Table, altar, throne

I want to talk to you today about furniture. Specifically, this piece of furniture that we've moved and then set up a temporary smaller version thereof. It's one of the most prominent things front and center in our worship space, rivaled only by the cross hanging on the eastern wall of the sanctuary. Today's lessons give us the opportunity to reflect on this key fixture in our worship space, even as we are in the midst of discerning as a congregation about how we might best arrange our furniture here.

The Prayer Book has several names by which it refers to this key element of our worship space.

On several occasions, the Prayer Book calls it both the Lord's Table and the Holy Table. This is a table around which we gather for a meal.

On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread. After supper he took the cup of wine. We come to the Lord's table to eat and drink. And table fellowship was key to Jesus' ministry of radical hospitality.

Today's gospel talks about Zaccheaus. Zaccheaus, was a tax collector for the hated occupying Romans.  He had personally enriched himself in this position at the expense of his countryfolk. Zaccheaus was thus in disrepute among his own people. Outcast. Unwelcome. It scandalized the Jewish faithful for Jesus to announce that he was going to be Zaccheaus' guest. But Jesus made a point that his ministry was focused on seeking out and saving the lost. This included being the guest of those who were not considered polite company. By dining at the table of Zaccheaus, Jesus sent a powerful message about the reinstatement of those who turned away from their sins. Jesus' company at table testified to the radical reality of reconciliation.

This Holy Table is certainly a sign of present reconciliation, as we gather together, but also serves as a foretaste of the feast to come, the heavenly banquet. The radical inclusion of the outcast modeled by Jesus in table fellowship in his earthly ministry foretells the reign of God, who casts down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly, who fills the hungry with good things but sends the rich empty away. The counterculturality of whom Jesus chose to dine with reminds us that the last shall be first and the first last.

So this is a meal table: we gather here, and are fed by our Lord. And in recalling the stories about with whom Jesus chose to be at table, we hear our own call to welcome the stranger, to visit the prisoner, to seek out the lost, and even echoes of the judgment of the nations: Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.

But this is not only a meal table.

The prayer book also refers to it as an altar. Now an altar is a place where sacrifices are offered to God.

Our first lesson from Isaiah talks about the practice, demanded by God in the Law as given to Moses, of "burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts." The practice in the temple was to offer twice-daily sacrifices of animals to God, and more on special occasions. The letter to the Hebrews talks about this at length, and contrasts the offering of Jesus, our great High Priest. "Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself."

When we celebrate the Eucharist, we make present once again the one sacrifice of Jesus on the cross at Calvary, given once for all, "having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension; rendering unto thee most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same." The old system of sacrifices of animals on the altar was replaced by the sacrifice of Jesus, given once for all, but every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we make that sacrifice of Jesus present yet again, here and now.

I can't pretend to understand how this sacrifice works, or why God calls for it. Indeed, the God who speaks through Isaiah says "I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats… they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them… Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow."

In other words, our God seems to reject sacrificial offerings in favor of demanding… wait for it… radical hospitality in the table fellowship we just talked about. But there is a powerful link between the sacrifice of the cross made present on the ALTAR and the radical fellowship made present at the HOLY TABLE.

A mentor of mine now helps run Manna House, a house of hospitality that provides showers, clothing, coffee, and a place to stay during the daytime to homeless people in Memphis, Tennesee. This ministry is an example of radical table fellowship at its best, as they try to see the face of Christ in all their guests. But reaching out to the outcast is not always popular. There are plenty of people who would rather that the outcast stay away. Last month, in their attempt to provide a safe space to the neediest in our society, Manna House volunteers had a run-in with the Memphis police.

As a local group reported, "On October 21, Memphis Police Department officers came to Manna House claiming they were looking for a suspect. A Manna volunteer approached the officers before they entered the property. On the public sidewalk outside of the house, she explained that Manna House sought to provide a safe space for the homeless. Therefore, under Manna's policy the officers could not come inside the privately-owned building without a warrant unless there was an emergency.

When the officers refused to produce a warrant or offer any other justification for their presence, the volunteer began filming. One officer responded by claiming the volunteer needed a permit to film, which is not true. When the volunteer refused to stop filming, the officers took her cellphone, placed her in handcuffs, and arrested her for obstructing a passageway, which apparently in Memphis means standing on a sidewalk to record MPD officers attempting an illegal search. Soon after the volunteer was arrested, a local organizer arrived, began filming, and asked that the officers identify themselves. In short order, the officers grabbed his phone, handcuffed and arrested him for obstructing a passageway, and, presumably for asking the officers who they were, tacked on a disorderly conduct charge for good measure.

Though all charges were eventually dropped and the cellphones returned, what both the volunteer and the organizer can never get back is the twelve hours they spent in jail."

Now there are certainly issues of constitutional law involved here. But even if there weren't, even if the police had the legal right to do these things, what could give these people the courage to extend radical hospitality to the least welcome, even at risk of their own imprisonment? Only the sacrifice of the cross.

Jesus lived radical hospitality, which made him a threat to the established order of the Roman Empire. The mighty Roman Empire used its full force to try to end the Jesus movement of selfless love. The enforcement apparatus of the empire publicly tortured and killed Jesus to say to all his followers and potential followers that this is the end that comes of those whose welcome of the outcast challenges empire. This is the end that comes of those who live as though God and not Caesar is king.

The salvation of God comes in the sacrifice of the Cross: the empires of this world threw all the evil they had at Jesus. They mocked him and tortured him and killed him. Jesus stood before the evil of the world, and somehow, through amazing grace, he didn’t use his infinite power to drive it off. He willingly accepted the worst torture and death they could give him.

He let evil do its worst, and it did not prevail.

And thus, we are free. We are free to live. We are free to love. We are free to share that radical table fellowship without fear, because of whom shall we be afraid? Love is stronger than death, and the cross does not have the last word.

And so, this piece of furniture, located beneath the cross, is both the ALTAR on which our Lord's sacrifice is made present yet again for us, to give us grace and strength, and the HOLY TABLE at which we join in God's radical feast of love and inclusion.

And yet there is a third image given by the Eastern Orthodox Church: what we call the altar or the holy table, they call the throne. It is where our Lord Jesus Christ is seated. Look at the decorated wall behind the altar, also known as a reredos, and the combined effect of table and backing does indeed look like a majestic seat. This tradition motivates such devotions as bowing to the altar, and facing it when we pray and recite our creed: we look to it as the place where God is seated in our midst, a locus to which we direct our prayers and a center to help us listen and meditate on God's word in our lives.

