4TH SUNDAY IN LENT—14 March 2010
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:15 a.m.
Joshua 5:9-12 | Psalm 32 | 2Cor 5:16-21 | Luke 15:1-3,11b-32
"Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends."
One of my favorite windows on what’s really going on in people’s minds is the advice columns in the papers. In the Iowa City Press-Citizen that would be Dear Abby. (Although of course now it isn’t the original Dear Abby any more, it’s her daughter, who actually is a pretty good counselor. But I digress.) Sometimes these columns are kind of depressing, because it’s fairly clear that there are a whole bunch of people running around out there who are profoundly clueless. But one of the recurring themes that keeps popping up in the letters that come in to these columnists has to do with gifts. “My nephew who lives on the west coast and whom I haven’t seen since he was seven has sent us a high-school graduation announcement; do we have to send a gift?” “My cousin is getting married for the fourth time; she could furnish a whole house with the engagement, shower, and wedding presents we’ve already given her, and we don’t even like her very much! Do I have to send a gift?” I remember a marvelous one from some years back — “Should the value of the wedding gift equal the price-per-couple being spent by the bride’s parents on the reception and dinner?” Or this: “I keep getting Christmas presents from so-and-so, and so we give presents back, but it’s more than we can really afford, and we really aren’t all that close anyway . . .” And on and on. You know how it goes. Most of us have been in that situation ourselves a few times.
What this suggests to me is that we have a real problem with the whole business of gifts. We don’t understand about Gift. Gifts are free. Absolutely free, or else they aren’t really gifts. We don’t pay for gifts (then it’s not a gift but a purchase we’ve made). We don’t deserve gifts (then it’s not a gift but a wage we’ve earned). We don’t owe gifts (then it’s not a gift but a debt we need to pay off).
But no. We’re all brought up to believe the wise old saying, “There’s no free lunch, you get what you pay for, and nothing’s going to come in the mail.” And so too often for us there’s no real giving in our lives, only transactions.
There is no virtue in irresponsibility, and real life is not lived in idle wishfulness. God knows our modern society understands poorly enough about actions and consequences. But our normal operational prudence must not blind us to the realization that at the deepest level of how things really are, everything is Gift. That’s at the heart of our faith as Christians.
The religious establishment in Israel—the pillars of the Church, the Scribes and Pharisees—have been grousing at Jesus because he hangs around with sinners, outcasts, non-observant Jews, and other such riffraff. The Pharisees’ basic problem is that they think that the old dictum “there’s no free lunch, you get what you pay for, and nothing’s going to come in the mail” is a Fundamental Law of the Universe. And so they think that God’s special favor rests upon those who, like themselves, have “earned” it by observing all the minute details of the Law of Moses, and further that God’s favor does not rest upon “undeserving” folks like Jesus and his trashy friends. The Pharisees were very much hung up with the question of “deserving.” Like the older brother in the parable this morning. Like us. (And of course, it is the older brother and his father that the “Parable of the Prodigal Son” is really about. And us.)
In this morning’s epistle, St Paul reminds us that God does not keep score on the past. “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” No, God’s plan is to give everyone a whole new start. “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” God “made him (who knew no sin himself) to take on sin for our sake, so that we, in him, might take on God’s righteousness.” A whole new start, not earned, not deserved, but given. “All this is from God,” St Paul says. God’s doing, not ours. Gift. Free gift.
That’s hard for us to accept. The economics of our world doesn’t work that way. “You only get what you pay for.”
We’ve heard and told and retold the story of the prodigal son for so long that we instinctively see the older brother as a hardnosed coldhearted whiner. He’s not. The older brother is the good guy, by our own usual standards. He’s the one who is hard-working, loyal, thrifty, responsible, brave, clean, reverent. The older brother is us. He’s the one who embodies all those ideals that you and I usually hold about human life. He understands that there’s no free lunch in life, you get what you deserve and should deserve what you get, we’re not to sit around waiting for something to come in the mail. And by these standards which all mature and responsible people share, his father is not being fair.
Well, no. God isn’t fair. Not if by “fair” you mean some human standard of “deserving” or “just deserts.” God’s justice is really a whole lot more encompassing than our rather narrow and often retributive notion of justice. (And a good thing, too. If God were really fair, and gave us all what we deserve, then we would all have long since perished in our sins!) Thanks be to God, divine justice is concerned not with what we deserve but with what we need; not with fairness but with forgiveness, with love and with life, new life, new creation.
At the very deepest level, all is Gift. Lunch at God’s banquet table is utterly free, if we will just sit down and eat. We get more than we can ever pay for, if we will just quit fumbling around with our wallets and reach out our hands to receive. “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him,” [1] if we will just go look in the mailbox.
[1] 1 Cor. 2:9; cf. Isa. 64:4
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
Sermon - 7 March 2010
3RD SUNDAY IN LENT — 7 March 2010
St. Mark’s, Maquoketa — 10:00 a.m.
Exodus 3:1-15 | Psalm 63:1-8 | 1 Cor. 10:1-13 | Luke 13:1-9
God said to Moses, "I am who I am."
“What’s in a name?” So wonders Shakespeare’s Juliet, whose beloved Romeo bears the name of the Montague family hated by her own Capulets. “O, be some other name! What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Alas, it was but wishful thinking, for there is more in a name than Juliet thought, and therein lay their tragedy.
For the Hebrew people of the Old Testament, there was a lot in a name. Your name somehow touched the essence of your identity, it expressed who you really were. Thus, if other people knew your name, they knew you; they had something of a claim on you; in a sense they had power over you, in knowing your name.
This same idea is found in other cultures as well: for instance, some Native American cultures, in which you have a public “nickname” by which you are known by other people, and then your own real name — often discerned in the course of a vision quest — which you never disclose to anyone else, lest it give them power over you. In a more positive mode, to be known by name opens the possibility of fellowship, of welcome, personal relationship, as for instance in the famous tavern of the old television series Cheers, “where everybody knows your name.” (But I digress.)
Young Moses has escaped from Egypt after assassinating an abusive slavemaster, and he has fallen in with the desert Midianite sheepherder Jethro. He has married Jethro’s daughter, and now, like a good son-in-law, Moses is out taking care of the sheep. And God speaks to Moses out of a burning bush. Which right in itself is a pretty remarkable thing!
Even more remarkable is what God has to say to Moses; God wants Moses to go back to Egypt (where Moses has a price on his head) and lead the Israelites out from under Pharaoh’s slavery. Just like that.
And perhaps most remarkable of all is what God says when Moses very naturally asks, “Ah . . . who are you? Just what kind of a God am I dealing with here? What is your name?” God responds, “I AM WHO I AM.”
Now, what’s in that name?
This is one of the things that Old Testament scholars have a good time with, trying to figure out what the Hebrew words which God gives us as the divine name (and which we see translated here as “I Am Who I Am”) really mean. It’s not completely clear. In Hebrew there is a play here on the verb häyâ, “to be,” and its relation to the usual divine name in the Hebrew Scriptures, spelled “YHWH” (or, as it was not-very-accurately rendered into English some centuries back, “Jehovah”). Later on among the Jews, respect for the divine name, God’s proper name, grew so great that they refused to say it out loud at all, lest sinful mouths pollute the sacredness of The Name. (I personally prefer to respect this tradition, though some Christians and some Christian bible translations do not.) Instead, when the Jews encounter the Sacred Name YHWH in the Hebrew text of the Bible, they substituted the word Adonai, “the Lord,” or sometimes the usual word for “God,” Elohim. You will recall seeing in your Bible perhaps — and this was the case with the King James Version, as well as the Revised Standard and New Revised Standard Versions and other many other modern translations, and also with the Psalms in the Book of Common Prayer — instances of “the LORD” printed in small capital letters. The small caps are to alert us that the original Hebrew text does not actually read Adonai (the title “Lord”), but in fact reads YHWH — a name too sacred to be pronounced aloud in Jewish practice.
