28 June -- St. Peter & St. Paul (Transferred)

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

Earlier this year, I began using the spiritual practice called “Lectio Divina”.  I had tried using this in the past, but had not successfully incorporated it into my Spiritual life.  It is a practice of slow and deliberate reading and meditation on sacred scripture.   

Over time I continue to grow in the way I use this practice.  At first, I felt obliged to read whole paragraphs, or even stories before beginning to meditate.  I now feel more free to stop even after a few words.  It is interesting to see where the meditation goes when I begin with one word or phrase. 

I am talking about this by way of introduction, because I “got stuck” on just a few words in the first lesson for today.  I didn’t even get through the entire first sentence.  I got as far as this:

“Thus says the Lord God: ‘Behold I, I myself will…”  It was this repetition of  “I, I myself…” which caught my attention.  It seems clear to me that in translating this part of the verse in this way that there is emphasis being placed on the fact that the Lord is acting on His own.  He is not sending an agent, or a prophet, or a proxy of any kind.  He Himself is going to do it all. 

I wish that I could say that I was an Hebrew Scholar.  It would be wonderful to say that I could go back to the original Hebrew text – the language in which the Old Testament was originally written – and to look at this phrase.  But I am not such a scholar, nor do I pretend to be. 

Which means that I must rely on the authenticity and skills of the translators of this particular translation of sacred scripture to have made a good translation.  I believe that this translation – the Revised Standard Version – is a good translation.  So that led me to think about the importance of the emphasis on the action of the Lord in this opening verse -- “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Behold I, I myself will…”   

In this reading from Ezekiel this morning, there are many things that the Lord says that He will do – He says:

“I will search for my sheep…I will seek out my sheep…I will rescue them…I will bring them out from the peoples…I will feed them on the mountains of Israel…I will feed them with good pasture…I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep…I will make them lie down…I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will watch over; I will feed them in justice.” 

This is quite a list.  And I thought about exploring all of the various things on this list.  But I continued to be stuck on “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Behold I, I myself will…”  -- “I, I myself will…”  

I continued to be suck on the fact that the Lord was being very clear, through the words that He gave to His prophet Ezekiel that He was going to do all of these things Himself.   He was not going to send someone else to do it.  He was going to do all of this Himself. 

And this led me to think about Jesus.   Of course, as a Christian there is very little that doesn’t lead me to think about Jesus.  Jesus is the embodiment – literally the incarnation of this phrase -- “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Behold I, I myself will…” . 

In Jesus, God is not sending someone else.  In Jesus God is doing it all.  Because Jesus is the Son of God.  Jesus is God “in the flesh” – incarnate.  Through Jesus God is doing everything: 

“I will search for my sheep…I will seek out my sheep…I will rescue them…I will bring them out from the peoples…I will feed them on the mountains of Israel…I will feed them with good pasture…I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep…I will make them lie down…I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will watch over; I will feed them in justice.”  In Jesus, God is doing it all. 

Let me encourage you to take some time to “take your time” reading Sacred Scripture.  If you get stuck on a word – go with it.  You never know what you might learn.  AMEN.

 21 June -- III Pentecost

Rector on vacation -- no sermon availible.

14 June -- II Pentecost

          In the Name of the Father and of the  Son, and of the Holy Spirit.           

          Sunday, June 13th 1999.    That was my first Sunday as Rector of this Parish.  On that Sunday, I baptized Patrick Reid.  Today, almost ten years to the day, I am baptizing Patrick’s cousin -- Mae Moore Bamberg.             

          I decided that it might be intersting to see what I said in the sermon on that first Sunday of our ministry together.  And guess what?  It is perfectly applicable for this morning.  So I decided to repeat that first sermon this morning -- with just a little editing.         

          When I preach the sermon on my last Sunday at All Saints' in Fort Worth, some people told me that I should use it again, with some changes, as the first sermon at St. Paul's.  But somehow this didn't seem right.  So what was I supposed to say at St. Paul's on my first Sunday?  It seemed so very important.  What I say today should set the tone for our time of ministry together.  What a daunting and scary task that seemed to be.

          Then I received a telephone call asking me if it would be okay to have a baptism at the 10:30 service on my first Sunday.  I said yes, but only later began to think about what a blessing this was from God. 

          A baptism on my first Sunday with you.  It all seemed to fall into place.  How good our Lord is to me.  This daunting and scary task didn't seem to be so daunting and scary now.  Because baptism is very important in our life of ministry together.  It is the time and place when each of us were given the gift of the Holy Spirit to do the work that Jesus calls us to do -- To be laborers in the Lord's harvest.  So let's look at what we do in the sacrament of Holy Baptism as a way of understanding what it mean to be laborers in the Lord's harvest.          

          We started off this Sunday as we do every Sunday in Pentecost, with the words "Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be his Kingdom now and forever."  By starting out in this way, we are saying to the world and one another, that all that we do is done in the presence of God.  The God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The God who we cannot understand fully, because if we could, then He wouldn't be God.                    