Now in many churches, especially ones of more formal design, the table is quite near the reredos, producing a combined effect that indeed looks much like a majestic throne. A small table in the midst of the assembly might look more like a bench than a throne befitting the Lord of Heaven and Earth. A throne suggests the transcendence and might of God; a small table in our midst not so much. And yet this is Nativity. Our title feast involves God becoming truly human and dwelling among us. The Lord of the Hosts of Heaven was born in a stable. And indeed, a charism of the ministry that God's people have done here since its founding has been to witness to the world that our transcendent God is also very imminent. Our table in our midst can indeed be the seat, the resting place of Emanuel: God with us. Gathered around the table, gathered around the altar, gathered around the throne, we know that God calls us to love and serve, that God is stronger than any evil that might threaten us, and above all, that God is with us.

We can conclude, in the words of the letter to the Hebrews, "Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

Amen.

The transactional calculus of scarcity vs. abundant selfless extravagance

In 1982 and 1983, Nativity Episcopal Church commissioned local artist Margaret Cavanaugh to create six stained glass windows to represent the six days of creation. Nativity has had, over the years, a number of ministries advocating on behalf of God’s creation. These works of art shared a theme with the ministry to which this Church was called at the time.

But why did we give up a substantial chunk of money commissioning stained glass windows? Could the money not have been better used more directly in pursuit of education or advocacy about the issues the congregation cared about? Why does the church squander precious funds on vestments and artwork and beautiful buildings when there are so many people in so much need?

If money is scarce, what’s even more scarce is our time. There’s so much we could be doing in the world to make it better. Volunteering, writing letters, demonstrating, working tireless on behalf of the marginalized and oppressed of every stripe. God knows they need advocates! And there’s so much work to be done. So why are we squandering our time here right now, sitting in this space hearing lessons that frankly we’ve heard before, hearing a sermon that we can probably do without, and eating some token bread and wine? Liturgy doesn’t do anything, does it? Why wait until the end of the service to go forth into the world being the face of God to those we meet? Don’t people need us right now?

If God’s people are in need, isn’t all this church stuff a holy waste of time and money?

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We encounter God when we love our neighbors as our selves, even and especially our most vulnerable neighbors, of whom God promised that whatever we do for the least of the hungry, the thirsty, the outcast, the sick, the prisoner, we do for God.

Or is that we encounter God in our sacred stories of God’s saving acts of old when we read scripture? Or do we encounter God through worship, especially in the sacraments of the church?

Maybe all of these are true. Within our Anglican tradition, of which Nativity Episcopal Church is a part, we don’t all emphasize all of them equally. Encountering God through love of neighbor might resonate more to many of us. Encountering the divine through service to, advocacy with, and love of our fellow humans seems to be an important part of our our congregation’s story. But it’s not the only way God can be found.

The more low church, or evangelical branch of Anglicanism stresses encountering God in scripture. And the Episcopal Church is a place where we do read a lot of scripture. Just this morning, we’ve heard four different passages from scripture read directly, and now you’re listening to a sermon that will (eventually) get around to talking about what that scripture means in our lives. The text of the rest of the liturgy is drawn heavily from words or images from scripture. So even if many of us wouldn’t say the first place we look for or find God is in the Bible, we do steep ourselves in the Bible quite a bit.

And we encounter God through worship, prayer, and the sacraments of the church. As a part of my formation process through the diocese, I’m taking a class that meets at a very high church, with a strong orientation toward the sacraments as THE central acts of Christian life. Do we primarily encounter God through receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ each Sunday and feast day?

Or are there other ways we encounter God? Do we encounter God through God’s creation? Do we encounter God through community? Do we encounter God through solitude, contemplation, and meditation? Do we encounter God through the arts? Do we encounter God through the use of our bodies? And do we have to choose?
One of my seminary classmates and I were going over our notes about the different traditions within Anglicanism, and how we vary in whether we emphasize finding God in service, scripture, or sacrament, and she asked “what if I find God in all three?” I think that’s part of the beauty of our tradition: there’s room for people whose primary encounter with the divine comes through service, through scripture, AND through sacrament.

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Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”

Talk about a holy waste! A pound of costly perfume? Worth almost a year’s wages? This is extravagant. How? Why? What makes this okay? Surely Jesus is about to scold Mary, right?

But no!

Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Jesus encourages this extravagance! The same Jesus who said we’d be judged on how we treat those in need - Jesus said it was okay to use so much money in pursuit of - of what, exactly? An outpouring of love, to be sure, but how is this practical? How is this a good idea? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we restrained these senseless and impractical outpourings of love and focused our energy into loving and helping those in need?

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We should not pass up the opportunity to worship for fear that it will deprive us of the opportunity to serve; far greater is the danger that in passing up one, we will fail to do the other as well, and then we neither worship nor serve.

Judas objected to pouring out the perfume because the money could have been used to help the poor, but had Mary passed on pouring perfume on Jesus, the poor would not have been helped anyway. As the Gospel tells us,

Judas said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.

Had Mary acted out of fear of losing one opportunity to encounter the divine, she would have missed out on both!

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We are conditioned by our post-Eden world to think in terms of scarcity. There isn’t enough to go around, so whenever someone or something gains, someone or something else loses.

Thus, prudent stewardship requires us to calculate: what do we give up, and what do we gain. Economists refer to “opportunity cost,” how we quantify what we are not doing whenever we do something. Judas today provides a textbook example of opportunity cost: perfume poured on Jesus’ feet could thus not be sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor.

But Jesus challenges us to escape from that thinking. Life is not a zero-sum game. God’s abundance invites us to think not in terms of “or” but in terms of “and.” The economies of our world are foreign to the abundance of God’s grace.

In Isaiah, God challenges us:

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

The wilderness is wild precisely because there are no “ways,” no roads, no paths there. The desert is characterized by a scarcity of water. But God’s abundant blessings overflow. Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.

God invites us to leave behind measuring and calculating and go all in. To throw ourselves in faith into the bounty of God’s love.

And when we show this extravagant love, God blesses and empowers us with even more extravagant love. I’m not claiming this is the prosperity gospel here - God’s blessing takes lots of different forms. But we don’t have to choose between worshiping God with our whole heart and our whole soul and our whole mind and our whole strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves. Indeed, our worship of God empowers us to love and serve our neighbors. Our time in worship, our reflection on these beautiful works of art, our whole-hearted embrace of Christian community - we do these without reservation. And then we are sent out, likewise without reservation, but with renewed gifts to take into the world in service.

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These experiences open the door for a conversion of heart.
God calls us to turn away from the transactional calculus of scarcity and embrace the gospel of abundant grace and selfless extravagance.

In the course of my studies, I took a church finance class last semester. The instructor drove home the importance of good accounting practices because even the hint of financial scandal can devastate a church community. And believe me, I’ve lived that. Twenty years ago, I lost my church home because of a community divided by the discovery of misused church funds. My instructor made it seem like transparency and accountability even trumped mission: if charity or service couldn’t be done with proper record keeping, the Church shouldn’t do them. But Jesus does give us a different example in today’s Gospel.

