As a child, having the last name of Huber always put me in the middle. I was never first nor was I last. The A names and the Z names either had it best or worst depending on what order the teacher started. There is something inside of us that wants to be first. My kids always, whenever there is line, jockey for position. I’m first, no me. All of you parents know what I am talking about…
I remember that line from a commercial with Bob Uecker, when the ushers come to him in the box seats, “must be in the front row” he says. And that is right about us. We like to be first, in the front row, on top. However you put it, its where we want to be… But like that commercial, Bob Uecker gets moved from those box seats to the bleachers and there is no front row for him, and so often we find ourselves in our lives envious of the front row, the first, as we sit way up, in the bleachers, and if you are at place like Fenway in Boston, you are probably behind a pillar too.
Jesus said, “some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last." We have heard this phrase from Jesus before, it happens in the other Gospels but this time, it is in response to someone who asked him, "Lord, will only a few be saved?" It is a question of worry, how many Lord, only a few, a set number? But why worry? Because we want to be in that number, the few, the proud, the saved.
But Jesus doesn’t give an easy answer. Jesus says, “strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.” Narrow door? What is he talking about? Let me get at this through another story.
A science professor had a no-nonsense method for assigning grades in his courses. A student’s final letter grade was based on how many points the student had accumulated throughout the semester. The points, in turn, could be earned in a variety of ways: daily quizzes, lab reports, a lengthy midterm, and a final exam. If, by the time of the final exam, you had already built up enough points for a B or C, and if you were content with that grade, you could skip the final. Or you could take it easy early on, skipping quizzes and lab reports, and hope that by cramming you could get the points you needed on one of the big tests.
The instructor, who also let it be known that he had no use for religious beliefs, had a way of introducing his points-system to his classes. “There is no Jesus factor in this course,” he would announce. A former student of this teacher, now a college professor himself, remembers: “I have often wished that I had asked him what he meant exactly by a ‘Jesus factor.’ But I think I have some idea. He wanted to eliminate all subjective factors in his grading. In his classroom, you got what your earned, and what it took was clearly spelled out . . . No excuses: Show me the points! In a word, there is no room for mercy in his system, and he was proud of it. “Actually, his system worked quite well. He may have been too rigid in his attitudes, but his total-points method was quite appropriate for a biology course. But I’m glad when it comes to dealing with the larger issues of life, there is indeed a Jesus Factor. Mercy is what the Gospel is really all about. If the Lord were simply to add up the points earned, we would all be miserable failures . . . I am glad that when we all face the real final test — the Last Judgment — God isn’t going to pass me or fail me on my ability to show the points. On that Day, the Jesus Factor will be my only hope.” [From Praying at the Burger King by Richard J. Mouw.]
The Jesus Factor is that narrow door we are to strive to enter, it is open to all who believe in Jesus. There are no points to be earned, its is not about the good we have done, the evil that we have avoided, nor the good we have failed to do, the evil we have done, none of which has anything to do with that door. That narrow door is the faith in Jesus Christ and it is by God’s grace it is open, we just believe and walk through it.
There are those old Smith Barney ads featuring actor John Houseman with his famous line: "We make money the old-fashioned way. We earn it." Or to translate it for this sermon, “we are saved the old fashioned way, we earn it.” But that’s the problem we do not earn salvation, it is a gift. A gift some will choose not to take, not to go through the narrow door, but the door is open. Salvation is not a transaction between God and us, that we have to offer God our worthiness, our good deeds, anything at all, as if salvation is a reward for the righteous. As Episcopal priest and Theologian Robert Farrar Capon puts it, understanding salvation is earned, “it becomes a transaction through which God deigns to reward the cooperative and excludes the unacceptable.” Then it would not be by God’s grace that salvation is feely offered to all.
Nor is that door solely opened by faith, as if we have enough faith then we can enter it, because faith then just becomes another transaction between us and God, like good works. It is open because God has it so, and if we desire to strive through it, even if we don’t always get it right, then we are indeed striving to enter that narrow door. But as I hear the parable that Jesus gives to explain it, the Jesus Factor is our following him. Lord, open the door to us,' then in reply he will say to you, `I do not know where you come from.' Then you will begin to say, `We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.' But he will say, `I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!' Its not just knowing who Jesus is or doing the right things.
