Previous Sermons

3.2.2008 The third Sunday in Lent

It’s not often that the gospel appointed for the morning takes up an entire chapter of the evangelist’s story, but this morning does. Fortunately the lectionary allows us to omit verses 14 through 27, which, as you noticed, I just did. Nonetheless there is a wealth of material in the story of the healing of the man born blind and I want to raise some of those issues for you to think about this coming week. My main point it the nature of perception. From the very first paragraph we are at the point of making choices as to what we perceive. The story opens as Jesus sees a man “blind since birth.” What the disciples see is something else: they see a theological conundrum: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?” Already the stage is set for different perceptions.

Jesus sees a man who needs to be healed; the disciples see a theological problem. Jesus sees an opportunity for God’s glory to be revealed, the disciples see a way to lay blame. Jesus sees a way to transform evil; the disciples see a way to talk about evil. Jesus views the man in the future, the disciples view him from the past. Jesus sees redemption; the disciples see guilt.

And then I have to stop in the midst of these thoughts and honestly say to myself that more often than not, I think like the disciples rather than Christ, and I feel demeaned somehow. We should know better. Perception is all.

So frequently in our lives and ministries to others (in and out of the church) we seem to perceive people as problems to be solved rather than people in need of God’s love and care. This is the church’s perennial heresy, and we’ve been doing it for years and years.

We must remember that what hurting people thirst for is not a theological answer to an unanswerable question, but rather what they are seeking is our love and acceptance as we manifest Christ to them.

That’s what this morning’s gospel is all about. It’s about people, not issues, not theories.

I remembered preaching on this text years ago, and went to the old sermon barrel to find it. It’s gone, but I do remember reading you a part of one of the most famous autobiographies in America – that of Helen Keller. The sermon is long gone, but I still have her book, and I’m going to quote her again These are two of the most famous paragraphs in our history of American biography.

We walked down the path to the well house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle…. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness, as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought, and the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free. There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could be swept away in time.

When we returned to the house, every object that I touched seemed to quiver with life… (A) strange new sight had come to me.... I learned a great many new words that day; I (learned) father, mother, sister, and teacher … words that were to make the world blossom for me “like Aaron’s rod with flowers.” It would have been difficult to have found a happier child that I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time, longed for a new day to come.

Jesus saw the opportunity to teach and heal. He did not look for guilt.

Annie Sullivan, also called a miracle worker, saw the same. She saw hope and not despair. In helping a child who was deaf as well as blind to “see” the world around her, she basically saved a child’s life.

“The living word” as Helen Keller called it, “awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, and joy. Set it free.”

That’s what Jesus saw. It’s all in perception. Isn’t that what vision is anyway?

2.18.2008 The second Sunday in Lent

Prelude:

The Negro Spirituals; I was asked to do the Sermon on a subject that I did not know much about. I could not really relate to the information I had gathered to be able to start and so I prayed that the Holy Spirit would give me insight. As I began to write a dream I had some years ago was revealed to me. I feel that I must share the dream with you because it helped me with my writing.

The Dream:

I was in an encampment, a child about 4 or 5 years. The shelter for the people was made from old rags and bed sheets with dirt floors. I was told not to wonder far from every one while I play. Being a curious little one I strayed too far from every one.

A man that was on the hill I suppose being the lookout came running into the encampment shouting “Da Masa is comin, Da Masa is comin, break da meetn up cause da Masa is comin”. He ran past me so fast just as if he never saw me standing there. The encampment was in a panic every one running screaming and I was left standing in the middle of all the confusion. I was very afraid; I could not find my Mother.

I was a Child of the slaves on a cotton plantation.

The Sermon:

(The Black Spirituals):

We know from history that Africans were first brought to the United States as slaves, in chains, deprived of their basic human rights, sold into slavery by African Kings and Queens or captured by their enemy tribesmen and sold into slavery.

The Slaves were forced to learn the English language and attend the Christian worship services. In these services they learned to sing Hymns. They were taught Christian ways in order to de-Africanize a people that were thought of as being uncivilized and uneducated. Far from the truth my brothers and sisters. These were civilized and well educated people, they did not know the language in this land.

As time went on and the slaves began to understand English they would have their own worship services after the Christian service, some held in secret where they would use some of the tunes from the hymns to compose songs that had rhythm accompanied by clapping and foot tapping and the Black Spirituals were composed.

The slaves learned about the Good News of the Bible, the message of Jesus Christ, and how God would watch over and delivered those that were kept in bondage or oppressed.