        We then rehearse the truth of who we are and what we are about:         

There is one Body and one Spirit           

This is one hope in God's call to us         

One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism         

One God and Father of all.         

          We are reminding ourselves that we are one in Christ, we are His Body on earth.  We are reminding ourselves of our calling, the call that we received  at our baptism, and that, again, we do everything before God, and in accordance with the will of our Heavenly Father.         

          What happens next?  We pray the collect of the day, and we sit to listen to readings from Scripture.  This is very important.  Because our work together at St. Paul's, the work of the Body of Christ, the work that is the will of the Father, is the fulfillment of Scripture.  The more we steep ourselves in  reading the Scriptures and meditating on them, the more we will understand the will of the Father for us.                             

          The reading of Scripture is then followed by what you are listening to at this moment -- the Sermon.   But what is a sermon?  I think that it is a way of looking at the Scripture and asking the question "How does this speak to my life?"           

          Notice, I did not say "How does my life speak to this scripture?"  All too often in our society today we see people who are too quick to dismiss something in Scripture because it does not coincide with their life experience.  Rather then living with the tension, they will simply dismiss the Scripture as irrelevant.  But we are called to live in that tension.  Sometimes that tension is the energy that keeps us going.         

          So, after the reading of Scripture, we try to see how we might live out the Scripture.  We are trying to answer the question, "How can I be a fulfillment of Scripture?"

          After this we present the candidate for baptism, and we ask the parents and godparents a few questions.  At the heart of these questions is the reality of the world in which we live out our calling.   These questions deal with the fact that there is evil and sinfulness in the world, but that as baptized persons we live in this world with the knowledge that Jesus is the Lord of our lives.

          We then go on to reaffirm our baptismal covenant.   The answers to the first three questions that are asked are the words to the Apostles' Creed.  This is the next point that I think needs to be made.  Not only is our life together a fulfillment of Scripture, but it is grounded in the Tradition of the Church.            

          We then pray for the candidate.  This is another important point to be made.  Our life together is the fulfillment of Scripture, grounded in the Tradition of the Church, and it is done PRAYERFULLY.  In the letter that I sent out to the members of the parish family a few weeks ago, I asked that you pray for me and for one another.  The work that we do together must always be supported by prayer because we live in a world in which there is evil and sinfulness.         

          We then baptize the candidate in the Name of the Trinity, once again reminding ourselves not only the reality of the God whom we serve, but that everything is done in His presence.                             

          Then we put the mark of the cross with chrism oil on the forehead of the candidate with these words "...you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own forever."  It is at that moment that we are acknowledging who we all are.  We belong to Christ forever.  We are His laborers.  We are His Body in the world.         

          Well, all that is left is then the peace and the Communion.  This is the final point that I want to make.  Jesus not only calls us to be His Body, to be the fulfillment of Scripture, to be grounded in the Tradition of the Church, to be strengthened by prayer for ourselves and one another, but then feeds us.  And with nothing less than His own Body and Blood.           

So let me sum it all up .  We are fed with the Body and Blood of Christ, we are  strengthened by prayer for ourselves and one another, we are grounded in the Tradition of the Church, and we live in fulfillment of the Scriptures as the Body of Christ in the world AMEN.

7 June -- Trinity Sunday

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

Does God ever change?  Or, does He always remain the same?  At first the answer seems obvious.  But several weeks ago at the midweek Bible study (which meets every Wednesday following the healing Eucharist) we had a discussion about how God is portrayed in the Old and New Testaments.  Since it is Trinity Sunday, I want to share some thoughts on this subject.   

I am sure you are all aware that as Christians we believe in one God who is Trinity of persons.  The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Equal yet ordered.  A God who is pure relationship.   

We believe that God became incarnate, that is human, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We believe that this incarnate Son of God was sent by  His Heavenly Father.  Together they send the Holy Spirit to us first on the day of Pentecost and then through our baptism. 

All these things we read in Sacred Scripture, and we profess in the ancient creeds of the church which have been handed down to us through the centuries.  Although some in the church may try to “re-image” God we must stay true to that which has been given to us. 

I am sure that these things are not new or surprising to any of you.  But the other week in the Bible Study we began to talk about how God is portrayed in the Old Testament.  During the course of the discussion, we talked about how it may seem at first that the idea that God is Trinity is something new to our Christian faith and is not found in the Old Testament.   

It is true that the idea of God as Trinity is not expressed explicitly in the Old Testament, but it only took us a few moments to come up with examples of the various persons of the Trinity in different places.  For example, in the creation story in Genesis God refers to Himself in the plural: “let us create man in our own image”. 

Likewise in the creation story it speaks of the Spirit “moving over the waters”.  If we think for a moment it is not a big stretch for our imagination to recognize that this same Spirit is the One sent down upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost.  This is the same Spirit that we have all received at our baptism.    

