st-michaels-episcopal-churchcf45ba09

The Early Riser

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 11:20:18 GMT

Sermon for Easter Day

Picture the scene. The sun is not yet up. It’s chilly. In the predawn light the women quietly make their way through the shadowy garden, bent with grief. As they approach the tomb where Jesus’s body was deposited two days before, they encounter a scene they do not expect.

The earth shakes. There is a loud noise, a blinding light, an angel descending from heaven. The tough Roman sentries faint with fear. It’s said they “became like dead men.” Whereas the dead man they were set to guard is more alive than ever.

The women are afraid, of course. But the angel, after heaving the heavy stone to the side, perches on it as if to rest and pass the time. He addresses the women as friends.

“Do not be afraid,” he says, “for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.” The angel is a servant of God, he, and they are on the right side, unlike the now unconscious guards. The angel continues, “He is not here, for he has risen, as he said.”

The tomb lies already empty. The main event—the resurrection of Jesus Christ—has happened without anyone seeing it. Jesus has been quietly up and about his business for some time. The guards were unaware of it; they did not know anything at all was happening until the angel appeared.

The Hollywood way to do this would be to have Jesus detonate the stone from inside the tomb and lay down some righteous smiting, starting with the soldiers at the tomb and working outward from there. Pilate would get his come-uppance, then the elders who demanded his death.

But there’s no showdown. The main consequence for the Romans and the Jewish leaders who crucified Jesus is that they never see him again. They never get to learn how wrong they were about him. They are left in doubt, fear, and persistent unbelief. This is its own judgment.

But what of his friends? Did they not all forsake him in his hour of need? What of their loyalty, their firm resolve to stand with him? Listen to what Jesus says to the women when he meets them as they go to tell the disciples about the empty tomb.

He greets them joyfully, cheerfully. “Hail!” or “Greetings!” Then he tells them, “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” Not “my disciples,” not “my fair-weather friends,” but simply and intimately “my brothers.” Yes, they all abandoned him, just as he told them he would. Yes, they are all full of fear and doubt. No matter. Jesus is on his way back north to Galilee, and they will see him there, in that place where he and they spent so much time in the past three years.

None of them could follow Jesus to the cross, and none of us are able to do it either. Sooner or later we all seem to chicken out. And that is the point. Christ has come to do what we could never do, would never do, for our sake and on our behalf. And having done all, borne all, with no word of reproach he sends us his cheerful and loving greeting: “Meet me in Galilee.” The mission goes on. His kingdom, unstoppable, advances, and we are sent to witness to his salvation wherever we go.

Christ is risen! It happened while we slept. Though our troubled hearts awoke us before dawn; though we crept through the chill of morning, we arrive to find the tomb empty. Jesus is already ahead of us, leading the way. Follow him to Galilee, and beyond.

Jesus Encounters You

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 11:13:27 GMT

Sermon for Good Friday

Over the course of all the Sundays in Lent, we’ve witnessed Jesus in the context of meaningful encounters with a variety of individuals and human types.

The first Sunday in Lent, we heard the story of Jesus’s encounter with the evil one, who offered him three temptations. Through his victory over the adversary, Jesus overcame the source of all the woes of the human condition into which our first parents, Adam and Eve, had plunged us through their own disobedience to God’s commandment. Jesus obeys where Adam did not; Jesus, unlike Eve, does not parley with the devil but humbly quotes the Holy Scriptures to him, both setting us an example of patient obedience to the Father, and showing us that, if we are baptized in Christ and filled with his Spirit, we are already victorious in him over sin and the devil.

On the second Sunday in Lent, we witnessed Jesus’s encounter with Nicodemus, who represents for us the pious. Like Nicodemus, people often think that leading a moral and outwardly well-ordered life is what is required to be on good terms with God. Jesus teaches Nicodemus that the transformation necessary to attain eternal life with God goes much deeper; it amounts to a total rebirth of the whole person, which no amount of good deeds can accomplish. Jesus teaches that it is only possible through his own work. He is the one who has come to deliver us from ourselves, and he will do this when he is “lifted up,” indicating his Crucifixion.

The third Sunday in Lent showed Jesus’s encounter with a person who in many ways was the opposite of Nicodemus: the woman of Samaria. Unlike Nicodemus, this woman had not lived an exemplary life. But Jesus offers her the same thing he offers Nicodemus: a new and eternal life, the “living water” of his Spirit. Instead of a future-oriented religious hope shared generally with her people and mired in uncertain controversy between Jews and Samaritans, this woman’s hope became immediate, objective, and personal, founded on Jesus himself. She ran back to her city to proclaim the good news.

On the fourth Sunday in Lent, Jesus encountered a man who had been born without the power of sight. This man represents all people who are born under the power of sin. We cannot see to find our way to God. It is less that we have lost our ability to apprehend truth, than that, by the corruption of our nature through sin, that power is not present in us. With the blind man, Jesus both granted him the natural capacity of sight and at the same time bestowed on him the spiritual rebirth that enabled him to apprehend the truth of God in faith and to recognize Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God. By contrast, Jesus’s enemies, the religious intelligentsia, displayed willful blindness, refusing to believe in Jesus despite the miracle performed before their very eyes.

The fifth Sunday in Lent brought us to the last and greatest sign of Jesus’s public ministry: the raising of Lazarus from the dead. When Jesus encountered his dead friend Lazarus, Lazarus arose from death and walked out of his tomb. This sign points, of course, to Jesus’s own resurrection on Easter Day, as well as to the Jewish and Christian hope of the future resurrection of the just. But the resurrection, we see, is not really “general.” It is personal. Lazarus is raised because Jesus knows and loves him, and not even his death can get in the way of that.

Finally, on Palm or Passion Sunday, Jesus encountered the visible powers of this world, which all united against him. The human authorities, both the council of the Jewish elders, and multiple levels of Roman colonial authority, set aside all pretense to law and justice for the greater purpose of crucifying the King of Israel.

But we do not get to simply blame corrupt leaders working in secret for Jesus’s death, because in on the whole thing is the crowd. As Americans, we hold a high view of popular rule; of the wisdom, one might even say the ‘divine right’ of democracy. But what we saw on Palm Sunday is that the crowd both proclaimed Jesus as the anointed one, and then turned on him and demanded his death.

Yes, the Jews killed Jesus. The Romans killed Jesus. Democracy killed Jesus. All have failed to achieve justice and have instead committed the ultimate injustice, the murder of the one and only truly innocent man. God so ordained it that all human institutions—church, state, or society—all the wicked tenants of his vineyard, would be complicit in in the death of his Son.

So, finally, we come to today, Good Friday, as Jesus hangs on the cross. And here we must finally set aside all shifting of blame, and accept the bitter truth that will finally set us free: We killed Jesus. We ourselves, with the works of our hands, the thoughts of our hearts, the words of our mouths, are just as much or more the reason why Jesus died as the Sanhedrin, or that hypocrite Pilate. It is on our account that he hangs suspended between heaven and earth, his life’s blood dripping down, each breath a new torture.

This is a willing sacrifice. Jesus makes himself the atoning sacrifice for our sins. He offers his nailed hands and feet for our own defiled hands and feet that run to do evil. His head is crowned with thorns for the evil thoughts that have ruled our minds. His mouth, that all his life spoke nought but good, cries out in anguish for every careless and cruel word we have ever spoken. His side is pierced for our divided heart and corrupted will.

On the cross, Jesus encounters you . All of you, even and especially those things you want to hide, to overcome, to leave behind, to deny.

We know that confession is cathartic. When we admit these things to ourselves or to others, we find that by naming them we can in a sense distance ourselves from them. But as therapeutic as this can feel, it does not overcome the reality that the evil within us is just as much ours as the good we try to project.

The cross is the end—both the ultimate terrible consequence, and the final gracious conclusion—of our self-delusion. It’s the only thing that tells the whole truth about us and about the world; and it’s the only thing that truly overcomes it.

In all the previous encounters, we can in a sense “see ourselves” in the various characters and human types whom Jesus encounters. But here, on the cross, is what gives all those encounters their power.

By his cross, Jesus makes amends for the human fall into temptation and sin. By his cross, Jesus makes it possible for each of us to be born again from the corruption of our nature to the new life of grace. By his cross, Jesus forgives our distracted and disorderly lives, comforts our lonely hearts, and gives us a new inner life and purpose oriented toward himself. By his cross, Jesus gives us new eyes through which we may see and return the loving gaze of our Creator. By his cross, Jesus ensures the promise of life after death, and overcomes the powers of this present age that are set against him, with nothing but his own self-giving love.

As Christians, we never go beyond the Cross. Yes, there is more to come. The joy of Easter awaits. But the cross is eternal. Jesus is forever the crucified Lord, even in heaven where he now lives and reigns as king, in the glory of the Father, receiving always the praises of saints and angels: the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; the priest of the new and eternal covenant.

As we conclude our Lenten journey here, at the foot of the cross, we find that we have brought nothing of our own, carried no cross, achieved no victory, besides that he has done for us. All that remains is for us to behold our salvation lifted high, and to worship.

George Herbert wrote a sonnet, “The Holdfast” about this, our ever present struggle to prove ourselves worthy, and the necessity of relying solely on Christ.

I threatened to observe the strict decree
Of my dear God with all my power and might.
But I was told by one, it could not be;
Yet I might trust in God to be my light.
Then will I trust, said I, in him alone.
Nay, ev’n to trust in him, was also his:
We must confess, that nothing is our own.
Then I confess that he my succour is:
But to have nought is ours, not to confess
That we have nought. I stood amaz’d at this,
Much troubled, till I heard a friend express,
That all things were more ours by being his.
What Adam had, and forfeited for all,
Christ keepeth now, who cannot fail or fall.

Jesus Encounters the Powers

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 11:10:06 GMT

Sermon for Palm Sunday

The liturgy for Palm Sunday, or the Sunday of the Passion—it has two names—gives us a feeling of whiplash. First, the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Then, suddenly (and skipping over much that happens in between) his condemnation and crucifixion. Jesus hailed as the saving King, and minutes later, Jesus dead in the grave. Why?

And, by the way, one might be forgiven for thinking, what's the point of the rest of Holy Week? Why do Good Friday when we already know he's dead?

Humanly speaking, this feels like a crushing, though not surprising, defeat. Jesus's enemies had long been awaiting their opportunity for getting rid of him, and he seemed to walk right into their trap. I speak of his human enemies. But in their hatred the great enemy was close at hand.

Palm Sunday is full of exclamations. From the crowd we hear both "Hosanna to the Son of David" and "Let him be crucified." There is the curse, "His blood be upon us and on our children." They speak better than they know. Christ dies for his people, the full and final sacrifice for their sins, and ours. Then we hear the mockery of the soldiers: "Hail, King of the Jews"—a true title, though uttered in derision. From Jesus we hear, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The final exclamation is the ultimate verdict, the centurion observing Jesus's death speaks with the authority of prophecy: "Truly this was the Son of God!"

Palm Sunday is full of paradoxes. The crowd conducts Jesus into Jerusalem as their Messiah, yet shouts "Crucify!" mere days later. Pilate makes a show of innocence as he knowingly condemns the innocent. The world's one true king is put to death while a brigand walks free.

But the greatest paradox is the Cross itself. The Cross is the death by which death will die. The defeat in which the defeated triumphs.

The cross is the world's shame; not just man's inhumanity to man, but man's rejection and murder of his creator. The cross is our shame too: the ultimate transgression. His blood is on our hands.

Yet the cross is also the sign of pardon and forgiveness. His blood is shed for our redemption. One man is condemned on the cross, so that all may be justified. One man abandoned by all, so that all may be reconciled to God.

Jesus's enemies, and his friends too, thought that he had lost. But what neither the disciples, nor the Pharisees, nor the Romans, nor even the devil understood was that this was his victory. This was his triumphal entry. This was the moment when the evil powers of this world were overthrown and the Son of David entered into his kingdom.

Hosanna to the Son of David! Let all in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth bow the knee and worship him.

Jesus Encounters the Dead

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 11:07:26 GMT

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

“Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

A reasonable question, no matter who asked it. One miracle is not greater than the other, and Jesus had indeed been summoned by his friends for just that purpose. As both Mary and Martha said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Yet previous miracles of our Lord showed that “being there” was not even necessary; Jesus had healed the sick before without ever going to them; think of the son of the ruler of the synagogue, or the centurion’s servant. He could have healed Lazarus like this; we can only conclude that he chose not to. Why? Did he pass up the lesser miracle only to work a greater one?

It’s important for us to see that this sign means something much more profound than simply Jesus coming to the aid of his friends. The death and raising of Lazarus prefigured Jesus’s own impending betrayal, suffering, death, and resurrection. While these sisters and their brother were clearly dear friends of Jesus for whom he held a tender regard, one could say that the miracle was less for their sakes than as the last and greatest sign of his public ministry.

The full meaning of this sign was not revealed to the crowd, but, for now, only to the family. In private conversation with the sisters, Jesus disclosed his identity and mission.

Martha said, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” This puts Jesus in the role of a mediator; one to whom God listens, who can exact favors. Will not Jesus put in a word with the Father for Lazarus?”

Jesus countered with a word of consolation: “Your brother will rise again.” Martha, like other devout Jews, was a believer in the resurrection of the just. She responds, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Yet she did not seem satisfied by that distant hope. Who knows when or how that that will be? In the meantime, her grief was immediate and sharp.

I think we all understand, as Martha certainly did, that the resurrection is not something that we expect to happen to us here and now. In the present life we experience failure, disappointment, pain, and loss. Things don’t always work out for us in this world, and eventually we all die. God’s promise is not that we will experience the fulfillment of our hopes here and now, or that our problems will eventually work themselves out. In a sense we do not “know” his salvation fully in this life. His promise is that even in death we are not beyond the reach of his saving power. His resurrection is the final proof of this, and points toward our own.

At the same time, because of Jesus the resurrection is not only something distant and vague. For Martha, at that moment, the resurrection was literally at hand; he stands before her. “I am the resurrection and the life.” Jesus was not only a prophet, a man who has God’s ear; he is God himself.

Although many Jesus’s hearers failed or were unwilling to understand him, the resurrection was not precisely a hidden teaching, and to call himself the resurrection was to identify himself directly with the God of Israel. “You shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves,” the Lord said to Ezekiel. The resurrection is the final proof that Jesus is who he says he is.

Our Old Testament lesson offers another perspective on the same theme.

Ezekiel writes to the survivors of the nation of Israel, now in exile. His vision is of armies fallen in battle: the former military might of Israel, now completely annihilated by their enemies. Only bones remain. Though some exiles survive, they are a people without a home and without self-determination. They have no future; their nation ended in that desert valley. Witness the judgment of God; the ultimate consequence of his people’s sin.

But this judgment is not God’s last word. The fullest promise is revealed as the fullest doom is surveyed. And in the gospel, we learn that this promise has a name: Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life.

Good news comes to us in strange guise. It comes in the tomb of Lazarus and the vision of dry bones. It says, your bones are dry, your strength is gone, you are finished. Dead. This is our reality. No hope in ourselves, in our nation, our religious institutions, our piety, or anything else in which we might place our trust.

Today’s Collect prays, “Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men.” We might say that we are willing and affective beings, beings who love and choose; but the problem is that our wills and affections are disordered, misdirected, chaotic. Death is the natural and inevitable result. We find that only God can reorient and reorder our hearts, so that we may love what he commands, and desire what he promises.

This is good news because if God alone has the power to do this, he also can and will do it. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” He did not come into the world to hold his salvation just out of our reach, as if to motivate us to better ourselves. He came to freely give us what we can never achieve on our own: his own abundant life.

The path to everlasting life leads through death. The disciple Thomas spoke truly when he said, “Let us also go [with Jesus], so that we may die with him.” Being followers of Christ does not remove from us the necessity of death, but it changes its meaning; united with Christ in his death, we take hold of the life of his Spirit that continues beyond death and culminates in the resurrection of the body.

So as long as we have breath, our calling is like that of the prophet Ezekiel in his vision: to speak the breath, the life of God, the gospel of Jesus, to the dead and dry bones of our world. To proclaim a salvation not of ourselves, that does not cooperate with human effort, but appears only when all hope is gone.

Amid the death and chaos, the dry bones of our world and our individual lives, in Jesus, new life arises. In him we are re-ordered. We are strengthened in what St. Paul calls the “inner man,” with spiritual life that will one day raise these mortal bodies, these dry bones, to eternal glory.

Jesus Encounters the Blind

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 11:04:48 GMT

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

We all love a good Bible story. Today we have heard two stories that may be familiar to you: the story of Samuel anointing David as king, and the story of Jesus giving sight to the man who was blind from birth.

But as we read these narratives, I believe it’s easy for us to hear a version of these stories that’s not really there, and to miss a lot of what’s truly going on. Are we hearing the story that Scripture is telling?

Recently on a podcast I heard, the guest spoke of stories as the best way to change an organization’s culture. People think and act differently depending on what story they think they are a part of, what role they think they are playing.

This is also true for the people of God. One reason the Bible is full of stories is that we always need to be confronting the stories that we tell about ourselves, our prevailing cultural myths, with the quite different story that God tells in Holy Scripture.

But if we’re not careful, it’s easy to mis-read biblical stories through the lens of the world’s narratives, allowing us to believe that the Bible stories reinforce our own prejudices instead of confronting them.

So I’d like to look at these two stories of Samuel anointing David, and Jesus giving sight to the blind man, with this question in mind: what are the standard narratives of our time that we might associate with these stories, and what might really going on?

It’s easy to read this story of the young David, for instance, in a way that reinforces one of our own present-day myths: the myth of human potential. According to this myth, we can find fulfillment in life, as well as help other people find fulfillment in life, through the recognition and “actualization” of our individual, innate qualities and capacities, thus becoming the “best version of ourselves.” This myth can also be stated in the negative, as of someone who has disappointed our expectations: “He’s failing to live up to his potential.”

By myth, I don’t mean this story is entirely untrue; just that it is one of the many stories that shape how we see ourselves and the world. There are many other such myths. The myth of fundamental human equality, for instance, and the myth of human potential don’t necessarily agree with one another, though somehow we manage to believe in both of them.

Viewed through the lens of “human potential”, the story of David looks like this: God recognizes that, among all the tribes and families of Israel, this youngest son from an obscure village has what it takes to lead and become Israel’s next king. In this way of telling the story, God works through the prophet Samuel to overcome fear, prejudice, and patriarchal conditioning to single out and prepare this promising youngster for kingship.

Some of the supporting details appear to fit this framework. David is the youngest son, overlooked by his father and brothers, but God looks deeper and sees what they do not. And as the story continues, extraordinary qualities will be revealed in this young man, whose public career as a leader in Israel will begin when he kills the Philistine champion Goliath in single combat and rallies the demoralized Israelites to rout their stronger enemy.

