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15 November -- XXIV Pentecost
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.
This sermon has been inspired by the lesson from the letter to the Hebrews.
In the beginning God created everything and the human being were in perfect relationship with God. But eventually, human beings decided that they wanted to take the place of God and so the broke their relationship with God.
Adam and Eve had two sons – Cain and Abel. One day Cain and Abel offered their sacrifices to God. God was pleased with Abel’s offering, for he had offered a sacrifice of the firstlings of his flock. Cain gave God a sacrifice of the fruit of the ground. And God looked with favor on Abel’s sacrifice, but not Cain’s. And this angered Cain. And Cain took his brother Abel into the field and killed him because his sacrifice pleased God.
And later there was a great flood, and then people tried to build a great tower. And God looked with favor on a man named Abraham and his wife Sarah. And a child was promised them. And God fulfilled His promise and they had a son and named him Isaac.
And one day, God tested Abraham. God asked Abraham to take his son Isaac and to sacrifice him. And Abraham took Isaac up on a mountain, and before he sacrificed him, God sent an angel and said that he could sacrifice a ram instead of his only son. And Abraham was blessed. He was blessed because he had been willing to sacrifice his son for God.
And the family of Abraham and Sarah grew through many generations. And they ended up in Egypt, first as people of privilege, but later a people of slavery. And God spoke to a leader of His people. This leader’s name was Moses.
God said to Moses that Moses was to speak to the King of Egypt and tell the King that God’s people needed to go into the wilderness to sacrifice to God. But God knew that the King’s heart would be too hard to let His people go into the wilderness to sacrifice.
And God sent many plagues upon the people of Egypt until finally the King let God’s people go. And they went through the Red Sea on dry ground, and the waters covered the Egyptians who followed them.
And God led His people into the wilderness. And in the wilderness they offered sacrifice to the Lord their God. And they remembered the triumph of the Lord by the sacrifice of a Lamb. And the God’s chosen people entered the land of promise.
But they forgot the greatness of the Lord their God. And they began to offer sacrifice to other gods. And this angered their God. And He sent judges, and He sent them into exile. He was angry because of their sacrifice to other gods.
And the people once again found favor with their God, and asked for a king. And they had their king, and they grew into a nation – great and powerful. And the kings and the people sacrificed to their God. But they would turn away, and then remember, and turn away and then remember. They would live in favor and then in exile. And there were prophets and judges. And this happened for many generations.
And finally God decided that it was time for His people to be brought back into perfect relationship. And the way that He would do this is that He would become one with them. God would become a human being.
And so, God was born, just like us. And He grew up with a human mother and human father. And after he was born, His mother and father followed the law of God’s people. And they took Him to the temple and there they offered a sacrifice, as was prescribed in the law of God’s people. And they were told by a man named Simeon and a prophetess named Anna that this child was a special child, and that He would save God’s people. Indeed the whole world.
And at the time that they offered sacrifice in the temple, He received His name. And his name was Jesus.
Jesus grew. He grew up much like you and me. And He was baptized and went into the wilderness, and He knew who He was and what He must do. He must be the sacrifice -- the sacrifice for the whole world.
And Jesus taught, and had disciples, and He performed miracles. And He went into the temple, and He drove out all of the animals and the money changers. There was no need for them to be there anymore, because Jesus was going to be the sacrifice.
And one evening, when He ate the sacrifice of the Passover lamb, He told his disciples that He would be the sacrifice. And afterwards He prayed on a mountain. And one of His disciples betrayed Him. And on the cross He was the sacrifice. He died for you and for me. And He rose for you and for me.
And today we come to worship the One, True God. And we say of the cross: “He made there a full and perfect sacrifice for the whole world; and did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious death and sacrifice, until his coming again.”
And we add ourselves to this sacrifice with the words: “And we earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, whereby offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies.”
And truly we can say, “Alleluia! Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast. Alleluia!” AMEN.
8 November -- XXIII Pentecost
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
For centuries the psalms have been at the center of the life of both Jews and Christians. People living in religious communities often read through all 150 psalms every week. It is possible, through the praying of the daily offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, to read through all of the psalms every month. With very few exceptions (when we say a canticle), we sing or say the psalms every Sunday as a part of the lessons appointed for the day.
I am somewhat ashamed to say that I very rarely focus on the psalms when seeking where I am being lead to preach on Sundays. Perhaps I should pay more attention to what they have to say, but I tend to focus more on the other lessons. But not so today. This morning, I was drawn to the psalm. I think that it has a lot to say about what needs to be at the center of our lives.
In today’s psalm, we are given a juxtaposition of a life that is focused on the self and one that is centered in the Lord. The psalm begins with the idea of the vanity of a life without the Lord:
Unless the Lord builds the house, their labor is in vain who build it.
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Unless the LORD watches over the city, in vain the watchman keeps his vigil.
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It is in vain that you rise so early and go to bed so late; vain, too, to eat the bread of toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep.
The psalmist points to several things in these opening verses. First, when he speaks of a house, I believe that he is not so much talking about a physical house so much as a family – the occupants of the house. And, by extension, I think that we could argue that he is talking about all of our relationships. In other words a relationship with another person is in vain if it is not build on the firm foundation of our relationship with the Lord.
He then goes on to talk about the vanity of security – “Unless the LORD watches over the city, in vain the watchman keeps his vigil.” The psalmist argues that protection and security is not found in the might of weapons, or in the vigilance of the watchman, but, again, that security finds its foundation in our trust in the Lord.