The treasurer he appointed, Judas Iscariot, was a thief who stole from the common purse. Now this is in the Gospel according to John. Of all the Gospels, John has the highest Christology: Jesus in John’s account knows everything. When he prays, he sometimes even says “I know you already know this, God, but I’m saying it so the people around me can hear it.” In John’s Gospel, Jesus is omniscient from day one. And yet he chooses to appoint Judas to keep the money.
What example do we draw from this? If our conclusion is that God encourages fraud, that’s probably not quite the right direction here, but rather that we need to move past the mindset of scarcity. Jesus could give the purse to Judas because it didn’t matter. Freely have you received; freely give.

The new bishop of Rome is a Jesuit, a member of an order with whom I worked when I first attended Nativity, and who taught me a lot. I learned a prayer from my time with them translated from St. Ignatius himself. We started class with this prayer pretty frequently:

Lord, teach me to be generous;

teach me to serve you as you deserve,

to give and not to count the cost,

to fight and not to heed the wounds,

to toil and not to seek for rest,

to labor and not to seek reward,

except that of knowing that I do your will.

Ultimately, that’s what we can take away from last week’s parable of the prodigal son and his even more prodigal, more wastefully extravagant father and from this week’s account of Mary’s selfless extravagance: our God of Grace is inviting us to go all in. Freely have you received; freely give. Commit ourselves to worship, to service, to love without reservation, without measure. This transforms us, and prepares us to be able to receive God’s abundant grace. Judas today, the older brother last week - these people were shocked and horrified by these acts of selfless extravagance. Because in a world of scarcity, to give abundantly means to deny other opportunities. To be able to receive abundant grace requires a conversion of heart to recognize the limitlessness bounty of God’s grace: unmerited, unearned, and yet, miraculously, given to us all the same. Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine! Amen.

Be of sin the double cure

It's the most wonderful time of year.

Now I know that isn't a lot of people's first reaction to Lent.
What's so great about Lent? Lent is so wonderful because we finally get to talk about sin. Woo hoo. And... no one here is cheering along with me. We don't like to talk about sin. And that's a real tragedy, because the reality of sin is what makes the Good News so good. We live in a world broken by sin, where so so many things aren't right, and that can make us feel powerless or guilty, but the Good News is that sin doesn't have the final word. We need to acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously have committed, but once we do, it's good news from there.

To explain, I'd like to introduce a lesson from the modern prophets Lou and Peter Berryman, singer-songwriters from Wisconsin:

Thanksgiving day Uncle Dave was our guest
Who reads the Progressive which makes him depressed
We asked Uncle Dave if he'd like to say grace
A dark desolation crept over his face

Thanks he began as he gazed at his knife
To poor Mr. Turkey for living his life
All crowded and cramped in a great metal shed
Where life was a drag then they cut off his head

Thanks he went on for the grapes in my wine
Picked by sick women of seventy nine
Scrambling all morning for bunch after bunch
Then brushing the pesticide off of their lunch

Thanks for the stuffing all heaped on my fork
Shiny with sausage descended from pork
I think of the trucks full of pigs that I see
And can't help imagine what they think of me

Continuing, I'd like to thank if you please
Our salad bowl hacked out of tropical trees
And for this mahogany table and chair
We thank all the jungles that used to be there

For cream in our coffee and milk in our mugs
We thank all the cows full of hormones and drugs
Whose calves are removed at a very young age
And force-fed as veal in a minuscule cage

Oh thanks for the furnace that heats up these rooms
And thanks for the rich fossil fuel it consumes
Corrupting the atmosphere ounce after ounce
But we're warm and toasty and that is what counts

I'm grateful he said for these clothes on my back
Lovely and comfy and cheap off the rack
Fashioned in warehouses noisy and cold
In China by seamstresses seven years old

And thanks for my silverware setting that shines
In memory of miners who died in the mines
Worn down by the shoveling of tailings in piles
Whose runoff destroys all the rivers for miles

We thank the reactors for our chandelier
Although the plutonium won't disappear
For hundreds of decades it still will be there
But a few more Chernobyls and who's gonna care

Sighed Uncle Dave though there's more to be told
The wine's getting warm and the bird's getting cold
And with that he sat down as he mumbled again
Thank you for everything, amen

We felt so guilty when he was all through
It seemed there was one of two things we could do
Live without food in the nude in a cave
Or next year have someone say grace besides Dave

Sin is rampant. The evil we have done, the good we have left undone, and the evil done on our behalf. When we itemize the ways the world about us is broken, the ways it dehumanizes and mistreats God's children, and the ways we are complicit in these systems of exploitation that sustain our own ways of life, it becomes overwhelming.

We face a dilemma. It seems like we have two choices: be trapped by sin's guilt, or be trapped by sin's power. To believe we must live without food in the nude in a cave is to acknowledge our contribution to the sinful social structures that oppress, to aspire to amend our lives, and to be utterly crushed by the guilt of sin. But is the alternative to silence the voice of the Uncle Daves? If so, we become slave to sin's power. In denial, we continue to oppress others, and continue in our alienation from God. Denial is less unpleasant than constantly calling to mind all the ills of the world. As the prayer book so aptly describes our sins, "the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable." But failing to acknowledge them increases the likelihood that we repeat them, over and over and over.

So we face this difficult position: remain enslaved to the power of sin by denying its role in our lives, or remain enslaved to the guilt of sin by wallowing in its immeasurable enormity.

My brothers and sisters, we have a third choice. The good news is this: if we confess our sins to God, we are forgiven, healed, and empowered. The old hymn "Rock of Ages" says it well:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee
Let the water and the blood from thy wounded side that flowed
Be of sin the double cure: save me from its guilt and power.

The double cure: we are freed from both the guilt and the power of sin.

Now the guilt part we have to somehow take on faith. In the mysterious cosmic accounting scheme, the guilt of sin is wiped off of our accounts. We have done evil, we have benefited from evil, we are culpable. But God somehow erases our culpability. We are forgiven. God's accounting system is a mystery, but somehow, and we don't know how, our sin no longer "counts".

But the power of sin is no mystery. We see it all too clearly. Despite our desire to be good, to do good, we are trapped by sin. We go on oppressing and mistreating others despite our best intentions. How can we possibly break the power of sin? How can we possibly "go and sin no more" in a world where our daily bread comes from a system built on the backs of the poor? How can we go and sin no more when our own impatience or addiction or weakness or foolishness or flaws seem to have so much power over our good intentions?

We acknowledge our brokenness, and bring the pieces of our life as an offering to God. We offer what we are.

Which means that a sinner's place is in the church. There's no such thing as not being good enough for church. No one should ever feel like they shouldn't come because they're "doing it wrong." We should never give anyone the impression that they somehow have to meet some standard to be "worthy" to come here before the Lord. None of us are worthy, but God calls us all.

If you want to sing praise to God but you're not particularly good at carrying a tune, don't let anyone convince you that you shouldn't offer your voice in praise to the Lord. God wants you as you are.