But in terms of the biblical narrative, that pivotal moment in David’s story, and all that follows, is the consequence of what happened on this day, when Jesse’s youngest son, belatedly summoned to the feast, was anointed in secret by the prophet Samuel and received the Spirit of God.

This is not a story of human potential being actualized. This is a story principally of God, choosing and empowering his servant to lead his people.

Ultimately, David is not chosen for his own sake, but for the sake of one who would come, his distant offspring, born in Bethlehem, who was called the Son of David.

God does not choose David because of David’s superior qualities or potential greatness, or even because of his humility. It would be more true to say that the qualities that are revealed in David are the result of God’s call, and the work of the Holy Spirit that, the Scripture says, “came mightily upon David from that day forward.”

Just so, as Christians we are not chosen for the sake of who we are; rather, we are chosen in Christ, for the sake of who he is and what he has done.

What might happen to us, if we began to see ourselves in light of this biblical narrative? All of us who have been baptized into the new life of Jesus Christ have been called by God, and have received the same Spirit that David received, to empower us as a kingly and priestly people advancing his kingdom in our world. We don’t have to set our natural giftings and interests aside—they, too, are from God—but we should be open as well to the supernatural empowerment that comes not from our own individuality but from the Spirit of God that now dwells within our hearts. Which means that people who, objectively speaking, are ordinary, average, flawed—statistically speaking, that’s all of us—are the people through whom God is likely to do his perfect and holy works, not the talented, great, or powerful people of this world.

Let’s briefly now turn to this story of the man born blind. There are many stories of supernatural healing in the scriptures, and Jesus himself heals many. So it would be easy to read this story as another one. But if we look closely, this is not a story of Jesus fixing what’s broken, like medicine only better. There are other stories of Jesus healing the blind. But this man had not lost his sight. He never had it. But what Jesus does here is an act of new creation. He forms in this man’s body a capacity of sight that he has never had before.

An important clue to the real meaning of this story is the way Jesus does it. The material cause, so to speak, of this man’s healing is dust, spit, and water. The dust recalls God’s creation of the first man from the dust of the earth. The spit from Jesus’s mouth evokes his creating word which brings into existence that which formerly had no existence save in the eternal wisdom and foreknowledge of God. And the washing is obviously a symbol of baptism, the new creation in the Spirit.

This man returns from the pool of Siloam not just able to see, but spiritually regenerated, a totally new man. In his subsequent interviews with the enemies of Jesus, the man exhibits all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are bestowed in Confirmation: wisdom, understanding, good counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and the fear of the Lord. He did not have any of these things before.

There are many other stories of sick people reaching out in faith to Jesus and being healed. This is not one of them. This man was inert. He did not ask to be healed. Nothing suggests that he recognized who Jesus was or what he could do. The man does not speak, or do anything at all, until Jesus sends him to the pool called “Sent.” He returns transformed, both physically and spiritually.

This week, an important system failed in our minivan, and I needed the help of an expert auto mechanic to fix it. That is not a good analogy for what Jesus wants to do in our lives. We limit the work of God in our lives when we treat Jesus as one who can help us solve important but ultimately limited problems that we have.

This narrative of Jesus as fixer sounds pious but is just as misleading as the myth of human potential. It underestimates the gravity of our human condition and the extent of the salvation that we need and which Jesus offers. He will help us when we get sick or stuck, but he won’t stop there. He wants to remake us into people who increasingly resemble himself—as he did with David; as he did with the man who used to be blind.

This is good news for us, and good news for the world. But it comes with danger. If Jesus’s work in our lives is limited to specific problems and their solutions, the danger of neglecting or misunderstanding him is also limited. Whereas, to neglect a salvation that involves the total regeneration of our personhood is perilous indeed. And we find from these biblical stories that it is quite possible for us to refuse God’s call, to refuse to recognize the truth of the story of God that we are in, and become spiritually blind and unresponsive to Christ.

So it was with the enemies of Jesus in this story. You see how they worry the poor man and his family with their repeated interrogations. They are not looking for information. They do not want to understand. The miracle was done in full view. What they are looking for is a way to justify their own stories about themselves in which they are the elect, the heroes of the story, the people at the center of God’s purposes in the world. They are the knowers among the ignorant; the teachers among the simple; the righteous among sinners. All of these stories are contradicted by the words and works of this man Jesus who confronts them as blind and corrupt, and openly announces himself as the one and only Son of God through whom all the hopes of Israel shall be accomplished.

Jesus calls their blindness a judgment. “For judgment I came into this world,” he says, “that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”

Jesus Encounters the Thirsty

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 11:01:59 GMT

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent

Christ stands in front of people who are thirsty, lonely, and adrift, and he offers them the gift of living water.

Living water is water in motion, issuing from an unseen source. Living water is wholesome and pure, not like the water of the stagnant pool or the day-old water pail.

On our vacation last month we took a day trip to a place called Silver Springs, near Ocala, where water gushes in immense quantities—millions of gallons—from vast underground caves, an aquifer that travels much of the length of the Florida peninsula.

Where it comes up, the water is fresh and life-giving, cool in summer and warm in winter. It attracts many species of animals, from exotic birds to monkeys, wild boar, and manatees, not to mention the ubiquitous denizen of Florida, the alligator; all of which we saw swimming in the clear river or sunning along the banks.

It makes me think of the river of the water of life described in the book of Revelation, which flows from the throne in the new Jerusalem, making a freshwater channel all the way to the sea. For such springs sought the early Spanish explorers, thinking they held the water of immortality.

They didn’t, but Jesus does. In our gospel lesson today, he offers the woman who has come to the well to draw ordinary, perishable water, the living water of his spirit, and the good news that will change her sad life forever.

This is not a gift to be hoarded but to be shared, and the woman immediately returns to her city to tell everyone there the good news.

I find it interesting that they listen to her. She is certainly not a woman of good repute or standing in her community. Yet her bad reputation became, ironically, a point of connection. When she said, “He told me everything I ever did,” that was proof of a sort that this man must be a prophet, and piqued their curiosity. Quite likely had the disciples, or even Jesus himself, simply gone into that town proclaiming the kingdom of God, the people might have written them off.

But because Jesus makes a profound connection with this one woman, troubled and damaged as she is, their minds and hearts are opened to him en masse, in a way rarely if ever equaled in the gospels.

Sociologists of religion now tell us that church attendance is highest among the wealthy and well-educated, the professional class, and members of older generations. That sounds like a profile of the average Episcopalian.

Working-class people and younger generations are least likely to regularly attend church, even if like most Americans they retain some idea of God or sense of the divine. This troubles me greatly, because it seems we do a remarkably poor job (I’m speaking for Episcopalians broadly, not just St. Michael’s) of reaching people who are not like us. Yet all the scriptural evidence points to such persons being very much in the center of God’s loving concern.

Who do you know who is thirsty? Thirsty for truth, for salvation, for meaning and hope? Do you yourself thirst for these things? Do you know where to find them?

The disciples walked into that city looking for bread. They never thought to tell the people of the Bread of Life that they had left sitting back there by the well. Did they think, “Oh, they’re Samaritans. They wouldn’t be interested in our Messiah, it’s kind of a Jewish thing.” Or maybe they even thought, “These aren’t the kind of people that we want to share our faith, join us in the Jesus movement.” But while they’re in the city buying bread, Christ is quietly advancing his kingdom.

Long ago, this was a Canaanite city. It was where two sons of Jacob, Judah and Levi, slew the men of the city by deceit because they believed their sister had been dishonored. Jacob complained that they were giving him a bad reputation. Now Jesus, the heir of Judah’s kingly line and the fulfillment of the Levitical priesthood, comes once again to this city, not as his ancestors with guile and sword, but as the bearer of truth and life.

The Samaritans, who have been alienated from the people of Israel through idolatry and other practices, are given, through Jesus, the opportunity to rejoin the faithful people of God under a new leader: not Jacob, nor Moses, nor the faithless kings and priests that led them astray, but Jesus, the King of Kings and the High Priest of the New Covenant.

Wherever you are coming from today, this is your invitation, too, to join. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you have come from. What matters is who you will be, already are, in him, and where you, and he, and all who call on his name, are going now, together. Come and eat with us this living bread. Quench your thirst now with living water.

Jesus Encounters the Pious

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 10:59:13 GMT

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent

“People of faith” is one of those euphemisms employed today to group things that are not all that similar into a category with one another. The media uses the phrase “people of faith” to refer to everyone from Catholics to Jews to Protestants to Mormons to Buddhists to Jainists. Many of these groups have little to nothing in common. The word is really being used to mean “religious adherents,” or perhaps more strongly, “those for whom a religious tradition significantly influences their lives.”

The Bible means something different when it talks about faith. In today’s scriptures, the meaning of “faith” comes across very clearly. Faith is not a subjective emotional state. It means, basically, “believing in the promises of God and acting on that belief.” At the root of it, “faith” doesn’t depend on an established religious system. Now, I’ll qualify that in a minute because you might hear me saying something I don’t intend to say, which is that religion is optional. It’s not. I don’t believe we can do without religion. But it comes from faith, as a response to it, rather than the other way round.

The patriarch Abram is, by biblical definition, a “person of faith.” In what does that faith consist? This wandering Aramean, this moon-worshipping pagan, heard God call him out and make him a promise, and so he picked up and left everything behind, at the age of 75. (Go west, old man!)

Abram at that time was not a member of any religion we would recognize today. Rather, he became the founder of a new nation that did not yet exist, created through his faith, which comprises everyone who, like him, believes in the promises of God. These promises, we believe, are ultimately fulfilled in his descendant, Jesus.

Jesus, in today’s gospel, encounters Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee and a member of the Council of the 70, the Sanhedrin—a prominent representative of what people today might call the “Abrahamic faith.” He opens with what might well be intended as a generous concession: “Rabbi,” he says, respectfully, “we know” (speaking not just for himself but for many of his associates) “that you are a teacher come from God.” This was not something that many Pharisees were in fact willing to admit, certainly not in public, and many actively disputed it.

Nicodemus says, “we know,” but Jesus is not satisfied with what “we know.” He says, “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” It seems Nicodemus does not know enough, and what he does not know will be a challenge for him to accept. Because the kingdom of God personified is standing right in front of him, and he has no clue. He thinks Jesus is another good teacher, maybe even a truly great teacher like Moses, sent by God, but no more.

But Jesus says, “you must be born again.”

Nicodemus is flummoxed. “How can a man be born again when he is old?” How, we might say, is an old dog to learn these new tricks? Abram, at 75, could well have asked the same question. How is a new life, a new home, a new family possible for me and Sarai, at our age? Indeed, in both cases, what God promises is impossible. It enters the realm of miracle, that which cannot come to pass without an act of new creation by God.

Jesus is the new creation, and he invites Nicodemus, and us, to enter into his new life.

Despite the Christian message being clearly proclaimed for 2000 years, many people still bear this false opinion of Jesus, that he is a great teacher, perhaps even a revolutionary religious founder on a level with other notables, such as Moses, the Buddha, Confucius, the prophet Mohammed, and so on—”People of faith,” as it were. They completely miss the point. To them, as to Nicodemus, Jesus says, “you need to be born again.” Your whole system of life will have to be overturned before you can see what has been in front of you the whole time.

And this may be true even for those of us who do recognize Jesus as the Son of God. When Jesus encounters the religious, like Nicodemus, he takes them back to the beginning. They must unlearn all they thought they knew. Just like Abraham’s journey from Mesopotamia, the conversion of the religious must often take place on unfamiliar ground, the ground that we find ourselves standing on not by choice and comfortable habit, but through catastrophe and loss. It is at such moments when we may be prompted to really turn and know Jesus for who he truly is, as if for the first time.

As Christians, we don’t find our deepest identity in our religious affiliation. I hope that, when asked to give a reason for the hope that is within us, we don’t start telling people about St. Michael’s, or, God forbid, the Episcopal Church! These may be fine things in their way, but that’s not where the power lies. God can very well accomplish his saving purposes in the world without St. Michael’s or the Episcopal Church, though we should seek to make ourselves useful to his mission if we can.

John wraps up this story of Jesus and Nicodemus with a verse that is familiar to us, yet one of the sweetest and most powerful summaries of the gospel in scripture. God loves the world—loves you, loves me, loves your neighbor, loves the guy in the parking lot at Market 32, loves even Vladimir Putin, so much that he sent Jesus, his one and only son, to save us all from the eternal death and separation from God that is the consequence of all our sin, and give us everlasting life with him instead.

Not that any of us deserved this, or anything good at all. Human sin cries out for vengeance, and even our conscience testifies against us. So as a remedy, he offers us the undeserved gift of his righteousness. The power of this gift is such that it changes us, so that we begin to desire and do what is good and holy in his sight. Old dogs learn new tricks. Old men are born again.

Faith, therefore, is trusting in the promises of Abraham’s God, the God who as St. Paul writes, “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” Faith is powerful because of who we have faith in. Baptism is the sacrament of this new birth, precisely because of who it joins us to, so that not by our own feeble efforts and fickle emotions, but by his steadfast love and almighty power, are we saved.

Jesus Encounters the Enemy

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 10:55:14 GMT

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

On this first Sunday in Lent, Jesus encounters our great enemy, the devil, whose malice led to the fall of mankind into sin and death, from which Jesus came to redeem us.

Does the devil know exactly who he is dealing with? Maybe, maybe not. He has, of course, been watching Jesus, as some of the church fathers point out. He was aware of Jesus’s miraculous birth, the adoration of the Magi, and his recent baptism at which God’s voice was heard declaring Jesus his beloved Son. Yet here now was this man, lying weak in the wilderness after 40 days of fasting. Moses had fasted 40 days, as had Elijah, and they were but men. Maybe Jesus, too, would now be susceptible to the devil’s suggestions. And so, the devil begins, “If you are the Son of God...”

Had not God just spoken, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased?”

This opening echoes how the serpent introduced himself to Eve, in Genesis ch. 3. “Did God say?”

The devil did not immediately tempt Eve to disobey. First he asked a seemingly neutral question, which the woman answered, apparently truthfully. But responding to the question was Eve’s first mistake. Only then did the devil contradict God’s word: “You shall not surely die”—and offer an alternative explanation, a notion that God’s commandment was less to protect Adam and Eve and more to subordinate them. He entices the woman with the prospect of becoming “like God” through the knowledge of good and evil. The forbidden fruit comes to seem attractive for its qualities and its supposed potential.

Adam and Eve were tempted only once, and fell. Christ was tempted three times, and endured. Yet the temptation in the garden and the temptation of Christ have much in common, and both reveal the essential characteristics of temptation in general, which we all face.

The fruit is presented as being “good for food,” “a delight to the eyes,” and “to be desired to make one wise.” It’s three different temptations in one.

“Good for food” refers to the animal appetites. We need food and other things to live. But God had provided all the other trees in the garden from which Adam and Eve might eat. They were not starving or even fasting.

Christ encountered this temptation in quite another condition, at the end of his 40-day fast. He was in a barren wilderness, not a garden, with neither the bounty of the earth nor the resources of civilization to meet his needs.

So the devil offered his first suggestion. “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

Jesus responds only: “It is written: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” A quotation from scripture.

Jesus dismisses the temptation, but for our sake he also answers the question behind the temptation, “If you are the Son of God.” Jesus is himself the Word, the Divine Wisdom that proceeds from the Father. So this is a word not for the devil but for us. Jesus is the source of man’s life; he is the bread from heaven that feeds us, just as the Israelites ate the manna in the wilderness. Just as they sometimes grumbled about the plainness and monotony of their diet, we may be tempted to grow impatient with the ordinary means of grace, the word and sacraments, which Jesus has given his church to be the means of our spiritual life. We may be tempted to look for more spectacular fare. This brings us to the second temptation.

In the garden, the forbidden fruit was not only good for food, it was attractive, something spectacular. It appeals to a higher faculty than that of the animal appetites. Human beings appreciate and desire beauty in a way that the beasts do not. Here the temptation may be to doubt God’s generosity. Has he withheld something good and special from them?

Christ’s second temptation is to prove himself once again to be the Son of God, this time by engineering a spectacular deliverance in the vein of Psalm 91: The angels “will bear you up in their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” But again Jesus dismisses the temptation, saying only, “you shall not tempt the Lord your God.” This again is a double-edged word. Jesus refuses to put God to the test, as the devil suggests. But because he is himself the Lord God, this is also a warning for the tempter.

For us, this second temptation shows us that the victorious spiritual life is not found in moments of glory, and supernatural events. It is in the patient endurance of all things, which Christ demonstrates in the face of temptation not rising to Satan’s bait. This is a preview of the cross. There, precisely through ultimate patience under unimaginable suffering, the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head. This, again, Jesus offers for our encouragement.

In the wilderness, one temptation remains. The devil offers Christ his domain, all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. “All these will I give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”

Idolatry is putting anything in the world ahead of God in our affections. The serpent enticed Adam and Eve with self-regard: “You shall be as gods.” The devil offers Jesus the closest thing he has to godlikeness, a poor substitute, really: power. But Jesus once again dismisses him. “Begone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’”

Power is a potent idol of the human heart, now more than ever. From the desire to exert control over those around us, to political ideologies that enslave millions, the allure of power is strong. Idolatry itself is often about the attempt to tap into a source of power.

Here once again in Jesus’s rejection of this final temptation there is hope for us. Rather than practice idolatry, or any other form of sin, we can look to him. He is the one who truly deserves our worship, who set aside his glory for a time, and came down to us, and lived as one of us, even tempted in all the ways that we are, so that he might raise us up with him, victorious, righteous, and free.

Sunday Sermon: Be Prepared!

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 17:10:28 GMT

How was your Thanksgiving?

For me, it was great to be with my family and close friends who gathered at my parents’ home to celebrate. My parents especially enjoyed spending time with their grandchildren, especially baby Jane who they’d hardly seen. At the same time, the difficulties and broken relationships within our family were felt through the absence of some. Four of my siblings and their families joined us in person, and two others who live far away tuned in through Zoom. But my youngest sibling was conspicuously absent. A cousin’s marriage, I learned, has fallen apart. Sadly, he wasn’t there, nor were other members of his family. Another older couple has celebrated Thanksgiving with us for several years after being shunned and cut off by their own adult children, boys I grew up with. We love these friends and are glad to have them with us, yet together we grieve these circumstances.

So the holidays are a time when we experience both the joy of togetherness and the pain of loss and brokenness. They are also a time when it is easy to be caught up in frenetic consumer activities.

A consumer survey (from Nerdwallet) reports that American gift-buyers expect to spend an average of $1,107 on holiday gifts this season, and those who journey for the holidays expect to spend an average of $2,586 on travel. All told, these shoppers and travelers will spend over $552 billion during the holidays. My generation, the Millennials, will spend the most, and Gen Z, the youngest generation of American adults, will spend the least. However, both younger generations are most likely to drink to excess at holiday parties, with Americans in general likely during the holiday season to imbibe twice the amount of alcoholic beverages they normally consume.

