shared this sermon with the 7:30am crowd this morning. I said to myself, “If we still read John Chrysostom out during sermon-time, I can surely read Kara Slade during sermon-time!” Best words on these passages that I’ve heard.
“Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty. For everything in heaven and on earth is yours. Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom, and you are exalted as head over all.” 1 Chron. 29:11
Why do we come to church on Sunday mornings? Why do we bother with all this work?
We do this because the powers that threaten us out in the world are real, they are powerful, they are overwhelming. Job experiences them (Job 3:1-26). He all but despairs—that is the thing, ALL BUT despairs. Why does he not completely give up? Why does he not curse God and die, as his friends recommend? Because he knows that his God is more powerful than any of the powers that are tormenting him. The mighty God we serve is the most potent force in the universe, stilling storms, healing the crippled, drawing fickle, divisive humans together, passing out his own self, his flesh, his Holy Spirit, to enliven us.
And that is why we are here this morning. That is why we come to church on Sunday mornings.
And do you know what you do? Each of you make it possible for us all to experience God, to be nourished by God’s Word and by Holy Communion. Think of this: long before Sunday, the communion vessels are cleaned, and linens ironed—the Altar Guild begins to set the table; just as God sets a table before us. Over the weekend, the Flower Guild work their magic with God’s beautiful creation, bringing reminders of God’s beauty and goodness right into our midst, adorning our mighty God’s throne, the altar, with those most beautiful things that he has given us—flowers and natural elements. Finally, early the week before, lectors are sent their reading assignments, they practice reading, they consider the passage’s meaning, that they might deliver it to us with faithfulness.
Then Sunday comes—early on the first day of the week, just the time when Mary Magdelene came to the tomb that fateful Sunday morning, many of us gather to prepare. Some come to greet and welcome God’s people into God’s own house, opening their arms to strangers and friends alike, just as the father did in the parable of the prodigal son–just as God does for us. Others of us take up stations inside the doors to help make everyone comfortable, to keep everyone safe, and to watch for how to keep the focus on God, directing the movements of hundreds of people with quiet confidence and cool heads.
Still more of us are preparing in places outside the nave; putting on special clothes to remind us that we are undertaking a special and specific piece of work when “we go unto the altar of God,” as the psalmist puts it. Acolytes carry torches and crosses, showing us how we are to carry God’s light and the power of the cross out into our everyday lives. Eucharistic Ministers and Eucharistic Visitors help everyone to get their nourishment through Jesus’ body and blood.
We are all parts of the body, doing different jobs, all toward one end–helping each other toward the foot of the cross, toward the Bread of Life, which Jesus explains in the reading from John’s Gospel (6:41-51). This is our hope. This is our salvation.
Thank you for your willingness to be vessels of God’s grace; to allow God’s love–the most powerful thing–to flow through you in service. May we have the courage to continue to follow where God leads us, trusting that He is our salvation and nourishment, the most potent force in the universe.
What a mighty God we serve!
“My soul magnifies the Lord.” (Luke 1:46)
Jonathan Myrick Daniels (whose life and sacrifice are remembered on August 13 in the Episcopal Church’s calendar) jumped in front of a shotgun’s discharge to shield the life of another.
He was a seminarian, an educated white man from the Northeast, who got himself to Alabama to join others fighting for civil rights in 1965. After being released from jail with four companions, he and another white man (a Roman Catholic priest) and two black women, were prevented from entering a store to buy soda on the hot August day (the 20th) by a man with a shotgun and pistol. When the shotgun was leveled at one of the women, Jonathan pushed her out of the way, receiving the bullets himself.
Jonathan gave up his comfortable life with the luxuries of class and status, using those tools of his gender and skin tone to draw attention to those who were stuck in social, geographical, and economic swamps.
Jesus came to the poor, lowly, voiceless. When Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus uses his status to pull her up out of the mire in which she’d been stuck. She accepts the living water which Jesus offers, she finds new life in God’s redemption. Jesus sees people in the shadows, people that others do not bother to notice, and he calls them into the light; Jesus gives up the riches, glory, position, and power of being the Son of God for the sake of being with us, loving us well, stepping in front of the bullets of Sin’s Death for each of us.