If you want to worship the Lord but it's one of those mornings where the alarm doesn't go off, and the coffee spills and the garage door won't open, don't let anyone's dirty looks convince you that you shouldn't come to church for whatever portion of the service you can make it for. God wants you as you are.

If you know you care about issues of the day but you're completely overwhelmed, and you feel like writing a single letter to a single leader about just one of the many topics that worry you seems too trivial, don't let anyone tell you contribution is too tiny to matter. God wants you as you are.

There's an old story about a rabbi who visits a remote congregation who don't have anyone nearby to teach them or lead them in prayer. And the rabbi hears one old man praying, in Hebrew, because that's the language God speaks, of course, and he's humbly but passionately praying over and over again "Alef Bet Gimmel Dalet He Vav Zayin..." And after listening for a moment, the rabbi realizes that the man is reciting the alphabet over and over again in Hebrew. And the rabbi asks, "Why are you reciting the alphabet?" And the man says that it's all the Hebrew he knows, but if he gives God the letters, God can put them together into words.

We are broken by the power of sin. But we offer God the broken pieces of our life, and God puts them together into something amazing. One doesn't make a mosaic out of whole pottery. It's the little broken shards that can become the beautiful new whole. We must not hesitate to offer our lives to God because they're broken. It's the broken pieces of our lives that God, the great artist, can assemble into the new creation.

As a broken people, we acknowledge our sin.
As a forgiven people, we experience God's reconciling love.
And then we get to Lent.
Now, we make space to listen.

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton prayed:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always
though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Our model for Lent comes from todays Gospel: Jesus went out to the desert to fast and pray, to listen, to discern.

Lent *is* about sin, but it is not about wallowing in guilt. How could it be? Jesus, who is without guilt, is our model. We acknowledge and confess our sins, and they are absolutely forgiven. Gone. Our sins are absolved. Lent isn't about guilt; we have nothing more about which to feel guilty. God has taken that away. Our fasting and prayer isn't to somehow make up for our sin - we couldn't do that even if we wanted to, but God doesn't ask us to. This beautiful season of quiet and prayer and fasting is so we can listen. So we can hear what we are called to do as we step out of the power of sin and into the work of building God's Kingdom.

We offer the broken pieces of our lives, and we pray and listen to learn how God wants us to use them. God invites us in all our brokenness, in all our sin, in all our despair, in all our self-perceived inadequacy to know love and healing and forgiveness, and to make room to listen for what we are called to do to spread God's love. Have no guilt that what we do is not enough to break the power of sin. We are not alone. We are with God. So I invite us all to confess our sin, to know God's forgiveness, and to listen for God's call: in short, I invite us to observe a Holy Lent. Amen.

Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead

I want to talk with you this morning about our reading from the Epistle from James. The only book in the bible attributed to a member of Jesus’s family (James of Jerusalem, known as the brother of our Lord Jesus Christ), had history played out slightly differently, we might not have heard this lesson today.

We often think of the Bible as a book, and indeed, “bible” just means “book.” But it’s really a collection of books written at different times by different authors, and there has been some dispute over the years just what books belong in it.

The Church had a head start putting it together, given that inspired scrolls had been read for centuries in the synagogue. But the term “Bible” is a Christian invention; the closest concept in Judaism is the Tanakh. The Tenakh, however, isn’t a single thing. It’s an acronym for the Torah, the Nevi’im and the Ketuvim. These three sets of scrolls were not on equal footing in Judaism. Of first importance was the Torah, the five books of Moses. Torah means teaching, and these books were where God taught God’s Law to God’s people. Next came the Nevi’im, the prophets. Books about the prophets, like Samuel and Kings, and books of the prophets’ writings, like Isaiah and Jeremiah make up these scrolls. Finally came the Ketuvim, the writings. This included the Psalms, the wisdom literature like Proverbs, the reflections on history like Ruth, Chronicles, and Nehemiah/Ezra, and the apocalyptic literature like my namesake Daniel. These collections of Hebrew scrolls all made up “scripture.”

But then there were other writings that would have been read in the synagogue. Accounts of the revolt of the Maccabee brothers against the occupying Selucid kingdom. The story of Judith, and of Tobit. More Wisdom literature. More reflections on the history of the Jewish people. Now these writings were preserved in Greek, not in Hebrew, so they didn’t have quite the same status in the synagogue as The Writings, the Ketuvim. But they were still read and cherished in a place of honor. Certainly not Torah, and not even quite Ketuvim, but not to be ignored. These other texts were included in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, known as the Septuagint, a project begun 300 years before the time of Jesus.

At the time of the Reformation, the emerging Protestant movement rejected the portions of the Septuagint not found in the Jewish canon of scripture, the Tanakh. The Eastern Orthodox and Roman churches embraced more of the texts found in the Septuagint. As for we Anglicans, we split the difference: According to the 39 Articles of Religion adopted by General Convention in 1801, the books of Hebrew Scripture not included in the Tanakh we refer to as “deuterocanonical” or on the “B-list” of scripture. They are books that“the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.”

When it comes to the New Testament, there’s more widespread agreement. The Eastern Orthodox, Romans, Anglicans, and Protestants all have the same canon for the New Testament. But it almost didn’t turn out that way.

You see, when Martin Luther was trying to reform the practices of the Church in his time, he encountered the particularly problematic practice of the selling of indulgences. The Church in Luther’s time was teaching that people could buy their way (or the way of a loved one) into the Kingdom of Heaven by paying money toward the construction of new churches. Luther was deeply concerned about what he called “Works Righteousness,” the belief that people could “earn” their way into the Kingdom of Heaven by their good works (or generous donations). Luther wanted to stress our need for faith not in our own power but in God’s grace and mercy.

The Kingdom of Heaven is where God’s commandments are followed. No matter how much good we do, we all fall short of God’s commandments, and thus by the Law, Luther would say, we do not “belong” in the Kingdom of Heaven. We cannot earn our way in. Only through faith in God’s mercy can we hope to have a place in God’s Kingdom. And to the extent that we cling to our good works, we trust in ourselves, and thus our faith is not in God, so we do not accept God’s mercy.

As Luther was trying to drive these themes home, he found the Epistle of James particularly unwelcome. As our lesson today asks “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?” Luther wants to scream, “Yes! yes! yes it can!” Luther thus called this Epistle “an Epistle of Straw”. He did not go so far, however, as to excise it from the canon of scripture.

But Luther can rest easy. James is far from advocating for works righteousness. In James’ worldview, we are just as dependent on God’s grace and mercy as we are in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans that Luther relies on so heavily. As James tells us, “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.” and “judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.”

God’s mercy saves us, not our own righteous deeds. To accept God’s mercy, we need to live our lives with faith in God, not faith in our own abilities.

But faith is no mere opinion, no privately held belief locked away in one’s heart of hearts. To believe something is to live as if it is true. Faith is to live out a truth even in the face of doubts. Faith is an action. Faith is transformative. Faith that has no consequences in how you live your life is no faith at all.