All too often, I find myself becoming a person who lives a life of fear rather than in trust. My DNA has inherited a “worrying gene”. It is important that when we find ourselves living in fear that we are reminded that if we say that Jesus is the Lord of our lives, then that means that we needn’t live in fear.
Does this mean that we should take undo risks? Should we all buy tickets to a war zone, or walk down a dark alley in a city? No. But, the center of our lives should not be fear. We cannot allow fear to become our god.
We need to remember that Jesus is the watchman who keeps vigil against the assaults of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Remember that simple song that children are taught in Sunday School – “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong. They are weak, but He is strong.”
Unless the LORD watches over the city, in vain the watchman keeps his vigil.
Then the psalmist turns to idea of our labor:
“It is in vain that you rise so early and go to bed so late; vain, too, to eat the bread of toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep.”
The psalmist again focuses our attention on the idea that everything in our lives needs to find its center, its foundation in our relationship with the Lord. Sometimes we need to work hard for something for it to come to fruition. But, likewise, we need to realize that there are times in which we will not succeed in our labors because they are not the will of God for our lives.
Several times in my life, I have been working hard for something that I believed was the will of the Lord for my life, and it did not seem to come to fruition. I found myself at the edge of my exasperation. I was ready to give up.
It was in that moment that things came together. They came together because I needed to understand that if something is the will of the Lord, then we need to allow the Lord to be the one who is in charge. If we think that we have achieved something because of our hard work, then we may be lead to believe that we do not need God.
The people who built the tower of Babel wanted to build that tower because they wanted to be like God. Adam and Eve were talked into eating the forbidden fruit because they wanted to be like God. We are not God. And, not matter how hard we work at it; we are not going to be God. We need God to live out His will in our lives.
It is in vain that you rise so early and go to bed so late; vain, too, to eat the bread of toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep.
The psalmist then turns from the vanity of a life lived without the Lord to the live of blessing that we have if we live in the Lord:
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Children are a heritage from the LORD, and the fruit of the womb is a gift.
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Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth.
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Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them! He shall not be put to shame
when he contends with his enemies in the gate.
If we look carefully, we see that these mirror much of the first part of the psalm, particularly relationships and security. Whereas in the beginning, the psalmist uses the idea of the house to represent our relationships within our family and with each other, now he uses the idea of the prosperity of many children to show the prosperity of relationships that are centered in the Lord.
He then follows that we the image of children as arrows, and the idea of a man having a quiver full of them. Does this not sound like someone who has security? Unlike the watchman who keeps vigil in vain because he does not put his trust in the Lord, the one who has the Lord at the center of his life has great security.
The psalmist gives us our choice in life – a life lived in vain or one in prosperity. A life lived in fear, or one of security. A life lived focused on ourselves, or one lived with the Lord at its center. What kind of life does each of us choose to live? AMEN.
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1 November -- All Saints'
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.
Who are the saints? Are they simply men and women who live in stained glass windows and books? Are they the people who you name Churches after? Are they the stuff of myths?
No. The saints were, and are, real people. People who lived real lives. The hymn that we find in our hymnal is true – “And one was a doctor, and one was a priest…You can meet them in schools or in lanes or at sea…” They were and are “just folks like us”.
I mention this because we tend to put the saints into stained glass windows and books and myths. We tend to do all of these things and we forget that they were real people who lived real lives. And they were real people who died. Some died in witness to the faith, and some died because of their faith.
Some were famous, and some are only remembered by the people who knew them in this earthly life. These are the ones whom we remember tomorrow night at our All Souls’ requiem -- the saints of god who touched our lives. Who lived and died, and whom we knew.
I have been thinking a bit this week about the fact that the saints of God were and are real people. People who faced the same temptations that we did. People who were married and had children. People who fell in love. People who had to make choices – just like we do.
And, I thought about how they were people who really did die. They died in so many different ways, but they died none-the-less. And, more likely than not, when they died, there were people who had lived with them and known them and had to deal with the fact that the person whom they knew and loved was now no longer on this earth -- just like we do.
This is what we see in the story of Lazarus. This, too, has become the stuff of Bible studies and stained glass windows and paintings by famous artists. But, in truth, it is the story of someone who really lived, and really died, and really had people who had to deal with that death.
“Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet, saying to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’” Do these not sound like the words of someone who has lost someone whom they loved? Do they not echo our own prayers for a miracle, or something other-worldly? Do we not experience that tension between the part of us who can’t let go, and the part who knows that beyond this life is something greater?
“When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” And just a moment later we read the shortest verse in the entire Bible – “Jesus wept”.
When I encounter people who are mourning the death of someone whom they love, and they are struggling with the fact that they will miss them, and yet they know that our faith calls us beyond this world to that which is to come. I like to tell them that it is alright to cry.
“Jesus wept”. He knew what He was going to do, but still “Jesus wept”. He wept because Lazarus was a friend – “So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’”
Does this not sound like the anger and frustration we have sometimes? As it says in one of the Prayers in the Burial liturgy, “Help us in the midst of the things that we cannot understand to believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection to life everlasting.”
And yet, we, like Martha, and those who are with her in her grief are confronted with the words of Jesus, “Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” And only moments later they would see that glory.
Most of us will need to wait a bit longer to see that glory. We will continue to live with the same temptations. We will love. We will continue to have to make choices. And some day, we, too will die. And we too will hear Jesus call our name.
“The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be an affliction and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of men they were punished, their hope is full of immortality.” “They were all of them saints of God, and I mean, God helping to be one, too.” AMEN.
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