Another example is found in the book of the Prophet Isaiah.  In several places Isaiah writes of the “suffering servant”.  Scholars question to whom Isaiah is referring.  Is it the people of Israel?  Is it Isaiah himself?  The gospel writers believe, and our tradition tells us, that this suffering servant is Jesus who “like a sheep that before its shears is mute” stands before Pontius Pilate. 

It is not hard, then, for us to see the persons of the Trinity in the Old Testament.  Indeed as Christians we see Jesus and that which is recorded in the New Testament not in competition with the Old Testament, but as a fulfillment of the Old Testament. 

If we believe that the God that we worship and serve is truly God, it only makes sense that the true God is not going to change over time.  It is impossible for God to change because for us to believe that God changes would not make Him God. Let me be clear.  It is possible for us as human beings to come to a greater understanding of God.  But this does not mean that God changes.  Merely that our understanding becomes more complete.   

This is how we understand our awareness of God as Christians.  We believe that through Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, and through the gift of the Holy Spirit that we have received the truest and fullest understanding of God.  And that understanding is that God is Trinity.   

If we search the scriptures -- both Old and New Testaments -- we see that God has always been Trinity.  If we search for the evidence of the existence of God in our every day lives we also can understand God as Trinity -- who creates us out of nothing, who saves us from our sins, and who guides us along every step of our journey in this life and with whom we will be in relationship for all eternity.  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, through the love of our Heavenly Father, and through the inspiring power of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

31 May -- The Day of Pentecost 

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN. 

There are courses taught in secular institutions of higher learning which look at the Bible as a piece of literature.  They will spend time looking at the way in which things are written, the order in which they are presented, etc.  and focus on them as they would any other book.   

This enterprise can be helpful for the faithful believer.  We can sometimes gain a greater understanding of the Truth that God wishes us to know in Sacred Scripture by looking at the way in which things are presented or the order in which they come. 

 But, we must be careful to understand the Bible as more than just a piece of literature, but a means of grace in which the God of all creation, the Lord which we profess in our prayers and creeds, wishes to give us His grace.  In other words, we must be careful to understand the Scriptures as much more than words written by human hands and inspired by human intellect, but are truly the Word of the Lord that we profess them to be. 

With that being said, what I want to focus on today is the way in which two stories are presented to us in the Bible and the truth that these stories convey to us through the placement and telling of these stories.First, I want to read for you the story of the tower of Babel.  It is not one of the lessons that was read today, but it is important for us to hear, so that I might be able to tell you what I want to tell you today.  The story is found in the book of Genesis:  

  “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” 5The LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 6And the LORD said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” 8So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9Therefore it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.   

The second story is the one found in the first lesson for today.  It is the story of Pentecost.  It, too, is a story that deals with people speaking in various languages.  But, it has a much different outcome than the Babel story.     

Now, let me talk about the placement of these two stories in Sacred Scripture.  The Book of Genesis is written in such a way in which we are presented first with the truth that when God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, that at the time in which He finished His creation, that creation was in perfect relationship with Him.  We are presented with the idea that at first their was chaos, and then that out of this chaos God created, and that His creation was in order.  Thus the story of creation ends with the idea that God looked at His creation and said that it was very good.     

But then we are presented with the truth of the fall of creation.  And everything in the Book of Genesis that comes after the story of the fall is meant to show us the truth that the order of creation was thrown back into chaos because of its fallen state.  The story of Babel is placed where it is because in its story of the confusing of the languages of the people we are given an example of the chaos of creation after the fall.        

By the way, the sin of Adam and Eve is also repeated in this story because the reason that the people of Babel wished to build their tower was so they could reach heaven and be like God.     

Now, let’s get back to this morning’s first lesson.  It is placed in a particular place in the story of creation’s relationship with God.  The story of Pentecost happens after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It is through this death and resurrection of the Incarnate Son of God that the chaotic creation as brought back into its original ordered relationship with God.  Through Jesus, the relationship between God and His creation is restored.     

So, we might then notice that whereas in the story of Babel in which the speaking of various languages is symbolic of the chaos of creation, because the people cannot understand each other -- on the day of Pentecost the opposite is true.  On that day the disciples spoke in many languages and those who were present were amazed because the understood them.      

This is because, just like the story of Babel was told after the fall of creation, the story of Pentecost is told after the restoration of creation in Jesus Christ.   The final piece, of course, is the reason that the disciples were speaking in tongues.  It was so that everyone that was gathered on that day might come to understand the truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died for us on the cross so that in Him we might no longer live in the chaos of a fallen creation, but instead would be restored to a perfect relationship with God in Christ.  

Looking at the Bible as a piece of literature can be helpful for the faithful believer.  We can sometimes gain a greater understanding of the Truth that God wishes us to know in Sacred Scripture by looking at the way in which things are presented or the order in which they come.       

Today, we were given a part of the story of creation’s relationship with God.  May we live in the truth that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Saviour and that through Him, and Him alone, all creation is brought back into perfect relationship with God.  Let us live in that Truth, and share it with others, in whatever tongue the Lord has given us.  AMEN