I don't think anyone has published how much Americans are spending on inflatable Grinches, but judging from our neighborhood it must be a few billion at least!

Christmas is a wonderful time, especially when we are able to keep the main thing—the birth of Jesus—in view. We can and should celebrate! But for many, holiday shopping, decorating, and partying may be less about remembering the Incarnation of our Lord, and more a way of coping with our feelings of pain and emptiness. A friend of mine put it like this: we’re stringing up artificial lights in the darkness of our lives.

And today, God, through the Holy Scriptures, has a word for all of us: Wake up! The Lord is coming! Be prepared!

First of all, this is a word of comfort and hope for those who have little else to hold on to. The prophet Isaiah directs our attention to the future state, when the Lord will have established his kingdom on earth. In this vision, the dwelling place of God will be exalted on earth, and all nations will be drawn there. We tend to think of “judgment” as a bad thing, and it often is, especially when sinful human beings attempt to wield it. But Isaiah shows us a future world in which people, all people, are attracted to the perfect judgment of God. They want it, they seek it, they need his law to make peace among the nations and peoples of the earth.

In those days “nation shall not lift up sword against nation.” Think of it—a world in which nations not only seek to avoid conflict, but the arts of war are forgotten. “Neither shall they learn war anymore.”

In one of the greenhouses attached to our church there is a little figurine on a pedestal, depicting a muscular figure hammering a sword into a plowshare. This is modeled on a statue of heroic proportions by Evgeny Vuchetich which stands at the United Nations, a gift from the USSR in 1959, a few years after this church was founded. It’s revealing how even that officially atheist regime could find no better emblem for its propaganda campaign than this striking image from the prophet Isaiah of a peace that comes about not by human effort but by divine rule. In the nearly 70 years since, neither Soviet collectivism nor American capitalism nor any other human agency has shown any ability to turn from making war to making peace.

Ironically, in the ’80s the image and title of this sculpture was used as the badge of a Christian pacifist youth movement in East Germany. They were of course persecuted by the Stasi. Witness the contradictions of the regime that promoted “peace movements” abroad but hounded the children of peace at home!

Yet in the days prophesied by Isaiah, God’s people will be honored by all the nations of the earth because the Lord will make his dwelling-place among them. His justice and his rule will go forth from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.

Though this future state is not something they can bring about themselves, Isaiah encourages his people to “walk in the light of the Lord” in hope and expectation of that day, and as witnesses of what is to come. If they walk in God’s light, God will be present with them as Lord and lawgiver, and many peoples will be attracted by the holiness and the power of God that is manifested among them.

But the final day of peace and justice will not come but through tribulation. It is, after all, the day of judgment. Jesus himself teaches his disciples to soberly expect this day—though not to fear it. He says that the final day will come much as came the flood upon Noah's unwary neighbors who had refused to see or hear his witness to the righteousness of God. And if we're not careful, we may find ourselves in that same condition.

To help us make ready, the Church gives us this season of Advent. While all around us it is a time for shopping, partying, traveling, getting ready—although people hardly know what it is they are supposed to be getting ready for—we are to conduct ourselves differently. “Stay awake,” Jesus tells us, “for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” Advent is the season for preparing, not so much for the celebration of our Lord’s Incarnation, as for his second and final appearing at the end of days.

How do we prepare? St. Paul says, in unison with Isaiah and our Lord, that it’s time to wake up and walk in the light. The world is dark both symbolically and literally; nights are growing longer and days shorter. Yet the eternal day is coming; Christians are to live now as if the day of God has come; we are to live as those who belong to that kingdom which has yet to be revealed on earth. Christ’s judgment and his gracious law of love is manifested here and now, not in the world at large, but in and through his Church.

Where the world practices carousing and drunkenness, we are to be sober, self-controlled, and filled with his Holy Spirit.

While people in the world are divided and alienated from one another by fighting and envy, we are to love our neighbor as our own selves and forgive as we have been forgiven.

While the world pursues personal gratification no matter the cost, we are to be faithful, chaste, and content with our lot in life, knowing that we await the inheritance of the redeemed, washed in the Savior's blood.

In short, as Paul says, we are to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” the whole and perfect Man who does away in us all that is unworthy of him. May his gracious judgment purge us of all that is unworthy, and his law of love be written forever on our hearts!

Sunday Sermon: All Saints Day

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 16:51:20 GMT

Daniel was born a prince of Jerusalem, but went into captivity after the Babylonian conquest, probably as a teenager, and lived as an exile in a foreign land for the rest of his life. Daniel rose to high influence when Nebuchadnezzar the king had a troubled night. None of his soothsayers could tell him what his dream was or what it meant. Daniel did both. He described the king’s vision as a great image of a man, made of a series of materials that grew more and more base as it progressed from head to foot. Finally, a stone struck the image and blew it to smithereens, and the stone became a mountain that filled the whole earth. This, Daniel said, was a vision of the kingdoms of men, of which the finest was Nebuchadnezzar's own, which would be followed by a succession of various empires until finally the God of heaven would “set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, and it shall stand for ever” (Dan. 2:31-44)

Nebuchadnezzar raised Daniel to a high position and relied on him to help govern the empire. But after the king died, his son, Belshazzar, ascended the throne, and Daniel was put out to pasture.

Now Daniel himself receives a vision. The things depicted in the vision is very different, but its ultimate meaning is the same as in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. It is not sent to a Babylonian king drunk on his own power. It is sent to an old and worried man, an exile whose influence has waned in the new administration.

This time, no golden statue. Instead, four rough and gruesome beasts. Unlike in the vision of the giant statue it is very clear these beasts are not glorious but brutal and bestial. The vision evokes the turmoil and chaos of the world as the churning waters of an angry sea from which these beasts emerge. Our reading today skips a bunch of verses that talk about their fearsome appearance and blasphemous deeds. Yet in the end, these great powers are subdued under the reign of “one like a son of man,” “the ancient of days.” Who can this be but Jesus, the eternal Word of the Father, who is both “eternally begotten of the Father,” and who for our sake “was made man,” according to the creed, and who will come again in glory.

The consequence of his triumph over these powers is glory and exaltation for his holy ones. “The saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, for ever and ever,” the interpreter tells Daniel, the repetition emphasizing the finality of these eternal victory. Daniel is especially disturbed the vision of the fourth beast the one with ten blasphemous horns, which is greater and more terrible than all the others, and the vision is recounted and interpreted a second time. Notwithstanding these things, he is told, this fourth beast will be utterly destroyed and the Lord will reign forever.

And now for something completely different.

For our offertory hymn today we’ll sing that fun little children's hymn, “I sing a song of the saints of God.” I have a love-hate relationship with this song. It’s so English—so early 20th-century English—that it seems maybe a little too cute or even inaccessible to our culture: “You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea.” Of course, that's also its charm. Go ahead and smirk. I do. Just don't let the smirk distract you from the very serious point this cute little song is making: The saints of God are are indeed ordinary, everyday people, people like you and me. In fact, they are you and me. By faith, we are to receive this sainthood as our true identity and vocation: men, women, and children called to be saints to the glory of God.

St. Paul puts it like this: “In him” (Jesus), “according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will, we who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”

What a great promise this is. What do we bring to the table here? Hardly much. Only that the Word of God has come to us, the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, and we have believed in Jesus as the fulfillment of all God’s promises. In this faith we are sealed, marked with the gift of the Holy Spirit, who enfolds us in the reciprocal love of the Father and the Son. This is as much a present reality as it is a future hope. It is true both now and to eternal ages.

That doesn't mean that life for the saints is all cottage gardens and cream teas with the Vicar. Again, that cute Sunday-school hymn goes pretty hard: “Who toiled and fought and lived and died for the Lord they loved and knew.” And then in the next verse: “And one was a doctor and one was a priest and one was slain by a fierce wild beast”—probably a reference to St. Ignatius who was thrown to the lions, but could just as easily refer to thousands of Christian martyrs throughout the centuries.

But what about that cheerful, jaunty tune? The music is actually very well matched with the text, because these hardships in no way diminish the tone of celebration. To suffer for the sake of Christ, even to die, is to participate with him in his conquest of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Well may the Psalmist declare: “Let the faithful rejoice in triumph; let them be joyful on their beds. Let the praises of God be in their throat, and a two-edged sword in their hand.” That sword, of course, is not the human weapons of war but the word of truth that proceeds from the mouth of God.

So today, on the Feast of All Saints, we can hardly do better than to remember and celebrate all those saints of God who follow in his triumphal procession, singing his victory chants, raising his cross as their standard, clothed in the seamless garment of his righteousness.

Sunday Sermon: Justified

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 16:00:28 GMT

Sermon for Sunday, October 26, 2025. Text: Luke 18:9–14

“Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others.” (Luke 18:9)

Too much with us today is this virulent contempt for others.

A great many people seem to feel that violence against people who hold different opinions than them is justified according to the degree of intensity with which they feel this disagreement. They dehumanize their targets, calling them names such as “fascist,” “nazi,” etc. The idea seems to be that applying one of these labels to someone proves he is one, and that in turn justifies personal violence against him.

People fail to hold sympathy for others not only because they do not understand them, but because they do not want to understand them. Those who indulge in intemperate statements about roughly half their fellow Americans who made different choices at the polls than they did, have a personal interest in not understanding them.

You and I might never do this. I hope not. But we undoubtably face the temptation offered by our present moment to hold our fellow human beings in contempt, especially when we feel ourselves subject to that same contempt from others. As a Christian, I cannot react in like manner. I must continue to know all persons to be fellow human beings and objects of God’s unfathomable mercy, and speak and act accordingly. That’s the only way to break the cycle of contempt.

In Luke’s introduction to the parable, he shows that this outward sin of contempt is rooted in another, deeper sin. “Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.” Despising others is the outward sin that results from the inward sin of self-righteousness.

Self-righteousness certainly describes the Pharisee, the man of religion in the parable. Luke’s introduction reminds us that he is telling this story to people who resemble that character. The Pharisee, despite his exaggerated and self-congratulatory piety, is not a hypothetical person over there. He is the audience. The parable is a mirror for them—and for us.

An inherent difficulty in identifying self-righteousness is that it’s always easier to see in others than to recognize in oneself. It’s a self-concealing tendency. The agrarian thinker and poet Wendell Berry has this great line in one of his essays, where he responds to criticism of his choice to not buy a computer. “Two others accused me of self-righteousness,” he writes, “by which they seem to have meant that they think they are righter than I think I am.” When we think we are better than others, we actually fail to understand both them and ourselves.

So before I begin to see in that Pharisee those others whom I identify as self-righteous, contemptuous, judgmental, I need to recognize this Pharisee in myself.

Now, by his account, this Pharisee is a good person. He would like God to know this about him. First of all, there are all the sins he does not commit: theft, adultery, injustice. He also maintains regular spiritual disciplines (fasting) and is scrupulous about giving a tenth of everything he gets back to God and his community. To be honest, it would help our budget if we had a few more such people in the congregation. But God doesn’t see things the way we do.

It is not for some secret hypocrisy, unmentioned in the parable, that this Pharisee is rejected by God. It is for the sin he is committing right there in public, standing in the courts of the Lord. He justifies himself and despises others. And for that, God will not justify him.

On the other hand, there is this tax collector, who, by his own and everyone else’s account, is a sinner. Speaking of calling people naughty names, this man, one could say, is a Quisling, a collaborator with the hateful and repressive Roman regime—and a corrupt one to boot, extorting extra fees to line his pockets. Unlike the Pharisee, he isn’t standing there proudly in the middle of the Temple courtyard. He is standing awkward and ashamed, at the edge of the crowd, over there by the wall just inside the doors, as if contemplating a quick getaway from his angry countrymen. Yet his presence has not gone unnoticed by the Pharisee, who makes him an object lesson for his own moral superiority. Unlike that worthy, the tax collector has no catalog of virtues, no list of sins he hasn’t committed. He knows only one thing: that God is merciful, and he sure is in need of that sweet mercy. God, be merciful to me a sinner.

And for that, Jesus says, this man went down to his house justified. Not necessarily with peace of mind, justified in his own mind and heart—the Pharisee has peace of mind, for all the good that does him—but the tax collector is justified where it really matters: with God.

Theologians speak about the righteousness of God as being both “imparted” and “imputed” to us. Imputation is a legal declaration of righteousness, whereas imparted righteousness is the gift of righteousness that changes us, makes us actually righteous before God. The grace of God, I think, should have some effect on us. Having encountered his salvation, we should not be as we were before.

And so it is tempting for me to assume of this tax collector, that he returned to his home a changed man—like the real-life tax collectors, Matthew and Zacchaeus, who had a life- and heart-changing encounter with the Lord.

But as we so often have to ask, what does Jesus actually say in the parable? Not, “This man went down to his house totally changed, generous, upright, a credit to his community.” He doesn’t say any of that. Only, “This man went down to his house justified .” Full stop.

When we repent of our sins, we can be tempted to think that God’s forgiveness and grace are conditioned on not only our repentance but also our future performance. We can’t believe that he would simply justify us with no strings attached. And yes, it is dangerous, having received his grace, to fall back into our former sins. Sin has a way of hardening the heart, and there is the danger that we will find it more difficult to repent again. God’s free and unconditional forgiveness should make the continued presence of sin in our lives seem more grave, not more trivial, and so in our Christian life we should take frequent opportunities to repent.

Our tradition gives us three such opportunities. First, is the daily prayer of repentance in the Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer. When I pray this myself, I add back in the phrases that were abandoned in our most recently revised prayer book, because they express so well the truth of our spiritual state that we would rather forget.

“Almighty and most merciful Father,
we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep,
we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts,
we have offended against thy holy laws,
we have left undone those things which we ought to have done,
and we have left undone those things which we ought not to have done,
and there is no health in us .
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders ,
spare thou those who confess their faults,
restore thou those who are penitent,
according to thy promises declared unto mankind
in Christ Jesus our Lord;
and grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake,
that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life,
to the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.”

I think the phrase “And there is no health in us” was omitted because we’d all like to think that there is a little health in us. We’re not as bad as we could be (we’d like to think), and so we deserve a little credit for that, at least. But this prayer orients us to the truth that whatever good there is in us is not of ourselves, but the work of grace, and so, miserable offenders that we are, we cannot take credit even for our good works, as the Pharisee does.

Those last phrases, “that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life” is not a prayer that we will be so good as to not need repentance hereafter. It is a prayer that the goodness of God which comes to us in his free and full forgiveness will be manifested in our lives, not to our own self-justification, but to his glory. We don’t want the world to see us as it sees that Pharisee. What a righteous man, what an upstanding citizen. No! We want the world to see us and say, What a testament those people are to the wonderful, unmerited, and, yes, transformative grace of God.

Now real briefly, the other two opportunities for repentance. One is the general confession we will pray in just a moment. Its language is similar to that of the prayer in the daily office; the main difference being the priestly absolution afterwards. One of the things that I treasure about being a priest is that Jesus has given me the authority to forgive the sins of others on his behalf. I want to regularly exercise that privilege and authority for the benefit of the church and the world. I hope when you hear me speak those words, by the grace of God, Jesus himself is drawing near to declare his pardon and forgiveness over you.

By the way, as a priest, I can’t absolve my own sins. I also need to confess and repent of them and receive the forgiveness of God and others, which is one reason why I from time to time take advantage of the third opportunity our tradition offers us for repentance, which is the rite of reconciliation or auricular confession, which begins on page 447 of our prayer book. I commend it to your attention. If it is something you have never done, or something you have not done in a long time; or if ever you feel, despite your ongoing repentance, the weight of sins past or present, Jesus offers to you through his Church the full and personal declaration of pardon, forgiveness, and absolution.

By his grace, let it be said of each of us: “This one went down to his house justified.”

Sunday Sermon: A New Name

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 16:32:03 GMT

A New Name

Sermon for Sunday, October 19, the 19th Sunday after Pentecost, 2025, at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Colonie, New York. Text: Luke 18:1–8, Genesis 32:22–31

“Will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

A challenging question for all of us who honestly know ourselves to be weak in faith, not constant in prayer, not persevering as we should.

But let me make sure you are not hearing what Jesus did not say.

Jesus did not say, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find peace on earth.”

He didn’t say, “Will he find social justice.”

He didn’t say, “Will he find thriving churches, full of shiny, happy people.”

He didn’t even say, “Will he find his people behaving themselves.”

He said, “Will he find faith.”

Now the object of faith is not, for instance, the belief that I can, by building good habits and strengthening my will-power, lead a morally blameless life.

The object of faith is not that the nations of the world will reconcile their differences and live in harmony.

The object of faith is not that our parish will see its glory days return.

The object of faith is not even that the church will take up the cause of the poor and downtrodden.

We may wish for all of these things, and perhaps even, to a certain extent, see some of them come to pass, if in a very provisional and temporary way. I rejoiced, for instance, at the news that the terrorist organization Hamas has finally been compelled to release its 20 remaining living Israeli hostages, who had been held since they were abducted on October 10th two years ago. This happened on Monday. It is not “peace on earth,” but it’s a good thing for which many have prayed.

A few months ago President Trump referred to his hopes for ending the Russia-Ukraine war. He said, “I want to try and get to heaven, if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I hear I’m really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”

As Christians, we are commanded to pray for our president and all those in authority, and additionally both as Americans and lovers of peace we should hope and pray for his success in these diplomatic efforts to make peace among nations. Our tradition provides some excellent prayers that we ought to pray for presidents and kings and all in authority. I like this one:

“O Lord, our heavenly Father, the high and mighty Ruler of the universe, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth; most heartily we beseech thee, with thy favour to behold and bless thy servant the President of the United States, and all others in authority; and so replenish them with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that they may always incline to thy will, and walk in thy way. Endue them plenteously with heavenly gifts; grant them in health and prosperity long to live; and finally, after this life, to attain everlasting joy and felicity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” ^[1]

We pray prayers like this because we know that our authorities need much grace and guidance and—indeed—personal salvation. Christians have known for a very long time that emperors, kings, and presidents, even those who try to do right, inevitably mix injustice with justice and fail in their best attempts, as do we all.

On Monday, despite the successful hostage release, Trump was more pessimistic about his chances with the Almighty: “I don’t think there’s anything that’s going to get me into heaven,” he said to reporters. A real moment of unscripted honesty, I think, and it happens to be true: nothing he can do can earn him favor with God.

This is just as true for you and me. If we’re looking to get into heaven on the basis of our accomplishments, it’s not looking good. We’re all way down at the bottom on the scale of merit.

For many years, Garrison Keillor would sign off his weekly radio variety show, “A Prairie Home Companion,” with the following spiel: “That’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

It’s a good joke to go out on, that “above average” thing. But this is what we, in our self-righteousness, think we are. We admit that maybe we’re not as good as we could, or should, be. But we still like to think we’re hanging on to a solid B-minus on the heavenly report card.