And the underlying meaning of the Divine Name, “I Am Who I Am”? Interpretations of the Name may tell us as much about ourselves as they do about the text. The early Fathers of the Church, and the medieval scholastics, suckled as they were on Greek metaphysics, saw in the Divine Name the expression of God’s Being, the one who is Being Itself — not just one being among other beings, not a being in the way you or I or a rabbit or a rock is a being, not even as the Supreme such Being, but “Being Itself,” “The Ground of All Being,” The One Who Is.
But most directly and literally, I think, “I am who I am” points best into the mystery of God, which is what God is trying to get across to Moses at the burning bush. Because in telling Moses the divine name, God is really not telling Moses very much at all. It is as if God were saying, “Do not attempt to name me — especially if you think that to name me is to tame me. My name is not something you can invoke with impunity for purposes of your own, and certainly not a formula you can conjure with. I Am Who I Am. My identity will always, ultimately, be opaque to you, for I infinitely exceed your ability to conceptualize me. I Am Who I Am.
“But there is another side, too [God says]: for you can trust that I Am Who I Am, and not another. I Am Eternally Who I Am; I am always consistent with myself; I do not waver; I am never fickle; my loving-kindness is steadfast and faithful; I keep my promises, and I do not change my mind, for I Am Who I Am.”
What’s in a name? In the case of God, everything, and nothing. At the burning bush, God reveals a name which points to God but does not really disclose God, except as the one who is beyond our naming.
But in the fullness of time God does bring the divine self within our naming, enabling us, not to comprehend God fully (finite creatures cannot do that), but to know God truly. God brings the divine self within our naming — not in a burning bush, but in a stable, and in a workshop and a fishing boat, and in the streets and on the hillsides, and on the Cross.
St. Mark’s, Maquoketa — 10:00 a.m.
Exodus 3:1-15 | Psalm 63:1-8 | 1 Cor. 10:1-13 | Luke 13:1-9
God said to Moses, "I am who I am."
“What’s in a name?” So wonders Shakespeare’s Juliet, whose beloved Romeo bears the name of the Montague family hated by her own Capulets. “O, be some other name! What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Alas, it was but wishful thinking, for there is more in a name than Juliet thought, and therein lay their tragedy.
For the Hebrew people of the Old Testament, there was a lot in a name. Your name somehow touched the essence of your identity, it expressed who you really were. Thus, if other people knew your name, they knew you; they had something of a claim on you; in a sense they had power over you, in knowing your name.
This same idea is found in other cultures as well: for instance, some Native American cultures, in which you have a public “nickname” by which you are known by other people, and then your own real name — often discerned in the course of a vision quest — which you never disclose to anyone else, lest it give them power over you. In a more positive mode, to be known by name opens the possibility of fellowship, of welcome, personal relationship, as for instance in the famous tavern of the old television series Cheers, “where everybody knows your name.” (But I digress.)
Young Moses has escaped from Egypt after assassinating an abusive slavemaster, and he has fallen in with the desert Midianite sheepherder Jethro. He has married Jethro’s daughter, and now, like a good son-in-law, Moses is out taking care of the sheep. And God speaks to Moses out of a burning bush. Which right in itself is a pretty remarkable thing!
Even more remarkable is what God has to say to Moses; God wants Moses to go back to Egypt (where Moses has a price on his head) and lead the Israelites out from under Pharaoh’s slavery. Just like that.
And perhaps most remarkable of all is what God says when Moses very naturally asks, “Ah . . . who are you? Just what kind of a God am I dealing with here? What is your name?” God responds, “I AM WHO I AM.”
Now, what’s in that name?
This is one of the things that Old Testament scholars have a good time with, trying to figure out what the Hebrew words which God gives us as the divine name (and which we see translated here as “I Am Who I Am”) really mean. It’s not completely clear. In Hebrew there is a play here on the verb häyâ, “to be,” and its relation to the usual divine name in the Hebrew Scriptures, spelled “YHWH” (or, as it was not-very-accurately rendered into English some centuries back, “Jehovah”). Later on among the Jews, respect for the divine name, God’s proper name, grew so great that they refused to say it out loud at all, lest sinful mouths pollute the sacredness of The Name. (I personally prefer to respect this tradition, though some Christians and some Christian bible translations do not.) Instead, when the Jews encounter the Sacred Name YHWH in the Hebrew text of the Bible, they substituted the word Adonai, “the Lord,” or sometimes the usual word for “God,” Elohim. You will recall seeing in your Bible perhaps — and this was the case with the King James Version, as well as the Revised Standard and New Revised Standard Versions and other many other modern translations, and also with the Psalms in the Book of Common Prayer — instances of “the LORD” printed in small capital letters. The small caps are to alert us that the original Hebrew text does not actually read Adonai (the title “Lord”), but in fact reads YHWH — a name too sacred to be pronounced aloud in Jewish practice.
And the underlying meaning of the Divine Name, “I Am Who I Am”? Interpretations of the Name may tell us as much about ourselves as they do about the text. The early Fathers of the Church, and the medieval scholastics, suckled as they were on Greek metaphysics, saw in the Divine Name the expression of God’s Being, the one who is Being Itself — not just one being among other beings, not a being in the way you or I or a rabbit or a rock is a being, not even as the Supreme such Being, but “Being Itself,” “The Ground of All Being,” The One Who Is.
But most directly and literally, I think, “I am who I am” points best into the mystery of God, which is what God is trying to get across to Moses at the burning bush. Because in telling Moses the divine name, God is really not telling Moses very much at all. It is as if God were saying, “Do not attempt to name me — especially if you think that to name me is to tame me. My name is not something you can invoke with impunity for purposes of your own, and certainly not a formula you can conjure with. I Am Who I Am. My identity will always, ultimately, be opaque to you, for I infinitely exceed your ability to conceptualize me. I Am Who I Am.
“But there is another side, too [God says]: for you can trust that I Am Who I Am, and not another. I Am Eternally Who I Am; I am always consistent with myself; I do not waver; I am never fickle; my loving-kindness is steadfast and faithful; I keep my promises, and I do not change my mind, for I Am Who I Am.”
What’s in a name? In the case of God, everything, and nothing. At the burning bush, God reveals a name which points to God but does not really disclose God, except as the one who is beyond our naming.
But in the fullness of time God does bring the divine self within our naming, enabling us, not to comprehend God fully (finite creatures cannot do that), but to know God truly. God brings the divine self within our naming — not in a burning bush, but in a stable, and in a workshop and a fishing boat, and in the streets and on the hillsides, and on the Cross.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Sermon - 14 February 2010
LAST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY — 14 February 2010
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:15 a.m.
Exodus 34:29-35 | Psalm 99 | 2 Cor. 3:12-4:2 | Luke 9:28-43a
Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to Jesus. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.
It has been the custom for many many years now that on the last Sunday after the Epiphany, and before the beginning of the Lenten season this coming Wednesday, we read for the Gospel the account of the Transfiguration of Christ — in a three year rotation from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and this year Luke. (I remember before this became our custom. Some of you probably do too, but I’ll leave it up to you to confess whether you do or not!) I remember thinking at the time, what a splendid way to conclude the Epiphany season celebrating the Manifestation of Christ before entering our Lenten pilgrimage to the cross and the Resurrection. I still think that!