Their minds and souls were awaken to the freedom they yearned and believed they would one day have by serving God. In these black hands and hearts, Christian theology became an instrument of Liberation.

The Black Spirituals composed by the slaves were inspired by stories and verses they heard from the Bible readings such as the story of Moses, the Exodus of the oppress children of Israel and how God struck down the enemies of his chosen people.

This story resonated deeply with the enslaved of this new land. They began to pray to the God above for their liberation and they praised God the father, Jesus the son, and the Holy Sprite with their Spirituals. They used these songs as a means of communication, coded communication for them selves…only. They told of births, new jobs, death, The Masters, escape routs and plans of escapes.

Steal Away, Go Down Moses, In the morning when I rise, Down by the riverside, Over my head, We must watch as well as pray Jesus will come by and by, Oh Freedom. Wade in the Water – (walk in the water along the river bank during your escape so that the dogs of the escape slave hunters, the Master won’t be able to pick up your sent). Let us break bread together on our Knees. When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun Oh Lord have mercy on me. (the words with my face to the rising sun is hardly related to Holy Communion, requiring one to face the east and is not essential to be on ones knees to receive communion….this song was used to call the Africans to secret meetings).

Who knew……We, the white Master, we planned it all. Teach the slaves about God …. let them sing those Spirituals, it helps them to work and helps to keep them under control.

The Black Spirituals were composed in the United States by Slaves. They used some of the tunes from the hymns sung in white worship services, the words came from the scriptures of the bible the purpose of these songs where to express their desire for freedom but most of all to express their Spiritual devotion and personal relationship with God.

When the time came to try escape routes to the north where Blacks lived as free people they used their spirituals as secret codes to communicate with one another about the routes to take and when to attempt the escapes. The Masters had no clue.

I say God had a plan.

A people from a foreign land with diverse backgrounds submitted to some of the worst conditions of living for a human being. They learned of the Good News. About how Jesus suffered died and buried and rose again; God’s forgiveness of all sins, of a Glorious place being prepared call Heaven.

They found happiness and comfort in the joyous music that God sent to there souls. They used this Heavenly music to express them selves.

I felt their pain when I read about their struggles.

I have learned a lot while doing my research about the music that was sent from Heaven to the Africans in The Americas. .

The music that has been renamed, The Negro Spirituals.

This sermon was written by Janice Smith and delivered February 17th, 2008.

01.20.2008 The Second Sunday aafter the Epiphany

January 15th and 19th, which will be celebrated tomorrow, January 21st, are translated holidays. Around here, it’s a feast of three birthdays. The first is that of Dr. Martin Luther King. The second is that of Maidie Walker, who is older than Dr. King, and the third is that of Robert E. Lee, who is older than Maidie Walker. Martin Luther King was born in 1929; Robert E. Lee was born in 1807, and Maidie’s birthdate is none of your business. But I will speak more to the two gentlemen I have mentioned.

And I say that, because in their own way, they each were prophets. Robert E. lee, notwithstanding the veneration he is accorded, lived in a slaveholding society. Martin Luther King was the great-grandson of slaves.

Yet I think that despite this peculiar collision of lifestyles, thy might have been friends. Lee opposed slavery, and it seems almost pointless to say so, but so did King. Lee looked for a time when this nation might understand the national tragedy that had befallen it, and so did King. And in their time, both were prophets.

I spent some time this week reading that most famous of King’s writings, “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” and was impressed again by his brilliance under duress. He wrote: “I am here because injustice is here. Just as the prophets in the 8th Century B.C. left their villages and carried their ‘thus saith the Lord’ far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly be responding to the Macedonian call for aid.”

King understood the nature of God’s call to him. Yet King was an imperfect man as all of us are. King gave what he was able to God’s design for this country and for the world.

Now what about Robert E. Lee? Was he a villain? By no means. Five generations before Dr. King was born, Lee realized the folly of slave and free in this country. He hated it. Inheriting people in servitude, he quietly set them free, realizing the value of human worth and dignity. In those different days, personal wealth was counted by labor, slave as well as freeholder, and Lee divested himself as quickly and quietly as he could. And following a war he didn’t want to fight, he spent the rest of his life as an educator, using his tremendous personal influence attempting to heal the wounds of a shattered nation.

