Sunday, June 4, 2023

The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday (Year A)

Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Psalm 8 or Canticle 2 or 13; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20

The Rev. Clint Brown

In late April of 1810, a beautiful Viennese noblewoman, Therese Malfatti, opened a letter addressed to her and watched as a piece of music fluttered out of the envelope and onto the floor. She leaned [over] to pick it up and saw that it was labeled simply: “for Therese.” The scrawled handwriting on the manuscript was immediately [recognizable]; it [was that of her] suitor, Ludwig van Beethoven. A few months shy of his fortieth birthday and increasingly desperate to marry, Beethoven had fallen in love with Therese earlier that spring and had proposed. The marriage never took place for reasons [that are] unclear, although it seems that Therese was willing, but her family was not. This little story is worth repeating, because when the music was found many years later among Therese’s effects, its dedication was mistakenly read as “Für Elise,” and the piece has been known by that title [ever since]. This, perhaps one of Beethoven’s best-known pieces, was thus no trifle for its composer but a musical love note; or [perhaps] more likely, a musical farewell to a [love that could never be].[1]

Sometime this week, I encourage you to do yourself the favor of putting on a recording of this famous piece and listening to it again with fresh ears, knowing what it meant to its composer and his doomed love affair. Imagine the impression it must have made on Therese Malfatti the first time she sat down to play it at her piano. I guarantee you will not hear its emotionally charged three minutes the same way ever again. 

Both the piece and the story capture well an essential quality about the music of Beethoven, and that is its very transparent autobiography. Music had not always been so personal. Before Beethoven, music had been intended more or less for entertainment; or, if it was “serious” music, reserved for the exclusive use of the church. But with Beethoven we see a seismic shift. Music was liberated. It could be serious about humanity as well as about God, and Beethoven was almost single-handedly responsible for this new and romantic view of music as personal testament. What Napoleon’s guns were doing to old Europe, Beethoven’s towering genius and Promethean sense of destiny was doing to music. Now music was free not only to plumb emotional depths hitherto unknown but to wax philosophical and poetic. And while no artistic effort has or can ever be completely devoid of some mark of its creator, never before had music been quite such a vehicle for personal expression.

On this Trinity Sunday, our readings celebrate the Triune God with an emphasis on creation – God as Creator. God’s creative acts are God’s means of personal expression. The Priestly writer who composed the first chapter of Genesis sometime in the early sixth century before Christ, was straining every category and means to capture the awesomeness of God’s creative activity. Compared to the gods of the peoples surrounding the ancient Hebrews, here was a portrait of how Yahweh, the one true God, had created from nothing and formed humankind in God’s own image. For his God, things were both grand and personal. And when, centuries later, Jesus spoke of the God of Israel as his Father, and commanded his small band of disciples to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, he was making plain that God, now revealed as Triune, was not and never had been done with creating. God was and still is at work in the world, bringing something new into being every time a person accepts baptism. God’s personal expressivity continues to be on full display in both the very big and the very small, not only in the realm of nature but equally so in us. 

It is this thought of God’s continuing work in us that I most want to leave you with today. You are an expression of God’s creativity. I believe that we don’t stop nearly often enough to consider the significance of this extraordinary fact, the fact of our having an existence at all. God has, as it were, given each of us a canvas upon which to paint a life, and our manner of life, our posture towards its possibilities and its challenges, our choices, these are our paints and brushes. There will be times when we will attempt to do things far in advance of our technique and our efforts will appear amateurish; times when our picture will look alright, but we could have risked more, attempting bolder strokes or brighter colors; or when we will get halfway through a portrait and realize we need to start over again because what we are painting is not truthful, not true to ourselves and our values; there will be days, weeks, or even months and years when our canvases will be clouded over by setbacks and disillusionments and darkness blankets what was once a sunny landscape; there will be times of dryness when we completely lack the inspiration to try and sit staring at a blank canvas (in those times we might do well to ask ourselves if it is paralysis because of fear, or, worse, the realization that we don’t have anything worth saying?); but, then again, there will be those times when we get things right and everything comes together, when we will feel at the full height of our powers and produce a masterpiece. Here is the crucial thing. To know yourself to be a child of God is to know that your life has significance, that it is always worth the effort of pressing on and making the most of it. Going through the motions, just getting by, is not enough, and neither is living irresponsibly and wastefully. This life is an extraordinary gift and far too precious to reject the call to be the best that you can be.

Whether you find yourself in a high place or a low place this morning – whether you believe your life is heading down the right track or not, know this – you are the unique expression of a personal God. God has created you in order to be revealed in you.

[1] Robert Harris, What to Listen for in Beethoven: The Essential Introduction to the World’s Foremost Composer and the Hidden Pleasures of Classical Music (Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1996), 17.

Sunday, March 28, 2023

Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23

The Rev. Jeff Bohanski

Pray with me, A Collect for Guidance

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Book of Common Prayer, page 100

Every family has its quirky inside the family vocabulary.  In my husband’s side of the family, it’s the use of the word “Coke.”  At any one of our family parties, someone will ask you “What kind of Coke do you want?” When asked that question, one needs to know you are being asked what kind of soda you would like. An appropriate response to the question would be, I would like, a Sprite, or a Dr. Pepper, or a Diet Coke, or even a Pepsi or an iced tea.  Over the years, our family has changed the definition of Coke to mean soda.

We Christians have done something similar to the word “Pentecost.”  We presume, perhaps in our arrogance, that we created that word.  For most of my life I assumed that Pentecost was just the celebration of the day The Holy Spirit descended of the people gathered in a public space. It was more or less the Church’s birthday.  For the community of the author of Acts Pentecost meant something different.

To a reader of Acts, Pentecost was a festival tied quiet closely to Passover.  Passover was the celebration of the remembrance of the events of Moses leading the people out of Egypt.  It was, or is, the powerful story of God’s redeeming God’s people from Egypt. 

The festival of Pentecost occurred fifty days later. It was an agricultural festival where the first sheaves of wheat were brought to give thanks for the harvest that was beginning to be brought in.  Prayers were also offered for bringing in the rest of the crop safely.  Pentecost was also a celebration of the remembrance of the time when Moses and the people arrived at Mount Sinai, fifty days after Passover, the leaving of Egypt.  It was the remembrance of when Moses went up the mountain and came down with the commandments for how God’s redeemed were to live according to God’s way, God’s purpose.

This is what was in the minds of those gathered in one place that one day of Pentecost when God decided to act again in a new way.  Luke writes, “There came from heaven a sound like a rush of violent wind. Tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue resisted on each of them.  All were filled with the Holy Spirit.”  Biblical commentator, N.T. Write suggests that Luke uses the words, all were filled with the Holy Spirit, to indicate all followers of Jesus were united. Now these united people from all over are being empowered by the Holy Spirt to carry out Jesus’ commandment to spread the Good News. The Spirit enabled Jesus’ followers then, and still does today, to share the Good News of Jesus that God loves you.  God wants to give you the ability through the Holy Spirit to love others as God has loved you and to share that Good News with everyone.

For some of us this sharing The Good News, this evangelism, may be by standing in a pulpit or on a street corner announcing to people God’s abundant love through Jesus.  For most of us, I suspect, it’s by showing kindness.  Kindness to people we meet at the store, perhaps by helping someone reach for something on a higher shelf.  Or perhaps it’s being patient.  Patient with the person driving the car in front of you who is trying to merge in and get ahead of you.  One could show kindness and graciousness by not honking one’s horn at them. Maybe it’s by loving your neighbor by not returning a snide comment with another snide comment.  By letting their comment to simply pass unanswered.  Maybe it’s by sharing God’s love by volunteering at Lord of the Streets.

For my own enrichment, each week I listen to the podcast, Working Preacher’s Sermon Brainwave.  Each episode is a discussion lead by a Methodist Minister, a Presbyterian minister, and a Lutheran minister about the weekly readings for the coming Sunday.  These readings come from the lectionary shared by Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians.  The episode I heard this week was about today’s readings.  In it, one of the ministers said, “Unity is not uniformity.”  I took this to mean that all Christians can be united in Christ’s love that is empowered by the Holy Spirit, but it can look differently in different cultures or communities or in different parts of a community.  Living in, being governed by the Holy Spirit means there is no reason for fighting between denominations about particulars of theology because we all share in the love of Christ. Listening and dialogue is important, but fighting is not. I’ve read articles about how Christianity is losing followers across the country.  Perhaps if we remember how the Christians in Acts who were from all over were united in Christ’s love and lived empowered by the Holy Spirit, we can reverse this trend. 

This notion that we Christians are to be united in Christ’s love and empowered by the Holy Spirit gives me hope that perhaps there is room for both high church people and low church people in the Church of Jesus.  Perhaps a church can be home to both organ loving people, praise band loving people, and no music at all loving people.  I have hope that even a democrat and a republican, a Yankee and a Southerner can find common ground in a church based on the love of Christ that is empowered by the Holy Spirit.  I know anything is possible when we ask for help of the Holy Spirit.  Come Holy Spirit, empower us to do your will, to love and serve one another.  Amen

Sunday, May 21, 2023

The Seventh Sunday of Easter

Acts 1:6-14; Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36; 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11; John 17:1-11

The Rev. Clint Brown

On Thursday last, this church marked the Feast of the Ascension with a special service of evensong. It was our way of saying that this day, which usually falls in the middle of the workweek and tends to fly under the radar, is important. It is, after all, designated by the Prayer Book as one of the seven “principal feasts” of this Church (BCP 15). We refer to the ascension every time we say the Creed – any of the creeds – and declare that, “He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” The ascension sits right there alongside the big three – the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the resurrection – in our confessional life. It is, in short, a pillar of our faith hiding in plain sight, absolutely equal in significance to all the others, and the scant attention we pay to it is in no way commensurate with its importance.

The death, resurrection, [and] ascension…of our Lord…so belong together that each event is indispensable for the story of our redemption. In fact, no one aspect of the mission of Christ can be stated properly without reference to the others. [Christ’s life is what gives significance to his death.] If Christ died, but did not rise again, our faith is vain. If he rose but did not ascend, he is not gone to God the Father Almighty, he is [somewhere out there still wandering] in our world….. If he is not [now] on the right hand of God the Father, he does not reign, and we have no King.[1] 

Pull one thread and the whole garment comes undone. What the ascension is is the essential link between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. 

