Sermon: June 15

I had the pleasure this week of spending some time at a continuing education class at Yale Divinity School. All Episcopal priests are required to take some cont. ed. classes every year which is a good thing in my opinion. My class was called The Bible in Art & Artifact and we examined the biblical text and then using the rich resources of Yale to see that text in art and artifacts from the Yale University Art Gallery to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. It was a great week. When we think about the bible, the stories, the history; so much of it has been put to music or drawn by artists, art has left a lasting impression on us in many ways.

For me, the visit of the Angels to Abraham and Sarah always brings me back to this icon…

This icon of the Holy Trinity was created by Andrew Rublev, a Russian iconographer in 1425. The three persons seated are the three strangers that come to visit Abraham and Sarah in the book of Genesis. Abraham and Sarah offer their hospitality to the three (offering food, drink, rest) and they in turn announce the unexpected birth of Isaac.

Rublev uses this encounter to paint the scene of three angelic figures, representing the three persons of the Trinity: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are seated together and look at one another. The Son points to the sacrificed lamb on the table. The Father has a blessing gesture in the scene and the Holy Spirit points to the opening in front of the table or altar. One can see the connection between the Father’s Blessing, the Son’s sacrifice, and the opening of salvation of the world by the Son through the work of the Spirit.

They are indeed all connected. It is a House of Love, as Henri Nouwen put it, that he experienced in his meditation on that icon of the Holy Trinity. Nouwen said, “the spiritual life keeps us aware that our true house is not the house of fear, in which the powers of hatred and violence rule, but the house of love, where God resides.”

The story of course, invites us to go deeper, for in the midst of the hospitality to these strangers/angels, that out of this House of Love comes the promise that Sarah will conceive and bear a child. One of them said, "I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son." And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?"

There is a wonderful medieval illuminated manuscript on this passage, as Abraham gives the hospitality to the angels and hears about the gift of a child in the background is Sarah who is laughing at the tent door. Abraham who in the previous chapter of Genesis hears that the Lord would bless Sarah and she would conceive and bear a child, fell on his face laughing at such an idea. It is a natural reaction. It seems impossible. A child now after all these years. But God is at work and offers a blessing.

The LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh, and say, `Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?' Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?”

At midnight on Friday night, I stood with others before the stage at the Relay for Life, many people were still there, young & old, survivors, caregivers and friends, and we stood there at the “Fight Back Ceremony.” The ceremony “symbolizes the emotional commitment we each make to the fight against cancer. The action we take represents what we are willing to do for ourselves, for our loved ones, and for our community to fight cancer year-round and to commit to saving lives.”

As we stood there I thought of Abraham & Sarah’s laughter and how just a few years ago we might have laughed too at the idea of fighting against cancer. Its too big, too hard to fight, too depressing, can we win? And God would have replied, “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?”

We do fight back, for we continue to find affective therapies to combat many cancers, we have learned over the years of what we can do and we have learned to fight. Childhood cancers have declined 48% in 30 years, most other cancers have also declined due to earlier detection and improved treatment options.

But sadly, we know that not everyone wins that fight, I know someone who recently lost his fight at the age of 23 after battling cancer since childhood. I also know that God is in the midst of this fight with us, inviting us to that House of Love, to know that God promises more for each of us.

The LORD dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him. And Sarah said, "God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me." (from Genesis 21)

They named him Issac, for Issac means in Hebrew, "He will Laugh." The laughter of incredulity has turned to the laughter of joy at such a birth! The last picture I have is all those who walked the Relay to celebrate and remember and fight back. An image of hope and indeed of laughter too.

May our laughter be that type of joy as we celebrate with those who have survived cancer or are battling it now, for those who have just given birth in our parish family, for those whom God has blessed. For we know that God fulfills God’s promises and we know it’s a journey we all walk to understand and celebrate those promises.