So today we celebrate this climactic vision of Jesus Christ in glory by his closest disciples, Peter and John and James. But it may be helpful to back up a little and pick up the context. About eight days earlier (Mark and Matthew say it was six, but I’m not going to go there just now!), Jesus had asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” and Simon Peter replied, “You are God’s Messiah” [9:20]. We know that story. And Jesus “sternly ordered them not to tell anyone” [9:21], and went on to predict his upcoming suffering and death. And he continued, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” [9:23-24].
So it is in this context that the disciples of Jesus — Peter and John and James, and all of us through the centuries — now are given the vision of Christ in glory. In glory — in Biblical imagery, the presence of God — and in that divine glory appear also Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, the great figures of God’s chosen people Israel. Moses, of whom we hear in the first reading today, coming down the mountain with the tablets of the covenant, his face shining with the glory of God [Ex. 34:29]. And the prophet Elijah, who you may recall was whirled up to heaven in a chariot of fire [2 Kings 2:11]. And Moses and Elijah converse with Jesus about his “departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” [9:31]. “Departure” — a word that can also be translated as “death.” In the midst of the divine glory, they talk about Jesus’ death. Hold that thought.
In the original Greek of Luke’s account, the word most English translations render as “departure” is exodos, literally “going out,” and thus figuratively “departure” (that is, from this life) or “death.” But here’s Moses, talking with Jesus about his “exodus.” How do you suppose Luke means his readers and hearers to understand this? I think so, too. All of the above. For the people of Israel, the Exodus from Egypt was their deliverance from slavery into freedom. And now, for the people of God, the Exodus of Jesus on the cross is our deliverance through death into life.
But I think it’s interesting to see just where this event, this experience, goes. First of all, Peter — God bless Peter, his mouth well ahead of his brain, as usual — Peter says, “This is great! This is so religious! Let’s build shrines!” Whereupon God interrupts with the cloud of the divine presence, and proclaims, “This is my chosen Son — listen to him! Did I say build shrines? I said listen to him!” And then it’s all over. The three say nothing about this at the time, as well they might not. They go with Jesus back down the mountain, and the next thing that happens is that Jesus heals an epileptic boy. Everything is back to normal. To the extent that Jesus’ ministry of healing is “normal.”
One of the deep questions with which many people wrestle — actually, most people wrestle with this at least sometimes, including me, and I assume including you — anyone who doesn’t wrestle with this at least sometimes just isn’t paying attention — is: “If God is good and God is omnipotent, why is the world so screwed up?” This question is called “theodicy,” which is derived from Greek words and means, roughly, “God’s justice.” (Although the word does not occur in ancient or biblical or patristic Greek, as far as I know; it was coined in the early eighteenth century by the philosopher [Gottfried Wilhelm] Leibniz.) We talked a little about this question last fall when we were reading Job. The problem is that there just are no easy answers to this, on either side. Christian or other “religious” answers, in the way they are articulated, often seem to me to be shallow and cheap. On the other hand, agnostic or atheist answers — or refusal to seek answers — also seem to me to be shallow and cheap. I don’t want to seem to be minimizing the seriousness of this question; nor do the Scriptures themselves have any simple solutions.
But there are some hints, some directions, and I think the Gospel today offers them, in the turn from the Mount of the Transfiguration to ministering to the needs of people, a second prediction of the Passion, and the start of the trek up to Jerusalem where the cross awaits. What God is up to in Jesus is not about power, not as we understand power. But what we want is power — God’s power, especially as it may serve as source and support for our own power. And it can be a severe test of our faith when God does not exercise divine power, particularly in the way that we want God to exercise power, in the way that we want God to enable our own exercise of power.
So now we prepare to enter into the Lenten season, to start our own trek up to Jerusalem, where the cross awaits. And yes, in the end there is power — but no kind of power we could ever have imagined.
[See Walter Brueggemann’s Reflections on this Exodus passage in the New Interpreter’s Bible; he includes references to Paul’s discussion in 2 Corinthians 3 as well as the Transfiguration narratives in the synoptic Gospels.]
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:15 a.m.
Exodus 34:29-35 | Psalm 99 | 2 Cor. 3:12-4:2 | Luke 9:28-43a
Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to Jesus. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.
It has been the custom for many many years now that on the last Sunday after the Epiphany, and before the beginning of the Lenten season this coming Wednesday, we read for the Gospel the account of the Transfiguration of Christ — in a three year rotation from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and this year Luke. (I remember before this became our custom. Some of you probably do too, but I’ll leave it up to you to confess whether you do or not!) I remember thinking at the time, what a splendid way to conclude the Epiphany season celebrating the Manifestation of Christ before entering our Lenten pilgrimage to the cross and the Resurrection. I still think that!
So today we celebrate this climactic vision of Jesus Christ in glory by his closest disciples, Peter and John and James. But it may be helpful to back up a little and pick up the context. About eight days earlier (Mark and Matthew say it was six, but I’m not going to go there just now!), Jesus had asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” and Simon Peter replied, “You are God’s Messiah” [9:20]. We know that story. And Jesus “sternly ordered them not to tell anyone” [9:21], and went on to predict his upcoming suffering and death. And he continued, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” [9:23-24].
So it is in this context that the disciples of Jesus — Peter and John and James, and all of us through the centuries — now are given the vision of Christ in glory. In glory — in Biblical imagery, the presence of God — and in that divine glory appear also Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, the great figures of God’s chosen people Israel. Moses, of whom we hear in the first reading today, coming down the mountain with the tablets of the covenant, his face shining with the glory of God [Ex. 34:29]. And the prophet Elijah, who you may recall was whirled up to heaven in a chariot of fire [2 Kings 2:11]. And Moses and Elijah converse with Jesus about his “departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” [9:31]. “Departure” — a word that can also be translated as “death.” In the midst of the divine glory, they talk about Jesus’ death. Hold that thought.
In the original Greek of Luke’s account, the word most English translations render as “departure” is exodos, literally “going out,” and thus figuratively “departure” (that is, from this life) or “death.” But here’s Moses, talking with Jesus about his “exodus.” How do you suppose Luke means his readers and hearers to understand this? I think so, too. All of the above. For the people of Israel, the Exodus from Egypt was their deliverance from slavery into freedom. And now, for the people of God, the Exodus of Jesus on the cross is our deliverance through death into life.
But I think it’s interesting to see just where this event, this experience, goes. First of all, Peter — God bless Peter, his mouth well ahead of his brain, as usual — Peter says, “This is great! This is so religious! Let’s build shrines!” Whereupon God interrupts with the cloud of the divine presence, and proclaims, “This is my chosen Son — listen to him! Did I say build shrines? I said listen to him!” And then it’s all over. The three say nothing about this at the time, as well they might not. They go with Jesus back down the mountain, and the next thing that happens is that Jesus heals an epileptic boy. Everything is back to normal. To the extent that Jesus’ ministry of healing is “normal.”
One of the deep questions with which many people wrestle — actually, most people wrestle with this at least sometimes, including me, and I assume including you — anyone who doesn’t wrestle with this at least sometimes just isn’t paying attention — is: “If God is good and God is omnipotent, why is the world so screwed up?” This question is called “theodicy,” which is derived from Greek words and means, roughly, “God’s justice.” (Although the word does not occur in ancient or biblical or patristic Greek, as far as I know; it was coined in the early eighteenth century by the philosopher [Gottfried Wilhelm] Leibniz.) We talked a little about this question last fall when we were reading Job. The problem is that there just are no easy answers to this, on either side. Christian or other “religious” answers, in the way they are articulated, often seem to me to be shallow and cheap. On the other hand, agnostic or atheist answers — or refusal to seek answers — also seem to me to be shallow and cheap. I don’t want to seem to be minimizing the seriousness of this question; nor do the Scriptures themselves have any simple solutions.