The ascension of Christ as a physical event observed by witnesses is referred to only three times in the New Testament, and, of the three, it is noteworthy that two are by the same author, Luke, who penned both the Gospel that bears his name and the book of Acts. The third, an addition to the last chapter of Mark, almost certainly dates to the 2nd century and owes its existence to the influence of Luke. On the whole, the NT seems much more concerned with Jesus’s present exalted status in heaven than with the question of how he got there, but it is certainly intriguing to consider. It is a fact that, as any wag will tell you, if Jesus lifted off of the Mount of Olives on a spring morning around the year 33, even traveling at the speed of light, he would still not have made it out of the galaxy.[2] The thought amuses me. I’m sure you’re like me – it makes you stop and think. Thought-provoking questions like this help ground scripture in reality, and I do think there is a response. It is my personal belief that God does not override the laws of physics to accomplish the divine purposes and that whatever seems inexplicable has an explanation. There are simply things we just don’t know about yet. So, wherever and whatever heaven is, I’m convinced that Jesus got there and that he’s there now, not hurtling past quasars and asteroid belts somewhere en route.  

Anyway, where the ascension really matters is not the “How?” but the “Where?”. “Where Jesus is” is at the right hand of God (Psalm 110:1), in a position of authority in the closest proximity to God. He is present to God in both his humanity and his divinity. And why that matters is this:

It is because the Son has ascended that he is able to act [in his threefold office as] King, Priest, and Prophet; to be with us in the preaching of the Word and in the Sacrament; to be with us when two or three are gathered together. His Ascension and his ubiquity, his life to God and his life to us; his presence to help us in our temptation, to convict us of sin and to offer us forgiveness; to protect, to comfort, to encourage us; to illumine, to free and empower us – to give us all the blessings of the children of God, everywhere, every time, in all states and conditions – all this is the consequence of his Ascension. He is with us because he is with God, and works with the omnipotence of God and his Spirit. When he ascended, he sent the Spirit, and with the Spirit, by the Spirit, he is God with us forever.[3]

The closest parallel I can think of to make this point comes in a scene from Star Wars. Old Obi-Wan Kenobi is in a duel to the death with Darth Vader, and it appears that it is only a matter a time before he will have to succumb; but, far from regretting his demise, he welcomes it. He says: “Strike me down, and I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” If you have ever wondered why Christ had to go away, why he couldn’t just hang out with us and stick around, this is the answer, so that he could be released, no longer localized, no longer bound to a specific place and time; that he could be with all of us, throughout the whole world, always and forever. The ascension is the essential link between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. It is indispensable. Christ had to go away so that he could be near to us all. And because he has gone away, we know that he will come back, and as the Church has proclaimed since the day the disciples stood on the mountain gawking at the sky to this, we say, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

[1] J. Haroutunian, “The Doctrine of the Ascension: A Study of the New Testament Teaching,” Interpretation, 10 no. 3 (Jul 1956): 270.

[2] The Milky Way Galaxy is no less than 26,000 light years across.

[3]Haroutunian, “Doctrine,” 280.

Sunday, May 14, 2023

The Sixth Sunday of Easter

Acts 17: 22-31; Psalm 66: 7-18; 1 Peter 3: 13-22; John 14: 15-21

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

Roman Catholic Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty once said these words: “The most important person on the earth is a mother.  She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral.  She need not.  She has built something more magnificent than any cathedral – a dwelling for an immortal soul.  What on God’s good earth is more glorious than this: to be a mother.”  To all mothers, and to all born of a mother - Happy Mother’s Day. 

 In honor of today, I want to share – briefly –, but about my maternal grandmother.  Like my mother, my maternal grandmother was named Jean, but we all called her “Bobo.”  Bobo was married to the man I named for – James McKay Lykes, but we all called him “Buddy.” 

Bobo loved to have her feet rubbed, and we would rub her stockinged feet as she lay on the couch, wearing dresses that she had created and hemmed herself.  She was fiercely loving to her grandchildren, but she did have rules.  One of the rules of her home was – I think – that no food was allowed on her living room Afghan rug.  If you walked into her living room, carrying a plate of food she would visibly tense up, and watch you like a hawk to make sure nothing was spilled on this Afghan rug she so loved.   

Today that same rug is in our house, and we do not retain any of the same rules Bobo did around this rug.  We also have animals (two dogs) living in our home.  Last week, after returning home Saturday afternoon, we noticed an unpleasant odor in our home.  My wife followed the smell to its source, and discovered the our yellow lab had released diarrhea all over the rug.  This event, had it occurred in Bobo’s house, would have sent her into cardiac arrest, I am certain! 

But that’s why they make rug doctors, and after scrubbing the rug multiple times, I am pleased to say the rug is clean now, and no evidence of Parish’s activity upon it remains.  What a great story for mother’s day, right?  Here is why I share it. 

I have recently become aware that I have been carrying heavy psychological baggage – and I have been carrying it for a long time, longer than I care to admit.  This baggage takes the form of a resentment I have towards my stepmother.  The details of it are insignificant – but what is important is that this resentment ultimately is unproductive, it blocks a deeper connection with God, it inhibits my spiritual growth.  If I were to visualize it, the resentment looks exactly like what my dog put on the rug in our home.  It’s not pretty, and its smell repels people away.  That’s what all resentments do. 

In spite of its ugliness, I have held onto this resentment so long it has become comfortable to me.  I no longer notice it’s foul odor or mess.  I’ve stepped into it many times, and tracked its residue all over my life.  I don’t believe this is how God wishes us to live.  There is a better way to live.  How to be free of it?  I do what others have taught me to do.  I pray for this person by, name – daily – and I ask that God would pour his blessing upon her, that God would show her the same mercy, patience, grace, and love I believe God shares with me.

I cannot minimize the power and impact of praying this way.  To pray God’s blessing upon those whom, for whatever reason, you feel have treated you unjustly, is liberating, and humbling.  With God’s help, I am detaching myself from expectations of how things will be.  I am choosing to allow God to be in charge.  As a result, this ugly, foul resentment is going away, and in the place it once occupied, I am discovering a beautiful array of flowers.  That is the power of God’s healing – a reminder that it is never too late to start living.  Happy Mother’s Day.  AMEN.  

Sunday, May 7, 2023

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31: 1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:1-10; John 14: 1-14

The Rev. Jeff Bohanski

It’s May! Like most Mays, all I can think of is, come on June!  We are in the midst of testing season at school. Individual testing of first graders is not easy when grades are due, and papers need to be graded.  Our air went out last week, but thankfully it was an easy fix. Next week is STAAR Math.  The children are tired and looking forward to summer. I know they hear their parents making summer plans and they can’t wait to start those plans.  Some days it feels as if I’m living in the middle of a hurricane.  This is where I am today when I hear these readings.  I’m guessing you may have your own list of issues you are dealing with. 

Yet, in all this, I find strength, direction, and refreshment in today’s readings.

In Acts we heard as Stephen looked up, he declared “Look, I see he havens open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” In my mind’s eye I can see Stephen keeping his eyes fixed on Jesus as he was being stoned.  I believe that’s how he was inspired to say, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, do not hold this sin against them.” By the way, did you notice that these words of Stephen were very like the ones Jesus said on the cross.

This image of Stephen keeping his eyes fixed on Jesus gives me help and strength this May.

As I keep my eyes on Jesus, I find myself pondering who Jesus is. So, I look to the Scriptures. 

In John’s Gospel we heard a few moments ago, the story takes place not after the resurrection, but at the Last Supper, that night before he died.  In it we hear Jesus telling his disciples “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” As a Christian I believe this and strive to live this.

Unfortunately, for a very long time, and even today, these words have been misused to instill hate or to declare war on those who do not believe Jesus is the Messiah, or who were not of our same denomination or religion or those who had no faith at all.  But I don’t think these words of Jesus were meant divide. I believe these words were not intended to be divisive but to be directions of how to build this new kingdom of his. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.

At the beginning of this same Gospel, we hear Jesus telling his disciples “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.  These words lead me to believe Jesus is a lover of all peoples because he goes to create dwellings for us.  People in dwellings have relationship with one another.  So, it makes sense that Jesus wants us to be in relationship with one another, not in division.

In the chapter before this morning’s Gospel, Jesus washes his disciples’ feet.  In the story, Judas, his betrayer, is among those whose feet were washed that night.  Jesus is the servant of all.  I believe we are all directed to serve Jesus in all humanity and in all God’s creation.

In the readings for Morning Prayer this week we read about Jesus healing the centurion’s servant.  In the story, Jesus naturally responded in love to a person in need.  He asked no questions asked about his background, sexual orientation, gender identification or religion or age.  He simply responded.  Soon after, Jesus, in the same reading, raised the widow’s son at Nain because he simply had compassion for her.  Keep your fixed eyes on the loving, compassionate Jesus. 

As of late, I have noticed that the world seems to be moving faster than ever.  I am getting more and more emails from stores that want me to buy things.  Last week alone I had over two hundred emails from stores wanting more of my business.  Google sends me more notices every day.  I’ve noticed traffic has gotten heavier and people are going faster.  It feels like just yesterday was 2013, the year Victor and I finally were able to get legally married.  Now suddenly, ten years have gone by.  Where has the time gone?  It seems to me if the world wants to keep us busy. Perhaps it’s to divert our eyes from Jesus. 

Today, in the midst of our issues, our busy lives, I invite us all to stop for a moment and look to Jesus.  Look to Jesus, the one who wants to dwell with us and we with him. Jesus the servant, so that we may serve him as he dwells with others.  Jesus the compassionate one, so that we may have compassion for ourselves and those we encounter.  I invite us all here today to live the way, the truth, and the life of an inclusive Jesus.  Amen.

Sunday, April 30, 2023

The Fourth Sunday of Easter

Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10

The Rev. Clint Brown

Many of you will remember, I hope, me telling you about my friend Brenda who lives in Tennessee. Brenda is now 83 years old. She paints. She rides horses. She climbs mountains. She throws axes. She holds the award for oldest acolyte at St. John’s – Johnson City. Brenda is one of those people who puts to shame people who are half her age, and, as if that doesn’t make her interesting enough, you’ll recall that she once had a pet frog named Monsieur Jean-Claude de Fourchette who would perch on top of her head whenever she did housework.