So thus, James begins, “My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?”

Faith that God is Lord of Heaven and Earth enables us to live out the very radical, disruptive, terrifying commandment that Jesus left with us: Love your neighbor as yourself. Self preservation comes naturally to us. We have a strong survival mechanism: make sure there’s room in the lifeboat for me. Even when we reach out beyond ourselves, we still can be very tribal: we look out for our own before we help the other. My family, my friends, my kind. And as for the “other” — they can sink or swim on their own.

This rugged individualism is enshrined in our American culture. And it’s antithetical to the Gospel commandment: Love your neighbor as your self. Be as willing to cut up food and put it into someone else’s mouth as into your own. Serve the most repulsive, foreign, unknown stranger as eagerly as you would do something for a member of your own family or even for yourself.

Wow! That is not easy. And we worry, if we put so much time and energy and treasure into helping others, won’t our own needs suffer? I know I worry about that all the time. This Law of the Kingdom of Heaven is very foreign to our experiences on earth. In Psalm 37, the Psalmist tells us, “I have been young and now I am old, but never have I seen the righteous forsaken, or their children begging bread.” But our experience sadly tells us that happens all the time. The righteous and their children suffer want every day. It takes a giant leap to faith to even try to approach this Law to love others without fear.

We fail on a regular basis to serve the poor in our midst to the extent Jesus calls us to do so. And James calls us to task: if out of fear of self preservation we fail to serve the poor, does that not betray a lack of faith, a lack of trust that God will indeed provide for us? We feed ourselves and leave others to go hungry because we lack faith that if we devote ourselves to service, God will ensure that we too are served.

James’ call to do works of service does not mean that by these works we may enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Rather, these works are the fruit of our belief in the power and goodness and mercy of God. A faith in God that does not produce works of service in response is not alive.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can “faith” save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

If we truly had faith in God’s saving love, we would already live without reservation by the commandment: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. We could cease to worry about providing for ourselves, and be freed to serve others. We would already live in the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven. We don’t. Maybe we can’t. And thus, we stand condemned: we cannot fulfill the law, and cannot earn a place in the Reign of God.

But our faith in the love and mercy of God allows us to begin to believe that there is a place for us in God’s reign. As we come to understand that mercy, we can live it out in our lives, too. God’s mercy to us begets our own acts of mercy, which make it easier to believe in God’s mercy, which empowers us to share God’s love and mercy even more, and the spiral continues. It starts with God’s grace, and each act in response to it lets us grow in grace until we live as we pray: your kingdom come, your will be done.

So we take our timid steps of service, in fear that we are foolish, in nascent faith that God will provide. And as we grow in God’s kingdom, our prayer can only be that of the man who asked Jesus to heal his son: Lord, I believe; help me in my unbelief.

Does anyone here remember the Good Old Days?

Remember when there were more kids of lots of different ages running around this Church? Remember when the pews were fuller, and the budget heftier and we could afford a full-time rector?

Remember when the Diocesan budget was more flush, and they could support more ministries, a great camp out in Ortonville, and more resources for the parishes?

Remember when economy was better? Jobs were easier to find, and more likely to last. Schools were better funded, political discourse less bitter, and great cultural institutions like the DIA had ample funding from the state and corporate donors and didn’t depend for their survival on enough people who support them remembering to get out and vote this coming Tuesday?
Remember the good old days?

Why aren’t things today as good as they were back then?

This isn’t a new question. When I write a sermon, frequently there’s a soundtrack that comes to me as I’m organizing my thoughts. Most of the time I am merciful enough not to try to sing the songs that inspire me as I’m writing, and today especially that’s a good thing. Picture Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton standing around a piano singing the theme song to All in the Family: Those were the days. I suppose there’s something rather meta-reflective when my example of nostalgia itself comes from a TV show that first aired before I was born.

But neither we nor Archie Bunker have a monopoly on nostalgia. A major theme in Hebrew Scripture involves contemplating the miserable circumstances of the Jewish people at the time scripture was compiled, and wondering why things weren’t as good then as they were back in the Good Old Days. What’s unique about Hebrew Scripture’s approach to the Good Old Days is that rather than some vague notion of yesteryear, there is a concrete time that makes up their Good Old Days: The reign of King David and his son King Solomon. The Books of First and Second Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah constitute one major thread in scriptures showcasing the Glory of Days Gone By, and prescribing what the people need to do to bring back the days when a unified kingdom reigns unchallenged from the Jordan River to the Great Sea.

In the Chronicler’s account, the way to bring back the Good Old Days is to purify the people of God : to cast out the impure in deed or ancestry, so that the assembly of God’s People only consists of worthy, good people. That’s the way to get back to the old days. But today’s lesson from the book of second Samuel serves as a challenge to the nostalgic account of the Chronicler. It reminds us that the reign of King David wasn’t as ideal as we might want to remember it. That David was hardly the perfect defender of God’s Law that the Chronicler might wish to hold him up as. That the assembly of the People of God was not just for the pure of deed and ancestry, because the idealized king himself was pure neither in deed (as demonstrated in the lessons from this week and last) nor in ancestry (as accounted in great detail in the book of Ruth). Chronicles, which often parallels the stories in Samuel and Kings, does not include the story we heard this week and last; it includes the very first line, then changes the subject. The Chronicles account wants to feel good about the monarchy, and this story doesn’t hold up King David as a shining beacon of moral conduct. It doesn’t portray the assembly of God’s People as properly pure.

The lesson the story passes along to us today is similar: Church isn’t for Good People. The assembly of the People of God isn’t a place where the pure gather and the unclean are excluded. A sinner’s place is in the Church! Whether we look at the example of Moses, or David, or Peter, or Paul, Scripture tells us again and again that the chosen ministers of God’s word time and time again are people who have managed to do terrible wrong. All of us who are call to be people of God are simultaneously sinners and God’s ministers.

In the past month, I’ve returned to a spiritual discipline that has been very meaningful to me over the years, when I’ve been able to keep it up: I’ve been regularly praying the Psalms in the morning and the evening. Last week, Pastor Diane told us all about why we all should keep a copy of the Book of Common Prayer around the home. One of the many benefits to our amazing prayerbook is the fact that it contains that most ancient of hymnals, the entire Book of Psalms. The book captures a very full human range of emotions, from joy to despair to fury to compassion, and the book connects us with humans seeking the divine thousands of years before our time. The Church prays the psalms together every time we gather for prayer, and the prayer book contains several guides for how a household, individual, or community could pray the psalms in a structured way over the course of time. These works of Hebrew poetry are legendarily attributed to King David, but none are more closely associated with David himself than Psalm 51, which we recited part of today. Psalm 51 is a psalm of repentance, and is tied to today’s lesson. This is ascribed to be what David prayed after Nathan called him out on his sinful actions. Let’s hear it again, putting ourselves in the place of David. We’ve done terrible evil. We are truly sorry, and yet we know that despite the evil we do, God has good that we are still called to do:

1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your
loving-kindness; *

in your great compassion blot out my offenses.