Both men, King and Lee, distressed with the world as they saw it; both men unhappy with the condition of the oppressed; both men trying, in their century, to deal with the human condition as it was handed to them, and both of them martyred – King with a violent death, and Lee with a broken heart; both men whose birthdays we celebrate on the same day. Can we not, on those birthdays, give thanks for prophets sent to us?

Here at Saint John’s we have often talked about the nature of prophecy. What makes the Hebrew prophets so mighty is simple. What they wrote, these ancient men, was directed specifically at their nation and their race, however, the message has universal application, which makes their words timeless. I truly believe, given the words and actions of these two men, King and Lee, that we can place them in that class of God’s servants we call prophets.

Listen to these final words from Dr. King’s Letter from The Birmingham Jail:

Let us hope that the dark clouds of prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our communities, and iin some not too distant tomorrow, the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine … with all their scintillating beauty.

The history of nations is not so important to God (he tells us) as the history of those who serve him. Robert, Martin, Maidie, you or me – we are all called to witness God in our generation with what truth he has given us to see, and to act on it responsibly. Amen.

10.07.07 The Ninetenth Sunday After Pentecost

I was explaining to Debra Rollins, our new administrator, that a part of her job here at Saint John’s actually has a diocesan role: She will soon be assisting Betty Russell and me in editing a publication called The Gift of Aging put out be the Committee on Older Adult Ministries of the Diocese of Maryland. Eileen O’Mahony is also a member of that commission. The committee has changed some of its focus in the twenty years I have been a part of it. Instead of focusing exclusively on the elderly, we have gradually given more attention to what is called, in the trade, the third age, those over fifty, but not yet retired – another term used is the “sandwich generation”, those who may still supporting children, but still have aging parents to care for as well.

What we have discovered is that this is a group that seems to have little compassion for the generation coming after them, those still scrambling up the slope of success, often at the other’s expense, and perceived as material to the core. They – those sandwich types – feel superior and unappreciated.

Now Saint Paul, in his diatribe to the Philippians this morning, sounds very sandwichy to me. Let me repeat a part of the epistle, and when I do, let’s dress Saint Paul up in a business suit, stressed out in his corner office. He is bewildered by the nursing home bills for granny, the killer mortgage that keeps his kids off the street, the pledge to the church, and ongoing tuition. Got the picture?

Okay, so now listen to him: He’s talking about those who aren’t responsible to obligations the way he is.

For as I have often told you, and now tell you with tears in my eyes, there are many whose way of life makes them enemies of the cross of Christ. They are headed for destruction; appetite is their god, and their glory is in their shame. Their minds are set on earthly things.

Now Saint Paul, as we know him was hardly a believer in the laisser faire system, nor was personal forgiveness his strong suit, and we can be pretty sure he was not obligated to mortgages or tuitions, let alone granny. But, since the time he wrote the letter to the Philippians, we have been able to observe cycles, things that go round and round with some of the most amazing results

I want to talk about the cycles that we understand. The generation that today is in their eighties – such as my late mother-in-law, is the generation that grew up in the great depression. Ruth McCampbell was the daughter of a farmer. She knew the value of a slice of bread, or an apple, or a job when there were no jobs to be had. Many of these people knew more often of not what it was to be poor. Yet statistically, it is these people today who are the most generous contributors to civic charities and churches all over this country. Ken Burns’ recent description of that generation shows how extraordinary they were.

Forty years ago, I sported hair that was long enough to braid (which I actually did).The children of the sixties lived in an era of economic upswing, and we reveled in it. No one worried about jobs or the future. It was another cycle. Today, however, I pull at the same hair – shorter and quite another color – when I think about the 2008 budget at Saint John’s.

I could go on with the Gen-exers – not what you would call regular church goers, or even grad school material, whom seem to have no rules at all. So?

Okay, here’s the point: What we so often forget is that God has put us on this continuum to mature.

If everyone we know got sort of quick-frozen at the age of 25 or 30: the depression kids, the sixties kids, even my own kids, what a horrible world we would live in. Saint Paul, regrettably, puts the whole thing into an us-versus-them mentality.

Let’s listen to Saint Paul again:

They are heading for destruction … we, by contrast, are citizens of heaven, and from heaven we expect our deliverer to come.

And so we do.

But wasn’t there a time when we thought we could do it all by ourselves? My kids certainly did, and probably yours, too, if you’ve been blessed with them. But they do mature. That time of youth is fleeting enough. Why grouse about a part of growing up?

I really don’t think that the current generation, or any other coming generation is going to hell. The truths that Saint Paul clings to will be the truth of yet another generation.