But there are some hints, some directions, and I think the Gospel today offers them, in the turn from the Mount of the Transfiguration to ministering to the needs of people, a second prediction of the Passion, and the start of the trek up to Jerusalem where the cross awaits. What God is up to in Jesus is not about power, not as we understand power. But what we want is power — God’s power, especially as it may serve as source and support for our own power. And it can be a severe test of our faith when God does not exercise divine power, particularly in the way that we want God to exercise power, in the way that we want God to enable our own exercise of power.
So now we prepare to enter into the Lenten season, to start our own trek up to Jerusalem, where the cross awaits. And yes, in the end there is power — but no kind of power we could ever have imagined.
[See Walter Brueggemann’s Reflections on this Exodus passage in the New Interpreter’s Bible; he includes references to Paul’s discussion in 2 Corinthians 3 as well as the Transfiguration narratives in the synoptic Gospels.]
Monday, February 8, 2010
Sermon - 7 February 2010
EPIPHANY 5 — 7 February 2010
St. Paul’s Durant — 9:00
Isaiah 6:1-13 | Ps 138 | 1 Cor 15:1-11 | Luke 5:1-11
Simon Peter fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”
A remarkable man, this Simon Peter whom Jesus chose as chief of his followers—after Jesus himself, and your patron St. Paul, whose own writings we have, we probably know Simon Peter better than any other figure in the New Testament. A hearty, blustering man, whose mouth was usually several steps ahead of his brain, a man of many promises made and somewhat fewer kept, a man who swore unswerving loyalty yet sold out at the first temptation before the night was out—and then wept bitterly for his faithlessness.
In today’s Gospel we get a typically human glimpse of Peter—Peter, as he is confronted by God’s power in Jesus, as he confesses his sinfulness, begging that God’s Holy One depart from him, lest his weak and silly soul be burnt up in the radiance of the awesome righteousness of God.
It’s part of long-standing Christian tradition that we spend a lot of time whining about what sinners we all are, how unworthy we all are, how much less we are as persons than we are meant to be, how in our unwholeness we are as nothing before the holiness of God. Sometimes when we talk about our own sinfulness and unworthiness we’re just fishing for the reassurance that we’re really not so bad after all. But often enough we really mean it. And it’s good that we mean it, and it’s good that we say it, because it’s true. We are sinners, we are unworthy, we are as persons far less than we are meant to be and called to be, in our unwholeness we are as nothing before the holiness of God. It’s true of me, it’s true of you, it’s true of Simon Peter.
But we mustn’t stop with that, because that’s only half the truth. The full truth is that God knows perfectly well what we are, and God loves us anyway—loves us enough to go all the way to win us back. “While we still were sinners Christ died for us,” St. Paul writes to the Romans [5:8].
Too much concern over our own sinfulness can be a dangerous thing, actually. It focuses our attention on ourselves, and we become fixated with the notion of how rotten we are, and spend so much time moaning about our own unworthiness that we can no longer see God and the life God is calling us to. If all we see is our own sinfulness, we grow to detest ourselves. And pretty soon we detest everyone else, too. Because they’re even worse than we are; or, what’s really even worse, they’re better than we are! And so, having learned to detest ourselves and one another, we learn to detest God as well.
Christian people in the past, and some even yet in the present, have taken this sort of attitude: we are “sinners in the hands of an angry God” (as the noted American colonial preacher Jonathan Edwards put it in his most famous sermon). But this can result in the sterile heartlessness of puritanism perverted — and then all too often we go out and displace this hostility onto everyone else around.
Well, we do need to take our sinfulness seriously — but in a way that leads to confession and repentance. It has been suggested that our society has lost its sense of shame, and we need to recover that — not that we may be degraded, but that we may be moved to repent. Repentance is turning around, changing direction, letting the past be past and starting anew by God’s grace—repentance is not morbidly wallowing around in our own filth or hammering on the gates of heaven with noisy protestations of our utter wretchedness. God knows perfectly well how wretched we are—God knows it far better than we do ourselves. And God says, “All of that is really quite beside the point, you know; the point is, I love you and I want you.”
The Scripture readings today all have to do with how God calls human beings who are really quite unworthy of being called; but you see God doesn’t care about that. We hear Isaiah’s account of his great vision of the LORD in the Temple in Jerusalem. And he said, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips!” And a seraph flies to him and says, “Well, we can fix that! (Though this may hurt a little.)” And God says, “Whom shall I send?” And Isaiah says, “Umm…send me?” And God says, “Okay! You’re on!” (This is kind of like what God said to Jeremiah last week, you may recall.)
Then we hear St Paul proclaiming the Good News of the resurrection of Jesus, the breaking in of new and eternal life, the death of sinfulness and unworthiness. “Unworthy? I’ll tell you unworthy!” says Paul. “I persecuted God’s Church! I’m not worthy to be called an apostle. But my unworthiness doesn’t have anything to do with it! So by God’s free gift, no strings attached, here I am, me of all people, an apostle of Jesus Christ!” We might think that Saul of Tarsus was the last man in the world God would want to do business with. But that’s the kind of God God is. God doesn’t call us because of who we are; God calls us because of who God is.
Jesus summons us all to proclaim and enact God’s Reign with him, to catch people for God’s Kingdom. He calls us with those joyful and exhilarating words which we so rarely see in the employment ads any more: “No experience or qualifications required. Will train.” Jesus calls us, not because we are worthy, but precisely because we are not worthy. Yet he loves us, and his love gives us worth. We can cry with Simon Peter, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinner!” But Jesus replies, “Yeah, yeah, I know that! But that’s just why I won’t go away! So don’t be afraid! It is you whom I am calling! Come! Follow me!
“(And bring a net!)”
St. Paul’s Durant — 9:00
Isaiah 6:1-13 | Ps 138 | 1 Cor 15:1-11 | Luke 5:1-11
Simon Peter fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”
A remarkable man, this Simon Peter whom Jesus chose as chief of his followers—after Jesus himself, and your patron St. Paul, whose own writings we have, we probably know Simon Peter better than any other figure in the New Testament. A hearty, blustering man, whose mouth was usually several steps ahead of his brain, a man of many promises made and somewhat fewer kept, a man who swore unswerving loyalty yet sold out at the first temptation before the night was out—and then wept bitterly for his faithlessness.
In today’s Gospel we get a typically human glimpse of Peter—Peter, as he is confronted by God’s power in Jesus, as he confesses his sinfulness, begging that God’s Holy One depart from him, lest his weak and silly soul be burnt up in the radiance of the awesome righteousness of God.
It’s part of long-standing Christian tradition that we spend a lot of time whining about what sinners we all are, how unworthy we all are, how much less we are as persons than we are meant to be, how in our unwholeness we are as nothing before the holiness of God. Sometimes when we talk about our own sinfulness and unworthiness we’re just fishing for the reassurance that we’re really not so bad after all. But often enough we really mean it. And it’s good that we mean it, and it’s good that we say it, because it’s true. We are sinners, we are unworthy, we are as persons far less than we are meant to be and called to be, in our unwholeness we are as nothing before the holiness of God. It’s true of me, it’s true of you, it’s true of Simon Peter.