As Robert Capon said, “And what is the narrow door the householder has still left open? Well, it is the remote possibility that, instead of nosily insisting on their own notions of living their way to salvation, they might just join him in the silence of his death and wait in faith for resurrection.” For Jesus is that narrow door and he invites us to come. Jesus turns our world upside down, upsetting things, the order we see is changed, first last, last first, indeed salvation is in God’s hands, it is more than a mere moment of one's life, it is the striving to enter the narrow door. As Frederick Buechner puts it, Salvation is a process not an event.
There is no interest in numbers, counting who will or will not be saved. There are no predestination games going on here. Salvation is open to all peoples. Jesus said, "Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God." One's birth, one's bloodline, family status, wealth or power are not part of the equation. We do not earn salvation, that is God's gift to us, an open narrow door, but we strive to enter through it as if our admission into the Kingdom, our salvation, depended on it but knowing in the end it depends on the grace of our loving and merciful God.
We are challenged to walk humbly with our God on that path to the narrow door and beyond, not worrying about numbers or salvation, not arrogantly trying to get others to follow us but to walk together in love and follow where Jesus has led the way. Amen.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Virtual Pipes (Great Music)
The 2007 Organ Festival from Trinity Wall Street is online!
The Trinity Church Conservatory Stars Organ Festival honors John Weaver
John Weaver was Head of the Organ Department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 1972 to 2003, and also Chair of the Organ Department at The Juilliard School from 1987 to 2004. Five of his former students are involved in the Festival: Cameron Carpenter, Felix Hell, Alan Morrison, Paul Jacobs, and organ builder David Ogletree of Marshall & Ogletree.
You can watch and listen here.
Great music!
The Trinity Church Conservatory Stars Organ Festival honors John Weaver
John Weaver was Head of the Organ Department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 1972 to 2003, and also Chair of the Organ Department at The Juilliard School from 1987 to 2004. Five of his former students are involved in the Festival: Cameron Carpenter, Felix Hell, Alan Morrison, Paul Jacobs, and organ builder David Ogletree of Marshall & Ogletree.
You can watch and listen here.
Great music!
No Longer Lost, a Refugee Accepts Call to Leadership
In Grand Rapids, Mich., the Rev. Zachariah Jok Char serves an Episcopal congregation that welcomed Sudanese refugees.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — About 7,000 miles separate Grace Episcopal Church here, where the Rev. Zachariah Jok Char preaches most Sundays, from the small town of Duk Padiet in Sudan, where he was born.
Read it all here.Prayers for the Miners
[from Episcopal News Service] Episcopal Diocese of Utah Bishop Carolyn Tanner Irish offered this prayer for all Utah congregations to use during worship in the coming days:
O God our times are in your hands. Look mercifully on those who mourn the loss of their loved ones in Crandall Canyon, those miners who remain trapped there, and those who care for the injured. Let your Holy Spirit abide within and among them, reminding us all of our call to care for all God's people. We give thanks for all who risk their own comfort and safety for the sake of others and all whose work puts them in harm's way. Keep us mindful of our responsibilities to press for increased safety measures in their work places. We pray in the name of the one whose very name is Mercy. Amen.
Sermon: August 19
Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”
As I sat with that statement of Jesus, I thought of the wild fires that I have been reading about in the West, one near Yellowstone, others in Washington & Montana. And as I read, I did some searching on the internet, its amazing what you can find on the internet. Not only our website and my blog, but I found a website listing all incidents of wildfires in the U.S., both current and contained. 153 Incidents with 80 Active,73 Contained, and 4,412,781 Acres burnt. The stats may seem meaningless but it struck me that over 4 million acres have been burned this year…
If we lived in the west, like Montana or Wyoming, we certainly would have the wildfires on our minds, Here in quiet CT, the reality of a wild fire is not on our radar screens.