2 Wash me through and through from my wickedness *

and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I know my transgressions, *

and my sin is ever before me.

4 Against you only have I sinned *

and done what is evil in your sight.

5 And so you are justified when you speak *

and upright in your judgment.

6 Indeed, I have been wicked from my birth, *

a sinner from my mother’s womb.

7 For behold, you look for truth deep within me, *

and will make me understand wisdom secretly

8 Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure; *

wash me, and I shall be clean indeed.

9 Make me hear of joy and gladness, *

that the body you have broken may rejoice.

10 Hide your face from my sins *

and blot out all my iniquities.

11 Create in me a clean heart, O God, *

and renew a right spirit within me.

12 Cast me not away from your presence *

and take not your holy Spirit from me.

13 Give me the joy of your saving help again *

and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.

14 I shall teach your ways to the wicked, *

and sinners shall return to you.

15 Deliver me from death, O God, *

and my tongue shall sing of your righteousness,
O God of my salvation.

16 Open my lips, O Lord, *

and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.

17 Had you desired it, I would have offered sacrifice, *

but you take no delight in burnt-offerings.

18 The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; *

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

19 Be favorable and gracious to Zion, *

and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

20 Then you will be pleased with the appointed sacrifices,
with burnt-offerings and oblations; *

then shall they offer young bullocks upon your altar.

This is David’s prayer of forgiveness: the prayer of one condemned by his sins, and the prayer of one still aspiring to be a minister of God’s grace. Not just “forgive me” but “I will teach your ways to the wicked and sinners will return to you.”
We stand condemned, we stand forgiven, we stand called to be ministers of God’s mercy and justice.

In our baptismal covenant, we pledge to seek God’s forgiveness not if we fall into sin, but whenever we fall into sin. In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray for God to forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. We are sinners, and we are ministers of God’s mercy.

David exemplifies this call to be a minister of God’s justice and mercy in response to the case Nathan brings before him: the metaphorical rich man who stole a poor man’s only lamb received his sentence from King David: “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” He deserves to die, but shall live and make restitution. God’s justice demands that we speak up for those who have been wronged, and not let off the hook those who do evil, but God’s mercy demands not that we condemn them, write them off as irredeemably evil, even if that is what they deserve, but that we believe and expect that they can and must do good to help the world recover from the evil they have done. This is the formula for messengers of God’s justice and mercy. Mercy and justice work hand in hand to lead not to retaliation for sins nor for ignoring and hiding sins, but to restorative justice.

And then, when prophetic voices like Nathan’s tell us that the judgement we deliver is, in fact, aimed at we ourselves, the formula is no different. We deserve condemnation for our sins, but we, like David, like Moses, like Peter, like Paul, we shall live to do good.

Our story from Kings cautions us against dwelling on restoring some glorious past. Despite Joni Mitchell’s great lyrics in the song Woodstock, we don’t “Got to get ourselves back to the Garden.” The message from our God is that our best days are not behind us. The Messianic Age, the Reign of God, is still to come. And we, all of us sinners, like David, are called not to sit in a pile of ashes mourning our sins, but to be agents of restorative justice to help bring about the Reign of God. We are called to be ministers of God’s justice and mercy holding ourselves and others accountable for the evil we do, not dwelling on condemnation, but focusing on what we can make right.

All our past experiences of God’s glory are but a foretaste of the feast to come. Let us journey on together, working to bring forth the coming age of God’s justice and mercy, for the reign of God is at hand. Amen.

Even at the grave we make our song

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Easter is a celebration of Life. But we do not celebrate Easter in a vacuum.

The prayer book tells us:

In the midst of life we are in death; from whom can we seek help?
From you alone, O Lord,
who by our sins are justly angered.

We are called, this Eastertide, to celebrate that God lives.

Our Gospel today tells us, As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; live in my love. Live in my love.

But "Live in my love" is hard.

In the midst of life, we are in death. Recently, it seems the news of death just keeps coming in.

Early Tuesday morning, Becky passed away. Becky, who worshiped with us. Becky who sent birthday cards to all of us on behalf of the church. Becky who was alive. Years ago, my wife worked at what was then the camp for this diocese. One of her co-workers, an 18-year-old counselor, later developed cancer. His funeral is this afternoon. He was 30. A friend of mine, a priest from New York, my age, died of a brain aneurysm a few weeks ago. Another friend of mine, a priest in the Roman church, lost his mother in the past week. In the diocese of Maryland, a homeless man killed a priest, a parish administrator, and then himself at a church outside Baltimore, not far from where my god daughter lives.

In the midst of life, we are in death indeed. The cumulative effect of all news of death is heavy. I know I've wanted to be able to do something about it, but, of course, I cannot. That helplessness in the face of death is why I wrote to Diane last week offering to preach two weeks in a row so she could have more time to visit her dying father. I couldn't keep people alive, but here was something I could do. Offering to help made me feel the slightest bit less helpless in the face of all this death.

Jesus tells us: Live in my love. But the live part is seems hard. So does the love part. Listening to the news this past week, I couldn't help but feel that the forces of selfishness and narrow-mindedness seemed to keep winning some victories this week. War between the Sudan and South Sudan seems to become more and more likely, while developments in Israeli politics seem to be making peace there less and less likely. We learned of more terrorist plots to blow things up, and our own nation's drones continue to drop bombs, killing terrorist and by-stander alike.

And then there's North Carolina. This week, voters there did what voters here in Michigan did back in 2004, approving an amendment to the state constitution to prevent any future session of the state legislature from extending the benefits of marriage to same-sex couples. Even sadder, in my view, is that in a survey conducted by the New York Times this week, support for the amendment was strongest among married people - people who enjoy the rights and protections of marriage were the most eager to deny those rights and protections to other families.

In other news, one of our nation's largest banks (and the one that holds my savings) revealed the amount of money it managed to gamble away trying to make the rich get even richer, and then it was revealed that the rules that enabled the bank to engage in such behavior had been changed in large part because of the extensive lobbying campaigns that same bank conducted.

Now these are the news stories that drove me near despair this week. Some of you might be bothered by different news. These were the headlines that hit me the hardest, but each of us is different. But in the face of all this Bad News, how can we celebrate life? How can we celebrate Easter?

But just as we do not celebrate Easter in a vacuum, neither did Easter happen in a vacuum. In the midst of life, we are in death, but Easter itself is a reminder that in the midst of death, we are in life. Death and despair and selfishness and bigotry and war and unkindness and evil do not have the final word.