So.

I am basically disagreeing with the propers for this morning.

Isaiah condemns the generation of Israel that lost Jerusalem … but a remnant came home.

Saint Paul rails at the materialists, but they became the basis of the new church.

And Matthew damns the entire Jewish nation, but it survived, radically changed, no doubt, but it survived.

Let’s take a look at cycles, realizing that God never lets us alone for even an instant. And if he wants to allow us to fool around with the joys of youth, well, I guess that’s okay, since he knows, as we all do, that ultimately we will come home, which we must.

It is probably not wise to take on a major prophet, the great apostle, and the author of a gospel all at once, but my faith in the next generation seems greater than theirs, and I think history will prove me right. So far it has.

I ask your prayers for those who may seem callow, but have grace growing in their hearts. And may we prove good examples and not chronic complainers. Amen.

09/16/07 The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

After almost forty years of staring at Gospel texts and trying to find out something different to say, I find myself now looking for a little phrase or innuendo that I might have missed rather than looking for the “big picture” yet one more time.

Now in the “big picture” of this morning’s gospel, Jesus’ message is simple: God goes looking for sinners. He just doesn’t wait for them to realize that they are lost, he takes a pro-active role, seeks them out and brings them back to his care. The shepherd and the housekeeper in these parables are doers. They are neither indolent nor uncaring. They represent God intent on retrieving what has strayed.

The story about the lost sheep and the lost coin are the same story with different backdrops and different characters, but they are the same story.

Now what I noticed this time around that I hadn’t caught on to before is that in addition to the searching that God does to find what is lost, there is the same response on God’s part. The words are in fact exactly the same in each text; “Rejoice with me for I have found what was lost.”

Jesus seems to indicate that whenever one of us is lost and found again, the response of the heavenly host is to rejoice, to party! And, when you really think about it, this seems to be an almost constant motif in the ministry of Jesus – to party, to celebrate.

Jesus seems so confident that God will provide, and he seems willing to trust human generosity, that he strongly suggests celebration over and over again.

Robert Funk, who recently published a book Honest to Jesus has also caught on to this phenomenon, and he writes about it:

(Jesus) congratulates the hungry and promises them a feast. Jesus shows up both eating and drinking, and so the people call him a glutton and a drunk, a crony of tax collectors and sinners. He advises his critics that the groom’s friends can’t fast as long as the groom is around.

Now given the texts of the last few weeks, who would have thought of Jesus as a party animal? But here it is, right in this morning’s text. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea, actually. I believe on some reflection, that the passage of time has turned Jesus into something that he might not have been.

The Greek influence on the early church removed some of Jesus’ Semitic earthiness; the Roman influence made him a bit more remote, rather like a cosmic emperor. The Middle Ages cast Jesus as a momma’s boy, and the Nineteenth Century rather emasculated him. Even in our era, Jesus the revolutionary has about the same degree of humor to him as Karl Marx.

Maybe it’s time to let the confident and carefree Jesus back into church again.

Look at this morning’s text: A woman loses a coin, sweeps the house until she finds it, and then spends that coin and maybe more, to celebrate her good fortune. The shepherd finds a stray and then throws a party to celebrate, maybe stewing us a sheep or two to feed his friends.

A celebration is a departure from our routine existence, a moment when we don’t particularly worry about tomorrow, but rather rejoice in today.

If the recovery of a lost soul is such cause for merriment in heaven, why not with us? Have we forgotten how to rejoice over such a moment of returning and mercy?

Christianity, as I understand it, is far more than a set of rules, a list of do’s and don’ts. It’s far more than a list of sins to be avoided and charities to be performed. It’s a celebration of forgiveness and our found-ness that makes us happy, and believe it or not, convivial.

I would beware of the dour Christian myself, I think he or she may have lost the point somewhere along the way. Have you noticed that those who have achieved, what we call. for some better word, piety, seem to have some glint in their eyes? I think they have discovered the joyful Jesus.

Merrymaking, Jesus tells us, is the way heaven responds to the continual conversion of the human race. And in that sense, I admonish you.

Celebrate! And continue to celebrate being found.

Amen.

09/09/07 The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Well now. Yet again this summer, we have something immensely unpopular in this morning’s gospel. As I mentioned several weeks ago, there is an unfortunate logic to the fact that if Jesus says something unpleasant in the gospels, he probably really said it, since no writer would make up something that disparaging.