On our way back from Philadelphia this week, Cavan and I stopped by Brenda’s for a visit, and, as any preacher with a sermon to write will appreciate, I was really counting on Brenda to give me some fresh material. Well, she did not disappoint, because today I have to tell you about Rocky. It turns out that, in addition to a pet frog, Brenda at another time had a pet quail, a pet quail named Rocky, a pet quail named Rocky that just happened to crow. Well, I should say, the story actually begins with a pet quail named Raquail Welch, except that one day Raquail started crowing, announcing that she was, in fact, not a “she” quail but a “he” quail, and so Raquail became Rocky – and, just in case you’re wondering, quails don’t crow, but this one did, and you’d just have to know Brenda to appreciate that a crowing quail named Rocky is the kind of thing of which you will just have to be prepared to accept.

Now it happened that Rocky loved no human being the way he loved Brenda’s dad, who, whenever he came for a visit, had only to sit down and Rocky would jump into his lap. Alone of all human beings, Rocky would let Brenda’s dad run his finger down his back and, as Brenda tells it, the longer Rocky was petted the longer Rocky’s neck became as he drooped his head in total relaxation. In fact, the bond of man and bird was so strong that at the mere sound of his voice Rocky would come running, and so, on entering the house, Brenda’s dad would have to be careful to communicate with hand gestures and help walk in the luggage silently before sitting down and finally saying hello, whereupon Rocky would emerge and leap into his lap.

The reason why this is the perfect story for today is that today we are reminded that Jesus is our Good Shepherd, the one whose voice his sheep know and love. He calls his own sheep by name, and, wherever we are in the pasture, when we hear his voice we know it and we run toward it to follow it. The Bible goes on to say that the sheep will not follow a stranger, because they do not know the voice of strangers (vv. 4-5). So my question for you today is a simple one: whose voice, of all the voices you hear day to day, are you listening to? Is it the Shepherd’s voice, or some other? Or to put it another way, whose voice is loudest? If it’s the voice of the media, you might believe that we are at total war with one another and there is no good thing to be found in the one who votes differently from you. If it’s the voice of the ads that bombard you, you might believe that you can’t live without the next greatest thing they are selling that you ought to be buying. If it’s the voice of your addictions, you might believe that you are powerless to gain control of your life and know inner peace again. If it’s the voice of culture, you might believe that you will never belong, never have enough, never be enough, never measure up. If it’s the voice of the evil one, you might even believe that God is dead and you’re on your own. But if it’s the voice of Jesus, you will know that God is not dead, but is risen. You will know that you are loved. You will know that there is nowhere you can wander where he will not go to find you, and that there is no vision so petty nor so small as the one limited to selfish gain alone. How different is the voice of the Good Shepherd from all those others we often hear so much louder!

Now you might wonder how to tell the difference between the voice of Jesus and those others, and the tell-tale sign is that the voices of deception never have your best interests in mind, but their own. The “thief” and “bandit” are those, we are told, who break in to the sheepfold to steal, kill, and destroy, who are interested in you only for what you can do for them. That is how those false voices – the false friends, the false narratives, the false Messiahs of our lives – betray themselves. They are the ones who haven’t entered through the gate to confront us directly with truth but have slipped over the fence while you weren’t looking with their half-truths and magic elixirs. But opposed to every false god and counterfeit Christ, like a hammer to smash every idol, is the Good Shepherd, the one who only has what’s best for you in mind. None of those imposters can or will suffer for you, but Christ Jesus has bought you with a price. God has proven his love towards us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). If this be the benevolent disposition of the Good Shepherd towards us, what then, I ask, is our duty towards him?

I often think about how, on the question of suffering, it is not really a matter of “if” or “when,” but only a question of deciding what to suffer for – because we all have to suffer for the sake of something. What is it, then, that is really worth suffering for, of taking the world’s abuse for, of being crucified for? It should, of course, be for a vision large enough and meaningful enough to justify our suffering. For the Christian, this is nothing less than to follow the Good Shepherd wherever he leads: to care for what he cares for – to suffer for the weak against the strong and the poor against the rich. All we once thought gain we now count as loss in order to embrace the fuller, richer, truer life of the Gospel. I say that the loudest voice should ever be the one who calls us to this nobler vision, the voice of the one who bids us come and die, the voice of the Good Shepherd who has acknowledged you as a sheep of his own fold, a lamb of his own flock, a sinner of his own redeeming.

Sunday, April 23, 2023

The Third Sunday of Easter

Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Psalm 116: 1-3, 10-17;1 Peter 1: 17-23; Luke 24: 13-35

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

Joel Osteen is right about a lot of things, but also this: if you humble yourself before God, if you are obedient to God’s purpose for you, you will prosper.  I believe that with all my heart.  This idea of “prosperity gospel” as it is sometimes referred to, is usually met with grimaces, smirks, rolling eyes, or downright disbelief. 

Loving God a whole lot will not get you a brand new Mercedes Benz as Janis Joplin once famously opined.  Loving God will not get you a large house, or a country club membership.  Loving God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind will get you a deeper spiritual life, a larger sense of God’s presence, and free entry into God’s eternal presence.

I would argue that material wealth is at the very bottom rung of the prosperity ladder Osteen preaches.   And what Osteen often preaches regarding prosperity has sound biblical backing.  If you read Deuteronomy 30, you will hear very clearly God say to the people of Israel: if you follow my ways, and do what I tell you to do, you will prosper, but if you do not follow my ways, and you follow other Gods than me, you will struggle, and you will suffer. 

And what God said to Israel way back then, is fundamentally true for us today.  If we insist on being the CEO of our lives, the know-it-all who assumes we know what is best for us, rather than God, I can guarantee a life of spiritual suffering.   

Likewise, I can guarantee that if you become smart enough to realize you don’t know anything, the least of which is how to live your life, and so you put God in charge instead, I can guarantee you that you will prosper. 

How do you put God in charge?  It’s really simple.  When you get up in the morning, get on your knees and tell God “God this is your day, direct and guide as you will.  Your will be done. AMEN.”  And whatever follows is God’s will, because you prayed for it, and God will answer your prayer.  It takes about ten seconds of your day to do that.  At the end of your day, before you go to bed, get on your knees again, and say to God “Thank you, God, for blessing me this whole day.”  That takes about three seconds.  If you want to argue with me that this asking way too much of you, I know some good therapists you can talk to for about $150 an hour. 

 A warning: building a pattern of humility and obedience into your life every day will lead to weird things.  What kind of weird things?  Here’s one.  After praying consistently over time, you might find yourself looking for that Bible that’s somewhere in your house that’s covered in dust and you will want to start reading it, because you realize you have so much to learn from it. Your vision will improve – you will begin to see the needs of people around you more clearly than before, and you will begin to ask God in your prayers – what can I do to help? 

Before too long, you will feel a sense of spiritual connection with the Divine that brings you true peace and comfort, even if everything in your life is a complete and total wreck.  You might even find yourself – facing a pile of bills you can’t afford to pay, a car note you can’t afford, or a mortgage beyond your means thanking God, saying “Lord, what did I do to deserve this prosperity?”  

 I close with a story – A Roman Catholic nun walks into a room of men who are on a retreat..  True story.  She comes into the room like she’s on a skate board.  She opens her mouth and she sounds like a truck driver.  “Hello.  Do you want to know how to be happy, and healthy, and not have any more problems with your family and your job and all that stuff?  No problem at all.  Easy as pie.  We can cut this short.”  And she rights on the board “Pray incessantly.”   The men were saying “What?  Really?  That’s the answer?  I don’t have time to pray.  I’ve got a job, I’ve got stuff to do.”  The nun looked around the room and said, “you don’t like that answer huh?”  “Tell you what.  Try this then”  And she flipped the backboard over and wrote this.  “Make your life a prayer.”  Can you get to a point in your life where what you do has God driving it to the best of your ability?  Do that, and your prosperity will have no limit.  AMEN. 

Sunday, April 16, 2023

The Second Sunday of Easter

Acts 2:14a,22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

The Rev. Jeffrey Bohanski

Lord, Jesus the Christ.  Help my unbelief.  Help me to forgive and live in your love and peace. Amen.

Happy Easter!  The Lord is risen!  He is risen indeed!

Today we hear two more resurrection stories.  How appropriate this is because after all, this is Easter.  Easter will be with us for another six weeks. 

Last week we heard about Mary weeping at the tomb.  This week we hear another resurrection story.  Well, actually we hear two stories. One story is about the disciples, minus Thomas, and the other takes place a week later, this time with Thomas. 

Have you ever noticed the story about Thomas takes place a week after the story about the disciples?  Have you ever wondered why the disciples are still there in that locked shut house? Why are they still stuck in their fear?

Perhaps they are stuck debating the word “if.”  In the first story where Jesus appears to the disciples and says, “Peace be with you. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."  What does that mean, “If you forgive the sins. . .”  Does that mean we have a choice we have a choice to forgive? You know, I can really see those hardheaded men set apart on opposite sides of the room mired down in fierce debate about the word “if.”

Should we forgive those who have just killed Jesus.  Should we forgive those who probably want us all dead or at best to simply go away?  Thankfully, the disciples in that room, probably due to the second story about Thomas, decided the answer was yes.

I’ve come to believe these two stories are related.  Perhaps, when Thomas brought his doubt about Jesus’ physical body being raised from the dead to Jesus, the disciples were then able to bring their debate about the word “if” to Jesus.  In both instances, Jesus lovingly and powerfully gave them the grace to change their minds. Thomas was given and accepted the grace to believe and the disciples were given and accepted the grace to forgive. 

I do think we’ve been given the choice of whether to forgive sins or not.  What happens if we don’t?  From my personal experience, when I didn’t, I got mired down in fear and resentment.  I’ve found holding onto resentment takes a whole lot of energy.

I’ve found if I, like Thomas, ask Jesus for help to forgive, he will and has already given me the ability to forgive.  Forgiveness brings life and joy.  Forgiveness brings me energy. Energy to live life as God created me to be.  Forgiveness brings peace, the peace I believe, Jesus intends for us.

Forgiveness is hard. Forgiveness is letting go.  For some issues of forgiveness, I’ve needed years and counseling and support to finally forgive and let go.  Sometimes I have to turn off the news and stop listening to the world telling me people like me are bad and dangerous and go listen to something positive or to focus on Jesus.  Sometimes it just an intellectual decision to say no to the world and yes to Jesus.

This week I listened to a podcast from The Living Compass.  In it the Rev. Dr. Scott Stoner posed this question, “What does it mean to live in and practice the resurrection?”  I believe living in the resurrection is living in and practicing forgiveness. 