The resurrection was not a random affirmation of life, but rather it followed the crucifixion. Resurrection came after violence and fear and oppression and death. The mighty Roman Empire used its full force to try to end the Jesus movement. Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter, right? The enforcement apparatus of the empire publicly tortured and killed Jesus to say to all his followers and potential followers that this is the end that comes of those whose nonviolence challenges empire. This is the end that comes of those who live as though God and not Caesar is king. This is the end of your movement.

And Easter is our celebration that the empire was wrong. The cross is not the end. Despite the full force of empire, Jesus lives. Despite the full propaganda campaign of the passion, the followers of the Way did not give up hope. Despite the full force of hate, love is more powerful.

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. The feast of feasts is our celebration that despite all the forces that oppose it, love wins. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. We do not need to fear death. We can live in love. Jesus died horribly, and yet he lives.

The people whose of death I learned this week all were people who very much lived right up to the end of their lives. Becky's card ministry touched so many of our lives. My wife's friend has been fighting cancer for years, knowing that his prognosis never included recovery, but determined to live his life to the fullest. A few months ago, he and his partner of many years, who has helped him through so many rounds of treatment, got married.

The priest and parish administrator in Maryland died while running a food bank to feed the hungry.

Life and service to God continue even in the face of death. And God's love empowers us to work for justice and love even against staggering odds. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.

It has been terrible sad to hear so many people use religion to justify denying civil rights to their brothers and sisters. And yet, in response to the North Carolina amendment vote, I heard two pieces of news that gave me hope. Wednesday evening I received an e-mail from a mailing list I am on. The President of the United States said that he has rethought his previous position, and come to the conclusion that he was wrong to oppose including all couples in the protections of marriage. He referred to his faith, and in particular the Golden Rule, as instrumental in coming to this conclusion. Now this doesn't change the law. This doesn't undo the damage that has been done and is being done by discrimination enshrined in the statutes and constitutions of our land. But it's an amazing sign of hope that the leader of our empire can be called to repent from his previous stance.

While leaders from some religious communities decried this announcement, I read a beautiful press release from a friend of mine from New Jersey, a priest named Jon Richardson, who is now Vice President of Integrity USA: "I am deeply grateful to President Obama for his vocal support of marriage equality. This growth and forward movement in his thinking is particularly heartening after the unsurprising, but disappointing vote yesterday for continued discrimination in North Carolina. While some churches and local governments are holding fast to socially irrelevant and outdated political positions, we are proud to lift up the Episcopal Church as a growing beacon of hope for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender people of faith and our allies."

Jesus calls us to love our enemies, do good to those who hurt us, pray for those who persecute us. We fall short, so often, as these words are hard. But this week, several churches in the Diocese of Maryland reached out to the family of the man who killed the priest and church worker and offered prayers and a funeral service. Sometimes, by God's grace, we get it right. God enables us to live like Jesus, reaching out in love against all odds, even in the face of death. God's grace empowers us to act in love. Death is powerful, but death does not have the final word.

And so we can turn to God and say, as the prayer book tells us:

You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind; and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return. For so did you ordain when you created me, saying,

"You are dust, and to dust you shall return." All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song:
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

[The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!]

Happy Easter, everybody. The Easter season goes on for fifty days. I hope you’re not still looking for that last missing colored hard boiled egg the Easter Bunny hid, because by now, it probably doesn’t smell very good. I suspect the chocolate bunnies are mostly eaten, and infestations of Peeps and Cadbury Cream Eggs have been tamed, and yet the Feast of Feast continues for a week of weeks.

To be honest, I find this to be one of the hardest parts of the Church year. Fifty days of rejoicing that our Lord is risen indeed. Fifty days of celebrating that Christ, our passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast. Fifty days of feasting. Fifty days of celebrating the here and the now of the Kingdom of Heaven.

I have to confess that I more readily find God’s grace in reading lessons from the Old Testament than I do in lessons from the New Testament. The messiness of Hebrew scripture and its competing narratives speak to my condition more often than the passages the Lectionary gives us from the Epistles, or even from the Gospel. But in Easter, our first lesson changes. Rather than a reading from Hebrew Scripture, our first lesson comes from the Acts of the Apostles. If the Church is the new Israel, then in Eastertide, rather than hearing the foundational stories of the first Israel, we hear the foundational stories of the establishment of the new Israel, where the twelve tribes find their successors in the twelve apostles. Exciting stuff, and it’s the one time of the year we get to hear the stories of the early Church that the Acts of the Apostles recounts. But for me, it’s a challenge, losing my fall-back plan: for most of the year, I know that if I don’t hear the Spirit speaking to me about the day’s Gospel, I can always preach about the lesson from Hebrew Scripture. Come Eastertide, that option goes away.

I do a lot better with the forty days of Lent. Preparing. Listening. Waiting for the Lord. I suppose I can better identify with meditative silence and fasting than I can with trumpets and feasting. But here we are in the Easter season, when we are called not to reflect on broken-ness, not to wait for our deliverance, but to rejoice that now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation!

Apparently, I’m not particularly good at extended rejoicing. But the Church year is a gift. God nudges us out of our comfort zone, so we can grow. And if extended rejoicing is the end for which we were created, to join in the anthem of the seraphim singing Holy Holy Holy at the feast of the Lamb for all time, perhaps it’s best if we take this opportunity to grow. All this practice at keeping the feast of the resurrection just might end up serving us well.

Our lesson from Acts today begins with an angel telling Philip “Get up and go!” There is a time for healing and a time for rest and a time for recovery and a time for fasting and praying and listening for the still, small voice of God – all of this is true, and vitally important, but a time also comes to take action.

If scripture were a movie, we’d switch genres here. We go from a contemplative drama in The Garden of Gethsemane – “stay awake with me and keep watch” – to an action adventure flick. God says “Get up and go,” so Philip races to catch up the Ethiopian eunuch. On foot, Philip outruns a chariot, known throughout the ancient world for their speed. And what happens at the end of this chase seen? Philip catches up to the chariot and… conducts a bible study. That’s right, they sit down and read together. Okay, maybe this isn’t the next Indiana Jones movie.

Yes, in this action-packed post-resurrection world there is still thought and discernment and study. But, keep in mind, Philip’s bible study here takes place in a racing chariot. And then, the Ethiopian eunuch hears what Philip has to teach him, and makes a decision instantly: Here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?

The action of salvation accelerates. Philip baptizes the Ethiopian eunuch, and then is immediately whisked away by the Spirit to his next task. It’s go, go, go in this outfit.

Now, to be honest, I’ve thought about this story many times in the past twelve years. In January of 2000, I approached my rector, John Keydel, to talk about the process of exploring a call to ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church. And for much of the last twelve years, I’ve gotten a lot of messages from God and the Church to wait. And wait. And wait. And there have been times this lesson from Acts has come to mind, where the Ethiopian eunuch says to Philip, “Here is water; what is to prevent me from being baptized” – no catechesis, no waiting for the Easter Vigil, no paperwork, no delays. Just stop the chariot, go down to the water, and boom – you’re baptized; start your new ministry. I’ve dreamed that perhaps someday a bishop might just be wandering by (not that there would ever be a bishop around this place) and say hey, there’s work I want you to do. Here are my hands – what is to prevent you from being ordained? And then it’s boom – on to the next mission.