Here’s the thing about that. Compared to your next-door neighbors, sure. Maybe you’re a little better, maybe they’re a little better. Maybe he’s a real bozo and makes you look extra good. Don’t we sometimes like to keep people like that around to remind ourselves of how good we are in comparison?

Or maybe another neighbor is a living saint who’s always feeding the homeless on her way to volunteering at the animal shelter and mentoring underprivileged youths, and you feel guilty whenever you think of all the things she’s doing and you’re not.

But it makes no difference, these grades we assign ourselves and others, because compared to the righteousness of God, no one measures up. On that heavenly report card, we all get a failing grade. So no more of this self-flattery. It’s time to get real with ourselves about ourselves, and turn to our gracious God for a hope that is based not on our own poor performance, but on his own righteousness and promises.

The point of the parable is this: Jesus will come, and he will vindicate his elect, by his own goodness and mercy. This is what we are to hold on to in faith. The elect certainly will not vindicate their Lord!

The biblical figure of Jacob is our object lesson. I don’t think we can have any temptation toward hero-worship once we read of all the things Jacob and his family get up to. Cheating his brother, deceiving his dad, running complicated business scams with his large, contentious, and sometimes violent family—it’s all there. A few weeks ago we checked in with Jacob on the run, after his brother threatened to kill him for stealing his birthright. That was when he had the vision of that stairway to heaven, a vision which the writer to the Hebrews identifies as a vision of Christ.

Now, Jacob is returning to the land of his birth, with large herds of cattle, wives (all four of them, not a practice I’d recommend), children, servants, etc. A very successful man—but his warlike brother Esau and his men could easily wipe them out. So as he prepares to cross the stream across the border into Canaan, Jacob sends everyone and everything he has ahead, and he remains, alone.

And there, it says, “a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.”

This story of Jacob’s supernatural wrestling match is familiar to many—Bono sings about it, for goodness sake—but if we read these words carefully we learn that it is not Jacob who wrestles with God, but God who wrestles with Jacob. Why is this important?

It is not Jacob who goes, even at this moment of crisis in his life, in search of God. If anything he is hanging back, passive, waiting for things to happen to him. No, it is God who comes looking for Jacob, who gets him moving, keeps him on his toes, who compels him finally to demand, once again, a blessing. Young Jacob got his father’s blessing through deceit, but God who was with him then is with him in his maturity, and wants to bless him again.

And what is the nature of this blessing? We might think of many blessings Jacob would want now, at this critical juncture in his life—safety and security for himself and his household being perhaps the most pressing need. This is not the blessing he gets. What he gets is a new name.

“Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

Jacob has prevailed upon God only because God chooses to be prevailed upon; God is really the initiator who wants to bestow his grace on Jacob. Again, Jacob is no hero of the faith. At this point he is so beat down by circumstances as to fail even in his natural chicanery. God has to rough him up a little to get him going again.

Jacob—Israel—limps away from this divine encounter without any assurances about how things will go in the impending confrontation with his estranged brother Esau. Later on we learn that Esau’s wrath has cooled, he also has prospered meantimes, and he is pleased by the peace offerings Jacob sent on before him. But Israel knows one important thing, and this matters more than anything else: the God of his fathers, the God who he saw in visions of the night at Bethel, is with him still, directing his ways before him, and he has given him a new name, the name by which the new nation of his descendants will be known.

Converts used to take a new name at baptism, a “Christian name,” to mark their entry into the faith. This practice fell off since after the first few centuries of the church most people were baptized soon after birth, and “Christian name” became synonymous with one’s proper name as opposed to a surname. But remember that for those who experience the new life of grace as a deliverance from their former life of bondage, taking a new name is a powerful sign. They had encountered the God of Israel, and he made them partakers of his covenant.

For all who are baptized, God has given you a new name. It is the very name of his Son, Jesus, and just as Jacob would bear a limp from that wrestling match for the rest of his life, so you bear the precious sign of Christ that marks you his own now and to life eternal. ✠

[1] If you try to find this prayer in the 1979 prayer book, you will not find it, although it was included in previous editions. Apparently the 1979 compilers felt that the eternal salvation of our rulers was too much to ask.

The featured image on this post is a painting by Paul Gauguin, “Vision of the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel).” It is in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland, and is reproduced here with permission from that institution.

That Parable at Lenny’s

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 15:27:32 GMT

This is the second Sunday in a row that the Gospel lesson features a healing, and not just any healing, but a healing done by Jesus on—what else?—the Sabbath day.

Last Sunday we heard of the woman who had, Luke tells us, “a spirit of infirmity” for 18 years; she could not stand straight. Jesus healed her immediately. There were those who objected to this healing on the grounds that it was work, and work ought not to be done on the Sabbath. After all, the law says, “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates.” Healing, they argued, is work; ergo, no healing on the Sabbath.

Jesus did not challenge God’s law, but their interpretation of it. He asked them, on the Sabbath do you untie your beasts and lead them to water? Yes of course, and even your beasts of burden enjoy their Sabbath rest, as the law requires. Why then should not this daughter of Abraham be released from Satan’s yoke of affliction on this, the day on which God himself rested?

In another place, Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). In other words, God established the law of the Sabbath so that we human beings could set aside our toil one day out of seven, in order to enter the rest of the One in whose image we were created.

I know it’s dangerous to “get political” in a sermon, but I do feel I have to say something about this. As our society has abandoned Holy Scripture and the Ten Commandments as a “norming norm,” the sabbath rest has become a luxury for the well-to-do. It’s Labor Day weekend, when government workers at least still get the day off to remember the humane victories of the labor movement, such as, for instance, the 40-hour week, the weekend (a secular Sabbath), and the family wage. Yet those hard-won protections have largely evaporated in today’s world of 24x7 work. Even now, on a Sunday morning, retail and restaurant workers have begun their shifts, and delivery vehicles ply our neighborhood streets. Wouldn’t it be better, more humane, to give them all the day off, or at very least, the morning? That Amazon package could wait a few hours—it really could!

I’ve always been personally troubled by that venerable American tradition practiced even in the most religious parts of our nation, the tradition of going out to eat after church. It seems to me to be founded on the presumption that Sunday churchgoing is an activity of the leisured classes, while service workers are expected to be at their posts. Yet why shouldn’t we go out to eat on other days of the week and on Sundays entertain one another in our homes? Or perhaps, even more radically, on Sundays we could seek opportunities to minister to those who ordinarily wait on us. But more on hospitality anon.

As the fine old lady said when the minister turned his attention to the sin of gossip, “He’s quit preaching, now he’s meddling!” I won’t apologize for my political opinions, but neither will I offer any excuse for my own hypocrisy in the many times I’ve shopped or dined out on a Sunday. I’m reaching for more of a cultural observation and a challenge, which I think is the real challenge of applying this commandment of Sabbath-keeping in an authentically Christian way: How ought we to use the freedom we have as Christians, not merely to enjoy ourselves, but to help others also enjoy the freedom and rest of Christ’s Kingdom? We often forget that the message Moses brought to Pharaoh was not simply a message of deliverance from slavery, “let my people go”; it was a message about God’s sabbath rest, a rest that is necessary for God’s people to realize their identity. “Let my people go, that they may serve me.”

The sabbath is not simply a day for acts of individual piety (for those so inclined). It is, in Jesus’s teaching, a day for social justice, for liberation, for inviting our fellow man and all of creation to share the freedom and the rest promised to God’s people, and by extension, to all of creation.

Now the hospital does not close on Sunday, nor do even our volunteer firefighters fail to answer calls on the Lord’s Day. This again is a right application of the principle. The Sabbath is not a day to shirk our obligations to others or to avoid helping those in need. Rather, because we are free in Christ, we may use our Christian freedom, especially on this day, to do good.

With that somewhat lengthy preamble, we have the context necessary to understand what is happening in today’s Gospel lesson. Again, it takes place on the Sabbath. This time the location is a dinner to which Jesus and presumably many others, anybody who was anybody in this town or village, was invited.

Here Jesus makes himself—how else can we put this?—the “skunk at the garden party,” the disruptive and ultimately unwelcome visitor, embarrassing the other guests and even his host.

It reminds me of nothing so much as that tour-de-force essay of Tom Wolfe, “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s” (New York magazine, June 8, 1970) reflecting on the infamous occasion when Leonard Bernstein and his wife hosted Black Panther activists at a soiree:

“Lenny is a short, trim man, and yet he always seems tall. It is his head. He has a noble head, with a face that is at once sensitive and rugged, and a full stand of iron-gray hair, with sideburns, all set off nicely by the Chinese yellow of the room. His success radiates from his eyes and his smile with a charm that illustrates Lord Jersey’s adage that ‘contrary to what the Methodists tell us, money and success are good for the soul.’ Lenny may be 51, but he is still the Wunderkind of American music. Everyone says so. . . . How natural that he should stand here in his own home radiating the charm and grace that make him an easy host for leaders of the oppressed. How ironic that the next hour should prove so shattering for this egregio maestro!”

I wonder how the Pharisee who invited Jesus to dinner thought the evening would go. Surely he did not expect this frontal assault on his social position and generous hospitality. Like the Panthers, Jesus shamelessly and even tastelessly takes advantage, turning the entire occasion into a living parable, skewering the pretenses of the host and his guests and reducing them to dumbfounded foils and object lessons at their own expense—if, we may hope, also for their own good.

The first set piece is of course this healing of the man with dropsy, which we usually today call “edema,” a chronic swelling caused by fluid retention, itself often a symptom of other serious health conditions. It’s a problem that even with modern medicine can be difficult to cure. (I’m not an expert, I just looked it up.) Now, how did this invalid get there? Did he just show up? Was he invited? Was the whole thing an attempt to set Jesus up, to see what he would do? Did the people doubt whether he could heal this man, or were they hoping Jesus would seem to violate the Sabbath by performing the miracle? Nobody says anything. But they’re watching. Before he ever says or does anything, Jesus is under suspicion, under surveillance.

Jesus has to clear his throat and identify the elephant in the room himself. The host and others gathered are Pharisees, experts in the law. So Jesus invites them to offer a legal opinion. “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” Nobody is willing to commit himself one way or another. No one will answer him yes or no, or even propose a distinction or clarification. Apparently the memo has gone out: do not engage with this man. So Jesus, when he sees that nobody will answer him, according to the scriptures, “he took [the man] and healed him and let him go.” The miracle of healing itself is so ordinary to Luke the Evangelist that it hardly rates a mention.

But Jesus isn’t done. After the healed man has left, Jesus poses a second, rhetorical question to the cowardly legal experts, or perhaps to the assembly in general. “Which of you, having a son, or an ox, who has fallen into a well, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” Again, no response. How could they respond, except to agree with Jesus that healing on the Sabbath does not necessarily violate the Law and that it is meet and right that God’s anointed, the Messiah, should do such things!

The second episode follows immediately on the first. Jesus observes the behavior of the guests, jockeying for the best seats, the seats closest to the head table and thus reflective of status and proximity to wealth and power. He then offer some advice that sounds very much like what we heard in that very short reading in Proverbs. “It is better to be told ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of the prince.” Good standard advice for the ambitious but wise young person. Don’t put yourself forward, let others recognize you, etc. The kind of advice your mom would give you.

Or is it? Remember that all of Jesus’s parables have to do with the kingdom of God. Notice the scenario Jesus offers: “a marriage feast.” For those who have ears to hear, he is not speaking of an earthly social occasion, but of the Supper of the Lamb at the end of days, the feast that has even now begun in the heavenly realm, the feast to which, in a few minutes, we will spiritually ascend and participate in as we celebrate of the Holy Eucharist.

Well then, if this is a parable of the Kingdom, we should take the host to be Jesus himself, who said that in his kingdom “many who are first will be last, and the last first.” The social order and hierarchies and ranks of the kingdom of God are not like ours. It seems that money and success are not good for the soul after all. Those who are wealthy and powerful on earth had best in fact start practicing humility and self-abasement, because they’re going to need it if they hope to be happy in God’s kingdom.

Finally, Jesus tells another parable that seems to be aimed at his host. “When you give a dinner or a banquet”—again, this sounds like it’s going to be more standard, proverbial type of advice. But Jesus quickly veers into the unexpected: “. . . do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid.” Oh no! Wouldn’t want to be repaid now, would we? Really, what is he talking about? Of course we want to be in good with our rich friends, of course we want to be repaid, isn’t that what building social capital is all about? But again, this is a parable of the upside-down Kingdom of God. What Jesus is showing us is that we have the opportunity even in this life to begin living as if we are already in his kingdom. The Kingdom of God is not some far-off place and time. The Kingdom is here, the kingdom is now! And what we do here and now does indeed have an impact upon our future standing in the world to come, as Jesus says: “You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

Here, I think we may return to the theme with which I began this sermon. Jesus says, “When you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.” I spoke of how God’s sabbath rest cannot be kept to ourselves but must be shared with others. Jesus himself is the exemplar of this way of life. In his earthly ministry, he did not seek the attention of the rich and well-regarded, or the powerful and influential. He addressed himself to those who had none of these advantages, who brought him only their need. And he did for them more than they ever thought he could.

This is how we too must approach our Savior. We do not come bearing gifts, hoping to be accepted for our good works, or our excellent character, or our standing in the world. We come to him simply because he offers in abundance all that we need and lack in ourselves: pardon for sinners, healing for the sick, strength for the faint of heart, peace for the dying. We acknowledge ourselves poor, maimed, lame, and blind, yet he is our life and our good portion, now and in the age to come.

Worship and Belonging

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 20:04:13 GMT

If you look on the top row of the windows there in the back of the church (feel free to turn around) you will see a remarkable series of images. The repeated motif is volcanic mountains.

On the left the volcanoes evoke the earth in its infancy, still emerging as it were from the primordial chaos, as sea and sky bring forth life and dry land emerges from the waters at God’s command.

The next image brings together two images of covenant and judgment. Noah is symbolized by the Ark, through which a righteous remnant of mankind was saved through the waters of the great Flood. Moses comes down from Sinai, the mountain of God, with the two tablets of stone containing the Law, in that awe-inspiring scene remembered by the Letter to the Hebrews: “So terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.’”

The final scenes envision the destructive power of nature, of mankind, and of final judgment.

But the writer to the Hebrews tells us (you can turn back around now) that we have not arrived at any such fearsome place or destination. Not pictured in our windows, but very much in view, is another sort of mountain: “mount Zion,” “the city of the living God,” “the heavenly Jerusalem.” This mountain is our refuge from the eruptions and upheavals of the world, which Jesus said are the birth pangs of his Kingdom, and which, we may be sure, will continue until all things are made subject to his rule.

Mount Zion is the place where heaven and earth meet in peace and joy, reconciled through him. See who is here: “innumerable angels in festal gathering . . . the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven . . . a Judge who is God over all . . . the spirits of just men made perfect” (the saints triumphant). And Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, offering his righteous blood not as an accusation, but a propitiation for sins.

But who else is here? Why, we also are here, the preacher tells us. Can you believe it? You and me, entering the heavenly temple, washed in the Redeemer’s blood and clothed with his own merits, taking our places with the angels and saints! Heady stuff.

This is not just what happens to us when we die—when we hope to join the throng of those “spirits of just men made perfect.” It’s talking about us now, here in this mortal life on earth. How is that possible?

The Letter to the Hebrews was written to Jewish believers in Jesus who were going through a hard time. They had been rejected by their Jewish communities, put out of the synagogues, perhaps even shunned by their families, all because they believed in Jesus as the Son of God and the hope of Israel. It felt to them like they had lost their connection with their heritage, the religious and cultural life of their people.

But the Letter to the Hebrews reminds them that they have something much better than the Temple and its sacrifices which are merely a dim reflection of heaven: they have in Jesus a connection to heaven itself. They are not missing out on God’s covenant promises; they are at the center of his plan for the salvation of the world.

I want you to think for a moment about how important it is to belong. We are not made to be isolated individuals. We need to be connected, to have a home, a people, a family; not just the weak ties of voluntary associations but the strong ties of blood, of close friendship, of place, and of religion. Those who lose these connections are unmoored; they have lost a great deal of what it means to be human.

On relocating to Albany I experienced a strong sense of loneliness. Once I realized this I was able to reflect on why I felt this way. I spent my formative years in remarkably strong communities; family, church, school, and work all significantly overlapping to form a close web of relationships and meaning which was very important for my sense of identity and significance; in short, belonging. I could say that I miss my home. But it’s less about the places themselves. I miss the human communities that fostered me. One of my big goals in life is to find that sense of belonging again.

But many of you can relate, I’m sure. I experienced this on moving across the country, but you can lose that connection even while staying in the same place. As life goes on, time takes much that was once familiar and dear to us, especially those people who are such an important part of out sense of belonging, our living connection to this world.

I often meet people who remember the St. Michael’s of their youth vividly and fondly. I think it was a community, perhaps for some the only one, where they felt that they truly belonged. For many it seems to have left a void that has never been filled by anything. I wonder if for some that sense of belonging was so strong, and the loss of it so keenly felt that it has prevented them from ever feeling “at home” since.

Anyway, I think the scripture gives all of us in whatever circumstances a direction for hope. There is a place and a people with whom we truly belong. It’s not my family, it’s not my hometown, it’s not even my local church, though all of these earthly experiences point us there.

The Letter to the Hebrews encourages its original recipients that they have a share of belonging in “a kingdom that cannot be shaken.” This kingdom, as I have said, is not just the matter of future hope. The preacher speaks in the present tense as of something they already possess and participate.

So we understand that “our citizenship is in heaven,” as Paul wrote to the Philippians. But how is that manifested right now?

It is primarily in the church’s worship that we find our real and tangible connection with God’s Kingdom.

It is said that we live in a consumeristic age. Churches feel the need to compete for people’s attention, not just with other churches but with all the other alternatives the world offers for things that create a sense of meaning and belonging. And so we often frame the question of worship like, what can we do or “offer” to “bring in” more people to our worship services.

This word “worship” can be misunderstood. In many churches today, the worship service is produced and finely tuned to create a highly charged and compelling sense of energy, emotion, and catharsis. This is accomplished by technological means, with loud music, dramatic lighting and projections, not to mention fog machines and other special effects. It was very common for people in this milieu to use the word “worship” to refer to the subjective experience engendered by these techniques.

The Temple worship experience of ancient Israel 2,000 years ago was just as immersive and overwhelming, perhaps even more so. Noisy, smoky, visceral (in the literal sense of people were dealing with the entrails of sacrificed animals). Lots of blood. Lots of noise too—you could probably hear the sounds of choirs chanting, animals, crowds of people. The smell also must have been overwhelming with smoke of burning fat and roasting meat, like a massive BBQ, not to mention the incense.

This kind of spectacle is what “worship” meant to most people, whether Jews or pagans, in the ancient world, which, after all, was also a society driven by consumer choice. Some things don’t change too much, after all.

