: 1-11; Psalm 91: 1-2, 9-16; Romans 10: 8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

            I want to speak today about temptation, something Oscar Wilde famously once said was the only thing in the world he could not resist. In the Gospel reading today, Jesus confronts three specific temptations: (1) the temptation of instant gratification (“turn this stone into a loaf of bread”). (2) the temptation of worldly power (“if you then, then, will worship me, it will all be yours”) and finally (3) the temptation of authority over God (“if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here . . . for God will protect you.”) 

            Although there appear to be two characters in today’s story, I would argue there is only one.  There is Jesus, of course, who is like us in this regard – he is alone, vulnerable, hungry conditions which make temptation especially alluring.  And there is one whom I choose to call the tempter.  The tempter, I argue, is not separate from us, it is the corrosive voice all of us have inside ourselves which pushes us toward the easy answer and the quick fix.  It is a most persuasive voice. 

Temptation, though it is all around us, is powerless over us. We are the ones who permit ourselves to be tempted. There are donuts in our parish hall. They are not forcing me to eat them. They are just sitting there, in the box, all glazed and pretty. But nevertheless I hear the tempter’s voice in my head – even now – just eat one donut.  It’s so delicious.  One donut will satisfy you.  If I choose to be persuaded by the tempter’s voice – which is really my voice - I am culpable, not the donut.

            The first temptation – the temptation of instant gratification. Jesus is in the wilderness, fasting, he is hungry. He is told that he has power to transform a stone into bread to eat. If he gives into the temptation, he will eat the bread, and no longer hunger. He refuses. He chooses discomfort – hunger – over gratification.  We live in a world of instant gratification. Instant Rice. Instant Coffee. Instant Credit. I have a sign on my wall which says, “the path that offers the greatest challenge is often the one leading you in the right direction.” 

            The second temptation – the temptation of worldly power. Jesus sees all the kingdoms of the world and is told he can have it all if he only would worship…himself.  Make himself God. 

Our culture is permeated with self worship.  How many of us have created our own narcissistic and self-centered universes in which we are the center and every one else orbits around us? I have. It never works. Jesus’ rebuttal – “worship the Lord your God and serve only him” saves him - it humbles him.  When we fire ourselves as the manager of our lives, and hire God instead to manage our lives, our lives become a thousand-fold more interesting and worth living.  

            The third temptation – the temptation of authority over God. Jesus is led to the top of the temple in Jerusalem, some 180 feet from the ground. He is persuaded to jump from the temple, and even quotes the Psalm to say that God will not allow him to be injured.   His stronger self prevails, and he refuses, and in doing so teaches that none of us – even Jesus – should play God.

            I close with a story. Growing up, my mother firmly established three rules for the teenage boys living in her home: no babies, no drugs, no dogs on the couch. She later added a fourth: if you get arrested, do not call her. My older brother tested this fourth rule, and in high school was arrested. He got his one phone call and called mom. Mom answered the phone in the middle of the night, and after hearing my brother’s sob story, said to him “well, I hope you can find someone to bail you out.”  Tough love. That is what happens in the wilderness. Jesus learns God’s three rules: do not seek instant gratification, do not be misguided by worldly power, and do not try to play God. That might sound like tough love. To me it sounds like grace. AMEN.

Wednesday, March 2, 2022 - Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

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

The Rev. Clint Brown

Theme: The freedom of limitation

As I understand it, there are two basic tasks in Lent. The first is to simplify and reorder our priorities so that the desire for God is before any other. We often reflect this in intentional practices, in the taking on of works of charity or piety or the taking away of things like chocolate or television. The second task is to accept responsibility for our sins…for owning it. We are sinners who, the Catechism reminds us, “[seek] our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation” (BCP 848). Sin which we normally work so hard to rationalize, minimize, or deny altogether is very much on the table during the season of Lent. In Lent we are invited to face ourselves squarely and not give ourselves a pass. We are sinners and we need to repent. The Catechism goes on to ask:

Q. How does sin have power over us?

A. Sin has power over us because we lose our liberty when our relationship to God is distorted.

Very curious, that. We lose our liberty? One thinks of sin as getting to do whatever we want, a gain not a loss. How does it make sense, then, to say that it is a loss to wriggle out from under all the “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots?”

Three times today Christ calls out those whom he labels “hypocrites,” a word we use to mean people who say one thing, but do another, like a person who says they never talk bad about people behind their back, and then we catch them talking about people behind their backs. Actually, it’s a word that comes from the world of the theater. It’s the Greek for “one who speaks from under a mask,” since in the ancient world, when only men were actors, it was necessary to wear masks to impersonate different roles, especially female roles.

When Christ calls out the hypocrites, this is his basic idea. They are acting – mask-wearing – pretending to be something they are not in reality. The person who gives money to the poor, but only when the cameras are around, is not doing it out of any genuine concern for the poor, but to impress. The one who prays long, fancy prayers is not usually thinking first about their piety as much as winning the admiration of those who hear them. The warning here is that when undertaking any spiritual practice, our outsides should match our insides, and when they do not, that is a problem. Outward displays that do not correspond to internal dispositions are meaningless because they are not grounded in truth. They are not just deception; worse, they are self-deception. The real “you” is the one away from the cameras and the crowds, the person only you and God know about. And that is the “you” that matters.

It is altogether accurate to say that liberty is the freedom to choose, to self-determine, but true liberty is the freedom to choose what is best for us. So as you move through Lent and tackle your own Lenten devotions, I suggest that you try rooting your piety in your freedom rather than obligation. “I am not eating chocolate this Lent” sounds a lot better than “I can’t eat chocolate this Lent.” The second sounds like an imposition and lends itself to falseness and bitterness, while the first is rooted in authenticity as an expression of identity and personal choice. “I am a person who does this” will always be much more preferable than “I have to do this.” You see, Lent only works when it becomes an opportunity for making the kind of choices that are better for us. It is a time to practice priorities, in particular that all-important recognition that God should always have the greater claim on our lives. So, yes, this Lent choose practices that encourage discomfort over comfort, inconvenience over convenience. Go in whole hog, not because you want to maximize your suffering, but because you are meant to confront the question, “Why am I doing this?” And in complete liberty you may reply, “Because I am choosing Christ.” And that demonstrates, in its ironic way, the absolute freedom of limitation.