As one author put it, “We laugh Sarah’s laugh, not because we have faith, but because we find it impossible to have it. That is the disturbing truth being held up before us in this week’s story: that faith is not a reasonable act and that the promise of God is not just a conventional piece of wisdom that is easily accommodated to everything else. Abraham and Sarah laughed because they had reached a dead end in their lives and because they had adjusted to it. They had accepted their hopelessness [of not having a child] just the way, if we are honest, we too accommodate ourselves to all those barren places in our lives where the call to believe in “a new thing that God will do” seems, quite frankly, nonsensical. And yet ... there is another kind of laughter to which the promise made in this story also points. A very different kind of laughter. The laughter, not of Sarah or Abraham, but of that One who keeps his own counsel and works his own will—whether or not we have the faith to see it. Sometimes we have to wait to share in that kind of laughter, just as Abraham and Sarah had to wait, too.” (Barry J. Robinson)

May we indeed share in that kind of laughter, that kind of Joy, celebrated in that House of love. May we hear & know of God’s work in our lives and our world, and put our faith and trust in what God is doing. Amen.

All the News Fit to Print (from NY Times)

Sometimes the NY Times has articles that get us thinking...

A $10 Mosquito Net Is Making Charity Cool

Donating $10 to buy a mosquito net to save an African child from malaria has become a hip way to show you care, especially for teenagers. The movement is like a modern version of the March of Dimes, created in 1938 to defeat polio, or like collecting pennies for Unicef on Halloween.

Unusual allies, like the Methodist and Lutheran Churches [and Episcopal Church!], the National Basketball Association and the United Nations Foundation, are stoking the passion for nets that prevent malaria. The annual “American Idol Gives Back” fund-raising television special has donated about $6 million a year for two years. The music channel VH1 made a fund-raising video featuring a pesky man in a mosquito suit.

It is an appeal that clearly resonates with young people.

Read more about it here.

Learn about the Nets for life Program (through Episcopal Relief & Development) here.

Gay Unions Shed Light on Gender in Marriage

For insights into healthy marriages, social scientists are looking in an unexpected place.

A growing body of evidence shows that same-sex couples have a great deal to teach everyone else about marriage and relationships. Most studies show surprisingly few differences between committed gay couples and committed straight couples, but the differences that do emerge have shed light on the kinds of conflicts that can endanger heterosexual relationships.

Read the rest here.

Out of a Church Kitchen and Into the Courts

NEBRASKA BEEF has been accused of making people at a church social very sick; one elderly woman died. Meatballs served at a smorgasbord of the Salem Lutheran Church in Longville, Minn., were tainted with deadly E. coli bacteria, and Nebraska Beef was named as the culprit in lawsuits filed by the dead woman’s husband and by Ellie Wheeler, one of 17 other people who became ill.

Ellie Wheeler, one of those at a church social who became ill, is suing Nebraska Beef. The company is suing her church. Carolyn Hawkinson died after eating meatballs at Salem Lutheran Church in Longville, Minn. All of this is straightforward enough, and you might expect that it would lead to an out-of-court settlement, with the meat company vowing to clean up its act.

But Nebraska Beef, based in Omaha, is pursuing a very different tactic. For starters, the company has denied that it is responsible for providing bad meat, and it has provided a culprit of its own. It blames the Salem Lutheran Church — contending in its own lawsuit that the volunteer church ladies who prepared the food were negligent.

Read the rest here.

Sermon: June 8

She said to herself, "If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well." Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, "Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well."

That’s Faithfulness in the midst of illness/suffering.

A leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before Jesus, saying, "My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live."

That’s Faithfulness in the midst of grief/mourning.

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him.

That’s Faithfulness as an outsider/traitor

Today’s Gospel reading is all about Faithfulness which is also present in our OT & NT readings as well.

For Abram’s response in Genesis to God’s call to go as the Lord told him, he went with Sara his wife and his nephew Lot and took all their possessions. For this act, the Lord blesses them! And that is faithfulness. In Romans, Paul remembers Abraham for his faith. Not because he did some valiant work: but Abram believed God, did what God called him & his family to do and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.

As we recognize the children, acolytes, HS seniors graduating, this morning, we are reminded of the faithfulness of children, of their curiosity and love and discovery, of whom Jesus said for us to enter the kingdom of heaven we are to become like children.