But when the preacher to the Hebrews speaks of “acceptable worship” he means quite a different thing, something that has little to do with the outward trappings of what is commonly regarded as worship either in his own day or ours. His hearers have been called out of that, because the one thing needful is not there.

The Temple continued to put on an impressive religious show for a time, but God had left the building. Jesus, he says elsewhere in the letter, “suffered outside the camp,” and so even as these believers in Jesus find themselves excluded from the life and worship practices of their community, they may offer worship that is acceptable to God like nothing else, because it is centered on their crucified and risen Lord.

It is in seeking this path and offering “acceptable worship” through him that true belonging is found.

This is what we do in the Eucharist.

“Lift up your hearts”—what does this mean? It does not simply mean, be happy, with a smile on your face and a song in your heart. The “uplift” is more literal; in that moment the church is raised up to heaven, the place where we truly belong.

Sometimes in the sacrament we think of Jesus “coming down” upon our altars, and this is not wrong, but it is just as true and perhaps even better to say that in these rites we are “lifted up” to the heavenly places where he offers the one, true, pure, immortal sacrifice on our behalf. We receive the Body and Blood of Christ because we are spiritually present in that place where he lives and reigns eternally with the Father.

Heed, then, the preacher’s warning: “Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.”

Vision and Dreams

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 20:18:57 GMT

“What has straw in common with wheat?”

Straw, you know, is the waste product of grain harvesting. Its uses are limited—some animals will chew on it, but it is not a high-quality feed. Mostly it is used to line stalls and as a cheap construction material. Wheat, by contrast, is the goal of the harvest. Its seeds are a staple food, ground into flour for bread. Some wheat from every harvest would also be set aside and sown again in the fields, ensuring future harvests.

The metaphor refers to the contrast between the truth of God’s word and the useless falsity of lying prophets telling the things they have dreamed up.

We can look at this in terms of two kinds of “vision.”

Vision is a word we hear a lot about today. One dictionary describes it as “the act or power of imagination” (Merriam-Webster). Included in this is the meaning which encompasses divine revelation. “Direct mystical awareness of the supernatural, usually in visible form.” However, more widely used is another sense of the term, “unusual discernment or foresight.”

Sometimes this word is used as an adjective to describe a person or quality: people may speak of someone such as the late Steve Jobs as a “visionary” whose “unusual discernment or foresight” changed our world (though not necessarily for the better). Those in positions of leadership often try to cultivate a perception of having this kind of “vision,” whether or not they actually possess it.

We can think of a “visionary” as one one who helps the community to see things that are real or potentially real, possibilities that could emerge. The visionary may help to alert the community both to unseen dangers and opportunities, and may suggest potential actions.

Vision, in this sense, is something much spoken of (if more rarely observed) in our world, and in fact is something human societies require to endure and thrive. Without this we stagnate, we flounder, we find ourselves incapable of making important choices, and instead continue with the kind of short-sighted and self-interested behaviors that do not prepare us for the future or improve our common life.

Vision can be dangerous. A faulty or misguided—or worse, a wicked and deceitful vision can lead the people astray and even destroy them. Some reputed visionaries are successful because they tell people what they want to hear, things that make them feel good about themselves. In politics, we call such smooth talkers demagogues. For the Greeks this simply meant one who championed the cause of the common people. However, such men are often deeply cynical, and the word has acquired for us the sense of one who gains power by manipulating popular prejudices.

Of course even the best vision must also be heard and acted on by the people if it is to make a difference. An important quality of a leader is the ability to persuade people to believe in a vision and act on it.

The Bible word for a visionary is a prophet. God’s consistent complaint against the so-called prophets who peddled their visions to the people, is that they were leading the people astray, away from the truth of his word. These false prophets were popular. They were powerful. They were persuasive.

Yet among all these false prophets swapping “dreams” and empty visions, God provided his people with faithful prophets who spoke his true word, whether or not the people would listen. Jeremiah was one of the last prophets in Jerusalem before the Babylonian conquest, which at God’s bidding, he faithfully foretold. It was a thankless task, not a message he enjoyed telling, or that anyone wanted to hear. Jeremiah reflected God’s own sorry over the downfall of his people by his tears. We know him as “the weeping prophet.” And, like his God, Jeremiah remained faithful to his people, even finally going with them on an ill-advised mission to Egypt against his own counsel. (One of the big ideas of the Bible is that going back to Egypt is always a mistake.)

So amid false prophets, and leaders who devised clever but foolish schemes for victory and prosperity, Jeremiah told God’s truth. Babylon would win, and the people would be taken into exile. Yet it was not a message of woe without hope. Jeremiah also promises a return from exile, and better things to come.

At the beginning of the chapter from which today’s reading is taken, Jeremiah prophesies the return of the exiles and the rise of a true and righteous king, one from David’s family line. We can identify this as a prophecy concerning Christ, God’s anointed; the incarnate Word of God the divine Wisdom; the one who brings to the earth, as he said, God’s cleansing fire; the one who is a stone of stumbling and rock of offense, but also the cornerstone of the new kingdom of God; the fruitful seed sown in the earth and raised up to bring life to all people; the grain that, crushed, becomes for the world the Bread of Life.

If we seek a true and enduring vision for our lives, as individuals and in community as the church, we must find it in none other than Jesus, and in the scriptures that bear witness to him. We must test the visions of our leaders, and the imagination of our culture, against the reliable standard of God’s Word, and most of all we must read and study this word until his thoughts become our thoughts, and our own imaginations are shaped and directed by the vision of his own eternal glory.

Righteous Offspring

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 18:02:24 GMT

Sermon for Sunday, August 10, 2025. The sermon refers to the readings given for the day: Genesis 15:1-6; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40

Abram is childless, despite God’s promise him that his descendants would inherit the land. Right now his default heir is not even a relative; it is his hereditary steward, Eleazar of Damascus. The fundamental question is this: Can Abram trust God to do what he said?

One thing we notice in this story is that Abram does not in any way try to get God off the hook for his apparently impossible promise, like we so often do: “Maybe I should understand this metaphorically instead of literally” (of this, more anon); or even, as indeed Abram later says of his son with Hagar: “O that Ishmael might live before thee.” No—He takes God’s promise literally, and believes what it says.

If you have read Genesis, you know how this story turns out. 15–25 years after this conversation, God follows through, not only for Abram, but ultimately for all of Abram’s descendants. What is important in this moment is that, seeing none of this as yet, the writer of Genesis says, “Abram believed the Lord, and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.” This is one of those places where the writer of Genesis puts a definite spin on the ball. We are to understand Abram’s faith in a specific way, as that which makes him righteous before God. This statement is all the more interesting because the immediate context has apparently nothing to do with righteousness, only with the promise of offspring. However, in the broader context, God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants has everything to do with how a chosen people may live before God in righteousness. Right from the beginning, faith, not the keeping of a law or ethical code, is shown to be the crucial matter. Indeed, Abram’s worst ethical failures are related to his lack of faith, his failure at various times to believe that God is really going to come through for him.

The Epistle lesson from Hebrews puts a finer point on the problem. What about all those people who died believing in God’s promises, but did not see them come to pass in their lifetimes? Abram at least got to see the birth of his promised son, Isaac. But he did not see Isaac’s own sons and grandsons, nor did he see the multitude of their descendants inherit the land which God had promised. Nor, indeed, did he see their exile and return, nor the birth of the Son who is both the author and the fulfiller of his promises.

The preacher to the Hebrews reminds them that Abram is one of many chosen by God to receive his promises, who do not seem to see them realized. God’s timelines are very long, and our lifetimes are comparatively short. Often the blessings and favor we ourselves receive are fruit of the hard and faithful work of our parents and grandparents of which we now enjoy the benefits.

But to be truly happy, Abram must ultimately see these things with his own eyes. This is where the understanding of eternal life and the ultimate resurrection comes in. Those who have, as Hebrews says, “died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar” will themselves perfectly enjoy all that was promised, that they received beforehand by faith.

Even today, the children of Abraham hope for very specific promises to be fulfilled. These promises involve actual land, geographic territory in the world. Theirs is no abstract utopian ideal. The Zionist movement in the late 19th and early 20th century was a novel political movement, but one based on a very ancient premise which the Jews have carried with them ever since God called Abraham out of Mesopotamia: God promised that they would possess this land and dwell in it.

The scripture teaches us that we, too, are children of Abraham. Our claim to this is not based on direct lineage. Ours is the heritage of Abram’s faith, on account of which he was judged righteous before God and worthy of God’s promises. We are not looking for an earthly but a heavenly land and city.

But before we dismiss the earthly hopes of the Jews as having nothing to do with us, think about what I just said. Have any of us really renounced all worldly hopes for ourselves and our descendants? I really doubt this. I certainly have not. I wish and hope for a righteous and peaceful world for my children to grow up in. The state of New York doesn’t feel like that kind of a place to me, but ultimately my hope is not in governors or presidents or even in my fellow citizens, but in God, who is sovereign over all of these.

It’s not un-Christian to hope for good in this world. Jesus himself taught us to pray “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” Christians do not hope only for “pie in the sky by and by” as some deride us. Pie, yes. Sky, not exactly. We believe that in the end Jesus will return to this earth from which he ascended and make all things right and good. Even before that, we believe that we are called to do the work of his kingdom here and now. So while our ultimate homeland is the heavenly Jerusalem which we do not yet see, we are fully invested in the time and place in which we find ourselves now, and especially in that place where the Kingdom of God finds its fullest expression on earth: the Church.

For me this points obviously to the place where we are gathered right now: St. Michael’s Church. As we seek to love and follow Jesus as part of this congregation, we are all, I think, confronted by the distressing fact that St. Michael’s is in a serious state of decline, and has been for a really long time. And we have to seriously ask the question of how long we will be able to continue with our work and mission as a parish since our present way of being is not sustainable.

Maybe here is where we can connect personally with the story of Abram. At the time of this narrative he was between 75 and 85 years old, and Sarai his wife was only 10 years younger. Too old by any reasonable standard to have a child. And yet Isaac was born 15-25 years later, when Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah 90.

For us, in 15—25 years it is reasonable to presume that this present congregation will not exist.

It has been said that the Church grows not primarily by natural generation but by adoption. Jesus is both the offspring of Abraham and God’s only begotten Son; we are brothers and sisters adopted in him. As Jesus said, “God is able of these stones to raise up children for Abraham.”

So while I may be at risk of spiritualizing the point, our hope as a congregation is not that a multitude of children may be born to us, but that a multitude of persons who are not now part of our congregation may be brought in. This is the work in which we may participate through evangelism.

This work should not be limited to but should certainly include our own children and extended family members. I encounter so many people who were raised here and have fond memories of the place, but have not attended church in many years, and have raised their own children functionally outside the faith. Shall we hope for the return of those who have chosen to live as exiles from the faith of their childhood? Yes, we should pray for their return. Those who have left the faith are often more difficult to reach than those who have never heard the gospel. They need, more than another invitation, a work of grace to revive their own faith and love toward God.

But what God requires of us in this situation is not (primarily) action. For Abram, as scripture says, “as good as dead,” only faith could bridge the gap between the impossibility of his circumstances and the promises of God.

I close with the words of Jesus, who gives us in today’s gospel a program for how we are to live faithfully in the meantime.

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Some of you, I will say, are doing precisely this, with your generous and faithful support of St. Michael’s church, both with your time and your finances. I can’t but think that you are investing in eternity, because as an investment in the here and now it would make little sense. May you reap in due time the reward of your faith, both in this time and in the age to come.

For others, I would encourage you to ask yourself: Do the ways in which I spend my time and my wealth reflect a heart of faith? Or is my treasure bound up in the things of this world which are passing away?

And again, the treasures that are most precious to God are his disciples, his “little flock.” It is for their sake, for love of them, that Jesus exhorts them to adopt an attitude of readiness. And it is also for the sake of those who do not yet know him, or who have strayed from his ways, that he tarries, in order that they also may be gathered in to he fold. This is the opportunity we have been given now. Time draws short. Let us prepare.

And Who Is My Neighbor?

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 14:36:20 GMT

This is a subtitle for your new post

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

It’s a very important question. Maybe the ultimate question in life!

As human beings we all seek happiness, fulfillment, hope, safety. But we also recognize that we are subject to the “changes and chances of this mortal life” which will have for each of us, at some unknown future point, a definite end. And we have a basic intuition of immortality—that this life is not all that there is. So we know that we need to prepare, in some way, for what comes after this life; to seek happiness, fulfillment, hope, safety that are eternal.

Our faith teaches us that we were created by God to share his immortal life—an immortality that was to encompass the body as well as the spirit. When sin separated us from the divine Source of this life, God purposed to redeem and restore us by establishing his covenant with us.

Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary, is the one through whom God fulfills these promises, and that even in death the souls of the faithful are alive in him and await a glorious resurrection when he returns.

This is all to say that the lawyer, whatever his motives, was asking the right question. And what’s more, he is asking it of the right person, the person who is himself the answer.

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

But Jesus, knowing all things, perceived that this man’s heart in asking the question is not sincere. It is a test. He sets himself up to judge the Lord.

So Jesus, instead of answering, turns the question around, saying, in essence, “why, you’re the legal scholar here, I’m just a rabbi from Galilee.” But it’s a good power play too, because he’s again established his authority in this conversation. He cross-examines the lawyer, who, in his turn, gives the correct answer—the textbook answer, since anything else would necessarily expose him to critique. “You shall love the Lord your God . . . and your neighbor as yourself.”

Like the village rabbi quizzing a youngster on his catechism, Jesus gives the lawyer an “attaboy.” “You have answered right. Do this and you shall live.”

But think about that for a minute. Is this where we want to leave things? “Do this.” It’s not so easy, is it.

Some will say that Jesus came to provide for us a moral example, to demonstrate for us what a life of perfect love can be. But seeing his example and actually following it are two very different things.

If I approached a world-class pianist I admire—someone, say, like Nicolai Lugansky—and asked him to tell me how to play Rachmaninoff, he might be able to demonstrate a few advanced techniques or show how he tackles a difficult passage. But this kind of demonstration will not help me to actually do what Lugansky does. In theory, if I spent many years in focused study and practice, just maybe I might learn to play something half as well as he.

Our situation is actually worse. Imagine the previous example of the pianist, only let’s say that I had been born without the use of my arms. No amount of study, no instruction in technique could overcome this basic disability. And this is the real situation we are in when it comes to keeping God’s law perfectly. Jesus is the perfect man; we are moral paraplegics.

“Do this and you shall live” is not exactly the “attaboy” it might seem at first to be.

The lawyer is an intelligent man and he recognizes this on some level. So he asks a follow-up question, a clarification of sorts, to see if there might be some way of limiting the law to an interpretation that might feel less burdensome.

“And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus, as he often does, uses a parable, a pithy story, to get to the bottom of the issue. One of the wonderful things about the parables is the way they both reveal and conceal. They reveal the good news of the kingdom to those whose hearts are prepared to receive them, yet they conceal them from those who are disposed to reject them.

You all are probably familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan, but we tend to forget about important details. I will just mention a few key points.

First, the identity of the characters is a large part of what the parable is about.

The man lying in the road is not described other than as a victim who has come down from Jerusalem on the road to Jericho. He is presumably a Jew, but is not identified as a good man or bad. We just know he is lying naked, robbed, beaten, “half dead.”

The two passers-by are identified: they are respectable men of religion, associated in some way with the worship of Israel and thus with the fulfillment of the covenant God made with his people at Mt. Sinai. We could say that it is their responsibility to conduct themselves in a way that sets an example of living according to the law of God.

In identifying the fourth man as a Samaritan, Jesus seems to be going for shock value. Samaritans were not faithful to God’s covenant. They were the mixed offscourings of the Babylonian conquest and practiced a strange, syncretistic religion combining elements of Northern Kingdom Judaism and paganism. Such a man seems to be chosen specifically to set aside the question of right religion. But that, after all, wasn’t the question. It is the question of “who is my neighbor?” that is at issue here.

The Samaritan shows compassion for the half-dead victim, compassion in which the priest and Levite were lacking. In the parable he proves to be a truer “neighbor” to the victim than they were.

Thus Jesus sharpens the moral point. There are no loopholes in the law of loving one’s neighbor. Your neighbor is, simply, the man lying in your path. No abstract religious goal, no ideological framework, no supposedly higher purpose can absolve you of the duty to love your neighbor, your actual neighbor, the person lying before you in the street.

Love of neighbor is one of those values that is routinely abstracted from its Christian context and weaponized in our political discourse. The purpose of the “who is my neighbor” game is for one side to prove that the other side doesn’t care about the downtrodden the way they supposedly do—not to genuinely inquire how our resources can best be used in the service of the needy.

This game is why a person who plants a “Love Thy Neighbor—No Exceptions” sign in her front yard may also be found posting hateful rants against “Trump supporters” on social media—many of whom, after all, live in her neighborhood. The real point of the game is to justify one’s own behavior and capture the moral high ground for one’s team. By broadcasting the supposedly right opinions we absolve ourselves of our real moral duty, a much more difficult thing.

Leaving political games aside, this parable of the good Samaritan is very bad news for every one of us, if we understand it only on the moral level. We are not good at this, and we know it. Even the most compassionate and diligent of us falls far short of the mark Christ sets. The lawyer’s guilty intuition was correct.

But do not despair. This recognition should drive us to revisit the parable on another level. The spiritual meaning of the parable offers us the hope that the parable’s moral lesson intentionally conceals.

In the moral interpretation of the parable, we are given a choice: will we be like the fallen man’s countrymen who pass by on the other side, or will we be a true neighbor like the good Samaritan. But in the spiritual interpretation of the parable, we find that we, and all humankind, can only be identified with one character: the hapless, half-dead victim, already beyond the capacity for rational choice or moral action.

The man in the road is Adam, the representative figure of the whole human race. Expelled from the mountain of God, he has come down to Jericho, the accursed city of man, when he is set upon by the evil powers—sin and the devil. Death is close behind to finish him off.

The priest and the Levite represent the impotence of human works to save fallen man. We could say that social respectability and even right religion fail to help us. Some commentators identify these characters as the Law and the Prophets. They may show the way back to God, but they do not have in themselves what is needful to save us.

This may not sound like good news. But now, at this lowest place, where nature, society, and religion have all come to nought, enters the one man who has what we need: Jesus himself in the character of the Good Samaritan.

Jesus meets us where we are, in the midst of our human frailty and the ravages of sin. He does not wait for us to look for him or try to better ourselves, to become somehow worthy of his attention. He comes with compassion and begins to minister to fallen man. Oil and wine are the medicine of the sacraments: oil for healing, wine for cleansing.

After bandaging his wounds, the good Samaritan puts the man on his own beast. Christ, in his human flesh, assuming the burden of human sin and death. He carries him to a place where he can be cared for. The inn is the Church, where we are delivered into the care of God’s people.

On the next day, that is, after his resurrection, the Lord gives two coins to the innkeeper. Jesus provides to his Church, through the spiritual graces of his Word and Sacraments, all that is needed to heal and care for sinners, until he returns.