How do we do this?  I’ve found it helpful to keep a journal of thankfulness.  This helps me to change my mindset and look for things to be thankful for.  I’ve found the Jesus prayer to be helpful in forgiving myself. “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  Praying for those who have hurt me has helped immensely.  I pray for them because I know hurt people hurt people. Somehow Jesus gives me the grace to forgive much like he did for Thomas in his unbelief.  I have found talking to and praying with a trusted friend about matters forgiveness is very helpful.  Remember one of our Pastoral Offices in our Book of Common Prayer is Reconciliation of a Penitent.  I invite you to review that.

My hope for us this morning is we all choose to live in the resurrection.  I invite all of us to live in forgiveness; forgiveness of others as well as ourselves.  My prayer is that we accept and use the grace of Jesus to forgive ourselves and others. Amen.

Sunday, April 9, 2023 - Easter Day

Easter Sunday

John 20:1-18

The Rev. Canon Joann Saylors

“I have seen the Lord!”

I can’t really preach a better sermon than Mary Magdalene’s on that first Easter morning. Short and memorable and to the point, and maybe the truest sermon ever preached. Mary, the Apostle to the Apostles, starts here. She doesn’t say, “Christ is risen, the Lord is risen indeed,” as joyful as that is, but “I have seen the Lord.” Mary isn’t making an abstract statement of belief but offering her own experience to those who are struggling to go on. Creeds speak truth, but resurrection is truth you can see and share every day.

“I have seen the Lord!”

We can think it and say it in our own lives. Not by standing on a street corner or a crowded coffee shop and yelling it into the faces of unnerved strangers, or by putting John 3:16 on a poster to hold up and wave during a football game. God doesn’t call us to evangelism as coercion, or extortion, or, for that matter, as certainty beyond doubt. God does call us to share Good News based in relationship and in the reality of what’s actually happening in our lives.

To say “I have seen the Lord” is to point out resurrection in the midst of ruin; to find new life when all that seems visible is death; to offer love in the face of hate; to live in decency and goodness despite the vitriol and viciousness often encouraged in our world. Because resurrection is not only the promise of life after death, even though that would be more than enough. Resurrection also offers the assurance that the life-giving love of God will always move the stones away. And while we see tombs all around us that hold the deaths of despair, anger, judgment, and fear, God continues to roll the stones away that keep us from truly living. “I have seen the Lord!” are the words which push away the stones that confine and constrain us, so that all life might be lived with dignity and regard and respect.

The promise of the resurrection was made real when God raised Jesus from the dead. The resurrection is also real and certain in the world around us now. “I have seen the Lord” insists that the ways of love will win over the ways of despair. “I have seen the Lord” confirms that the truth of kindness can be heard over the shouts of vindictiveness and rage. “I have seen the Lord” witnesses to the fact that there is another way of being in the world — a way of being, shaped by resurrection, that embodies anything and everything that is life-giving. It is a way of being that is so counter-cultural, so demonstrative of mercy, so exemplary of the truth of Easter, that when we model it, others will listen, watch, wonder, and say, “Wait a minute. Did I just see the Lord?”

 It’s not that the truth of the resurrection needs our works in order to convince others. The resurrection is true regardless of what we choose to do or say. But maybe it will be more true for each and every one of us if we can walk out of church this morning and be willing to say “I have seen the Lord.” If we find the places where we can say, “I have seen the Lord” in our lives. If we watch for those who might need us to say, “I have seen the Lord” because they cannot, after seeing only the walls of their tombs for too long.

The truth is that the resurrection of Jesus matters for our future, but matters even more for the here and now, for our own sakes and for the sake of others. Jesus matters for the sake of the world.

I have seen the Lord. In the offers of support after a hard medical diagnosis,

in the sacrifice of missionaries’ vacation time to serve others in need, in a family choosing to forgive someone who has done them harm, in a teenager courageously standing up to speak unwanted truth. I have seen the Lord, at work in my own life and the lives of others, in times of joy and in times of deep sadness. I have seen the Lord here, where we gather around his table, and where we build community. I have seen the Lord in hospitals, in schools, in libraries, in lines at the store. I have seen the Lord in the faces of others and in the games of children.

Anywhere people care for one another, anywhere people work for peace and reconciliation, you too can see the Lord. I promise you this because Jesus promises this. When you look for the Lord, you will find him.

Jesus has risen. So let’s go forth in joyful proclamation. Shout it today and say it again tomorrow and say it whenever you can. Who have you seen? I have seen the Lord! AMEN.

Saturday, April 8, 2023 - Easter Vigil

Easter Vigil

Matthew 28:1-10

The Rev. Francene Young

Easter has become predictable. The challenge for preachers is to restore Easter’s power to shock, startle, surprise, terrify, amaze.

The preacher must pull a rabbit out of a hat. (Now you know how rabbits became associated with Easter.) 

I do not have a hat or a rabbit, but I do have an Easter Challenge. A challenge to become rock-rollers with an Easter Heart.  Hold on to that thought.

But before I go on, I want to share a little story I found while researching for this message.  I love these little stories:

A Sunday School teacher had just finished telling her first graders about how Jesus was crucified and placed in a tomb with a great stone sealing the opening.

Then, wanting to share the excitement of the resurrection, she asked: “And what do you think were Jesus’ first words when he came bursting out of that tomb alive?”

A hand shot up into the air from the rear of the classroom. Attached to it was the arm of a little girl. Leaping out of her chair, she shouted out excitedly, "I know, I know!"

"Good" said the teacher, "Tell us, what were Jesus’ first words?"

And extending her arms high into the air she said: "TA-DA!"

My friends, we are hear in anticipation of the great TA DA!

The resurrection of Jesus is much greater than a magic trick, and our proclamation must be no less enthusiastic than that little girl's "TA-DA!"

In the gospel we just read from Matthew, Jesus’ first words to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary when Jesus appeared to them on their way to tell the disciples of his resurrection was “Greetings.” Not TA DA!  Though I am sure “Greetings: had a TA DA impact on them!

The resurrection changed the world forever. It announced that God's kingdom had come.  It was the start of God's new age that opens God’s kingdom to all people! And this is a gift, offered to each of us without price, simply because God loves us that much and Jesus paid the price with his life.  So we could have a new life. 

Christ has done all the work that needs to be done. Christ has died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. And then, Christ was raised to new life, so that we, too, can be raised and have eternal life.

So Easter is all about a four letter word — and as Christians we’re supposed to be full of it.  The four letter word is LIFE.

(I know you were thinking something else).  But our Easter four-letter word is LIFE!

New life. Whole life. Abundant Life. Redeemed life. Resurrected life.

The purpose of life is not death, Easter says. The purpose of life is life . . . a life that triumphs over death forever.

Celebrating Easter is the best thing that we, as the church, can do because it is a celebration of all that is good, all that is true, and all that is beautiful.

In fact, I would make the case that celebrating Easter is the greatest public service the church can perform for the world. Why? Because THE TA DA, the resurrection, Jesus’ return to life gives us new life which we share with others.  

Remember Jesus’ final words on the cross? “It is finished.”

On Easter “It is finished” becomes “..and Now it begins.”

Life begins anew with the resurrected beating of an Easter heart; a resurrected heart. An Easter Heart.

It is an Easter heart that the resurrected Jesus offered to all who believed in him 

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary saw the empty tomb, encountered the Resurrected Jesus on their way to tell the disciples. Filled with fear and joy of an Easter heart, the two Mary’s ran to tell others.  We need to tell others.

Do you have an Easter heart? Does the church have an Easter heart?  Here are some ways you can tell.

1) An Easter heart is full of new life. An Easter heart is full of a new mission. An Easter heart is full of new possibilities and open to what Christ might be calling it to do?  An Easter heart responds to the tug of Jesus.  WHAT HAS BEEN TUGGING ON YOUR HEART?? 

2) An Easter heart church is full of rock-rollers. Notice I didn’t say rock-and-rollers.  I am from Cleveland, the city of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  I know the difference.  I did not say an Easter heart church is full of ROCK AND ROLLERS . . . I SAID an Easter heart church is full of ROCK-ROLLERS. 

The first sign of the resurrection, as noted by a distraught Mary Magdalene and the Other Mary, was that the rock that sealed Jesus’ tomb had been rolled away from the tomb’s entrance by an ANGEL.  

Rock-rollers offer help remove stones or barriers for all sorts of people who are trapped in all kinds of tombs.

Strengthened by an Easter heart we can . . . .

·       Help roll away despair, and reveal a path to hope.

·       We can roll away fear — and encourage those stuck in tomb  to step out into the light.

·       We can roll away feelings of rejection and unworthiness as we show people the love of Christ (the love he has shown us).

4) A church filled with ROCK ROLLERS HAS An Easter heart THAT IS always experiencing adrenaline surges,

always skipping beats, and

always HAS a racing pulse.

5) A church filled with ROCK ROLLERS HAS An Easter heart THAT is arrhythmic because in an Easter heart church the unexpected is always happing. Resurrection happens. Miracles happen. Truth happens. Goodness happens. Beauty happens. Jesus happens.   

6) A church filled with ROCK ROLLERS An Easter heart church is filled with laughter.  

The resurrection is a testimony to the adage, “he who laughs last laughs best.” The Sanhedrin thought they had the last laugh. The Roman authorities thought they had the last laugh. The cruel crowds and sadistic soldiers thought they had the last laugh.

But the resurrection proved God has the last laugh.

The church WITH ITS Easter heart filled with rock rollers, should ring with laughter enjoying fully the divine sense of humor.

This is not to say that our journeys will all be rosy and without trials. 

The promise of Easter Sunday is not that our hearts won’t break. In fact, the promise of Easter is that if you love, your heart WILL break. For God so loved the world, God’s heart broke. The cross is a symbol of God’s broken heart. A broken heart is the price of love. 

Yet, Easter is the symbol of a heart that will break and out of this broken heart, God will birth a new heart, a whole heart, a redeemed and restored heart.

An Easter heart is full of new life, renewing itself over and over, again

An Easter heart church is full of rock-rollers who in the name of Christ reach out to help other removes the stones from the tombs that have blocked them from experiencing the love of Christ.

I want to close this Benediction found in

Numbers 6:24-26:

Here it is in its original form:

“May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace.” 

I have altered this for today for our rock rolling Easter hearts, WHICH IS ALSO A CHALLENGE.  Let us pray

“May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace with a beat-skipping, laughing out loud, rock-rolling, Easter hearts.”

AMEN!

Sermon adapted from several from Sermons.com who grant permission to use their resources.