In preparing for this clearly difficult passage, I turn again to that great theologian Helmut Thielike and his book The Waiting Father (1959). It seems both to Thielike and me that we don’t like this passage because it show a part of Jesus that makes us exquisitely uncomfortable..

Usually Jesus is calling, pleading even, to us to come to him, arms open, the embrace only awaiting our eager rush to his bosom. “Come unto me all ye who travail and are heavy laded” was certainly one of the best loved phrases in the old prayer book. Yet this morning Jesus is pushing us away.

If you think I’m mistaken, read the passage carefully, and all one can deduce from the statement is this: Count what it will cost you in this life and then consider whether you are equal to my discipleship.

Now I call that a put-off plain and simple. So here we are in yet another summer of Lukan diatribes – remember the one a few weeks back? – and let me repeat what I said then: Grace is free, but it costs plenty.

It is difficult to be a Christian.

Okay, let’s look at it one more time. We know that Jesus had set out to win back the lost and unfaithful people of Abba, his father; we also know that he had a measurable degree of success with this. People followed him; people listened to him, parised him for his wisdom and compassion. In general they approved of his unusual but comforting theology.

But he was not a teacher who would have what today we call mass appeal. Whenever he was on the verge of becoming a folk hero, he would challenge the people and ask them to take a sobering accounting of the cost of discipleship.

Why, we ask, would Jesus do this? We see the people, all gathered around him, including you and me, looking for solace, and we get handed an ultimatum, and we don’t like it.

I believe the answer to be this: What Jesus is saying is that you and me can’t have a “little bit” of God, so that you can have a “little bit” of peace.

Sorry, folks, the package is all or nothing. Anyone who wants to be partly devout and partly happy is surely going to end up Unhappy.

Let me quote from Helmut Thielicke for just a second. Now perhaps we can understand what Jesus’ intention was in demanding such a radical decision. At first sight, it seems hard and implacable, but it is only in the sternness of a physician who tells a man “only a radical operation will help you now.” So Jesus’ intention was to free us from this confounded dividedness. He says to us “If you want to follow me, then you must make a radical change in your life. You must say goodbye to the many things to which you cling.”

Now that’s why we don’t like this morning’s gospel. Nobody likes to hear the cost. As I said a few weeks back this is an unpopular theme, but it’s one of the most provocative in the New Testament, since there is probably no place else in the narrative where the cost of discipleship is so clearly laid out to the people Jesus came to save.

Make no mistake here. What we are called to is a radical change in our lives, by a radical doctrine, with radical demands, and radical goals.

What we look at this morning is the essence of what Christianity is all about. There is no room for complacency.

Did I mention that it’s hard to be a Christian? Amen

08/19/07 The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

I have been pretty much alone this week. Margy’s mother is quite ill and Mac went to California early Wednesday morning to tend to her for a while after she leaves hospital. MEG has been attentive on the phone and Carrie did come by for dinner yesterday, which was nice. I am dog sitting for our friends, the Fulwilers, which actually I consider a pain, but I do have Sunny’s company until Tuesday. Yet I miss that whole family togetherness, and especially I miss my wife.

Then today, we get this shrill railing from Jesus in the gospel for this morning, who seems to blow families to smithereens. Couldn’t he have said something a little nicer? Maybe “Pray a lot” or “Kiss the sacred torah daily.” Or “Do a good deed with every breath.”? No, he dumps on what I, at least, consider pretty important, valid, and perhaps sacred.

We, at least most of us, want harmony in our families. This is unsettling stuff, but so again was the gospel that Jesus was preaching. I think that the clue to this troubling passage lies in that understanding of the times and the message.

All that was “settled” if you will, was based on a system of inequality that Jesus was determined to upset. The meek will win, the poor will inherit, the mourners will see joy. Those who saw this new system as backward and perhaps threatening, were bound to be at odds with those who accepted this new world view. Families could and probably would take sides and conflict.

If Jesus’ message was to be taken wholly, then these tensions would be inevitable. Why couldn’t they see that, he argued. If they were smart enough to predict the weather, which is obvious, then why not be smart enough to understand the radical quality of these ideas?

Taken in this light, perhaps this awkward passage makes some kind of sense. We can be pretty sure that Jesus said it.

One of the first things one learns in biblical studies is applicable here. The more bizarre the statement, and the more embarrassing it is, the more veracity there is to it, reason being that nobody would make this particular outburst up and stick it in Jesus’ mouth. The gospellers certainly wouldn’t have invented such a tirade, but they dutifully recorded it because they saw it as their job and left it for us to interpret.