And so we find that, as the Church, we can join, like the innkeeper, in the work of our neighbor, the Good Samaritan.

The lawyer asked, “And who is my neighbor?” The spiritual interpretation of the parable reveals that Jesus is his and our true neighbor, because Jesus is the one who has acted in this way on our behalf. Only when we have received the help and healing grace of his salvation, can we in turn offer it to others: “Go, and do likewise.”

What do we lack?

peterschellhase@gmail.com (Peter Schellhase) — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 16:01:39 GMT

Sermon for Sunday, June 23

“You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections.” (2 Cor. 6:12)

What holds us back from living a victorious Christian life, from experiencing the power of God’s work in us and, through us, to the world around us?

Paul says to the church at Corinth that nobody is holding them back in the spiritual life but themselves. For comparison, he offers them a picture of what the victorious Christian looks like as lived by himself and his apostolic companions.

“As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watching, hunger; by purity, knowledge, forbearance, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet [are] well known; as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

All worldly appearances to the contrary, he tells them, Paul is living the life of freedom and power in Christ.

Now is this something that Paul alone can boast, as some kind of super-Christian?

In his first letter to the Corinthians, right at the outset, he told them, “You are not lacking in any spiritual gift.” God had not been holding out on this church, stingy with the gifts he bestowed on others. He has already given them everything they need!

Congregations can too often have a mentality of “lack.” We’re quite aware of what we don’t have, often in terms of material goods and circumstances, and it can prevent us from recognizing what we do have in Christ. We speak in “if onlys.” If only we had, for instance, more families with children in our congregation. A large, illuminated sign on Central Avenue. A bigger budget. A parish choir, or maybe someone who can play the guitar. Whatever it is we think is lacking to accomplish the goals we have set in our minds, to realize our dreams, to live up to our self-imposed images of “how church should be.”

Now perhaps we lost these things; perhaps we never had them; perhaps in some cases we squandered what we once had. But what we can’t say is that these are things we need, right now, to do the work and accomplish the mission that Christ has given us to do now and in the days to come. In his providence, nothing is lacking, nothing holds us back. In faith we can say with the hymn writer: “All I have needed, thy hand hath provided: Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.”

When I say “nothing is holding us back” I mean nothing external. Not God, not even our circumstances. There is something that can, and does, restrain and restrict us, sabotages us, turns wine into water, bread into a stone. Paul says to the Corinthians, “You are restricted in your own affections.”

The Corinthians are restricted by their affinity for the world, their appreciation of its “good things,” their desire to find approval and acceptance among their non-Christian neighbors and associates. These worldly affections are so strong that their appetite for the things of God is weak and faltering by comparison. Paul exhorts them to “widen your hearts”—not to the ways of the world, but to Paul and his friends, and to Jesus for whom they speak. It is Christ’s approval, his acceptance they should be seeking, not that of the world. Paul continues:

“Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Bélial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,

“I will live in them and move among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
Therefore come out from them,
and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch nothing unclean;
then I will welcome you,
and I will be a father to you,
and you shall be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.”

“Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.” (2 Cor. 6:14–7:1)

Here Paul references or directly quotes Moses, in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy; as well as several prophets: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zephaniah: all of whom were speaking to the people of Israel. Observe how Paul takes this language of God making his covenant with his chosen people, in consequence of which this people must be separate and distinct and purified from the evil practices of the people around them, and applies it directly to the Corinthian church (and by implication, all Christian people).

The Corinthians are to separate themselves from the world and its ways, in order to become truly children of God, just as the ancient Israelites were called out from among the nations to be a holy people set apart for God’s glory. In so doing, they will liberate themselves from what holds them back; they will be enabled to truly live the law of love.

Paul’s example shows the way. To the world, he appears contemptible, a no-account loser and outcast, perhaps even a bad person who deserves to be punished. But in suffering all these things, he proves that he is genuine, a true apostle of Jesus Christ.

What might it mean for us, for you and me, for our church, to open our hearts more fully to Jesus? What false affections, what worldly entanglements, restrict our freedom? Can we, with a sanctified imagination, dream better and truer dreams for the sake of the gospel? How could you and I, in our individual lives and corporately as this congregation of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, here in the Village of Colonie, live as those who have been called out in covenant with Christ, as sons and daughters of God?

+ In nomine Patri . . .

So much depends . . .

peterschellhase@gmail.com (Peter Schellhase) — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 12:02:17 GMT

Homily for Sunday, June 16, 2023

We sometimes speak of certain things as “matters of life and death.” Moments when all hinges on a choice, a decisive act, when the question is one of survival. There is a sense of urgency, of significance, of crisis.

Tiny things sometimes make all the difference in the world. An ancient French proverb says, “The loss of a nail, the loss of an army.” Another version of this proverb goes:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe the horse was lost;
For want of a horse the battle was lost;
For the failure of battle the kingdom was lost—
All for the want of a horse-shoe nail.

The poets urge us to open our eyes to the importance of things which may seem inconsequential, trivial. One of the most well-known poems of William Carlos Williams says:

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens

Another poet commented that he is constantly remembering this poem, or rather, “the poem is remembering me, in a way, it’s putting me back together, in the quiet time of my existence while I am alive . . . It’s a moving thing to be the place where those words return.” [1] So few words, yet they encompass the world.

And so it is in the economy of God. Jesus compares the kingdom of God, the kingdom he has come to establish over all space and time, in terms of things that seem ordinary, insignificant, even microscopic. He says the kingdom is like grains of wheat sown in a field; like a tiny mustard seed. These things are tiny; they are not even, properly speaking, alive—what “life” they contain is potential only. A grain of wheat, a mustard seed, is too small to be of any direct use. To eat it will not nourish us; we cannot exploit it or compel it somehow to help us in any way.

All we can do is to cast it on the ground. That’s when the mystery of its life begins to take place. The seed fallen in the earth enters into the mystery of new life. It sprouts, and soon the fields are covered with waving grain as far as eye can see.

The tiny mustard seed itself grows up into a flourishing shrub, a shelter for birds.

Jesus offers these parables, these apparently simple stories to the people without explanation. Another gospel includes an interpretation of the parable, offered privately to his disciples; that it has to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus, who is himself the “kingdom” that he he preaches; and what we usually think of when we speak of the kingdom—the Church—gains its identity, its life, and its self-understanding only through incorporation into Him.

Mark does not seem to think an “explanation” is necessary for his readers. The parable is given, and if we allow these words of Christ to dwell with us, to take up space in our hearts and minds, to re-member us as we remember them, we will begin to be transformed; the parable, like the Williams poem, will begin to interpret us.

The seeds in the parable certainly speak to us of death and life as found in Christ. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “one has died for all; therefore all have died.” As the Church we are individually and collectively incorporated into Christ. We cannot look upon the image of the Crucified Savior presented to us in the Gospels and say “That man died, that I might not.” While “Jesus died for sin, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God,” the ministry of reconciliation he has given us means that we must also say that if Christ has died, therefore I also have died and must die, that what once was ‘I’ has come to an end, and as from that seed in the ground a newer, greater life has sprouted, a life shaped by and in the likeness of Jesus. “If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation.”

The Christian life, we see, is a matter of life and death. And, not or. We must die, as Christ has died, and much for the same reason. First of all, as Christ died for our sins and was raised for our justification, so we must also die to sin so that we can live the new life that he has raised us up into. While we all once went through life trying to please ourselves, now in Christ we have found that true life means putting God’s concerns ahead of our own, letting his priorities govern us. What we once were in ourselves becomes less important than what we now are and will one day be in glory.

But for each of us, this new life plays out in the context of everyday, normal, ordinary things. It is through the normal actions and choices of our life, approached from this new perspective, that we become the kingdom in Christ. And thus it is that, reconciled to God, we are made fit to bring the good news of reconciliation to those around us.

+ In nomine Patri...

[1] https://jacket2.org/podcasts/poem-remembering-me-poemtalk-30

All God’s Children

peterschellhase@gmail.com (Peter Schellhase) — Sun, 05 May 2024 17:17:19 GMT

Sermon for Sunday, May 5, 2025

How do we know who is a child of God? The apostle John sets out a pretty simple test: Those who are children of God can be identified because they believe that Jesus is the Christ, that is, the Messiah, the Son of God. Further proof is found in the love that God’s children have for one another. Or to put it in negative terms, those are not God’s children who do not believe that Jesus is the Christ, and do not bear love for his family, the Church.

Christianity is thus both radically inclusive and starkly exclusive. For those who want to belong, nothing about who they are, or where they come from, or who their parents are, or what they have done, can keep them out of the kingdom of heaven.

On the other hand, for those who do not believe in Christ nor love his family, it doesn’t matter who they are, how much money they have, how they were raised, how blameless their conduct. They lack the one thing necessary.

In the early chapters of Acts, the apostle Peter encounters a group of God-fearing Gentiles, non-Jews, and at first he is not sure what to do. You may have heard the story. He is in Joppa, staying with a fellow Jewish believer, Simon the Tanner, praying on the roof while the men who have come from Cornelius’s house wait for him below. He sees a vision of a sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners. Within the sheet are all kinds of animals which were forbidden to the Jews to eat or even touch. They were unclean. A voice from heaven instructs him: “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.” Peter objects. All his life he has kept the purity laws. “I have never eaten anything unclean,” he says. The voice responds: “What God has made clean, do not call common.” The instruction is repeated three times, and then the vision recedes.

Peter now understands that God is not telling him to change his dietary habits. Rather, the spiritual interpretation of this vision is that the gospel of Jesus is to be preached to all people without distinction between Jew and non-Jew. So he preaches, and this is where the story picks up in this morning’s first lesson. As soon as the people hear the word of Christ, they believe and are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to praise God in other languages, just as the Jewish disciples of Jesus had done when the Spirit descended upon them at Pentecost. So God distributes his gifts to these new Gentile children the same as to the children of Abraham who believed. Seeing this, Peter calls for their immediate baptism, saying to the Jews who have come with him and observed the miracle, “Can any one forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”

“Every one who believes that Jesus is the Christ is a child of God, and every one who loves the parent loves the child.” If we love God, we must also love his children, and everyone who believes in Jesus is a child of God.

“And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is truth. There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree.”

All of these three witnesses point us to Christ. The Spirit descends on Christ at the moment of his baptism. The same Spirit descends on his brethren in the upper room, and again on those of Cornelius’s household. Water, too, is involved, baptism being the sacrament of the new birth in Christ. And the blood of Christ, poured out for our sins, now unites the whole church as “one blood” though called from many different nations and peoples.

I trust that so far you have been mostly nodding along. The message of these scriptures seems to be, at least on the surface, compatible with the egalitarian prejudices of our age. These prejudices, expressed in slogans like “love is love,” which tend to deny that different kinds of things can be distinguished from one another, including ultimately a difference between right and wrong, between the way that leads to life and the many ways that lead away from God toward death.

The gospel is not about blurring lines, abolishing boundaries, erasing distinctions, wiping away the horizon. The Gospel is about the reconciliation between God and man through Christ. This relationship restored is a source of unity that does not destroy, yet is, both stronger and deeper than other human differences.

The gospel of Christ not only opposes but overcomes prejudices both ancient and modern; John says that “this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.” Not faith as an abstract, a disposition toward belief in anything, but specifically faith in Christ. “Who is it that overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

Faith in Christ is thus the universal inheritance of all God’s children, and the rule by which they (hopefully we) are distinguished from all that opposes Christ and his gospel. Peter had to see that Jew and Gentile made no difference to God, but only belief in Jesus Christ. May our vision in these latter days be so clear. Thanks be to God.

+ In nomine Patri . . .

Holy Boldness

peterschellhase@gmail.com (Peter Schellhase) — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 14:48:26 GMT

Sermon for Sunday, April 21, 2024

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
(Response: The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!)

Congratulations: you passed the test. You’re now an evangelist! Please be seated.

The examples of early Christian preaching and evangelism we read in the Acts of the Apostles are simply elaborations on this theme. Paul recaps the message for the Corinthian church: “The first thing I did was place before you what was placed so emphatically before me: that the Messiah died for our sins, exactly as Scripture tells it; that he was buried; that he was raised from death on the third day, again exactly as Scripture says.” (1 Cor. 15 MSG)

The apostles preach this message with holy boldness; they are more afraid of not proclaiming it than of getting in trouble for doing so; and they do experience opposition, as Jesus had said they would. And yet the opposition does nothing to slow them down; if anything it accelerates the spread of the gospel throughout the world, even in that first generation of Christians.

A couple weeks ago Karen reminded us of the apostle Thomas and how he personally made it all the way to India. We know Paul intended to go to Spain; a few scholars believe he actually made it there! Whether or not this happened, the Church spread throughout the known world in a few centuries, despite at times very strong opposition.

For you and me, most of what holds us back from this kind of boldness isn’t the opposition “out there.” It’s the fear “in here.” We’re not afraid that anyone will kill us for talking about Jesus—a fear that would have been rational among the early disciples. The things that intimidate us into silence are more subtle.

One thing I admire about my mother-in-law is her way of casually but persistently identifying herself as a Christian, wherever she is and with whomever she is speaking. She does it in the most natural yet, I know, fully deliberate way. She’s an ordinary woman living her normal life—as housewife, mom and grandma, pet owner, golfer, volunteer, etc.—but above all she’s a Christian and spreads the light of Jesus wherever she goes.

If you do this, you’ll find, as she has found, that you meet other people who are also Christians, and you’ll share an immediate connection, like distant cousins who’ve never met but are part of the same family story. By living as a Christian, you’ll encourage other Christians and be encouraged through them.

And yes—living as a Christian is not just about our words. St. John speaks of this in the epistle. “Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.” He means empty words. Plenty of people even today think of themselves as Christians, maybe even go to church, If you’re gonna talk the talk, you better walk the walk. Lead with your giving, your time, your compassion.

In a bygone era—perhaps still, in some parts of the American South—a certain degree of cultural Christianity was the norm. To not be a churchgoer was to be socially suspect. Today the shoe is on the other foot, with religious people much more likely to be viewed as suspect and potentially harboring antisocial values. Christianity has become strange again, and I’m okay with that. It just means that many people no longer think they already know what Jesus is about, and we may have the opportunity to tell them about this very good news for the first time.

Preachers sometimes will ask, “If being a Christian were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” In some parts of the world today this is a real question, with blasphemy laws in some Islamic countries as well as hate speech laws in some Western countries being used to target Christians for publicly affirming teachings that are central to the Christian faith. The situation in our own country is more complex.

But let me suggest another perhaps more fruitful way for us to look at this question: If someone in your circle of acquaintance was looking for some really good news, would they think of you as a person they could turn to?

Would someone be able to say to you, “I’ve noticed how you’re not wrapped up in yourself like other people, you really care about me and others, and I have an idea that Jesus is behind it.” “You’ve been suffering from chronic illness for years, and yet you have this sense of peace and wholeness around you. How can I get that for me?” “I’ve noticed that you always speak kindly to others, and you don’t gossip about people or participate in dirty conversation. I’d like to be more that way. Could Jesus have something to do with this?” Now, they might never say these things in so many words. But would they think it?

If, reflecting soberly on your life and conduct, you do not think you would be identifiable to others as a Christian in this way, think about what steps you could take to identify yourself more closely with our crucified and risen Lord, so that your life might become a sign of his victory and grace.

✠ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Advent Expectations

peterschellhase@gmail.com (Peter Schellhase) — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 19:57:10 GMT

Homily for the first Sunday of Advent

Welcome to Advent. Though for us Christmas doesn’t really start until the evening of December 24, the secular holiday season is already in full swing. A few weeks ago Erin noticed that Kohls was playing Christmas music. This was before Thanksgiving, so they were easing into the season gently, with less jingle bells and snow, more, as she put it, “Christmas relationship problems.”

The main reason for the music of course is commercial—to remind people that Christmas is coming and they need to do their shopping. However, the music also says something about what Christmas means to our culture. Everyone knows that the winter holidays are supposed to be a special time for family, friends, celebration, giving. Yet, at the same time, the holidays put a keener edge on poverty and want. We try to remember especially at this time those families who struggle to put food on the table, presents under the tree. And poverty at Christmas isn’t limited to those who are poor. A deeper spiritual and emotional poverty—loneliness, broken hearts, broken families—is behind many of the most popular holiday songs.

Mariah Carey sang “All I want for Christmas is you.” This represents the romantic aspirations of the season. But other songs tell the other side of the story. More often than not, these romantic hopes don’t work out. “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart,” sang George Michael in the ‘80s. But sure enough, he got used and dumped, though hope springs eternal. Maybe this year it’ll be different. More recently pop star Ariana Grande approached the same theme with even less optimism and more Gen-Z realism. “Santa, tell me if he really cares / ’cause I can’t give it all away / If he won’t be here next year.” Santa, of course, is silent, though the relentlessly cheerful music jingles with sleigh bells.

The eternal optimism of Hallmark Christmas movies—another seasonal favorite, with their cosy stories and predictable outcomes—is very popular, but even their biggest fans understand that they are a form of escapism. We don’t really live in that world. The holiday season as we know it overpromises and underdelivers. Even when everything is going well for us, our lover is by our side, the kids are home for the holidays, the presents are under the tree and nostalgia is turned up to eleven, we can still feel the emptiness within, asking for something, someone, to fill it.

That’s why, amid all the tinsel and twinkle, the cookies and mistletoe, the Christian faith has a bigger and a better story to tell.

Sometimes people talk about “modern alienation” as if it were a problem unique to the modern world. And I agree that it’s gotten worse. But alienation is really the oldest human problem—older even than death.

God created us, human beings, to live in fellowship with him. Impossible as it may now seem, we were made to be friends with God! Just as the Holy Trinity exists in an eternal relationship of love between its three equal and eternal persons, human beings were made to reflect the glory of this love by living together in community, and man and woman in particular share a unique relationship of fruitful love.

And yet from the very beginning this all fell apart. We became estranged from God through sin, and the knock-on effects of this sundering alienated us from ourselves and one another. Humankind is scattered, suspicious, and separated. Men and women still desire one another, but often fail to find true intimacy and trust. Deep friendships are rare and risk betrayal. We don’t know what we want, and when we get it, we still aren’t happy.

Just turn on the radio at Christmas—this is the story you’ll hear.

But there’s much more to the Christian story. Even as Adam and Eve are leaving the garden to make their own way in the world, God promises that he is working on a plan to save them, and their children; a plan to restore us to the friendship and intimacy with God and one another that we were created for.

As his way of doing this, he chose a childless old couple, Abram and Sarai, and told them that he would create a family from them that would bless the whole world. In his time and in his way, he brought this to pass. Their descendants, the children of Israel, became God’s special chosen people, chosen as a witness to the world of what friendship with God could be.