Good Friday, April 7, 2023

Good Friday

The Rev. Clint Brown

A couple of years ago, I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night from a dead sleep. Now you might think that this was because I had had a bad dream or heard a noise or suddenly remembered that I had left a door unlocked or the oven on. But that was not it – not it at all. I was roused from sleep by an intense and profound sadness. It was the oddest sensation. From someplace deep within, a palpable sadness, possessed of its own inertia, had broken through from my unconsciousness to my consciousness and manifested itself as a physical thing.

As I lay there trying to sort it all out, I began to identify the shape and contour of this sadness that had presented itself to my awareness, and I finally realized that it was all the negativity and anger and bad feelings of our politics, of the shocking and unkind things we can and do say about one another that, for who knows how long, I had been absorbing and depositing, layer upon layer. It was a vast deposit of negative energy that, on this particular night, my troubled spirit was offering up to me, shaking me awake, demanding to be heard. And not knowing what else to do with the magnitude of these feelings, I felt compelled to pray. And as I lay there praying in the dark – feeling, with the psalmist, a helplessness, a despondency, as of drowning in waters that had risen above my head – it happened that I suddenly became mindful of the Cross.

I guess, upon reflection, it couldn’t be helped. It is to the Cross, after all, where all the negativity and the worst that the world can dish out ultimately leads. This, I thought, is where our hate and anger and bad feeling get us. This is what hate does to love. It crucifies it. And now I lay there weeping in the dark – warm tears that pooled at the corners of my eyes and fell slowly down either side of my face. Weeping for the world, weeping for myself, and weeping for the goodness of the man on the cross of whom we had proven ourselves to be so unworthy. And I thought how whatever I was feeling of the injustice of the world was yet only an infinitesimal part of what Jesus himself experienced when he wept over Jerusalem; as he agonized in the Garden; as Judas betrayed him; as Peter denied him; as he listened to the crowd clamoring for his death; and, finally, as he hung nailed to the Cross, rejected and forsaken, bearing on his body all the malice, all the cruelty, all the confused rage of humanity.

Why, what hath my Lord done? What makes this rage and spite? He made the lame to run, he gave the blind their sight. Sweet injuries! Yet they at these themselves displease, and ’gainst him rise.[1]

This, I thought, is what hate does to love, and I let myself weep for our fallen race.

And so things stood for several days until I shared my helplessness with another priest, who brought me out of the dark. Yes, he said, this is what hate does to love, but look at what love does to hate. The power of the Cross is Christ’s steadfast and obedient faith despite the worst we could do. He did not succumb to the temptation to let the cup pass from him. When he cried out, “It is finished,” it was not to say – or, at least, not only to say – that his torture was over. More than that it was a shout of victory. “It is accomplished!” “It is achieved!” “It is fulfilled!” “Your hate may, indeed, crucify Love, but only because Love allows it!”

This is the victory, that God has taken all the hate and wrongheadedness and poison of our nature and absorbed each and every blow. All these things have been crucified with Christ and their power destroyed for ever.

The tragedy of [humankind had been our] disobedience, [our] resistance to reality, [our] pettiness. The triumph of Christ [was] his obedience, his grasp of reality. In Christ our whole human experience was rerun, this time properly…[2]

Hate may mock and scourge and do its worst, but Love receives the humiliation. Hate may carry the day, but Love wins the war. Hate may kill, but Love is stronger than death.

If love does not seem to make any meaningful headway in society, perhaps it is only because we have never really given it the chance. Yet that is exactly our charge as Christians. We are meant to be infiltrators, working from below, leavening from within. Ours is not to be part of the problem, but part of the solution. We are Good Friday people. Our symbol is the Cross – the symbol of obedience and self-emptying love. We are on the side of the oppressed against the oppressor. We represent those who outlast hate. We are for love. And love wins.

[1] Hymnal 1982, #458, My song is love unknown. Words by Samuel Crossman (1624-1683)

[2] Richard Holloway, The Killing: Meditations on the Death of Christ (Wilton, CT: Morehouse Barlow, 1985), 68-69.

Wednesday, April 5, 2023 - Holy Week

Wednesday in Holy Week

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 7; Hebrews 12:1-3; John 13:21-32

The Rev. Jeff Bohhanski

So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.

As I hear this evening’s Gospel, I imagine the room where Jesus and his disciples were was filled with bright warm happy light. Outside it wasn’t.  It was night. It was dark.  It was the world.

I find the sentence: “It was night.” thought provoking. I notice in John’s Gospel, where Jesus is, there is light.  Where Jesus isn’t, it’s dark.  This makes me think about times when I find myself out in the dark, either by choice or by circumstance.

For instance, I feel I’m in the dark when I begin to worry about getting to the bottom of a long “To Do List”, or when I begin to think I don’t measure up, or when I begin to feel I have absolutely no control over the world around me.

I also feel I’m in the dark when I’ve been cut off in traffic or when someone has been rude to me at work or at a store.

Esther de Waal says, “Without the still center, the journey whether inner or outer is impossible.” This evening I want to lead us through a meditation I find helpful when I’m journeying through the dark.

This meditation is based on Psalm 27, verse 1.  First, I will ring the bell and read the verse.  Then I will allow for two minutes of silence.  I will ring the bell again and read a smaller part of the verse.  I will repeat the process two more times and then conclude the meditation with a prayer.  Let’s begin.

I invite you to close your eyes.  Take a deep breath in through your mouth, hold it, now breathe it out through your nose.  One more time, in through your mouth and out through your nose.  Feel the seat you are in and relax your shoulders.  Take another deep breath in and out.

Psalm 27:1

The LORD is my light and my salvation — whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life — of whom shall I be afraid?

Psalm 27:1

The LORD is my light and my salvation — whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life

Psalm 27:1

The LORD is my light and my salvation.

Psalm 27:1

The LORD is my light.

Lord, God, we thank you for always being a light in the dark places of the world and in the dark places of our lives. May your light and love blaze in all your creation and in all the world. Amen.

Sunday, April 2, 2023

Palm Sunday

Matthew 26:14-27:66

The Rev. Francene Young

My how time flies. Less than 20 minutes ago we where in a Jesus Parade, joyfully waiving palms and singing All Gloria Laud and Honor to thee Redeemer King. However, I admit in my head I was singing from Jesus Christ Superstar

Hosanna hey sanna sanna sanna ho

Sanna hey sanna hosanna

Hey JC, JC, won't you smile at me?

Sanna hosanna hey superstar.

And shortly after it starts and Jesus reaches the Temple, the party is over!

The story I am about to share is adapted from Bob Benson's book "See You at the House: The Very Best of the Stories He Used to Tell.” It is about how we are perceived and thus how we perceive ourselves. How Judas and Peter who both betrayed Jesus and their self-perceptions resulted in very different outcomes. I have always wondered about Judas. So bear with me!

As part of a study, a group of researchers from Harvard contacted an elementary school teacher at the beginning of a school year. They told the teacher that they had designed a test that would correctly predict which students were going to grow intellectually during the coming school year. (Someone called it "The Harvard Test of Intellectual Spurts" because he said it told which students were going to 'spurt' that year).

The researchers promised it would indicate the right students. The test was said to be very, very accurate. The researchers then administered, unbeknownst to the teacher, an obsolete IQ test. When the students had finished, the researchers threw the tests away. Then they randomly picked the names of five students and told the teacher, "These are the students who are going to have a very good year. Watch these kids. One of those on the list was Rachel Smith."

"Rachel Smith?" the teacher replied sarcastically, “She couldn't 'spurt' if you shot her from a cannon.” But the researchers maintained that the test was hardly ever wrong in its findings.

You can imagine what happened that semester, can't you? Under a barrage of constant attention "Rachel, would you write this on the board this morning?" or "Rachel will lead the line to the lunch room today?" or "Is that a new dress, Rachel? It sure is pretty" or "Thank you, Rachel, that was very good." Rachel "spurted" all over that school. And so did the other four who received this type of attention and affirmation.

Benson goes on the say that According to the apostle Paul, every one of our names belongs on a list like that. We are all "God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved." A little boy in elementary school said, "My teacher thought I was smarter than I wuz. So I wuz!"

The impact of being open to God’s attention and affirmations. In the Passion gospel we just read from Matthew, Jesus throughout the dark night of his soul in the Garden of Gethsemane, begged his disciples to stay up with him, comfort him, pray with him, support him. But they couldn't do it. On the night that Jesus was arrested, all of his disciples abandoned him. And two of them actively betrayed him.

Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus only once, almost immediately regretted his action. He boldly marched back before the powerful, corrupt officials and proclaimed Jesus' innocence to their faces, throwing their bribe money back at their feet. He regretted his role in turning over Jesus to his enemies.

Peter, the other disciple, betrayed Jesus on three separate occasions. In his fear of the officials ran off seeking anonymity and seclusion. He resurfaced only after the Crucifixion.

Yet Judas, has been named throughout history as the prime example of all that is contemptible, corrupt and deceitful in human nature. For example, how many kids do you know named Judas? While Peter, the second disciple to betray Jesus is honored as the father of the church and is designated a "saint.

What distinguishes Judas' action so starkly from Peter's?

Perhaps the simplest way to understand is to look at their motives.

Judas' actions were premeditated, calculated, even paid for. In Matthew’s telling of the story, when Judas realizes the gravity of his actions, he returns the 30 pieces of silver, called blood money, and attempted to defend Jesus' innocence before the tribunal while Jesus was still alive.

Peter's act of betrayal, on the other hand, were somewhat a cowardly, spontaneous burst of emotion that profited him nothing after committing to Jesus that he would never betray him and in contrast, Peter only sneaked back into the disciple's fold as a mourner after the crucifixion frenzy had passed and the tomb was sealed.

I believe one key difference between these two betrayers - Judas and Peter - was their perception of how Jesus perceived them.

Judas was overcome with guilt. Although "he repented" (Mt.27:3), Judas could only envision a wrathful, Judgmental Jesus declaring him cursed according to Deuteronomic law (Mt. 26:23-24, Deuteronomy 27:25). In his despair, Judas blocked out Jesus' instruction in the garden (Mt.26:50) “do what you are here to do”.

Hearing only condemnation ringing in his ears, Judas cut himself off from the healing capabilities of God's grace and, in an agonizing fit of self-Judgment and hanged himself.

Peter heard other voices. Undoubtedly, he replayed his own three denials of Jesus over and over again. After leaving the courtyard Matthew says Peter "wept bitterly" (Mt.26:75). Surely Peter also heard himself promising Jesus he would never deny him, even if it meant facing death (Mt.26:35). But there were other crucial conversations Peter had with Jesus that were stored in his memory that gave him hope.