This week, some of us are going to see the movie Prince Caspian based on one of the books of the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis. One year has passed in our world since the first adventure ended (The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe), but in Narnia, almost 1,300 years have passed when the Pevensie children return to Narnia. Aslan the Lion is in many ways the Christ character of the story, but the children who learned to trust and love him in the first story have nearly forgotten him in the second book except for the youngest Lucy.

She is the one who sees him when the others say they haven’t. It is her faithfulness that finally leads them on the right road to help Prince Caspian. She has that magical faith of a child and yet there is more to it than that, for she is older and despite everyone who fails to see Aslan, she does and continues to believe. That’s faithfulness too.

But Aslan doesn’t stop his work until all see him again, he continues on, waiting for those to come around, just as Jesus confronted by others about his ministry said, I have come to call not the righteous but sinners. Understanding that he was calling those who had faith and those who as of yet did not. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Jesus said.

If we understand that our selves, our souls, our bodies, are in need of health, in need of the power of God, then we can be open to hear the words from the physician of our souls, Jesus Christ, for he has the words that will make our lives what they can be. "Go and learn what this means," says Jesus, “I desire mercy not sacrifice.”

Jesus does not want to make insiders and outsiders for the Kingdom of God. He wants everybody in! But he challenges those who think they are righteous, who have it all going for them, who are not the poor, the powerless, the outcasts of society, to truly consider whether or not they are doing what God wants. Are they hearing the call? Where is mercy in their lives?

Like the older children in Narnia, they come again to faith through Lucy’s help as they learn they were not hearing Aslan's call…

We must remember that as we gather here at St. Peter’s, we are not the righteous gift of God for the world. But we are sinners who have heard the call of Jesus Christ to come follow, and are attempting to live out of love and mercy as Jesus would have us do.

May we hear the call of Jesus, in our lives, a call to radical discipleship, a call to embrace the outcasts of our society to bring them the love of God. To bring healing, forgiveness and hope. To bring mercy.

May our lives be open to what Jesus can bring (just as Abram heard God’s call to go and he and his family followed that call. Matthew heard the call of Christ, gave up his work as a tax collector and followed Jesus. The leader of the synagogue and the woman with the hemorrhage, heard of Jesus and believed in him. Lucy continued to have faith even as her older brothers and sister did not.) And in faithfulness, be ready to follow where Christ calls us to go. Amen.

The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat

After hearing about Jim McKay's death, I thought of how ABC's Wide World of Sports introduced to me as a child, sports through out the world and of course, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Jim McKay was a big part of it. May Jim and all the departed through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

The Eucharist and Exclusion

There are news reports from time to time about celebrations of the Eucharist (or the mass) when people are specifically excluded from taking communion...

Mother of autistic boy in Minnesota pleads not guilty to violating church restraining order

Priest Snubs Lawyer over Obama Endorsement or For an 'Obamacon,' Communion Denied

Wyo. church denies lesbian couple Communion

Girl with digestive disease denied Communion

Church denies Communion to autistic boy

Giuliani breaks rules by having Communion at papal mass

Sadly, sharing in the Eucharist and breaking bread together in Jesus' name has become too ruled by law and not by the Spirit.

As we live into the spirit of Anglicanism here at St. Peter's, I think of words written about Elizabeth I who in so many ways helped shape our understanding of the faith that we have inherited as Episcopalians (Anglicans).

It is according to Sir Francis Bacon that Elizabeth believed that what people do is what matters, our saying common prayers together and not our assumptions about other's opinions or beliefs. Bacon sets out this view of Elizabeth: "Her Majesty, not liking to make windows into men's hearts and secret thoughts..."

In her own words about taking communion:

'Twas God the Word that spake it,
He took the bread and break it;
And what the word did make it;
That I believe and take it.

May we with humble hearts take communion together in the name of Jesus, with nothing to separate us from that sacred meal.

Sermon: June 1

A man is looking at his new home, built on low lands, admiring them from above as he notices a Thunderstorm just west of him, when he suddenly looks down at his house, water starts streaming by it, in a matter of seconds, the water becomes a flood, his house is swept away, as he stares down on what has happened, a voice from heaven says, “life comes at you fast…”

Ok, so maybe God wouldn’t use the Nationwide ad, but it isn’t just Nationwide that is on your side, God is too and as we heard from Jesus in the Gospel today, his last words from the Sermon on the Mount, that God’s grace is with us and our discipleship will help us with what life throws at us.