Of course, Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants didn’t live up to this high calling. Neither do we. Nevertheless, God was (and is) faithful to them, and to us. The prophets proclaim this reality of God’s faithfulness to an unfaithful people, and call on him to fulfill his promises, to restore the world to wholeness and love.

We listen to the Hebrew Scriptures to know what we’re hoping for; we look to the New Testament to see it being fulfilled. The Bible speaks of Jesus Christ, the Baby of Bethlehem, the Rabbi of Galilee, the Crucified and Risen King of the Jews, as the one by whom and in whom all of these promises are made real for us. Paul writes of this, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” The fellowship of his Son—that’s another way to say, friendship with God, that for which we were made, once impossible because of sin, now possible again, and accomplished for us by Jesus.

It’s all done. He’s done it all. And yet his work is not complete. In Advent we look ahead to his final return, when he will finish the job, when “the hopes and fears of all the years” will be answered once and for all. This will be a happy ending of such weight and magnificence that not even Hallmark movies would dare to hope for. “They will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Homily at the Christmas Vigil

peterschellhase@gmail.com (Peter Schellhase) — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 16:28:26 GMT

“Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, ‘Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be as deep as hell, or high as heaven.’ But Ahaz said, ‘I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test.’”

In those days the southern kingdom of Judah was besieged: the northern kingdom of Israel was in league with the Assyrian king, and their joint forces had reached the gates of Jerusalem. The prophet Isaiah had gone to Ahaz, king of Judah, with God’s reassurance that he was not idle in Judah’s defense; that the enemies of Jerusalem would not prevail and would themselves be judged, cast down.

Ahaz, as we see, was unwilling to take God at his word; to ask a sign, any sign, that he would deliver them. Why?

Ahaz phrases his refusal in what may sound like pious terms. After all, in Deuteronomy 6, Moses warns, “Do not put the LORD your God to the test, as you did at Massah,” referring to a memorable episode of unbelief during Israel’s wandering in the desert. Jesus himself quotes this injunction when he is tempted by the devil. But Ahaz misinterpreted and misapplied it. He refused to ‘test’ God—yet not in faith. God invited him to ask for a sign, and put no boundaries on the sign. Ahaz was unmanned with fear because of the army outside the walls, but no longer believed in the power of God to save. His refusal was the counsel of despair.

The Psalmist gives us another response in similar situations. He acknowledges the providence of God in the trials of his chosen people, yet calls on God for salvation.

“You have made us the derision of our neighbors, and our enemies laugh us to scorn,” and yet, “Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; show us the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.” The Psalmist waits and hopes for God to act.

God offered Ahaz light and hope in the darkest hour, life snatched from the jaws of death. “Ask a sign of the LORD your God, be it as deep as hell, as high as heaven.” As it says elsewhere, God’s throne is in heaven, he beholds all the dwellers upon earth” (Ps. 11), and Isaiah later wrote, “Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear.” Not God’s inabilities, but your inquities, have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have his his face from you, that he will not hear.”

Ahaz, not God, was being tested, to see if he would turn to God in his time of need. In short, he failed the test. And yet, as Isaiah goes on to describe, God promises to accomplish a deliverance greater than Ahaz could imagine, with or without the king’s cooperation.

“He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede: then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him.”

“The LORD himself will give you a sign,” and this sign is both as high as heaven and as deep as hell, “for behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” After all human strength, all human goodness, all human courage and hope have failed, God reveals his power paradoxically, in human weakness: a young woman and her infant Son: a son whose name, Immanuel, means “God with us,” and a woman who through her free act of faith and obedience becomes the Mother of God.

This is a sign, and not only a symbol but a reality that encompasses everything. It means the salvation of the whole world—and salvation offered to each one of us—a sign that comes to us from highest heaven and fathoms even the depths of hell.

So in these two individuals we have the two ways; the way of life and the way of death; the broad and easy way that leads to destruction and the narrow way that leads to salvation. The Blessed Virgin Mary is our preeminent icon of this way of life—“be it unto me according to thy word”—and Ahaz, not that Scripture lacks a sufficient number of such examples, reminds us today of the fate of those who refuse to put their hope in God.

Ahaz misses out on much more than a way out of his present difficulty. He misses out on being a part of God’s plan of salvation.

The Christian doctrine of hell, so much a part of Jesus’s own teaching, is not something we can set aside, even in the context of the universal and free offer of salvation in Jesus Christ.

A great living theologian wrote this about it: “Christ . . . descends into hell and suffers . . . but he does not, for all that, treat man as an immature being deprived in the final analysis of any responsibility for his own destiny. Heaven reposes upon freedom, and so leaves to the damned the right to will their own damnation. The specificity of Christianity is shown in this conviction of the greatness of man. Human life is fully serious.” (J. Ratzinger, Eschatology, p. 216)

Next Sunday is Christmas. It’s easy to forget, in all the sentimentality of the season, mangers and mistletoe, that we rejoice at Christmas because God has done something utterly serious, even catastrophic, for our sake. The world in its present form will not survive the impact of this salvation; our own lives, though we are saved, will be utterly changed. Come, Lord Jesus, and make perfect our will.

Advent Series: Hell

peterschellhase@gmail.com (Peter Schellhase) — Sun, 18 Dec 2022 18:31:04 GMT

The Fourth part in an Advent series on the “Four Last Things”

Ahaz, as we see, was unwilling to take God at his word; to ask a sign, any sign, that he would deliver them. Why?

The Psalmist gives us another response in similar situations. He acknowledges the providence of God in the trials of his chosen people, yet calls on God for salvation.

“He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede: then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him.”

Ahaz misses out on much more than a way out of his present difficulty. He misses out on being a part of God’s plan of salvation.

The Christian doctrine of hell, so much a part of Jesus’s own teaching, is not something we can set aside, even in the context of the universal and free offer of salvation in Jesus Christ.

Advent Series: Heaven

peterschellhase@gmail.com (Peter Schellhase) — Sun, 11 Dec 2022 18:27:28 GMT

The Third part in an Advent series on the “Four Last Things”

In one episode of the long-running animated sitcom The Simpsons Bart Simpson and his father Homer convert to Roman Catholicism, lured by pancake suppers, bingo, and the forgiveness of sins. This bothers Homer’s wife Marge, who doesn’t want to accept the Church’s teachings on birth control.

Marge imagines the afterlife. She arrives in “Protestant heaven,” only to see Homer and Bart on a nearby cloud in “Catholic heaven.” Compared to the genteel croquet-party vibe of Protestant heaven, Catholic heaven looks like it knows how to party. Marge asks to speak to Jesus about this, but it turns out that he’s also in Catholic heaven.

This depiction of “heaven” in The Simpsons is a reflection of its characters’ subconscious desires and anxieties, rather than an actual place. In reality, we don’t get a heaven tailored to our preferences. But The Simpsons may prompt us to ask the question, “what sort of ‘heaven’ would I be suited for? In what sort of ‘heaven’ would I feel at home?”

After asking this question we have to compare our subjective ideal of heaven with what we are actually told about heaven in scripture. After this, we can ask the question, “how would I need to change my life or adjust my expectations in order to be the kind of person who can look forward to heaven, as it really is, with confidence and hope?”

Scripture speaks of heaven in a number of places—often in symbols and metaphors. Heaven as it is is hard to describe. It is an eternal place, the place where God’s glory dwells. But a lot of the visions of heaven described in the Bible refer to the “new heavens and the new earth,” a renewed creation in which God dwells with his people.

Last week we heard Isaiah’s description of a new Jerusalem, which is part of this heaven. Today we view, perhaps not heaven itself but the road that leads to Jerusalem through the eastern wilderness of Judea. In Isaiah’s day (and in ours) it is a rough and dangerous road, contested by many powers, desolate and forbidding. This road and the country through which it passes are transformed in Isaiah’s vision. The desert blooms, and water fills it so abundantly that it is a wasteland no longer; it is a wetland, a place for birds and wildlife. Similar visions appear in the prophet Ezekiel as well as in Revelation; we find that there are both fresh and saltwater bodies of water in this area. Imagine the sound of flowing water, birds of all kinds, abundant wildlife.

This is the way of salvation, the road on which God will bring his exiled children home.

The dangers of the wilderness—animal and human—are no longer present. There are no predators, no bandits. In place of the rough road, an elevated highway, smooth and safe, with wide banks on both sides, leads to the holy city.

What kind of people are there?

In Isaiah’s vision, heaven is a place where losers become winners: “no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.” The disabled are made whole: “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” The weak, the feeble, the oppressed will be strengthened, vindicated, and delivered from their oppressors. “Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.’“‘ It is a place for people who have learned patience in suffering.

This suffering may not have been undeserved. The disabilities mentioned—blindness, deafness, lameness, dumbness—are all characteristic of the way the Assyrians would mutilate conquered peoples. They are signs of defeat, of shame. In the spiritual interpretation of this passage, these are the wounds inflicted on God’s people by their sins. But now, they have been not only liberated from the bondage of sin, but even the effects and consequences of sin are being healed.

The highway to heaven is for those who have been made worthy; healed, cleansed, prepared for the presence of God. Isaiah’s vision of heaven is radically inclusive, admitting, in the words of the prayer book, people of “all sorts and conditions.” However, it also excludes those who persist in wickedness. “The unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people.” The Psalmist expands on this, “The Lord loves the righteous; the Lord cares for the stranger; he sustains the orphan and widow, but frustrates the way of the wicked.”

And it’s pretty clear that the wicked are not banging on the gates of heaven demanding to be let in. Isaiah’s heaven is not the sort of place that appeals to them.

This is because heaven is the place where God is. The humble, the poor, the oppressed, have come to know God as their helper and deliverer. God remains, for the wicked, their enemy. He is the one who continues to condemn their unjust intentions and frustrate their evil plans. His appearance throws them into confusion and they flee into darkness before the avenging sword of his mouth. They find themselves in a hell of their own furnishing, one that corresponds with who they truly are, with what they truly desire. But that’s a subject for another time.

Jesus is called “the desire of the nations.” Though he “frustrates the wicked” and “puts down all the rulers of the earth” for their wickedness, Christ also awakens within the nations a desire for himself and for his holy place. At the end of the Bible there is a vision of this prophecy fulfilled, as not only the exiles of Israel but people from all nations stream into the new Jerusalem.

Jesus will be at the center of this heavenly city. It is the place where he will dwell with his people. So the question becomes, is Jesus the one for me? Is he the answer to my own longing?

Matthew’s Gospel relates this curious story about John, imprisoned by Herod, sending his disciples to question Jesus about his mission. Is he the promised messiah, anointed one, deliverer, or are they to wait for someone else?

Jesus responds by showing how his ministry fulfills—in very literal terms—the promises of the prophets. “Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” And he adds, “And blessed is anyone who is not offended at me.”

I don’t think that John really doubts that Jesus is the one. It was he who identified him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. It was John who said, “he must increase, but I must decrease” and sent his own disciples to follow Jesus. On the other hand, consider John’s circumstances at the time, unjustly imprisoned by an evil king for preaching against the king’s personal life. Any one of us in that circumstance might well wonder when Jesus intended to start making things right in the world.

Jesus has high praise for John as well. He calls him the greatest of all the prophets. And yet he says, “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” What Jesus is about to do is so much greater that it will put everything and everyone who came before him quite in the shade. The words of the prophets are fulfilled in no one else but Jesus himself.

Advent Series: Judgment

peterschellhase@gmail.com (Peter Schellhase) — Sun, 04 Dec 2022 18:22:18 GMT

The Second part in an Advent series on the “Four Last Things”

The story is told of St. Boniface, the English monk who became a missionary to Europe, that he struggled to convert the Germanic tribesmen from their worship of the old gods to the worship of the one true Lord Jesus Christ. One day around the winter solstice he and his band of monks came upon an ancient oak tree, dedicated to the god Thor. A crowd was gathered to observe a human sacrifice. The priest of Thor raised a heavy wooden mallet above a bound victim. Suddenly Boniface stepped forward, interrupting the ceremony. “The Cross of Christ shall break the hammer of the false god Thor, he said, and, taking an ax, began to strike the massive tree. The bemused Germans watched this monk trying to chop down this huge tree with an ax, but, as the story comes down to us, he had cut no more than a notch in it when the whole tree trembled, swayed, and crashed to the ground, breaking into four parts.

As the crowd stood stunned, their sacred shrine destroyed, Boniface spied a small evergreen sapling growing up among the roots of Thor’s oak. Boniface seized on it as a timely sermon illustration. Look, he said to the stunned crowd, “This little tree, a young child of the forest, shall be your holy tree tonight. It is the wood of peace . . . It is the sign of an endless life, for its leaves are ever green. See how it points upward to heaven. Let this be called the tree of the Christ-child; gather about it, not in the wild wood, but in your own homes; there it will shelter no deeds of blood, but loving gifts and rites of kindness.” The wood of the oak tree was used to build a church in that place.

So if anyone try to tell you the Christmas tree is a pagan symbol, you remember about St. Boniface and his ax!

This story reflects two important themes for us to meditate on in this season of Advent; first of all the judgment of God, expressed in the overthrow of false religions, their idols and evil practices; second the profound mercy of God expressed even in the midst of that judgment, calling all people and redeeming them for himself; giving them a kinder and better hope than their idols could possibly provide.

Scripture is full of such examples, and indeed our Scripture lessons today are also full of axes and stumps—the icons of judgment—as well as the hope of redemption and new growth through the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

In the verses immediately preceding this morning’s lesson from Isaiah, the prophet portrays the judgment of God as of a woodcutter with his ax:

Behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts
will lop the boughs with terrifying power;
the great in height will be hewn down,
and the lofty will be brought low.
He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an axe,
and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall.

This is, figuratively, a campaign of deforestation; not selective removal and woodlot management, but clear-cutting, complete devastation.

When I was in seminary, I did a paper on the book of Second Chronicles in the Old Testament. The book concludes with a census of those who returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity. Notably absent from this census is any mention of Israel’s royal family, the house of David. The tree of Jesse appears to have been felled and Israel is now subject to foreign rule.

But in Isaiah, written well in advance of these historical events, God promises renewal. In the fallen ruins of once-proud empires a young tree, a shoot, emerges from the stump of Jesse, the royal family of Israel. Chosen by God, this branch will put not only Israel but the whole world to rights.

Two of the gospels—Matthew and Luke—offer genealogies of Jesus, showing that he is indeed descended, albeit obscurely, from the royal family of David. Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled.

Jesus’s cousin John the Baptist warned the people of this impending visitation of God.

A colleague pointed out to me that this passage is a kind of re-founding, a re-consecration of Israel. Israel has gotten so far from where they started that they need a reset. And so it’s no accident that John is preaching and baptizing at the Jordan river. He is calling the people of Israel to return to the place where Joshua first crossed the Jordan. They must re-enter God’s kingdom, as if for the first time, by passing through these waters.

But there are two kinds of people who are coming out to hear John the Baptist. First, it says that “all Jerusalem and Judea” was going out to hear his preaching and be baptized in the Jordan, repenting of their sins. It was a significant movement.

But another group of people also come out, the Pharisees and Saducees. The Pharisees were the teachers of the Law, while the Saducees were the Temple party. In terms of today’s religious groups these would be the Presbyterians and Episcopalians, respectively. But John the Baptist is not enthused that these upstanding men of religion have come out to listen to him and get baptized. Instead of congratulating them for seeing the light, he unloads both barrels of a blistering warning of judgment.

You nest of venomous snakes! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? And then he comes to the point: “Do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’.”

Being children of Abraham is not enough. Judgment is coming. “The ax is laid to the root of the tree” just like in Isaiah. “Any tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire.” These parties in religion think that a right relationship with God is mediated through either the law or the practice of the temple religion. They’re not gonna make it. The law, and the Temple, are God’s gracious gifts. But they are about to pass away. One greater than Moses is here. By refusing to recognize the Messiah when he comes, and placing their hope in their own observances, the Pharisees and Saducees are no better off than those pagans practicing evil rites around the oak of Thor.

John’s critique is harsh and his warning ought to make the hair stand on end. God’s judgment may seem threatening. But it’s more than that.

A cliched line of television dialogue has something to teach us here. Two characters are in the heat of an argument. Is that a threat? one man asks. No, the other responds, it’s a promise. In other words, he’s gonna back his words with action.

God’s judgment isn’t just a threat he holds over the world to make us behave ourselves. It’s his promise to make things right at last, in a way that we never could.

Later Jesus himself appears to be baptized. Jesus himself has no sin to repent of. He is not under judgment—he is the judge. The cross tells us that Jesus was judged for us. His righteousness makes us righteous; his justice justifies us.

Jesus fulfilled in himself, vicariously, everything, the law, the sacrifices, the threats and the promises of the prophets, the whole identity and calling of Israel. So this is not just good news for those who are “children of Abraham.” It’s for the whole world. The apostle Paul, who began his career in religion as a Pharisee, put it like this:

“I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.”

With that, let us pray.

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Advent Series: Death

peterschellhase@gmail.com (Peter Schellhase) — Sun, 27 Nov 2022 17:34:19 GMT

The first part in an Advent series on the “Four Last Things”

We all know what we’re getting for Christmas.

Not that Santa doesn't have one or two surprises up his big red sleeves. What I mean is that Christmas will probably go, more or less, the way we expect it to. We’ll get up on Sunday morning, have that cup of coffee. Kids everywhere wait impatiently to unwrap the packages under the tree, and reach down to find out what is hiding all the way down in the toe of their Christmas stocking.

Then of course to Church for Christmas Day service, then back home for a nice dinner with relatives and friends.

Yes, with Christmas, we all know what we’re getting.

And in terms of the meaning of Christmas, the reason for the season, we all know about that, too. We come to church fully anticipating to hear about the Baby in the manger, with his Blessed Mother, and so on. Good money says that “Silent Night” and “Hark, the herald angels sing” will be on the rotation. Yes, we all know what we’re getting for Christmas, and, for most of us, whatever else is the matter in our lives, we look forward to Christmas for the comfort and joy that brightens and warms our lives in this otherwise cold and dark time of the year. We need Christmas, not only for these things, but also for Who it reminds us of: Jesus, who became man for our sake, because of his great love for us. Christmas is about God coming to be with us.

With Advent, on the other hand, it’s a lot easier to be uncertain about what we’re getting. By now the Jingolator on the radio is already turned up to 11, Mariah Carey is belting out what she wants for Christmas in the shopping malls, everything is lights, greenery, and peppermint.

Advent is… a little different. In church, our Advent meditations and practices strike a “blue” note in the otherwise nostalgic tones and major key of the commercial ho-ho-holiday season. What time is it?

While the advent of the Messiah is indeed “tidings of comfort and joy,” the voices we hear in Advent—the prophets, John the Baptist, the apostles Paul and James, and Jesus himself—urge us to ‘wake up,’ ‘be on the lookout,’ and to avoid sleeping or drunkenness, because the Messiah, the Anointed One, is coming, and we want to be ready when he arrives. For the rest of our culture, this may be a season for beating the winter blues through indulgence, shopping, holiday parties. But we are exhorted to sobriety, self-control, alertness, as we await the hope to which we are called.