Peter was the disciple who had come to Jesus to ask specifically about the act of forgiveness. How many times should we forgive? Peter asked. Jesus declared "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven." (Matthew 18:21-22).

Even more importantly, Jesus had singled Peter out when asking, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter could recall he had once boldly confessed, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:15-16).

Even more comforting and hopeful must have been Peter's recollection of Jesus' response to that confession: "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!"

And then came Jesus' affirmation of Peter, "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:17-18).

What a lifeline these memories must have been for Peter as he wept at his betrayal. Peter knew that Jesus believed in him. Jesus had designated him to be something special in the life of the church. Whatever Peter had done in his past, Jesus had assured him he had a future. Like Rachel Smith, who spurted due to attention and affirmation, Peter’s memories of the affirmations from Jesus gave him hope of forgiveness.

Apparently, Judas did not have or could not recall such affirmations. Judas also must have forgotten that he was only one in a long, established, distinguished tradition of God's failed faithful. Moses, Aaron, David, Thomas, Paul all committed grievous acts of betrayal against God. But each one found their way back to God's side through God’s undying grace.

Judas died, stigmatized by his own heart as a betrayer. He was never able or chose not to accept the gift of God’s forgiving grace. He took matters into his own hands. He had hoped he could stop the tide of his betrayal of Jesus by returning the coins and defending Jesus’ innocence, but it was too late. The train had left the station.

In panic, Judas' final controlling act was to take his own life. He never dared to check that back door of grace that God always leaves unlocked - and even pushes open for us to re-enter.

On this Palm Sunday that started with a joy filled parade and ends with the crucifixion, we must travel this long, hard road with Jesus who in the garden of Gethsemane accepted God’s Will to die for us. This is not an easy journey, yet one key message of the gospel is that God's grace is available to all, that the door to God's loving presence is always open.

We become like Judas when we betray and deny Christ himself and when we deny the redemptive power of God's grace. We become like Peter when we betray and deny Christ but remain open to the grace and forgiveness that Christ offers every one of us. Be open to his grace. AMEN!

Sermon adapted from resources provided by Homiletics Online

Sunday, March 26, 2023

The Fifth Sunday of Lent

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

The Rev. Clint Brown

Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were well-known to Jesus and his disciples, that much is clear. You’ll recall that in Luke’s Gospel, he gives us a glimpse into their world. Here is the bustling Martha, playing the part of the perfect hostess, and there is the contemplative Mary, oblivious to all else except Jesus (Luke 10:38-42). In my mind’s eye, I always picture a scene of comfortable, middle-class domesticity. A well-kept house. Some flowers in pots. Not the richest fare on the table, perhaps, but it is always delicious and hearty, so that you find yourself pushing your chair back from the table and rubbing your belly. For Jesus, it must have been a place of inestimable importance. In the course of his ministry, I imagine he must have dropped in many times whenever he needed respite from the miles of dusty roads and their deprivations. And since it is hard to always be “on” when playing the part of a public figure, he must have regarded this happy home as one of those few places where he did not have to be the great man, but just be himself.

As the story opens, John can assume his reader’s familiarity with the family and their closeness to Jesus. He can make reference, for instance, to the story of Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet, a story which he has yet to tell. And when Lazarus falls ill, it is hardly surprising that the sisters would send for him. It would have been the most natural thing in the world. They know who he is. They know he can heal their brother. No one dies in the presence of Jesus. And so a messenger is sent to summon him and they eagerly await his arrival.

Jesus, at this moment, is in the Trans-Jordan, the region across the river where John the Baptist had lived and worked, but among his little band of disciples things are tense. They are not here to see the sights or revisit scenes of past glory. They are here because they have been forced to. After the incident with the healing of the blind man, Jesus has very nearly gotten himself stoned and arrested and he and the rest are lucky to have gotten out of the city at all. Now they are hunkered down in the relative isolation and safety of the wilderness wondering what Jesus will decide to do next. If the decision was theirs to make, no doubt they would opt to return to Galilee and lay low until things in the capital had settled down a bit.

But then a messenger arrives from Bethany, and, instead of retreating to further safety, Jesus resolves to go back to Judea. It is a death sentence and Jesus knows it. He who has spoken of himself as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep will now make good on his word. For the sake of restoring his friend Lazarus to life, he will now risk his own. The disciples, having discussed the matter amongst themselves, they, too, know the odds. Finally, Thomas says, “Very well, if we’re gonna go, let’s go. We’ll just have to die with him, too” (v.16). And so the men, full of apprehension, gather their things and catch up to Jesus, who is already a good ways down the road. Now they find themselves retracing the steps they had just taken away from danger, and with each new step are drawing nearer towards it.

By the time Jesus arrives, Lazarus has been dead for four days. The poor man must have succumbed to his illness shockingly quickly, on the very day the messenger had been sent, and he would have been buried the same day. According to rabbinical tradition, the souls of the departed hovered around the grave for three days in the hope of being reunited with the body, but as soon as decomposition set in, it would leave for good. This is why the narrative draws out the fact that it is now the fourth day. The Greek uses here an odd expression. It literally reads that Lazarus is a “fourth-day man,” sounding almost, to my ear, like a proverb. When someone is absolutely and completely beyond our reach, they are a “fourth-day man.” Searching for a similarly apt expression, a later writer in a later time would find them in the words, “Old Marley was dead…dead as a door-nail.” Lazarus is dead and there is no way to bring him back.

And now Jesus, standing beside the grave of his friend, utters into this hopeless situation words that, but for knowing the one who speaks them, would convince anyone that the speaker is mad. Ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ἀνάστασις καὶ ἡ ζωή. “I am the resurrection and the life” (v. 25). And, in this the greatest of his signs in this book of signs, to prove that these are the words of God and not just the preposterous ravings of a lunatic, Christ commands the stinking, decaying corpse to come out of the tomb. 

And so, in the same way, Christ stands at the entrance of whatever tomb you find yourself in today – whatever heartbreak and disappointment, whatever hopelessness, whatever shadow of death – and he recalls you to life. Despite being already dead for four days, despite being a stinking, decaying mess, despite being bound up and in the dark, the power of Christ is available to bring you life where before there seemed only unpitying, unconquerable death. I pray that you might know and accept this power and the love of the one who speaks it, the one who has rushed to your side knowing it will cost him his life, the one who weeps with you and for you, the one who says, In me death is certain to live, and the living is certain never to die.[1]

[1] After F. Godet, quoted in Marvin Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, vol. 2 (Maclean, VA: Macdonald Publishing Company, n.d.), 203.

Sunday, March 19, 2023

The Fourth Sunday of Lent

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

The Rev. Jeff Bohanski

Jesus saw a blind man.  Lord Jesus, forgive me when I do not see as you would want me to see.  Help me to see as you would want me to see.  Help me to walk in your love and walk in your ways.  Amen. 

The reading we just heard from John is long and seemed to go on for a long while.  My hope for us all is that this sermon won’t.

There is a lot going on in our Gospel reading today.  I suspect a whole Lentin series could be done from just this one reading.  We could do a class on why a loving God would permit someone to be born blind.  We could have another class on why all the Bible translations I’ve read from my little Gideon Bible to the King James Bible all have an English translation of the word Siloam added in in parenthesis.  We could also do a class about the ways the blind man was healed.  He was healed physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually.

This morning I’m going to just offer a couple of thoughts and prayers that came to me as I meditated on the readings this week.  Perhaps they will help you in your meditations and prayers.

When pray with a selection of Scripture, I read it several times.  I imagine myself in the passage and I imagine who is in the passage.  If Jesus is in the passage, I imagine how people are reacting to him.  This week as I read the readings, I was drawn to the Gospel story.

I imagine the heat of the day and the dust in the air.  I imagine the crowd pushing in around Jesus as they moved in mass to get to where they were going.  I imagine the disciples being so involve in their theological discussion that they missed seeing the needs of the blind man in front of them.  I imagine Jesus bending down in mid-sentence to help this man in need.  I imagine the blind man whose eyes were covered with mud making his way to The Pool of Siloam.

The first thought that occurred to me was how Jesus treated the blind man.  Jesus saw the man as he was, a person in need of his saving love.  So, he simply lovingly bent down, asked no questions, and began the blind man’s healing process. It then crossed my mind that this is how Jesus treats us.  He sees us and loves us as we are, as blind as we are, just as we are. Jesus wants to bring us healing to our blindness.

Then I began to think about my blindness.  How at school I can be so intent on teaching a lesson that I don’t see the child in need who is right in front of me.  Then I acknowledged how I worry that tomorrow I could be so distracted by the State takeover of HISD that I could miss the needs of a child in front of me who would really need my attention.  That’s when I asked Jesus to help me to see as he would want me to see.  Help me to see the person in need in front of me.  

On Wednesday I read this Gospel again.  This time it occurred to me that parts of it was like a cable news network.  There were the disciples who were so concerned about who is to blame for the situation of the blind man that the blind man’s needs went overlooked.  Then there were officials who were so determined to find a big lie in the story that they couldn’t see the fact that a blind man had actually been healed.  Instead, the officials threw everyone out of the synagogue who didn’t agree with what they were teaching.  I found I wanted to do what I do to the cable news shows when their noise gets too loud for me.  I wanted to turn them off.  So, that’s what I did.  I closed my Bible, and I went for a walk.

On my walk I asked myself, where was Jesus in all this noise?  My answer was, He was there where he always is.  Loving, teaching, and restoring people to health.  He was also confronting and correcting injustice.  I prayed; Lord help me to hear your voice in the noise of the world.  Help me to bring your healing love to those around me.  Help me to confront injustice I see in the world so that you may correct it in your way.

I believe as a person who follows Jesus, I am called to act on my prayers and meditations.  I see there is an opportunity for all of us to put our prayers into action next weekend.

Next Saturday we are holding a Parish Summit.  We will be looking at our five-year plan for ministry and spiritual growth here at Saint Andrews.  Over the three or four years I’ve been here I’ve seen everyone here play a part in God’s saving mission for the world.  I invite everyone here today, if you are a first-time visitor or if you are a long-time parishioner, to attend.  You hear God’s voice speaking to you, I invite you come add your voice and ideas to the prayerful discernment of where Jesus is leading us as a community so we may bring his healing loving and sometimes uncomfortable message to the community and world we find ourselves living in.

Come be a part of the future of Saint Andrew’s.  Amen.