And I guess after some reflection, there is truth to the matter. Even today there are many families who argue about the status quo. Call it the battle between the conservative and the radical, the new ager and the old line, those who want to give away the store and those who run the store. After all this time, families remain essentially the same. And Jesus is saying that his message is a tough one and it can cause us some pain in that place where we want it least, the home and hearth. Not a pretty gospel, this morning’s but a lesson we need to hear.

A number of biblical scholars think that Jesus might have been referring to the persecutions that were to come, something he correctly anticipated, yet the message rings true through the ensuing years. If and when the troubles may face you, just remember – you’re not alone. As we have learned, it’s not easy to be a Christian.

Amen

08/12/07 The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

If can’t imagine that in a Baltimore August, any of you want to hear a sermon and I’m not sure that I want to preach one, either. So let’s just call this five minutes of musing and leave it at that. I choose to talk about Abraham, but that’s probably not a surprise since I just love the guy, and I’m not alone. He’s seen as the father of the Jews, the Moslems, and us Christians, too. But what’s more important is that we can relate to him in a way we can’t with those who came before him. The difference is, of course, like us, he’s real, or so we think he was. Now that doesn’t mean that Noah and his family weren’t important, or that Cain and Abel don’t mean anything, or that Adam and Eve don’t have a place in our mythic culture. I’m not saying that, yet what I am saying is that Abraham, we have an added bonus. Most scholars believe that Abraham did indeed walk this dusty dry earth like the rest of us. And one day God took him aside and said “Look up into the sky and count the stars, if you can. So many shall be your descendants be. And Abraham put his faith in the Lord, and the Lord counted that faith to him as righteousness.” And that’s what makes Abraham so different: his covenant and his faith.

It isn’t hard for us to say that Sir Galahad exemplifies purity or that Smokey the Bear stands for safety. Or the man from Glad or is it Mr. Clean -- we all know what they mean – but they were never real. When we talk about Abraham exemplifying faith, the abstract quality of it disappears. We think of the recurring struggle over doubt and “un-faith.”

Abraham comforts me in a way that so many biblical characters can never do. He’s not perfect. He never claims to be. But faithful. So faithful. I’m not perfect either. Never claimed to be. Yet I want to be faithful – so faithful. Abraham gives us hope. Amen.

08/05/2007 The Service Today was Morning Prayer, Rite 1, Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

07/29/2007 Ninth Sunday after Pentecost Rev John. Wilbur

The Old Testament story of Abraham’s bargaining with God reminds us vividly that people of faith believed that the Creator is merciful and that God responds to the requests of people who are asking for mercy on behalf of others. Abraham was not asking God’s favor for himself; he wanted to save the righteous within a doomed city and, in the process, avert the doom about to befall the city itself.

The story in Luke of Jesus’ teaching His disciples to pray includes no such bargaining. Instead it reminds us of the value of persistence and offers us reassurance that God’s love is superior to human love and that only the simplest examples of fatherhood’s mercy can describe it.

Several truths emerge from this story: that Jesus prayed and prayed often. Again and again we read of His going away to pray, of His withdrawing from the crowds in order to pray. The disciples saw the results of His frequent and regular praying in His healing actions and unforgettable words. They recognized that He knew something about prayer that they did not possess. So one of them asked for help: “Teach us how to pray.”

Embraced within His teaching about prayer is the assurances of being heard.

It was typical of Jesus to teach theology by using the parables of everyday life. It is a kind of theology of reasonableness. The argument works like this: everyone knows’ that a friend will help another out, even if reluctantly. Why can’t you think of God being like that? The same logic is implicit in the parable of the prodigal son. Everyone knows’ that this is what a father would want to do. Everyone knows something about compassion: why can’t you think about God like that?

I once knew a priest with a sign on his desk that said, simply, "Prayer changes things." I believe I would say it differently. I would say, "Prayer changes us." The ultimate value of prayer is that it opens us to understand God and the world in fresh ways. Prayer gives us new lenses through which to see the world, that puts the seemingly huge demands of contemporary life in a new perspective. Prayer helps us listen to the voice of God, accept the will of God and ask for the good things of God.