When I think of my childhood, I remember the great fire that ripped through a national forest near my parent’s cottage in MI. A month after the fire, we returned to the cottage to find miles and miles of national forest gone, it was hard to see any life. The only thing the huge fire missed was the town’s schools, located in that forest, to the disappointment of many kids. It finally was stopped less than a mile from the outskirts of the town. Unlike the fire outside Yellowstone started by a lightning strike in dry weather, that fire in MI happened because of an unattended campfire. The next year, where everything the previous summer was burnt, new seedlings had popped up. The plants that grew on the forest floor had come back. It was hard to tell that the area was just devastated except for the noticeable lack of large trees. Signs of new life were seen everywhere throughout the forest. The fire had not only destroyed but it had also renewed the ground. From that destruction, new life was born, and that forest is alive and well today.
A few years ago, I was hiking through Yosemite in California, and I walked through the remnants of a controlled fire. The underlying forest floor had been burnt but not the large trees, so that the fuel that would help a forest fire grow would not be there. It was amazing to walk through it, and see the controlled burn, smoke still lingering, still smoldering in some parts and knowing that the ground and the forest would be reborn, and the large trees would still be alive! Fire can destroy, but fire also can purify and pave the way for new growth.
I wonder if that’s what Jesus had in mind… Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” I don’t think Jesus was talking about a fire that would consume the earth and destroy everything... For God so loved the world, that he sent his only son to destroy it…no, that’s not it. This is after all, the Jesus who gave us the commandments about love. I think Jesus came to set our souls on fire, to purify us and to kindle in us the love for God and each other, to move us away from our self-serving practices and our ego trips, and to serve and love each other and all of God’s creation.
For that fire is passed to us through baptism by the Holy Spirit. It is in baptism, just like Jesus’ baptism, that we are named by God, and not just named but sent forth into the world to proclaim through our lives the Good News, to love each and every person who comes before us, and to love our God who created us.
Today, Ian Hudson Chichester will be baptized and the fire of God will be given to him, and will slowly grow with him as he grows into his faith and life. And as we all follow Jesus, through the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, and then out into the world to minister in Jesus’ name, it is his fire that burns in us, renewing us, restoring us, making us whole. It is the Holy Spirit that comes and kindles God’s will and message into our lives.
But sometimes, we seem to lose the fire; and to regain it some will go on a spiritual retreat, or renew their worship and prayer life; some will revisit their service to others. Like a controlled burn, these are ways we can help renew the ground of our lives and allow for new growth with God. And for some, it is the circumstances of their lives, that bring opportunities for new life even in the darkest hours. For it is this same Spirit that will kindle hope when we have none. It will give strength when we are weak. When things look dead & gone, the Spirit will be with us to renew us and give new growth and our lives will change.
A story is told of some workers in Africa who received a box, as they often did, from the States: "Only this box of clothing and help—this care package, as it were—had a note and many, many strips of cloth. The note said, 'We are former members of the Alabama Klu Klux Klan. Recently we have been converted to Jesus Christ and we've taken these robes that we used to wear and cut them into strips. We thought you might be able to use them as bandages." (The Rev. George Antonakos)
It is the Holy Spirit who is most active in our lives even when we don’t see God’s activity. For it is the Holy Spirit who guides us to life, who helps us grow and thrive in God’s will, to live and move and have our bring. In the lives of some Klu Klux Klan members, it is that Holy Spirit that moved them into real life and real relationship with Jesus, using their former robes to bring healing to our world in the name of Jesus. Jesus is our teacher, who tells us there will be conflict, there will be division if we follow his ways but his fire can renew us and lead us to true life, that through faith in Jesus we can live and hope and persevere.
So maybe its time for us to put on our work boots on and our hard hats and go out into the world, to spread the fire of God’s love that fills our souls, to bring hope & forgiveness where death & destruction lay, to fulfill our baptism and follow God’s ways, so that there can be new growth for everyone. God wants us to be part of the message, part of the mission of the Kingdom of God. If we look out into the world with the eyes of faith, we will see that God’s hands, are indeed at work in the world around us. So lets gets those boots on, and help kindle that fire, a fire set by the Holy Spirit, for there is more life that God is ready to give! Amen.
As I sat with that statement of Jesus, I thought of the wild fires that I have been reading about in the West, one near Yellowstone, others in Washington & Montana. And as I read, I did some searching on the internet, its amazing what you can find on the internet. Not only our website and my blog, but I found a website listing all incidents of wildfires in the U.S., both current and contained. 153 Incidents with 80 Active,73 Contained, and 4,412,781 Acres burnt. The stats may seem meaningless but it struck me that over 4 million acres have been burned this year…
If we lived in the west, like Montana or Wyoming, we certainly would have the wildfires on our minds, Here in quiet CT, the reality of a wild fire is not on our radar screens.