Sunday, March 5, 2023

The Second Sunday of Lent

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

The Rev. Clint Brown

John 3:16, the most famous verse in the Bible; and it begins with the words “For God.” God is introduced without any explanation of any kind. God is simply stated as a fact. God is a given. For those of us in the pews, we can leave for the theologians to make for us all the sophisticated arguments for the existence of God. Our task is simpler, which is to make as compelling as possible the life that we live in light of that knowledge – the knowledge that God simply is. To the extent that we need something conceptual with which to start, we can liken it to how there are better and worse ways to interpret a novel. As Christians, we start with God, and the rest of our experience comes into focus, but for the skeptic, hoping to work their way to a place of certainty, the story does not have a clear beginning, middle, or end. The story that everything we know has come from nothing and will return to nothing – indeed, signifies nothing – is, for me, a way of interpreting the story that does not account for all the facts. At some point you just have to plant your flag, and, for me, I am for God.

“For God so loved.” We are in need now of definition. What is the nature of this God we serve? According to the First Letter of John, God is love. Love is the very definition of God and, because love is who and what God is, it would be a contradiction to experience anything other than this from God. In our rush to judge God we neglect to see that God has done the most loving thing imaginable – God has provided the way of deliverance. God has reached out to us so that the just punishment for sin has no claim on us. And God has given us complete freedom of choice. God has done all that love can do without forcing us to love God back – which, of course, true love could never do. Knowing, then, the depth and seriousness of God’s love for us, it seems to me like we could complain less and take greater care to live our lives like it mattered to us – this love which has reached out to us first – and turn toward God with the same seriousness with which God is turned to us. 

“For God so loved the world that he gave.” There are two things of importance to note here. First, it is easy for us to read these lines and congratulate ourselves. Aren’t we so glad that we are secured and our little corner of the world is secure? Aren’t we glad that God has taken special notice of us and our concerns? So we need to be reminded that our favored status is also within the larger context of God’s favor. God has, in Christ, done something for the whole world, not just for us. God’s eyes look kindly upon every nation and this is an important imaginative leap for us, to be able to un-center ourselves and see in the plight of others something that we ought to care about. For most of my life, I have had a world map on the wall of my office, and this has been so that, in saying my prayers, I can see where and for whom I am praying for. I can step outside of what is good for them: someone in Sri Lanka? Or Malawi? Or the Seychelles? Or Turkmenistan? What concerns them? And what do their lives look like? What are their struggles? And that reaching out with my imagination to embrace complete strangers helps me to come close to imagining the reaching out that God has done. Because what God has given He has given for all. God has given “his only Son.”

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” The image of a son is used throughout Scripture to convey the idea that when you look at a son, any son, you can, in a way, “see” the father. In the world of the Bible, the son would often act as the representative of the father, in trade and alliance-making, and we are all familiar with the idea of a son manifesting the father in mannerism, even resembling him in appearance. When we look at Jesus, we are confident that we see God in him – God’s character, God’s wisdom, and God’s love. And to say that Jesus is an “only” son, simple means that he is precious and unique. An only-begotten son is “one of a kind.” Jesus, like Isaac, was a child of promise, and like Isaac he was offered up on a mountain to be sacrificed. “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and…offer him…as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you” (Genesis 22:2). In the end, however, Abraham was spared the loss of his precious son, but God was not.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” God “gave” His son in order to draw the whole world to Himself. The word “believes” here has less to do with doctrine and more to do with trust. Who do you trust your life to? We are dealing here with something more than intellectual assent; we have gone down to the level of dependence, like a child for its mother, or a soldier, in a foxhole, in the dark, for the soldiers on either side. “Save [me],” cried the poet, “that hath none help nor hope but Thee alone.” The question becomes who will you put your faith in to deliver you? Because you have been given the choice. These two verbs are in the subjunctive: “may not perish,” “may have eternal life.” The subjunctive is the mood of possibility, contingency, choice. You may do the thing, or you may not. The choice is before you, and now all that has been done for you depends only upon your acceptance. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent…so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (v. 14). The remedy, the cure, was lifted up in the old story above the heads of the people for all to see and be healed. Jesus Christ was hoisted up on the Cross in order that the world may gaze upon him and be healed. Friends, life and death is set before you. Look up and see your deliverance: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Sunday, February 26, 2023

The First Sunday in Lent

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

The Rev. Clint Brown

It is well said that we can’t have Easter without first having the Cross. If not well-known enough to be a proverb, it certainly could be. We all know that there is no gain without pain; that we can’t run a victory lap without first having won the race; and we Christians know that, when it comes to our salvation, we should never accept its benefits without first weighing its cost. It is the knowledge of who we are – sinful, mortal, frail – that Lent confronts us with; forty days to confront squarely our need for God and why it is that Easter represents the momentous thing it does. This is why I want to encourage you to be especially intentional this Lent about your Lenten practices. It is not a question of should you do something different. The question to be decided is what should you do different? What can you do to shift your focus and let more of your attention land on Godly things rather than the things that otherwise preoccupy you.

It is all too easy, you see, to make the mistake of the distressed disciple who came to his teacher begging him for help. “Do you really want a cure?” the teacher asked. “Well, of course I do,” the disciple relied. “Otherwise, would I have bothered to come to you?” “Oh, yes,” the teacher replied. “Most people do.” And the disciple asked, incredulously, “Well what for then?” And the teacher answered, “Well, not for the cure. That’s too painful. They only come for relief.”

That, in a nutshell, is the work of Lent. Lent is the hard work of accepting the cure before we can know the relief. The cure that comes from the Cross is to accept its sadness; its disappointment; its defeat; and its demands. Why does the story have to go this way? Why does the King of Love have to die alone at the hands of angry men? On Palm Sunday we will be ourselves participants in the incredible drama of both welcoming and rejecting Jesus all in the space of one morning. The crowds who fall over themselves to acclaim Jesus that first day will, by week’s end, be calling for his execution. We cannot turn away from these facts. We must look upon the innocent man condemned to die and ponder the imponderable: the Creator being mocked and beaten by those he created; the real rabble-rouser being let off scot-free; the reality – the perversion of justice – that it should be us being punished for our sins, and not the one who knew no sin.

Such are just a few of the many ironies of the Cross that make the story we have to tell in the days ahead so poignant and so terrible. Above the head of Jesus, Scripture says, Pilate will inscribe, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (John 19:19). Pilate and the religious authorities had thought to mock him, to make an example of this “so-called” Christ – and they certainly did – but not the one they intended. The example of the Cross is how we have to die in order to live. What could be a better focus for our contemplations and occupations as we commence our Lenten journey? Dying in order to live. The cure before the relief. We are back at the place we started: we cannot have Easter without the Cross.

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Ash Wednesday

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

The Rev. James M.L. Grace

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

We find ourselves here, on Ash Wednesday, at the beginning of our journey through the season of Lent.  Lent is about honestly accounting for our sinful and broken lives while also accepting the fragility of our lives. 

To acknowledge the simple – yet profound – truth of our sin and our mortality, we wear a mark upon our forehead – a simple cross of ashes.  Ashes were used in the ancient world to express grief.  For example, at the end of the book of Job, when God challenges Job to defend himself, Job knows that he cannot do so before God, so he simply says “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”  Elsewhere in scripture the prophet Jeremiah writes about the coming destruction of the city of Jerusalem, telling its inhabitants to “put on sackcloth, and roll in ashes.” 

Our culture is one that remains staunchly uncomfortable in honestly expressing our grief and acknowledging our inevitable deaths.  Our funeral industry profits in dressing up the dead as if they were still living, coloring their faces with makeup to give an appearance – however false – that blood still is pumping through their bodies.  We cover up dirt at the graveside with astroturf because, according to what I have heard those in the funeral industry, the very sight of dirt, that will later be shoveled onto a casket – is unsightly, and causes funeral attendees discomfort.

 However often we keep death at a distance - there are times when embracing mortality is unavoidable, such as when we see images of the damage wrought by the recent earthquake in Turkey and Syria.  The earthquake has reminded us – yet again – of our fragility and mortality.  Beyond that, the damage levied by the earthquake reminds us – starkly - that nothing we build lasts forever, a theme explored in Percy Blythe Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias,” which I will now read: 

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.  Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

In honor of our impermanence and in honor of our mortality, we today take the ashcross upon our forehead.  We bear this mark as witness to the world and to ourselves that through death we live, through humbling ourselves, we rise, and that in giving away our lives – we receive them.

My wife and I recently purchased a niche in a columbarium where we will one day be placed whenever we may die.  After our bodies are cremated, our ashes will be placed in the columbarium niche which is in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, in view of many of the mountains we enjoy hiking.  Elk and deer are mill through the columbarium.  On bright side, I now get to say that Marla and I are proud owners of a home in Colorado, the downside being that have to die first before we get to move in.

That is not so bad. The Christian faith is built upon that very idea – dying is not something to fear or dread.  I believe that there is much beyond this life, and I choose to believe the promise of the Bible which proclaims that our destiny is to receive a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.  We do not go quietly into the night.  We die boldly in assurance our God will receive us.  AMEN.

Sunday, February 19, 2023

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany

Matthew 17:1-9

The Rev. Canon Joanne Saylors

As many times as I have heard the story of the Transfiguration, I am never sure what to do with it.

Is the experience for Jesus’ benefit?

Some sort of strengthening for what is to come?

Or is it for Peter, James, and John?

So that they can better understand what Peter meant when he acknowledged Jesus as the Christ six days before?

For their strength?

What about the other disciples? Why can’t they know about it?

I get that Jesus may not want the rest of his followers to know, but does it have to be a secret from Andrew? Philip? Thomas?

What we do know is that Jesus is given a special experience in meeting God on that day.

Of course, we don’t know exactly what it was like when Jesus talked to his Father all the time,

but we know that this experience was different and special, both for him and for the others. 

Something about Jesus’ communion with God that day was so profound that his very appearance changed.  

This hearkens back to the Old Testament reading where Moses takes Joshua and goes up the on the mountain to receive the ten commandments, and the glory of God settles there.

And sure enough, who appears to talk to Jesus, but Moses himself, along with Elijah, who had also had a mountaintop experience. 

Elijah experienced the natural drama of wind, earthquake, and fire up on the same mountain as Moses,

but then heard God in a still, small voice.

So perhaps it’s no surprise to those gathered when the voice comes, just as it did at Jesus’ baptism:

“This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

God is speaking to the disciples, not Jesus, and it is a reminder of Jesus’ identity and relationship to God,

an invitation for them to look inward to their own.