The practice of prayer is a standing rebuke to the wisdom of the world. The practice of prayer affirms a dimension to life that is unseen and unmeasurable, while the wisdom of the world considers something important only if it is visible and quantifiable. The practice of prayer proclaims that people are spiritual beings, rooted in the heart, while the wisdom of the world assumes that we are economic beings, concerned primarily with our personal net worth and an adequate retirement income. The practice of prayer indicates that God is the watcher, guide and protector of our lives, while the wisdom of the world teaches that unless we stand up for ourselves, no one will. The practice of prayer proves that "nothing will be impossible with God", while the wisdom of the world says we need all the resources ahead of time and all the right people speaking up for us or we will not be able to get what we want out of life. The practice of prayer says, "Don't worry." The wisdom of the world says, "Calculate."

Prayer is one of the principal ways of enlarging our awareness of God and of the universe. It assumes there is more to the world than we can experience with our five senses. The great diversity of living things in the world should not only increase our sense of wonder, but also give us an awareness of our human limitations. We spend hours at the gym trying to hone our limited physical capabilities; why not spend some concentrated effort attempting to strengthen our spiritual endowments?

The spiritual person comes to understand that spirituality is concerned with how to live a full life, not an empty one. The fact is, all we have in life is life. Things-the cars, the houses, the educations, the jobs, the money-come and go. They turn to dust eventually, they change and disappear. No, things do not make life. The gift of life, the secret of it, is that life must be developed from the inside out, from what we bring to it from within ourselves, not from what we collect or consume as we go through it, not even from what we experience in the course of it.

Responsibilities tell us we’re too involved with the "real" world to be concerned about the spiritual questions. But it is always spiritual questions that make the difference in the way we go about our public responsibilities.

Spirituality is about coming to a consciousness of the sacred within the secular. It is in that consciousness that perspective comes, that peace comes. It is in that consciousness that a person comes to wholeness.

Life is not an exercise to be endured. It is a mystery to be unfolded. Life comes from the living of it, from the attitudes we bring to it and the understandings we take away from each of the moments that touch our own. The truth is that life is the only commodity each of us actually owns. It is the only thing in the universe over which we have any real control whatsoever, slim as that may be.

It is a busy world. We find ourselves too tired to do the things that would rejuvenate ourselves, too distracted to read, too plagued by people and deadlines to organize our lives, to reflect on our futures, to appreciate our present.

We simply go on, day after day after day. Where is God in all of that? How shall we ever get the most out of life if life itself is our greatest obstacle to it?

Quiet time leads us to see into the present with the eye of the soul so that we can see the glimpse of heaven that each life carries within itself. It takes us back inside ourselves and leads us back out of ourselves at the same time.

We live and breathe, grow and develop in the womb of God. And yet we are forever seeking God elsewhere-in defined places, in special ways, on specific days and with special ceremonies. But the life that is full of light knows that God is not over there, God is here. And for the taking. The only question is how. Prayer is the answer.

God is the spirit that leads us and drives us on. God is the voice within us calling us to life. God is the reality trying to come to fullness within us, both individually and together. It is to that cosmic God, that personal, inner, enkindling God that we pray.

Prayer is the unique opportunity which God gives us to develop a deeper understanding of God and of the world. On one occasion Jesus chided people for their shallowness of spiritual awareness.

What is the essential nature of prayer? First, prayer is the threshold to the spiritual world where God dwells. It is the door to the inner world of the heart. Prayer is the means to a process of spiritual mapmaking. When we pray, we pursue Jesus into the deep things of life. It opens new realms to us.

Prayer is the means Jesus used to open Himself to God, to anchor Himself to His Father. I believe it was prayer that gave Jesus His powerful sense of awareness and insight into people and the world. It connected Him to God, the source of life, and He began to see things so much from the divine perspective that He had no doubt that His work was God's work. The practice of prayer gave Jesus an intuitive grasp of the truths of life as well as the political and religious realities around Him. He could, figuratively speaking, see into another person's heart because He knew both His own heart and the heart of God.

The fact that Jesus spent the entire night praying before a big decision tells us something about the function of solitude in His life. Jesus fought the big battles of life in solitude. We tend to think battles are fought on the battlefield. But Jesus demonstrated that the battle takes place in silence, where you are alone, as you seek to attune yourself to the will of God.

So we heard that Jesus had been praying one day and His disciples saw the powerful impact that this kind of experience had on Jesus. They said, "Would you teach us how to do what you're doing? We want that same energy exchange in our lives." And in response, Jesus did two things. First, He gave them a model that they could begin to use immediately. He said, "When you pray, here is how to do it," and what follows is a shortened form of what is usually called The Lord's Prayer. This is simply a basic outline of the kind of concerns that make up authentic prayer.