But we mustn’t stop with that, because that’s only half the truth. The full truth is that God knows perfectly well what we are, and God loves us anyway—loves us enough to go all the way to win us back. “While we still were sinners Christ died for us,” St. Paul writes to the Romans [5:8].
Too much concern over our own sinfulness can be a dangerous thing, actually. It focuses our attention on ourselves, and we become fixated with the notion of how rotten we are, and spend so much time moaning about our own unworthiness that we can no longer see God and the life God is calling us to. If all we see is our own sinfulness, we grow to detest ourselves. And pretty soon we detest everyone else, too. Because they’re even worse than we are; or, what’s really even worse, they’re better than we are! And so, having learned to detest ourselves and one another, we learn to detest God as well.
Christian people in the past, and some even yet in the present, have taken this sort of attitude: we are “sinners in the hands of an angry God” (as the noted American colonial preacher Jonathan Edwards put it in his most famous sermon). But this can result in the sterile heartlessness of puritanism perverted — and then all too often we go out and displace this hostility onto everyone else around.
Well, we do need to take our sinfulness seriously — but in a way that leads to confession and repentance. It has been suggested that our society has lost its sense of shame, and we need to recover that — not that we may be degraded, but that we may be moved to repent. Repentance is turning around, changing direction, letting the past be past and starting anew by God’s grace—repentance is not morbidly wallowing around in our own filth or hammering on the gates of heaven with noisy protestations of our utter wretchedness. God knows perfectly well how wretched we are—God knows it far better than we do ourselves. And God says, “All of that is really quite beside the point, you know; the point is, I love you and I want you.”
The Scripture readings today all have to do with how God calls human beings who are really quite unworthy of being called; but you see God doesn’t care about that. We hear Isaiah’s account of his great vision of the LORD in the Temple in Jerusalem. And he said, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips!” And a seraph flies to him and says, “Well, we can fix that! (Though this may hurt a little.)” And God says, “Whom shall I send?” And Isaiah says, “Umm…send me?” And God says, “Okay! You’re on!” (This is kind of like what God said to Jeremiah last week, you may recall.)
Then we hear St Paul proclaiming the Good News of the resurrection of Jesus, the breaking in of new and eternal life, the death of sinfulness and unworthiness. “Unworthy? I’ll tell you unworthy!” says Paul. “I persecuted God’s Church! I’m not worthy to be called an apostle. But my unworthiness doesn’t have anything to do with it! So by God’s free gift, no strings attached, here I am, me of all people, an apostle of Jesus Christ!” We might think that Saul of Tarsus was the last man in the world God would want to do business with. But that’s the kind of God God is. God doesn’t call us because of who we are; God calls us because of who God is.
Jesus summons us all to proclaim and enact God’s Reign with him, to catch people for God’s Kingdom. He calls us with those joyful and exhilarating words which we so rarely see in the employment ads any more: “No experience or qualifications required. Will train.” Jesus calls us, not because we are worthy, but precisely because we are not worthy. Yet he loves us, and his love gives us worth. We can cry with Simon Peter, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinner!” But Jesus replies, “Yeah, yeah, I know that! But that’s just why I won’t go away! So don’t be afraid! It is you whom I am calling! Come! Follow me!
“(And bring a net!)”
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Sermon - 31 January 2010
4 EPIPHANY —31 January 2010
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:00
Jer 1:1-4 Ps 71:1-6 1Cor 13:1-13 Luke 4:21-30
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Have you ever been asked to do something, and your immediate response was, “Oh, I can’t do that! I don’t know how! I don’t have any training! I’m not good at that! It’s too much for me! Find somebody else!” Most of you have probably been there at one time or another. I certainly have.
And sometimes the word came, “Well, try it anyway!” And, by golly, you tried it and you found that you could do it after all! You never know what you can do until you try! Remember the Little Engine that Could? “I think I can, I think I can . . .” And sure enough, he could, and he did!
Or maybe when the word came, “Well, try it anyway!” by golly, you tried it, and sure enough, you couldn’t do it, you didn’t know how, you weren’t good at it, it was too much for you, and the whole thing was an utter disaster! I’ve been there, too!
Though I can’t help but observe that, no matter how disastrous the thing may have been, the world is still here, you and I are still here, and so perhaps failure is not always quite the catastrophe that we sometimes make it out to be!
I’m not peddling the power of positive thinking. Life isn’t quite that simple. If we are properly humble (I don’t mean false modesty, but if our knowledge of ourselves is realistic), then we will recognize that there are some things we are not good at and cannot do well. God knows there are plenty of things I don’t do well. But it still remains true that we can do more than we usually think we can; there are things we will find we can do if we just try; we do have abilities we don’t always give ourselves credit for. And—what we so easily overlook, and this is the key to the whole thing—we are not completely dependent upon our own resources. We are not alone.
And so my text for this morning, from the book of the prophet Jeremiah:
The word of the Lord came to me saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
And Jeremiah said, “Oh, God. Oh, — God! Oh, Lord God! Not me! Don’t look at me! I don’t know how to be a prophet! I’ve never been a prophet before! I don’t want to be a prophet! I can’t be a prophet! (To the nations??!!) Oh, no! Look, I didn’t take prophecy in school! I don’t know how to speak—I wouldn’t know what to say! I’m only a boy!”
And the Lord said, “Oh, Jeremiah, for my sake! Shut up for a minute and listen to me! Just do what I tell you—and don’t be afraid, for I am with you!”
The Epistle today will no doubt sound a little familiar to you! It’s the beloved 13th chapter of Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth. A favorite chapter for many; in some danger of becoming a cliché, I suppose; but a central Scripture to the Christian Gospel: Paul’s great treatise on love.
You’ll remember from the Epistle readings the last two Sundays that Paul has been discussing the variety of spiritual gifts in the Church in chapter 12 of First Corinthians. Paul has been pointing out that everyone has a gift; different people have different gifts; they are all important; the Body needs all its various members. But you recall, last Sunday’s reading from Paul ended up: “Strive for the greater gifts.” And now we turn the page to Chapter 13, and here’s the most important gift of them all, and that’s the gift of love, the love that comes from God and fills us and enables us to love each other.
And love is the greatest gift, because love is the ultimate gift. Love is the gift that finally endures when everything else has served its purpose and has passed away. Including all the other things that we were good at, or not good at. All our great successes, and all our utter failures. But it is faith, hope, and love that endure, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Today’s Gospel—continuing from last Sunday’s—is worth meditating on at such times. Jesus has come back to his home town of Nazareth, and is asked to preach at the Sabbath service in the synagogue. He reads from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me [in Hebrew, those are the same words that we could translate, “made me Messiah,” the anointed one] -- he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor,” etc. Then Jesus proclaims this as his own ministry: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And the congregation thinks that’s all very nice, until they realize what Jesus is really saying. And then they go wild with rage and try to kill him for blasphemy. Jesus, too, had more than his share of failure. It must often have seemed to Jesus that he wasn’t getting anywhere at all. Remember, Jesus didn’t end up getting a Presidential citation in the Rose Garden. He ended up getting nailed to a cross.
Well, not exactly “ended up”! And that’s part of the point, too.
So when we respond to God’s call to be Christ’s Body, in ministry to the world, by saying, “Oh, no! Not me! I can’t! We can’t! We don’t know how! Our church is too small! We’ll fail!” God says to us, “Oh, hush! You sound just like Jeremiah! He failed a lot, too. So what? I failed a lot myself, and I still fail a lot! (You think my will is being done on earth as it is in heaven very much?) Remember, I didn’t say you had to do all this all by yourself! Be not afraid—for I am with you,” says the Lord.