Now it doesn’t work that way, and for good reason. An ordained leader in the Church can do a lot of damage, so the Church needs to be careful that it calls people who are well selected, well supported, and well prepared. But when the message is wait, wait, wait, when, one can start to expect that the word from the Lord is always “wait.” In the time of Elijah, the voice of the Lord was not in the wind and not in the earthquake, and not in the fire. When that happens, it’s easy to become complacent. To expect that the message is always “wait until later.” To miss the call to action of the Lord speaking in the sound of sheer silence. But after the wind, earthquake, and fire, God did speak to Elijah, and said Get up and Go. And just like Philip, once God said Go, Elijah went indeed.

For us here at Nativity, we’ve been in a time of healing. We’ve been in a time of praying, and listening, and waiting for the Lord. And when God isn’t calling us to get up and go yet, the proper course of action is indeed to wait for the Lord. But today’s lesson is an important reminder that the hour is coming when the word from the Lord won’t be wait, but rather Get up and Go. We’ve got to be listening for that call, and ready for the change of pace that might follow. There’s a time to wait for the Lord. A time to pray and study scripture and discern. And also a time when God presents us with opportunity: here is water. What is to prevent us from doing God’s work in the world. And we do it, and boom! It’s on to the next mission. Amen.

And then there were ten

When we’re trying to make sense of the world, we sometimes try to simplify things. When the world seems complicated, we often dichotomize: we divide the world into two opposed, non-overlapping parts. Black and White. Secular and Spiritual. Law and Gospel. Old Testament and New Testament. Jews and Christians. Commandments and Cross.

In that light, it’s easy for our reading from Corinthians today to come off as self-congratulatory: the Jews and Greeks get it wrong, but we followers of The Way, as the nascent Christian community called itself, we have it right.

Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Thinking in “either/or” mode, we might say that Jews cling to the “Old” Testament, the world of the Law, the world of the ten commandments. But we Christians, we’ve moved beyond that. We’ve got the right answer: the cross. The Law condemns us, but the cross redeems us.

But everything doesn’t always fall into such neat compartments. And just because the Old Testament is old, doesn’t mean it’s out of date. It doesn’t mean we should just throw it away.

So today, I want to look at our first two readings: the ten commandments, and Paul’s reflection about the Cross, and see what they tell us about each other.

Jewish tradition teaches that the Torah, the law, contains six hundred thirteen commandments. And yet there are ten that hold a particularly special place in our memory. The first lesson we heard today isn’t known as “ten of the commandments”; we call it “The Ten Commandments”. As if these ten were so special that beyond them, there are no others. What’s so special about these ten?

The Godly Play curriculum calls them the Ten Best Ways to live. There’s a long rabbinical tradition of trying to summarize The Law, and perhaps the ten commandments do that. They start by recalling God’s relationship with the people: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

And then continue:

• You shall have no other gods before me.
• You shall not make for yourself an idol.
• You shall not bow down to them or worship them.
• You shall not make wrongful use of the Name of the Lord your God.
• Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.

We sometimes divide the commandments, saying that those are about the relationship between God and humans, and the rest are about the relationship among humans: Honor your parents, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not covet.

But they aren’t in neat categories there. When we covet things that do not belong to us, we both hurt our fellowship with our neighbor and reject what our God has blessed us with. When we do not allow those who work for us to keep the Sabbath, we defile God’s holy day and we exploit our neighbor. And what more wrongful use of the name of the LORD is there than to invoke the name of God to oppress our neighbor? To use the holy name to gain power over others?

When Jesus was asked to summarize the law, continuing in that rabbinical tradition, Matthew 22 tells us that he said

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with 
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great 
commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments 
hang all the Law and the Prophets.

I used the traditional language there because of the transition it uses between the two commandments: “The second is like unto it.” We’re not talking about two completely different things. Our relationship with God shapes our relationship with our fellow humans. Our relationship with our fellow humans is a necessary consequence of our relationship with God.

Love the Lord and love Humankind – these are two sides of the same coin. And this love was brought to its fulfillment in the cross. Jesus doesn’t abolish the law, he fulfills it. The Law, the 613 commandments, the ten commandments, the two commandments – the cross of Jesus demonstrates their most full expression. But the message about the Cross is indeed foolishness to those who are perishing.

The wisdom of the world says protect yourself. The wisdom of the world says be strong, to fight off your enemies. The wisdom of the world says hold back from helping others, and be sure you can take care of yourself first.

The message about the cross is foolishness to those who embrace worldly wisdom.

The commandment to love others as much as you love yourself resists seeking of power for self-preservation. The commandment to love others as self says the impulse to help oneself – to save oneself – is only to be embraced as a part of the helping and saving of all humankind. And there in the heart of the summary of the law is the message of the cross.

The Christian message about the cross is that the ultimate manifestation of power and strength is to totally empty oneself. To lay down one’s life in resistance to evil – not by fighting it, but by bearing witness to the power of God. Love God with every fiber of your being, and love yourself as a part of loving all humankind.

The Roman message about the cross is that power can bring order. The cross itself was a tool of Roman subjugation. Put down rebellions, quell dissent, keep calm throughout the known world.

The power of the cross, to the Romans, was in fear. People who dared to defy them were hung up on display, so everyone could see them very painfully die.

But the Christians embraced the cross as their own symbol. The cross became not something to fear or be ashamed of – look, your movement’s leader was tortured to death here – but rather a source of strength. When Jesus died on the cross, and yet rose from the dead, he showed that the ultimate symbol of violence, the ultimate symbol of peace through strength, the ultimate claim that “power over others makes you strong” was, in fact, powerless against him.

Without fully loving, hoping, believing in the power of God, Jesus could never have embraced the cross. The first of the great commandments makes the second one possible. We have the courage, and grace, and power to serve others only because we are first fed by our God. We go forth into the world to serve only in response to the abundant grace that God first gives us. We can engage in the crazy, foolish, subversive act of loving neighbor as self only when we are animated by the love of God.

Paul didn’t write about Jews and Greeks as “them”. They weren’t the other. Paul’s community was made up of Jews and Greeks. When Paul sets the cross against the expectations of Jews and Greeks, he shows us how our own expectations resist the message of the cross. We are the Jews. We are the Greeks. In each of us is a resistance to the radical, absurd love of God witnessed by Jesus’ passion. But, by the grace of God, we can receive the message about the cross. As we fear danger, we cling to wisdom and power, but the cross of Jesus offers another way: a way of fearless nonviolence, of powerful powerlessness, of foolish love.

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Amen. Amen.