Jesus said, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.” So what does it mean to follow Jesus?

Jesus wants us to understand that it means more than hearing his words. A whole crowd, including his disciples, had been listening to his words on the side of that small mountain. He doesn’t want what he says to them, to be heard one day, and forgotten the next. Nor is it just saying Lord, Lord. And it isn’t just doing spectacular things. We have seen too many charlatans who look like the real deal but who are not following God’s will.

Jesus wants all of us who hear his words, who read them at night, hear them proclaimed in Church, study them, listen to them on the radio, he wants us to put those words into actions, into following God’s will. To believe in Jesus is to follow God’s will as Jesus has given it to us, and to put his words into action into the whole of our lives, not just a part.

As one person put it, “If Christ does not reign over the mundane events in our lives, He does not reign at all.” (Paul Tripp) Discipleship is about the whole of our lives following God’s will. And there are those who hear the words of Jesus but who don’t act on them.

Jesus tell us that they are like “a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell-- and great was its fall!” Jesus who wants us to have an abundant life, filled with joy, love and peace reminds us that to really have those things, we must follow and act. For those who don’t, life will always fail them when the tough times hit.

And notice that Jesus says that “the rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on” both the wise man and the foolish man’s houses. It is only the foolish that had it fall. Jesus reminds us that all of us in our lives, suffer the rains, the floods, the bad, troublesome even tragic times. But if we live as Jesus has called us to do, than we will have the ability to withstand what comes our way, that God will give us the strength we need to overcome the “rains” so that our house will not fall, that the Spirit will be inside of us and around us to guide us, to live through the suffering, the tragedy, because we know there is more to life!

And his words certainly means there are no easy roads in following Jesus, but we already knew that in our lives, that there are no easy roads period. Discipleship is costly but truly following Jesus means we will have the strength to face what comes before us each day.

One simple way we can remember this, is by the prayers we say I think of this prayer for use by one who is sick (anyone can use it), from our Book of Common Prayer…

This is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words, and give me the Spirit of Jesus.

Simple and yet built on the Rock, on the faith that Jesus offers to us for the Spirit of God that is with us, is there to support us all the day long to do God’s will. I also think of this prayer by Malcolm Boyd, written over 40 years ago, that asks for Jesus to be with us on our busy day.

“It's morning, Jesus. I've got to move fast — get into the bathroom, wash up, grab a bite to eat, and run some more. Where am I running? You know these things I can't understand. It's not that I need to have you tell me. What counts most is just that somebody knows, and it's you. That helps a lot. So I'll follow along, okay? But lead, Lord. Now I've got to run. Are you running with me, Jesus?”

The kingdom of heaven is for those who do the will of God says Jesus. No matter what life throws at us, no matter where we are running, right here and right now, we can anchor our lives on the words of Jesus and put them in practice, so that every day we can put ourselves on solid rock. For it is that foundation of faith and practice that will help us see Jesus today and forever.

As Robert Benson reminds us in A Good Life (Paraclete, 2004):

“If Christ is in us, and if Christ is present in the others that we meet, acknowledged or not, then there are no moments in which Christ is not present... One does not have to go far to find Jesus. What one has to do is adopt a posture that allows one to see him. My father used to say that when we get to heaven and see Jesus, our first thought is not going to be that we have never seen him before. Instead, we will grin and say, ‘It’s you, it’s you. I have seen you everywhere.’” Amen.

A Lambeth Prayer Vigil

Province I of the Episcopal Church (of which the Diocese of Connecticut is a member) announces a prayer vigil for our bishops while they gather at Lambeth, July 16-August 3.

“Petitions for a Lambeth Prayer Vigil," written by the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, is for use by congregations and individuals. Two specific times are suggested: 7 a.m. (noon in England) and noon (5 p.m. in England).

You can find more information on the vigil including the prayer, here.

I will be participating while on vacation and when I return.