St. Paul’s, Durant — 9:00
Jer 1:1-4 Ps 71:1-6 1Cor 13:1-13 Luke 4:21-30
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Have you ever been asked to do something, and your immediate response was, “Oh, I can’t do that! I don’t know how! I don’t have any training! I’m not good at that! It’s too much for me! Find somebody else!” Most of you have probably been there at one time or another. I certainly have.
And sometimes the word came, “Well, try it anyway!” And, by golly, you tried it and you found that you could do it after all! You never know what you can do until you try! Remember the Little Engine that Could? “I think I can, I think I can . . .” And sure enough, he could, and he did!
Or maybe when the word came, “Well, try it anyway!” by golly, you tried it, and sure enough, you couldn’t do it, you didn’t know how, you weren’t good at it, it was too much for you, and the whole thing was an utter disaster! I’ve been there, too!
Though I can’t help but observe that, no matter how disastrous the thing may have been, the world is still here, you and I are still here, and so perhaps failure is not always quite the catastrophe that we sometimes make it out to be!
I’m not peddling the power of positive thinking. Life isn’t quite that simple. If we are properly humble (I don’t mean false modesty, but if our knowledge of ourselves is realistic), then we will recognize that there are some things we are not good at and cannot do well. God knows there are plenty of things I don’t do well. But it still remains true that we can do more than we usually think we can; there are things we will find we can do if we just try; we do have abilities we don’t always give ourselves credit for. And—what we so easily overlook, and this is the key to the whole thing—we are not completely dependent upon our own resources. We are not alone.
And so my text for this morning, from the book of the prophet Jeremiah:
The word of the Lord came to me saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
And Jeremiah said, “Oh, God. Oh, — God! Oh, Lord God! Not me! Don’t look at me! I don’t know how to be a prophet! I’ve never been a prophet before! I don’t want to be a prophet! I can’t be a prophet! (To the nations??!!) Oh, no! Look, I didn’t take prophecy in school! I don’t know how to speak—I wouldn’t know what to say! I’m only a boy!”
And the Lord said, “Oh, Jeremiah, for my sake! Shut up for a minute and listen to me! Just do what I tell you—and don’t be afraid, for I am with you!”
The Epistle today will no doubt sound a little familiar to you! It’s the beloved 13th chapter of Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth. A favorite chapter for many; in some danger of becoming a cliché, I suppose; but a central Scripture to the Christian Gospel: Paul’s great treatise on love.
You’ll remember from the Epistle readings the last two Sundays that Paul has been discussing the variety of spiritual gifts in the Church in chapter 12 of First Corinthians. Paul has been pointing out that everyone has a gift; different people have different gifts; they are all important; the Body needs all its various members. But you recall, last Sunday’s reading from Paul ended up: “Strive for the greater gifts.” And now we turn the page to Chapter 13, and here’s the most important gift of them all, and that’s the gift of love, the love that comes from God and fills us and enables us to love each other.
And love is the greatest gift, because love is the ultimate gift. Love is the gift that finally endures when everything else has served its purpose and has passed away. Including all the other things that we were good at, or not good at. All our great successes, and all our utter failures. But it is faith, hope, and love that endure, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Today’s Gospel—continuing from last Sunday’s—is worth meditating on at such times. Jesus has come back to his home town of Nazareth, and is asked to preach at the Sabbath service in the synagogue. He reads from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me [in Hebrew, those are the same words that we could translate, “made me Messiah,” the anointed one] -- he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor,” etc. Then Jesus proclaims this as his own ministry: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And the congregation thinks that’s all very nice, until they realize what Jesus is really saying. And then they go wild with rage and try to kill him for blasphemy. Jesus, too, had more than his share of failure. It must often have seemed to Jesus that he wasn’t getting anywhere at all. Remember, Jesus didn’t end up getting a Presidential citation in the Rose Garden. He ended up getting nailed to a cross.
Well, not exactly “ended up”! And that’s part of the point, too.
So when we respond to God’s call to be Christ’s Body, in ministry to the world, by saying, “Oh, no! Not me! I can’t! We can’t! We don’t know how! Our church is too small! We’ll fail!” God says to us, “Oh, hush! You sound just like Jeremiah! He failed a lot, too. So what? I failed a lot myself, and I still fail a lot! (You think my will is being done on earth as it is in heaven very much?) Remember, I didn’t say you had to do all this all by yourself! Be not afraid—for I am with you,” says the Lord.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Sermon - 10 January 2010
1st AFTER EPIPHANY — 10 January 2010
St. Mark’s, Maquoketa — 10:00 a.m.
Isaiah 43:1-7 Psalm 29 Acts 8:14-17 Luke 3:15-17,21-22
“I baptize you with water, but . . . he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
Well, we’re coming off Christmas, and I guess we’re mostly done with it. How many of you have taken down your decorations at home? No, we haven’t either. We normally leave everything up through the full twelve days of Christmas, that is, through the Epiphany, and we were going to take the decorations down yesterday, but we decided to go see Rosenkavalier in HD instead, which was a much better decision. I’m always a little sad at heart when, as I did this year when I went down to the post office the day after Christmas, and there on the curb were a couple of Christmas trees to be hauled away. On the other hand, we noticed last night that there were still a lot of trees still up in people’s living rooms, and most of the outdoor lighting displays were still up. But then, who wants to go take down outdoor Christmas lights in weather like what we’ve been having for the past three weeks? So we’re okay with the fact that our Christmas tree is still up. We can still use a little quiet time with the lights like little stars in the evening.
Christmas is kind of an inward-looking celebration. (That’s not a criticism!) Christmas is a time of peace and goodwill, a time for caring about others, a time of generosity. But at its heart, as we mostly experience it, Christmas is a “homey” festival, a domestic celebration. Our own homes and families are important, even central, aspects of it. After all the hustle and bustle and busyness of the preparations, all the shopping, the parties, the celebrations (not really what Advent is meant to be like!), but then Christmas itself is kind of quiet. The central story of Christmas has about it the hush of the nursery. For many people, the favorite Christmas carol is still “Silent Night” by candlelight.
The Church in her wisdom lets us enjoy that for a while, but not too long; Christmas is followed by the Epiphany. And the Epiphany represents the world breaking in upon the quiet romance of the manger. In the Gospel appointed for the Day of the Epiphany itself, which was Wednesday, the Wise Men come from a far-off land to see the Christ-Child, bringing rich, and mysterious, and foreboding gifts. In their wake, and at their unwitting guidance, a paranoid tyrant comes a-murdering, and the Holy Family must take the Child and flee the rustic quiet of the Judean hills and lose themselves as refugees in the turmoil of the second city of the Empire, Alexandria in Egypt.
But the visit of the Wise Men is but the beginning of the Epiphany, of the Appearance of Christ to the world. Today we celebrate the next moment in the Epiphany, perhaps a more central moment (and indeed so in the observances of the early Church): The Baptism of Jesus, the visible attestation of his anointing by God as Messiah, and the beginning of his public ministry.
“I baptize you with water,” says John Baptist the forerunner; “but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
And here, maybe still in the warmth of the quiet joy of Christmas, we are brought to a turn, a turn back to the world. For the Epiphany is not a cozy domestic celebration. The Epiphany is about the mission of Christ in the world. If Christmas is something of a Sabbath and a Lord’s Day, Epiphany is a Monday morning: it’s time to go back to work.
But we go back, not as we so often come to a Monday morning, our tails still dragging! Or at least we need not and ought not! We go back renewed. We go back empowered. We go back glowing, burning, with the good news of God and of God’s gracious Reign.