Part of what’s unsettling about Ferguson, I think, is that it lays bare our own situation. Our lives are overcome with violence, chaos, disorder, fear. The emotions and forces acting out on the streets of St. Louis mirror the condition of our own selves.
Ferguson, and all creation, wait in groaning and despair for their Savior. As the Samaritan woman, we have met the Savior at the well; God washes us with the waters of life in Baptism, and nourishes us through his own body and blood in the Eucharist.
We are not the saviors of this age. We are not able to do any more than to try to serve as a window, a reflection, a magnifier of God’s presence; a sign and signal of the Savior’s faithfulness.
Hear our cry, Lord; save us and heal us, for your mercy is great.
a version of a homily preached August 13th, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
A message of hope in the darkness, offered articulately by my colleague the Rev. Canon Dane Boston.
“For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness; Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” -Colossians 1:9-14
Listening to NPR can be a dangerous—at least when there’s a very alert almost-four-year-old listening with…
View original post 2,004 more words
A sixth parable: In the movie The Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep depicts fashion mogul and long-time Vogue editor Anna Wintour–though her character has a different name in the film, of course (the real-life parallels are too blaring to be ignored). A young, idealistic journalist, Andy (played by Anne Hathaway), desperate to get an “in” anywhere in the writing world, takes a job as an assistant to Miranda Priestly–Meryl Streep’s character.
Early in the film, there’s a scene in which the staff is agonizing over which turquoise belt to use in a shoot; witnessing the turmoil, Andy scoffs. Ms. Streep turns her venomous tongue on Andy, delivering a powerful monologue tracing the history of the frumpy sweater which Andy proudly sports as a sort of anti-fashion statement.
So it is in the Kingdom of God. (see yesterday’s Gospel lesson: Matthew 13:31-33 & 44-52)
Sometimes we mistakenly think that it is our accomplishments or our self-made worthiness that elicits God’s response in becoming incarnate and eventually dying to stay with us. It is not because there is something intrinsically superior about me, or you; it is because Jesus chose us.
Our worth comes from the price which has been paid for each of us–every person has a market value that is equivalent to Jesus’ life–our deepest identity is that we are loved by God. We are really not such impressive, fantastic people; how exhausting it is to pretend that we are–how frustrating and tiresome to always try to work yourself up to perform and behave relying on your own steam and goodness!
If, however, our energy, our hope, our “steam” comes from finding ourselves only in what God has told us, we are free from being impressive, trying to achieve God’s love, or others’ acceptance.
We are both the cerulean sweater, and Andy, the idealistic journalist. There’s nothing intrinsically better or more impressive about cerulean versus navy or lapis or even kelly green–the only thing that sets the cerulean sweater apart is that Miranda Priestly chose it. The only thing that sets any one of us apart, that makes any one of us special, is that Jesus chose each of us–not that any one is particularly exceptional in and of themselves. And we’re like Andy because we often think we’re in control of our own fashion–or our own image, or lives!–but really, we aren’t. If we stake our image, our understanding of ourselves on anything other than being God’s child, being the one for whom Jesus sacrificed himself, then we won’t ever be at peace.
Matthew 13:44: “‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
The Good News is that looking at ourselves honestly, rightly, allows us to see our shortcomings, admit to them, own up to our sinfulness, and to still know that we are the field, the pile of dirt, that Jesus has joyfully bought with everything that he has. I think it’s not a coincidence that a field, a pile of dirt, doesn’t do anyone much good unless life is put in it somehow–if someone plants it (as many of the parables surrounding this verse describe), or if, as in Genesis 1, God’s own breath–ruah–is blown into the pile of dirt, animating it, making it live (making it into us, into humanity). Without God’s breath, God’s spirit, God’s energy and hope, we are just piles of dirt, but with God, because of God’s sacrifice of love for us, we are made free and alive and full of color.
May we be free from the expectations and achievements which this world–and we ourselves!–puts on us, knowing that our life, our worth, our very breath, comes only from God.
hope of things not seen 