In essence, we must seek now to become the kind of people who, when He comes, will recognize him and welcome his coming; who will see his advent as the fulfillment of our dearest hopes, and not as an interruption to our already comfortable and fulfilled way of life.

That day will come when no one expects it. As Jesus said, the signs of the end times are at hand. But on the other hand, it will be completely unexpected. “No man knows,” Jesus said. “The Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” Just as the flood came without warning and put an end to the world as its inhabitants knew it, so it will be when Jesus comes. The unwary and unprepared will be taken by the calamity, and only those who are awake, alert, and attentive to God—like Noah—will remain.

It sounds as if we are talking about the apocalypse, the end of the world, and in a way we are. Just as no one knows the day or the hour of Jesus’s return, likewise no man knows the day or the hour of his own death.

Jesus Christ will come again in glory on the last day, whenever that will be. But, most likely, all of us will meet him sooner than that, on our last day. Our span of life on earth, which we ourselves cannot know, will end, and we will stand before God.

And yet, death seems, despite all evidence to the contrary, distant from us and from our experience. Richard Challoner wrote in 1801, “the greater part of men, who, though they daily see some or other of their friends, acquaintance, or neighbours carried off by death, and that very often in the vigour of their youth, very often by sudden death, yet always imagine death to be at a distance from them.”

How much more so does our present-day culture represses its awareness of death: hiding it away in hospitals and funeral parlors, obscuring it under medical terminology; trivializing it in the portrayals of violent death to which all of us who watch films and television are to some degree desensitized; avoiding the mention of death through euphemisms, as when we call a funeral a “celebration of life” or speak of a person’s death in sentimental but inappropriate terms—“Heaven has another angel,” etc. Though we think of ourselves as living in a society that has gotten beyond most taboos, death is a big one for us, more so than in most other cultures throughout history.

And this does us no favors, because if we cannot acknowledge the reality of death for each of us, we cannot properly prepare ourselves for death and what comes after death.

The Church likewise, in her cultural captivity, cannot adequately express the hope that we have in the face of death, which we find in the person, and work, and present reign, and future appearing, of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

So, this Advent, we contemplate death: Our death, but even more so that of our Lord, whose death gives new meaning and new hope to our own death. The cross is always for us a symbol of hope, because it is that instrument by which the Son of God finished his work, humbling himself and becoming like us even in death, in order to overcome death on our behalf and open the way of everlasting life to all who trust in him.

It’s okay to feel a little blue in Advent. Because, as St. Paul says, we do not mourn as those who have no hope. We have the best hope of all in Jesus, who we know is coming to save us all from the dominion of sin and death, and bring us into his kingdom of light and life. What time is it? It is time to wake up and prepare to meet the Lord, sober and ready for his kingdom.

Christ the King

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 17:41:35 GMT

Sermon for Sunday, November 20, 2022

Of this Sunday, which is often called “Christ the King Sunday” or “The Reign of Christ,” one Anglican priest whom I will not name had the following to say:

“The Reign of Christ is a chance to think what the world might look like if everyone behaved like Jesus.”

This sentiment is completely wrong, in the worst way possible. The Reign of Christ is not about wishing for a better society, if only people would behave themselves. There are no ‘ifs’ about the reign of Christ. This Sunday's observance is not about better living through ethics, but about a King who rules the nations with a rod of iron, and who will bend all things to his gracious will.

Of course, it is tempting to compare the way the world is, with the way we would like it to be. You may have noticed that all is not well with the world today.

I want to explain something about the specific times in which we live. You may already have a sense of this, or have wondered about what is going on.

Our country, our society, in fact, the whole modern world, is experiencing an extended and acute crisis of authority, a crisis of institutional decline. This has been going on in some form for most of our lifetimes, but it is getting worse and worse.

For many in the postwar generation, raised in the righteous afterglow of the Second World War and the heroic fight against fascism, the Vietnam War was the first time they began to suspect that the people in charge were wrong, or didn't have the country's best interests in mind, or perhaps were simply wicked and cruel. And those veterans who returned from that conflict received, not the heroes’ welcome enjoyed by the GIs of 1945, but suspicion, abuse, and ostracism from their fellow citizens. Our society was divided.

For many of the baby boom generation, the real heroes, the real role models, were not elected officials, but activists, truth-tellers, iconoclasts; those who stood up to the power structures of the government, of polite society, even the church, to support justice and equality.

But while the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 70s achieved many of its goals, the various and sundry social movements which followed it were neither as successful nor as unifying—nor, indeed, as clearly righteous. Activist heroes and gurus who emerged from the 60s milieu proved no less fallible than other authority figures. Many became corrupt and abused their power and goodwill, and were co-opted by powers no less insidious than the ones they had opposed.

In the prosperous 80s and 90s, America abandoned idealism and turned to capitalism and consumerism as our cultural uniting values. Hippies became Yuppies, fretted about the antisocial tendencies of Generation X, and gave birth to my generation, the Millennials.

The reputation of capitalism took an initial hit with the collapse of the dot-com bubble in the year two thousand, followed by the Enron scandal, and government-chartered financial institutions went morally bankrupt less than a decade later in the subprime mortgage crisis.

In 2001, a new, external crisis in the form of terrorism provided a temporary infusion of confidence in our national institutions, particularly the military and the agencies of American interventionism. “Regime change” became fashionable again, even as the American regime embarked on unprecedented surveillance of its own citizens, domestic police forces adopted military weapons and tactics, and an ever-escalating series of supposedly high-stakes elections made political civility a fond memory, and both major political parties were captured by the lunatic fringe. Beginning with the 2000 election it became normal for the losing party in every presidential election to level allegations of systemic election fraud and voter disenfranchisement by the winning party.

A year after 9/11, the Boston Globe broke the story of the massive abuse scandal and the even more scandalous systematic cover-up in the Roman Catholic Church. The abuse, of course, was something we already knew about on some level, often emerging within our social consciousness as the subject of dark humor. But the cover up shook the faith of many Catholics who had been raised to believe in the authority of the Catholic Church and the infallibility of the Pope. Protestants and evangelicals, whose churches lacked the same degree of centralized authority, at first blamed these problems on the distinctive practices and structure of the Catholic Church, until all too soon they discovered flagrant abuse and cover-ups in their own midst. Today, the moral authority of all churches and religious leaders, not just Catholics, is in tatters.

By the second decade of the present century, people had lost their faith in Government, in the Church, in schools and institutions of higher learning, and in the free market.

But at least there was one trusted authority still above the fray: the voice of Science.

Until 2020, when the scientific and medical establishment proved that it, too, was both subject to fallibility and ethical failure. After months of contradictory public health recommendations and crippling lockdowns and mandates—all of which had little apparent effect in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic—the reputation of our public health authorities, and even of the medical profession, was also circling the drain.

The crisis of institutional authority has been brewing for a long time, but it is clear that we have entered a new and acute stage. If I can sift all this down to a single fact, what we have learned over the past 20 or so years is that those institutions we thought were built on a sound foundation were in fact resting on sand, and had in fact been undermined for years. Those who we assumed had our best interests in mind do not; they are cynical operators, in it for their own power and gain.

The fall of a great institution always seems sudden, but its causes are usually of very long standing.

And what all of these crumbling institutions and their leaders all seem unable to grasp is that they are entirely responsible for their own demise. They continue to this day to blame their difficulties on external factors, completely blind to the reality that they no longer live in a society that trusts or believes anything they have to say.

Our political and media establishment claims that “election denial” and “radicalism” are the greatest threat to our political order. This is complete nonsense. These kinds of things are symptoms of a greater problem, the inevitable result of decades of mismanagement, when people no longer trust our political institutions or the people who run them.

Similarly, the church looks at the world and blames “secularism” for the wholesale abandonment of religion. Rubbish. It is not atheism or secularism that have driven so many people away from the church. It is corruption within, so acute that, for instance, generations of Episcopalians grew up under pastors who did not believe in the scriptures and the doctrines of our faith they were entrusted to teach; or who were morally unfit to lead the church; or who wasted their own and the church’s energy on vain and irrelevant programs and pursuits.

The shepherds themselves have scattered the flock.

So it was in the day of the prophet Jeremiah, who lived in times not so different from ours.

The reading from Jeremiah opens with a declaration of woe, a curse on the authority figures of the day, who have abused their position and their trust, just like so many leaders of today. “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord. Therefore thus says Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the Lord." There is a crisis of authority, of leadership, and God warns that he will intervene on behalf of his people, but this will be a hostile intervention toward those rulers, priests, and authorities who have incurred his wrath. They will be removed and replaced.

Good things are coming for God's neglected and scattered flock. “I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.”

What God promises is not a democratic revolution or ‘regime change’ in the usual sense, but a new and worthy King who will be as worthy, wise, and righteous as their present leaders are unworthy, foolish, and corrupt. He will be the true heir of King David. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’”

The season of Advent which begins next week is a time when we join the ancient Israelites in waiting for the appearing of this righteous and worthy King. He has already come, and he will come again at the end of days to rule not only over Israel but all of the nations of earth.

In this way, Jesus is the answer, not only to our personal problems, but to the big problems which afflict us as a society. It is he who sets up rulers and puts them down; he reigns now from heaven, and all the nations are judged in his sight.

When we pray for our own leaders, we pray that they would imitate Christ in wise and righteous rule. We pray this because we know that they will be held accountable to him for how they have acted. Forget about the court of public opinion; the accountability our elected officials, judges, and priests should fear above all is not the people but the unquenchable fire of divine wrath. There will be, literally, hell to pay, both in this life and in the next.

Over the next four weeks of Advent, I will be preaching on what the Church calls the "four last things," which are the subject of traditional Advent sermons: the four last things are Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. As I explore each of these four related subjects, I will seek to help us meet Jesus in each of them, and show how his promise of salvation is worked out in the midst of these scary and upsetting facts (and yes, I include Heaven along with the other three in the category of scary and upsetting, as you will see!)

But today, as we observe the solemnity of Christ the King, or the Reign of Christ, fix your eyes on the one who reigns even from the accursed tree. The repentant criminal said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." But Jesus did not promise to remember him at some future point when he would enter into this kingdom. He said, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." Though tortured and bleeding, dying, crowned with thorns, Jesus was consolidating his rule; even at that moment he was achieving victory over the enemies of his people; over their corrupt rulers, over their unholy priests, and over the spiritual forces of wickedness which lie behind the visible evils of the world. Even death and hell could not stand before him; those tombs of the righteous, which Jesus accused the religious establishment of building for those their fathers had killed, trembled and gave up their martyred dead.

Even on the cross, Jesus was fully revealed as the anointed one of Israel, the son of David, and the great high priest, the seed of Abraham in whom all nations would be blessed, and the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent.

The icon of Christus Rex , “Christ the King,” which looms behind this altar, must be more than a static image, a figurehead like the carved mermaid on the prow of a boat. It must not represent a future hope only; far less should it be viewed as an aspiration for what the world might look like if we simply tried harder. No! If Christ the King were simply the totem of something we desire to create for ourselves in the world, that would be idolatry. Christ the King means that Jesus Christ rules over the nations now, in actual fact, as well as over the Church, despite her low condition. Only if we truly believe this, can we pray faithfully, as he has taught us: Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.

How to Become a Saint

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:40:20 GMT

Sermon for All Saints’ Sunday, November 6, 2022

Who are these like stars appearing,
These before God’s throne who stand?
Each a golden crown is wearing;
Who are all this glorious band?
...
Who are these of dazzling brightness,
These in God’s own truth arrayed,
Clad in robes of purest whiteness,
Robes whose lustre ne’er shall fade,
Ne’er be touched by time’s rude hand?
Whence come all this glorious band?

I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

These are they who have contended
For their Saviour’s honour long,
Wrestling on ’til life was ended,
Foll’wing not the sinful throng;

These are they whose hearts were riven,
Sore with woe and anguish tried,
Who in pray’r full oft have striven
With the God they glorified…

Sainthood is attainable, but not easily so. This is why the Christian tradition has given us not one but two observances this week to remember those who have left this world. On All Souls, which we kept earlier this week, we remember all Christians who have died, and offered prayers on their behalf. Today, the Feast of All Saints, we celebrate those who by their witness to Christ earned, to say the least, particular honor and distinction in the kingdom of heaven. Equality is not a characteristic of heavenly society. Some will have more honor than others, though all alike will be there by the grace of God. We will be rewarded in just measure to our faithfulness here on earth.

And while seeking honor and glory here on earth puts one in the way of vainglory and pride, I would go so far as to say that we ought to strive for distinction in the kingdom of heaven. What does that look like?

Revelation gives a view of the saints in their heavenly reward; Jesus’s Beatitudes show how they got there. And it shows us what our lives need to look like, if we hope to see ourselves one day as members of that shining company.

Before we look at these verses individually, let me first state a fundamental axiom, or self-evident truth, about these “Beatitudes” as a group, and about those who they describe.

The Beatitudes describe those who follow Jesus Christ, and they describe the life of Christ himself, as he lived on earth. Blessed is the man, as the first Psalm says—that Man is, first and foremost, Jesus. He shall be like a tree planted by streams of water. Jesus Christ is the Tree of Life, from whom the streams of living water flow, and whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

Perhaps we could even say that the saints, in their lives on earth, are like those leaves: by their presence they bring blessing and hope, and even in their death they consecrate the places in which their bodies rest. The blood of the martyrs cries out for vengeance, but at the same time it waters the seed of the gospel, so that over the bones of the dead saints are built the temples of the living church.

The “poor in spirit” are those who imitate Christ, who set aside the glory of his own divinity to take on human flesh. His followers give up earthly glory and the world’s worth for the sake of future glory. Thus on earth they live as poor, but the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
Those who mourn over sin (their own and others’) and walk in repentance allow the bitterness of Jesus’s Cross to purge them of sin. In the kingdom of heaven, their mourning will be turned to joy.
The meek partake of Christ’s meekness, who “as a sheep before his shearers was dumb” and shut his mouth before the powers of the earth. He has now ascended to the highest rule and authority in heaven, and his sheep “overcome evil with good,” who do not hold offenses in their hearts but prefer to suffer wrong rather than to wrong others, will one day rule not in heaven only but on earth as well.
Those who hunger for righteousness will be made righteous;
those who show others the mercy of Christ will receive mercy themselves.
Those who bring peace and reconciliation instead of war and hatred will find that they have come to resemble the Son of God who came to reconcile the world to the Father through his blood.
And those who share in his sufferings and death, hated for the truth and persecuted for the sake of righteousness, will also share his glory in heaven.

These are not 8 different types of people; these 8 blessings describe the lives and the virtues of all the saints.

As you can see, being a saint is not easy. But neither is it impossible, for those who fix their attention on Jesus, following in his way and turning aside neither to the right nor to the left, persevering and enduring all things, but never taking their eyes off the prize, which is to see and know God.

In the words of the Sunday-school hymn:

“They were all of them saints of God, and I mean, God helping, to be one too.”

Praying for the Dead

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 21:43:59 GMT

Homily at the St. Michael’s Requiem Mass for All Souls, November 2, 2022

As some of you know, I grew up in an evangelical context. And while that was good for me in many ways—particularly in teaching me the importance of a lively and personal relationship with Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and giving me a respect for the Scriptures as the inspired and infallible word of God—it also contributed certain other habits of mind which I have had to unlearn.

For one thing, one of the assumptions I used to have was that one of the reasons I came to church was to learn, or to put it more accurately, to hear something new that would change my perception in some way. Whereas what we actually do in church is to hear things that are old; things that we already know; things that we have heard before, but have not yet completed their work within us. More than that, we come to encounter Jesus in the scriptures, in the sacraments, and in the fellowship of the congregation.

But even that account leaves out one of the most important aspects of corporate worship: prayer. We come to pray, which does not directly do anything. We make our requests, but it is up to God to fulfill them. We offer praise, but to a God whose all-sufficiency means that he does not actually need anything from us, not even words of affirmation. Even our greatest prayer, the one that is most central to our worship, which we call the Eucharist, the great thanksgiving, or the Mass, does not do or cause anything directly in itself. It is a petition, a commemoration, a request that, through our feeble human and earthly means, God will give us the grace that we need. The sacraments are powerful because they come with a promise, that if we use them, God will offer us what he promises through them. Or in other words, while God is present and active everywhere at all times, we know for certain that in the sacrament of the Altar he is present to us in a particular way, just as in baptism we have the assurance of forgiveness and being born again.

What does this all have to do with All Souls' Day? Well, in the Eucharist we do not so much offer up a new prayer to God, as enter into a worship event which is already and eternally taking place. We join the angels, and for a moment are lifted spiritually into the holy and heavenly places. It is a foretaste of what is to come. But we believe that those who have died in faith—the "faithful departed"—are already there in the presence of God. Ordinarily they are not present to us. Their souls have left this world, and only what was mortal of them has been left behind. (This includes, of course, their bodily remains, but also perhaps their memory and influence. Who of us can hope to be remembered two hundred years hence, except as, perhaps, a name on someone's family tree, a story passed down, an official record somewhere? How little I remember even of my own grandparents!)

The promise of All Souls is that there is one who does remember, and whose remembering is not limited to sentiment or the recollection of past events, but is strong enough to hold the reality of those who have departed this life in the power of his own life. Thus the dead are said to "rest," but they do not cease to exist, because they are known of God, and in the resurrection they will be fully restored; not merely to what they were on earth—transient, frail, and fallen—but to their fullest potential as created beings who share the divine gift of eternal life.

Now, as a young evangelical I was taught and firmly believed in the persistence of our souls after death, in the reality of heaven and hell, and in the hope of the resurrection, just as I preach today. But I was also taught to view "prayers for the dead" as a superstition, incompatible with the supposedly biblical understanding that after a person dies their fate is fixed, and they go immediately to heaven or hell. I am not sure now that scripture is all that clear about the immediate fate of the dead, or whether they are in need of our prayers. It is a matter of some controversy, and I don't think we can settle it today. But what we can do is to reflect on the communion of the saints. If we believe in the communion of all the saints, those who are made holy by Christ, both in this world and in the world to come, then we continue to be bound to those who have died, insofar as we all, living or dead, participate in Christ. Just as in the Eucharist we pray "by him, and with him, and in him," both our own spiritual life and the life of those who have died is by Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ. We offer our prayers through Christ, and they are answered according to the merits of Christ, not our own worthiness.

So when we pray for the dead, we do not do it because we think that every prayer of ours grants them some amount of time out of purgatory, or some such thing. We pray for them because we know that, wherever they are, God's will for them is the same as his will for us: that they would grow in the knowledge and love of God, to be more fully conformed to his image and attuned to his love. And we pray that we too might persevere in faith, so that at the resurrection, when the dead in Christ are raised, we also will be among them, united forever, through Christ, in the eternal life and love of God.