For all that we enjoy the Christmas season and its family celebrations and its quiet relaxations—and it is right and needful that we should do so—we also now shift our gears and get going again, and it is right and needful that we do this too. The Epiphany, the Appearance of Christ to the world—not just the Wise Men, but the Baptism, the Power and Love of the Cana Wedding, the Proclaiming of God’s Reign Now at the Nazareth Synagogue, the Calling of the Disciples, culminating in the Transfiguration on the Holy Mountain — all the ways the Messiah shows himself to God’s broken world that we will hear in the Gospel in the coming weeks — the Epiphany of Christ calls us to our mission as Christians. As Jesus began his public mission at his baptism, sealed in power by the Holy Spirit, so we take our commission (our com-mission, our mission together with him) from our baptism into Christ, likewise sealed in power by the Holy Spirit, kindled aflame by God’s love for us and for God’s world.
And in acceptance of our commission, and I hope with your forgiveness for breaking with the line printed in the bulletin, for this Sunday in place of the Nicene Creed, I ask you please to rise now and turn in your Prayer Books to page 292:
St. Mark’s, Maquoketa — 10:00 a.m.
Isaiah 43:1-7 Psalm 29 Acts 8:14-17 Luke 3:15-17,21-22
“I baptize you with water, but . . . he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
Well, we’re coming off Christmas, and I guess we’re mostly done with it. How many of you have taken down your decorations at home? No, we haven’t either. We normally leave everything up through the full twelve days of Christmas, that is, through the Epiphany, and we were going to take the decorations down yesterday, but we decided to go see Rosenkavalier in HD instead, which was a much better decision. I’m always a little sad at heart when, as I did this year when I went down to the post office the day after Christmas, and there on the curb were a couple of Christmas trees to be hauled away. On the other hand, we noticed last night that there were still a lot of trees still up in people’s living rooms, and most of the outdoor lighting displays were still up. But then, who wants to go take down outdoor Christmas lights in weather like what we’ve been having for the past three weeks? So we’re okay with the fact that our Christmas tree is still up. We can still use a little quiet time with the lights like little stars in the evening.
Christmas is kind of an inward-looking celebration. (That’s not a criticism!) Christmas is a time of peace and goodwill, a time for caring about others, a time of generosity. But at its heart, as we mostly experience it, Christmas is a “homey” festival, a domestic celebration. Our own homes and families are important, even central, aspects of it. After all the hustle and bustle and busyness of the preparations, all the shopping, the parties, the celebrations (not really what Advent is meant to be like!), but then Christmas itself is kind of quiet. The central story of Christmas has about it the hush of the nursery. For many people, the favorite Christmas carol is still “Silent Night” by candlelight.
The Church in her wisdom lets us enjoy that for a while, but not too long; Christmas is followed by the Epiphany. And the Epiphany represents the world breaking in upon the quiet romance of the manger. In the Gospel appointed for the Day of the Epiphany itself, which was Wednesday, the Wise Men come from a far-off land to see the Christ-Child, bringing rich, and mysterious, and foreboding gifts. In their wake, and at their unwitting guidance, a paranoid tyrant comes a-murdering, and the Holy Family must take the Child and flee the rustic quiet of the Judean hills and lose themselves as refugees in the turmoil of the second city of the Empire, Alexandria in Egypt.
But the visit of the Wise Men is but the beginning of the Epiphany, of the Appearance of Christ to the world. Today we celebrate the next moment in the Epiphany, perhaps a more central moment (and indeed so in the observances of the early Church): The Baptism of Jesus, the visible attestation of his anointing by God as Messiah, and the beginning of his public ministry.
“I baptize you with water,” says John Baptist the forerunner; “but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
And here, maybe still in the warmth of the quiet joy of Christmas, we are brought to a turn, a turn back to the world. For the Epiphany is not a cozy domestic celebration. The Epiphany is about the mission of Christ in the world. If Christmas is something of a Sabbath and a Lord’s Day, Epiphany is a Monday morning: it’s time to go back to work.
But we go back, not as we so often come to a Monday morning, our tails still dragging! Or at least we need not and ought not! We go back renewed. We go back empowered. We go back glowing, burning, with the good news of God and of God’s gracious Reign.
For all that we enjoy the Christmas season and its family celebrations and its quiet relaxations—and it is right and needful that we should do so—we also now shift our gears and get going again, and it is right and needful that we do this too. The Epiphany, the Appearance of Christ to the world—not just the Wise Men, but the Baptism, the Power and Love of the Cana Wedding, the Proclaiming of God’s Reign Now at the Nazareth Synagogue, the Calling of the Disciples, culminating in the Transfiguration on the Holy Mountain — all the ways the Messiah shows himself to God’s broken world that we will hear in the Gospel in the coming weeks — the Epiphany of Christ calls us to our mission as Christians. As Jesus began his public mission at his baptism, sealed in power by the Holy Spirit, so we take our commission (our com-mission, our mission together with him) from our baptism into Christ, likewise sealed in power by the Holy Spirit, kindled aflame by God’s love for us and for God’s world.
And in acceptance of our commission, and I hope with your forgiveness for breaking with the line printed in the bulletin, for this Sunday in place of the Nicene Creed, I ask you please to rise now and turn in your Prayer Books to page 292:
As our Lord Jesus Christ at his baptism was shown to be filled with the Holy Spirit, so we too, in him, are baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire. I call upon you, therefore, now as we enter upon this Epiphany season, to renew the solemn promises and vows of Holy Baptism, by which we once renounced Satan and all his works, promised to serve God faithfully, and committed ourselves to the mission of his Holy Catholic Church.The Renewal of Baptismal Vows, BCP 292
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Sermon -- 3 January 2010
2nd SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS — 3 January 2010
St. Michael’s, Mount Pleasant — 10:00
Jer 31:7-14 Ps 84 Eph 1:3-6,15-19a Matt 2:1-12
Wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”
This story is a very familiar one. It’s not clear to what extent this is actual history, and to what extent it is theological legend; but that’s another issue for another time. (I keep meaning to write a paper about it, and I keep not doing it. Oh well.) Perhaps this story is a little too familiar to us: we know this story better than the Bible itself does! Tradition has filled in a lot of details that just aren’t there in the text. In the first place, the visitors weren’t kings. (We knew that.) That’s a bit of lore that first shows up in the second century, undoubtedly reflecting the fact that this story reminded the early Christians of Isaiah 60 and Psalm 72, which talk about foreign kings coming to Jerusalem to worship God. (That’s where the camels come in, too — not in Matthew, who doesn’t mention camels.) Nor does the Gospel text say that there were three of these sage visitors; that’s an inference from the three sorts of gifts that are mentioned, and it first shows up explicitly in the tradition only in the fifth century. Nor are the names Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, traditionally given to the wise men, apparently any earlier than the eighth century. And the depiction of Caspar as a Moor is only 14th century — practically yesterday!