And we, in turn, study this story just before Lent – for the same reason. 

We are entering the time in the Church year especially appointed for self-examination and attention to our relationship with God and with Christ. 

Given our human failings, that inevitably means repentance and, ideally, amendment of life. 

We focus on our own need for salvation, and the part each of us plays in the Passion story that comes before Easter.

That’s hard. 

We can find encouragement in this story. 

We should know that at times when we need a special encounter to give us strength, God will provide it to us. 

Maybe our self-reflection and prayer show us we have a particularly difficult path to tread or maybe we are being strengthened for new ministries. 

Maybe God knows we are ready to be transformed in order to enter a deeper, more profound relationship with our Creator.

Whatever the reason, if we truly need it, God will provide.

But while this kind of special moment of God’s presence is essential to the person who receives it directly,

I think such moments are meant to be shared. 

I have been lucky to hear such stories from a few people along my own journey,

and I have found strength, encouragement, and wisdom in hearing them. 

Our faith is built and strengthened in the Christian community,

and we all need the encouragement that comes from such an experience,

whether it happens to us or to one of our brothers or sisters. 

Because not all of us will necessarily receive a mountaintop experience of our own. 

Again, still nine disciples down on the ground somewhere.  Perhaps not everyone needed this kind of direct experience, or maybe the others were simply not ready, for whatever reason. 

Perhaps there was a lesson there that they needed to learn

about the discipline of faith while staying on level ground, instead of going to the mountain. 

Only God knows – for each of us – how best to reach us.

The whole thing is amazing enough that Peter wants to camp out and keep it going. 

After hearing the voice of God, he suggests that they build three dwellings, for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, so that they can all stay up on the mountain. 

I imagine his self-reflection made him think he needed more time on the mountain, whether in preparation for his ministry or simply to be with God and his spiritual companions.

So he suggests a way, within the scope of his human understanding, that the experience can go on.

Is that so different from the way we are? 

When we are caught up in our own mountaintop times, we want them to go on and on. 

As I have traveled on my path, there have been a few times in my spiritual journey when I felt so absolutely filled with the presence of God,

so bursting with the Spirit, that it was almost overwhelming, and I did want that to last forever. 

If God does grant us a special communion with him, an intense experience of grace, of course we wouldn’t want that to end.

But that’s not how it works.

Jesus and the disciples don’t stay on the mountain. 

They come down the next day. 

They have work to do. 

Peter, James, and John have a secret to keep.

Jesus didn’t come among us just to have people see his glory on a mountain. 

He spent a lot more time among the people: 

with his disciples, with the poor and the outcast, with those who listened to his teachings and followed him. 

And no matter how it transformed them, no matter how their ministry was shaped by the experience,

we never do hear Peter, James, and John talk about the mountaintop in their ministry. 

They do continue to follow Jesus, to teach and spread his message, and to heal the sick. 

They continue the ministry to which God had called them.

So maybe their experience is the thing that kept them on that path, even when things got hard.

Maybe they held it, treasured it, drew upon it.

But I don’t think that was the true source of their strength.

Most of their ministry was on the plains, not the mountain. 

And the flatlands can be disappointing. 

We stumble, we fall, things don’t work out the way we expect them to,

God doesn’t answer our prayers in the way we think He will.  Sometimes we take paths on our faith journeys thinking we’re following God’s plan and they don’t work. 

We need strength to carry on.

And, as I said, not everyone has this intense kind of encounter with God. 

The grounded nine continued in their ministry along with the mountain three.

So mountaintop experiences alone aren’t what strengthen us. 

While they can reinforce our faith and deepen our relationship with God, or even transform it, mountaintop experiences alone cannot be what build our faith from day to day. 

What does?

More important than a one-time experience in our spiritual lives is ongoing relationship. 

It’s the love of God and the love of our faithful sisters and brothers and the love of our neighbors.

Faith is grown in our day-to-day lives, through regular conversation with God in prayer, in corporate worship, in service to others, and in the fellowship of a Christian community.   

While some of us might get a mountaintop experience once in a while,

and while there is certainly much in them for ourselves and for those with whom we share them,

it’s the ordinary experiences of faith every day that really build up our strength. 

Truly transforming, transfiguring experiences don’t so much change the way we look, but the way we look at the world. 

They change how we approach situations. 

They give us the strength to pick ourselves up after disappointments and keep going,

and give us something to draw on at those times we feel God’s absence more than God’s presence. 

Sometimes they signal a change in the direction our journey is taking,

and it may be that the road ahead will be difficult, so we will need extra strength, as the disciples did. 

Here’s the thing, though: You don’t have to be on a mountaintop to have transforming experiences. 

My own journey has shown that sometimes I just have to look back at what seemed ordinary to find the transformation in it. 

Maybe it’s less about going to the mountain and more about building the mountain,

by accumulating the smaller stones of everyday grace and love.

We finish the season of Epiphany this week and begin the season of Lent,

knowing that in forty days we will reach the pinnacle of the highest mountain there is in our Christian faith:  the resurrection of Jesus.  All of us were transformed by that and will continue to be. 

But this season let us also look for the daily experiences that transform us,

those unexpected instances of grace, those special moments of relationship, those opportunities to serve one another. 

With God’s help, let us build our own mountains.  Amen.

Sunday, February 12, 2023

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 118:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37

The Rev. Clint Brown

Today is the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, born in a log cabin in the backwoods of Kentucky in the year 1809. Without question he was one of our greatest presidents, if not the greatest, and if we had the benefit of his insight today, I’m sure there would be plenty worth hearing from someone celebrating their 214th birthday! But as it is, he has long since left us, tragically so. But he did leave behind a record of a great many wise and insightful things, and among many examples I had to choose from, the one that came to my mind as I prepared for this sermon was a certain letter that he wrote to his stepbrother who had asked for an advance of money. It is a brief letter and won’t take too long to read. Here is what it says:

Dear Johnston:

Your request for eighty dollars, I do not think it best to comply with now– At the various times when I have helped you a little, you have said to me "We can get along very well now" but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again– Now this can only happen by some defect in your conduct– What that defect is, I think I know– You are not lazy, and still you are an idler– I doubt whether since I saw you, you have done a good whole day’s work, in any one day– You do not very much dislike to work; and still you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it– This habit of uselessly wasting time, is the whole difficulty, and it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children that you should break this habit– It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it; easier than they can get out after they are in–

You are now in need of some ready money; and what I propose is, that you shall go to work "tooth and nails" for somebody who will give you money for it– …Now if you will do this you will soon be out of debt and what is better you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again– But if I should now clear you out, next year you will be just as deep in as ever– You say you would almost give your place in Heaven for $70 or $80– Then you value your place in Heaven very cheaply for I am sure you can with the offer I make you get the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months work– You say if I furnish you the money you will deed me the land; and if you don’t pay the money back, you will deliver possession— Nonsense! If you can’t now live with the land, how will you then live without it? You have always been kind to me; and I do not now mean to be unkind to you– On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice you will find it worth more than eight times eighty dollars to you–

Affectionately

Your brother

A. Lincoln[1]

 As you were listening, you may have recognized in this kind of talking what most of us today would call “tough love.” Lincoln may sound harsh, but that’s all because he would be failing his brother is he did not give him a good dose of reality. Lincoln is not saying tough things because he wants to demoralize his stepbrother, or because he gets a kick out of kicking a man when he’s down. No, what Lincoln wants to do is convert his stepbrother to the idea of personal responsibility. And I think that that is precisely what God has been up to since the beginning. It is the idea of moral and ethical seriousness that God had in mind when He gave the Law, but a Law that for a thousand years, from the day Moses came down from the mountain, the Israelites had tried and failed and tried and failed again to keep. A new ethic was required.

Now, by the time of Jesus, there was no one who took God as seriously or were more exemplary in doing what the Law required than the Pharisees. In fact, we cannot understand what Jesus’s sermon is about if we don’t look on them and admire them. For here is Jesus saying that not even what they are doing is enough. The best are not the best. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (v. 20, emphasis added). That is what he tells the crowd, and the crowd must have turned to each other in utter astonishment. And so Jesus uses six illustrations to explain his meaning, of which we hear four today: concerning anger, concerning adultery, concerning divorce, and concerning oaths.

“You have heard that it was said…but I say…” In each case Jesus uses this formula, but, in each case, it is important to know that Jesus is not displacing the Law with a better one; the Law is not being destroyed, but perfected. What was old is good, it’s just that the emphasis has been all wrong. The problem is the age-old conflict between the outer and inner forms of spirituality, and here Jesus shows which tail should be wagging the dog. It is not what someone does that defines their position for Jesus, but, rather, who they are. What he is driving at in each of his examples is, “What does my action and speech reveal about my character?” Am I angry with someone? Jesus says that that is as punishable an offense as murder. Notice that. Notice that as devastating as the effect of our anger may be toward its object, and it cannot help but be terrible, Jesus dwells not on that but rather on the danger to me. And that, then as now, is “the best way of securing the aim of the old Law. A [person] will not murder without a motive, and the [heart] that excludes hatred and anger will not only be justified in itself, but will [also] make murder impossible.”[2]

Or take the prohibition against adultery. It is perhaps easier to see in this case more than any other how sin must be committed in the mind before it can be committed in action, and so Jesus proposes a radical treatment: if your eye causes you to sin, he says, gouge it out; and if your hand offends, cut it off (5:29-30). This is, of course, is the language of hyperbole, and its meaning is crystal clear: as valuable as an eye or a hand is, nothing is more valuable than our character. And what is “character” except the way we properly relate to each other?

In the same way that sound needs air to propagate, so living God’s law requires people. The message of Jesus’s sermon is relationship. The Law was always meant to be expressed chiefly in our behavior toward one another. Moral and ethical seriousness, about which Lincoln wrote in his letter and of which we have been speaking, is not an added-on thing, it is the whole thing; and so we want to become the kind of person who cannot err in this most vital of arenas. As our own Bishop Monterosso is fond of saying, there are many ways to love our neighbor, but there is only one way to love God – and that is by loving our neighbor. Learn that and the kingdom of God will have been born within you.

[1] Abraham Lincoln to Thomas Lincoln and John D. Johnston, 24 December 1848, accessed February 11, 2023, https://papersofabrahamlincoln.org/documents/D200534. Some spelling and punctuation has been modernized.

[2] Theodore H. Robinson, The Gospel of Matthew, The Moffatt New Testament Commentary (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1960), 39.