When I think of my childhood, I remember the great fire that ripped through a national forest near my parent’s cottage in MI. A month after the fire, we returned to the cottage to find miles and miles of national forest gone, it was hard to see any life. The only thing the huge fire missed was the town’s schools, located in that forest, to the disappointment of many kids. It finally was stopped less than a mile from the outskirts of the town. Unlike the fire outside Yellowstone started by a lightning strike in dry weather, that fire in MI happened because of an unattended campfire. The next year, where everything the previous summer was burnt, new seedlings had popped up. The plants that grew on the forest floor had come back. It was hard to tell that the area was just devastated except for the noticeable lack of large trees. Signs of new life were seen everywhere throughout the forest. The fire had not only destroyed but it had also renewed the ground. From that destruction, new life was born, and that forest is alive and well today.
A few years ago, I was hiking through Yosemite in California, and I walked through the remnants of a controlled fire. The underlying forest floor had been burnt but not the large trees, so that the fuel that would help a forest fire grow would not be there. It was amazing to walk through it, and see the controlled burn, smoke still lingering, still smoldering in some parts and knowing that the ground and the forest would be reborn, and the large trees would still be alive! Fire can destroy, but fire also can purify and pave the way for new growth.
I wonder if that’s what Jesus had in mind… Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” I don’t think Jesus was talking about a fire that would consume the earth and destroy everything... For God so loved the world, that he sent his only son to destroy it…no, that’s not it. This is after all, the Jesus who gave us the commandments about love. I think Jesus came to set our souls on fire, to purify us and to kindle in us the love for God and each other, to move us away from our self-serving practices and our ego trips, and to serve and love each other and all of God’s creation.
For that fire is passed to us through baptism by the Holy Spirit. It is in baptism, just like Jesus’ baptism, that we are named by God, and not just named but sent forth into the world to proclaim through our lives the Good News, to love each and every person who comes before us, and to love our God who created us.
Today, Ian Hudson Chichester will be baptized and the fire of God will be given to him, and will slowly grow with him as he grows into his faith and life. And as we all follow Jesus, through the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, and then out into the world to minister in Jesus’ name, it is his fire that burns in us, renewing us, restoring us, making us whole. It is the Holy Spirit that comes and kindles God’s will and message into our lives.
But sometimes, we seem to lose the fire; and to regain it some will go on a spiritual retreat, or renew their worship and prayer life; some will revisit their service to others. Like a controlled burn, these are ways we can help renew the ground of our lives and allow for new growth with God. And for some, it is the circumstances of their lives, that bring opportunities for new life even in the darkest hours. For it is this same Spirit that will kindle hope when we have none. It will give strength when we are weak. When things look dead & gone, the Spirit will be with us to renew us and give new growth and our lives will change.
A story is told of some workers in Africa who received a box, as they often did, from the States: "Only this box of clothing and help—this care package, as it were—had a note and many, many strips of cloth. The note said, 'We are former members of the Alabama Klu Klux Klan. Recently we have been converted to Jesus Christ and we've taken these robes that we used to wear and cut them into strips. We thought you might be able to use them as bandages." (The Rev. George Antonakos)
It is the Holy Spirit who is most active in our lives even when we don’t see God’s activity. For it is the Holy Spirit who guides us to life, who helps us grow and thrive in God’s will, to live and move and have our bring. In the lives of some Klu Klux Klan members, it is that Holy Spirit that moved them into real life and real relationship with Jesus, using their former robes to bring healing to our world in the name of Jesus. Jesus is our teacher, who tells us there will be conflict, there will be division if we follow his ways but his fire can renew us and lead us to true life, that through faith in Jesus we can live and hope and persevere.