Well, then, who were these wise men? The Gospel calls them Magi from the East. The “Magi” were apparently originally a tribe of the Medes, who lived in what is now northern Iran, north of the Persians. These Magi were famous for their knowledge of the occult and astrology, and it is from them that the word “magic” comes, via Greek and Latin. Later on in Persia and Babylonia, magicians and astrologers were known generically as “Magi” whether they were actually ethnic Medes or not; and such seem to have been the Magi of the Gospel story. We refer to them as “astrologers,” but that’s not the same thing as the fortune-telling baloney of which the supermarket tabloids are so fond. We no longer buy the basic premise that earthly affairs are influenced by the positions of the stars and planets — as one of the first of “modern” men, William Shakespeare, put into the mouth of Cassius: “Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Nevertheless, despite their premises, the astrologers of ancient Persia did approach their study of the stars with a fair amount of scholarly rigor. Given the relative primitiveness of their instruments, they described and were able to predict astronomical phenomena with remarkable accuracy. But they were not interested only in the scientific phenomena as such, but in the supposed meaning of these phenomena for human affairs. They were both scientists and seers. By religion they were probably Zoroastrians, but they would have been familiar with the Hebrew scriptures — there were many large Jewish communities in Babylonia and Persia, dating from the exile centuries earlier — and one of the prophecies they may well have known is this verse from the Book of Numbers (24:17): “A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.” A somewhat obscure verse, perhaps, but we know that in the years just before the Christian era it was regarded as a prophecy of the vindication of Israel by the Jewish sect (Essenes or something like) that wrote the War Scroll, one of the documents found fifty years ago in a cave at Qumran by the Dead Sea.
And so when our Magi saw the star, it was not just a matter of scientific interest but of deeper import for world history. What was it they saw? We don’t know. One speculation has been that they saw a supernova — an exploding star suddenly dominating the night sky for some weeks — although there is no certain corroborating evidence of such a phenomenon at that time. More likely is a conjunction of planets, and apparently there was indeed a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation Pisces a few years before the death of Herod, right before the turn of the era. Conjunctions of planets were the kind of thing which were of immense interest to astrologers but not particularly obvious to anyone else.
The Magi were not just educated men, learned men by the standards of their time, they were wise men. Their life work was seeing the significance of phenomena — the meaning of things. They not only charted and computed the movements of the heavens, or what they interpreted as the movements of the heavens. (As Galileo would insist sixteen hundred years later, it is not the heavens, but the earth that moves. But I digress.) The Magi attempted to perceive what this all meant for human beings; and if we today would want to say that astrology was the wrong tree to be barking up (swat that metaphor!), we would still want to affirm and admire their fundamental quest for meaning. Ultimately, to be in quest of meaning is to be attentive to God. In fact, we might define being wise as “having a taste for God,” a sensitivity to God’s action in the world. As the Scriptures often remind us, “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.”
And the Magi were wise men. They perceived that God was up to something, and that God wanted their witness. So they packed up and went on pilgrimage to find the newborn king of Israel. And they found him. But not where they first looked — not in the royal palace in Jerusalem. They found him in a humble rural village. That in itself is a mark of their wisdom, of their taste for God, of their sensitivity to how God does things in the world: they recognized Jesus when they found him, no matter how unlikely the circumstances may have appeared.
Remember the bumper sticker that said, “Wise men still seek him”? So they do. And from the wise men we learn something of what true wisdom is. Not only to see what’s going on in the world, but to see what it means, to see God’s hand at work in the world about us, to see what it requires from us in response. True wisdom is to have in the midst of this world a taste for God.
St. Michael’s, Mount Pleasant — 10:00
Jer 31:7-14 Ps 84 Eph 1:3-6,15-19a Matt 2:1-12
Wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”
This story is a very familiar one. It’s not clear to what extent this is actual history, and to what extent it is theological legend; but that’s another issue for another time. (I keep meaning to write a paper about it, and I keep not doing it. Oh well.) Perhaps this story is a little too familiar to us: we know this story better than the Bible itself does! Tradition has filled in a lot of details that just aren’t there in the text. In the first place, the visitors weren’t kings. (We knew that.) That’s a bit of lore that first shows up in the second century, undoubtedly reflecting the fact that this story reminded the early Christians of Isaiah 60 and Psalm 72, which talk about foreign kings coming to Jerusalem to worship God. (That’s where the camels come in, too — not in Matthew, who doesn’t mention camels.) Nor does the Gospel text say that there were three of these sage visitors; that’s an inference from the three sorts of gifts that are mentioned, and it first shows up explicitly in the tradition only in the fifth century. Nor are the names Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, traditionally given to the wise men, apparently any earlier than the eighth century. And the depiction of Caspar as a Moor is only 14th century — practically yesterday!
Well, then, who were these wise men? The Gospel calls them Magi from the East. The “Magi” were apparently originally a tribe of the Medes, who lived in what is now northern Iran, north of the Persians. These Magi were famous for their knowledge of the occult and astrology, and it is from them that the word “magic” comes, via Greek and Latin. Later on in Persia and Babylonia, magicians and astrologers were known generically as “Magi” whether they were actually ethnic Medes or not; and such seem to have been the Magi of the Gospel story. We refer to them as “astrologers,” but that’s not the same thing as the fortune-telling baloney of which the supermarket tabloids are so fond. We no longer buy the basic premise that earthly affairs are influenced by the positions of the stars and planets — as one of the first of “modern” men, William Shakespeare, put into the mouth of Cassius: “Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Nevertheless, despite their premises, the astrologers of ancient Persia did approach their study of the stars with a fair amount of scholarly rigor. Given the relative primitiveness of their instruments, they described and were able to predict astronomical phenomena with remarkable accuracy. But they were not interested only in the scientific phenomena as such, but in the supposed meaning of these phenomena for human affairs. They were both scientists and seers. By religion they were probably Zoroastrians, but they would have been familiar with the Hebrew scriptures — there were many large Jewish communities in Babylonia and Persia, dating from the exile centuries earlier — and one of the prophecies they may well have known is this verse from the Book of Numbers (24:17): “A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.” A somewhat obscure verse, perhaps, but we know that in the years just before the Christian era it was regarded as a prophecy of the vindication of Israel by the Jewish sect (Essenes or something like) that wrote the War Scroll, one of the documents found fifty years ago in a cave at Qumran by the Dead Sea.
And so when our Magi saw the star, it was not just a matter of scientific interest but of deeper import for world history. What was it they saw? We don’t know. One speculation has been that they saw a supernova — an exploding star suddenly dominating the night sky for some weeks — although there is no certain corroborating evidence of such a phenomenon at that time. More likely is a conjunction of planets, and apparently there was indeed a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation Pisces a few years before the death of Herod, right before the turn of the era. Conjunctions of planets were the kind of thing which were of immense interest to astrologers but not particularly obvious to anyone else.
The Magi were not just educated men, learned men by the standards of their time, they were wise men. Their life work was seeing the significance of phenomena — the meaning of things. They not only charted and computed the movements of the heavens, or what they interpreted as the movements of the heavens. (As Galileo would insist sixteen hundred years later, it is not the heavens, but the earth that moves. But I digress.) The Magi attempted to perceive what this all meant for human beings; and if we today would want to say that astrology was the wrong tree to be barking up (swat that metaphor!), we would still want to affirm and admire their fundamental quest for meaning. Ultimately, to be in quest of meaning is to be attentive to God. In fact, we might define being wise as “having a taste for God,” a sensitivity to God’s action in the world. As the Scriptures often remind us, “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.”
And the Magi were wise men. They perceived that God was up to something, and that God wanted their witness. So they packed up and went on pilgrimage to find the newborn king of Israel. And they found him. But not where they first looked — not in the royal palace in Jerusalem. They found him in a humble rural village. That in itself is a mark of their wisdom, of their taste for God, of their sensitivity to how God does things in the world: they recognized Jesus when they found him, no matter how unlikely the circumstances may have appeared.
Remember the bumper sticker that said, “Wise men still seek him”? So they do. And from the wise men we learn something of what true wisdom is. Not only to see what’s going on in the world, but to see what it means, to see God’s hand at work in the world about us, to see what it requires from us in response. True wisdom is to have in the midst of this world a taste for God.
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