So maybe its time for us to put on our work boots on and our hard hats and go out into the world, to spread the fire of God’s love that fills our souls, to bring hope & forgiveness where death & destruction lay, to fulfill our baptism and follow God’s ways, so that there can be new growth for everyone. God wants us to be part of the message, part of the mission of the Kingdom of God. If we look out into the world with the eyes of faith, we will see that God’s hands, are indeed at work in the world around us. So lets gets those boots on, and help kindle that fire, a fire set by the Holy Spirit, for there is more life that God is ready to give! Amen.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
The One Campaign & You
"With them, with black men and white men, with all of life, in Him Whose Name is above all the names that the races and nations shout, whose Name is Itself the Song Which fulfills and 'ends' all songs, we are indelibly, unspeakably One." -Jonathan Myrick Daniels, 1965
ONE Episcopalian ™ is a grassroots partnership between The Episcopal Church and the ONE Campaign to rally Episcopalians – ONE by ONE – to the cause of ending extreme poverty in our world and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
More than one billion of God's people live on less than one dollar eachday. More than fifteen-thousand people die each day because of AIDS, tuberculosis, or malaria, all preventable diseases.
ONE Episcopalian ™ is a grassroots partnership between The Episcopal Church and the ONE Campaign to rally Episcopalians – ONE by ONE – to the cause of ending extreme poverty in our world and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
More than one billion of God's people live on less than one dollar eachday. More than fifteen-thousand people die each day because of AIDS, tuberculosis, or malaria, all preventable diseases.
It doesn't have to be this way. The world holds in its hands the resources, strategies, and capabilities to eradicate extreme poverty.
What's missing is the political will. That makes your participation, your voice, joining together as ONE with people around the world so important.
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 Sign the ONE Campaign pledge and become a ONE Episcopalian through the EPPN. As a ONE Episcopalian you will receive periodic emails from the EPPN and ONE campaign. Find out More! |
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 Whenever and wherever you wear a ONE wristband you say -- even without saying a word -- that you are part of a movement calling for Americans to join as ONE to end global poverty. Pick one up in our Narthex. |
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 ONE by ONE we join together. Together we build the political will for ONE world without poverty. Tell your friends about ONE Episcopalian. Invite them to join - because together we can change the future. Find out More! |
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
St. Mary the Virgin
The honor paid to Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ, goes back to the earliest days of the Church. Two Gospels tell of the manner of Christ’s birth, and the familiar Christmas story testifies to the Church’s conviction that he was born of a virgin.
In Luke’s Gospel, we catch a brief glimpse of Jesus’ upbringing at Nazareth, when the child was
wholly in the care of his mother and his foster-father, Joseph. During Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, we learn that Mary was often with the other women who followed Jesus and ministered to his needs. At Calvary, she was among the little band of disciples who kept watch at the cross. After the resurrection, she was to be found with the Twelve in the upper room, watching and praying until the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.
Mary was the person closest to Jesus in his most impressionable years, and the words of the Magnificat, as well as her humble acceptance of the divine will, bear more than an accidental resemblance to the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount.
Later devotion has claimed many things for Mary which cannot be proved from Holy Scripture. What we can believe is that one who stood in so intimate a relationship with the incarnate Son of God on earth must, of all the human race, have the place of highest honor in the eternal life of God. A paraphrase of an ancient Greek hymn expresses this belief in very familiar words: “O higher than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim, lead their praises, alleluia.” (from Lesser Feasts and Fasts)
O God, you have taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of your incarnate Son: Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
In Luke’s Gospel, we catch a brief glimpse of Jesus’ upbringing at Nazareth, when the child was
wholly in the care of his mother and his foster-father, Joseph. During Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, we learn that Mary was often with the other women who followed Jesus and ministered to his needs. At Calvary, she was among the little band of disciples who kept watch at the cross. After the resurrection, she was to be found with the Twelve in the upper room, watching and praying until the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.
Mary was the person closest to Jesus in his most impressionable years, and the words of the Magnificat, as well as her humble acceptance of the divine will, bear more than an accidental resemblance to the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount.
Later devotion has claimed many things for Mary which cannot be proved from Holy Scripture. What we can believe is that one who stood in so intimate a relationship with the incarnate Son of God on earth must, of all the human race, have the place of highest honor in the eternal life of God. A paraphrase of an ancient Greek hymn expresses this belief in very familiar words: “O higher than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim, lead their praises, alleluia.” (from Lesser Feasts and Fasts)
O God, you have taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of your incarnate Son: Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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