However, Jesus realized that there was a deeper issue involved than just having an actual model to follow. How do you really understand that mystery to whom your prayerful words are addressed?

You and I need to go down into the self and find nothing but God in the center of life and call that everything. One prayer at a time, we must allow the heart of God to beat in the heart we call our own.

Little by little, one word, one moment of silence at a time, we come to know ourselves and the barriers we’re putting between ourselves and the God who is trying to consume us.

We eventually learn not to pray in order to coax satisfaction out of the universe. God is life, not a vending machine full of trifles to fit the whims of the human race. God is the end of life, the fulfillment of life, the essence of life, the coming of life.

You and I can learn to pray in order to be open to what is rather than to reshape the world to their own lesser designs.

L E T U S P R A Y

Help us, O God, as we draw apart from the world, to see Jesus with new eyes and understanding, and to find in Him that which makes Him unlike all others who ever lived. Help us when we see Him, to follow Him and to show Him to the world we live in; all these things we ask in His name. AMEN.

07/22/2007 The Service Today was Morning Prayer, Rite 1, Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

07/15/07 Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

On Tuesday I told Richard and my daughter Carrie (who filled in for Joel last week) that preaching about the good Samaritan was kind of a dog, since everything that could be said about this old chestnut had already been said, which is probably the sort of thing one says when one is really ready for vacation. On Tuesday night I stayed far away from the keyboard. On Wednesday I decided to take on Deuteronomy instead. NOBODY preaches on Deuteronomy, so the field was clear, untrammeled by better wordsmiths.

What follows is a sermon on the 30th Chapter of Deuteronomy, and more specifically the use of Moses’ term “ancestors” as found in verse 12.

When Moses preaches to the Hebrew children, we often hear that magical catch phrase “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” In this sermon, Moses uses “ancestors” in place of that famous trio. The phrase came into use about 3000 years ago, yet is echoed in Eucharistic Prayer C that we will be using this morning, though that particular prayer is only about 35 years old.

It has a nice ring to it – names that just seem to fit together --- like O’Connor, Piper and Flynn, or Mannie, Moe and Jack. Yet with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, there’s some sort of difference. Why do these men rate so highly that they have been receiving such notice for 3000 years? I think, that, because they are our ancestors, they claim a higher role in our consciousness. That patriarchal quality enshrines them in a way few other names can touch.

Now there are other names, Moses’ own, perhaps, or that of King David, and again we talk in hushed tones about men who have actually spoken with God, but with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, there is a difference: not only did they speak with God, they covenanted with him as well.

It is that covenant, actually, that the author of Deuteronomy refers to in this morning’s lesson: the great covenant on which the whole history of Israel would depend. And when we mention that great covenant we do so because basically every covenant is a relationship between God and man. Now a covenant is not a document but s series of promises made by our ancestors with God and to which we, their descendants, are bound. So when we mention the names of our patriarchs, we recall our association with them and the obligation we have, as descendants, to honor that commitment.

God’s covenant with Abraham was simple indeed; Abraham would be God’s chosen and Abraham, in response would dedicate the lives of his children to this God. That was sealed for all time about 2100 years before the birth of Christ.

Abraham: childless, illiterate, nomadic, sealing a covenant with a strange and Jealous God – walking barefoot through the entrails of animals as a symbol of the promise made.

Isaac: Abraham’s only legitimate son: Almost himself sacrificed to this jealous God, and father himself of two sons: Jacob and Esau.

And Jacob: Jacob the thief, who by stealth takes away from Esau the blessing that can never be returned. Jacob who wrestles with angels (or is it his own conscience), and then fathers 12 sons who give Abraham the nation promised so long ago.

These are the patriarchs. Here are the mortal and flawed men who had conversation with God in the most intimate of ways. And in recalling their names we recall that these men are our ancestors.

So there is a point in reciting that litany of names after all. By recalling their human fabric and the fright that was the earliest part of their conversation with God, we somehow ally ourselves to their action.

They took our part, in their generations, for that terrifying act of conversing with the almighty and of forming the covenant of which we are still a part today.

So when we hear those names in that great eucharistic prayer, we remember that they are more than just decoration in the text, they are more than storybook characters. They are our archetypes. They represent us and all that has gone before us.

Listen again to that verse in Deuteronomy: When you turn again to the lord your God with all your heart and soul, he will again rejoice over you and be good to you, as he rejoiced over your ancestors.

That’s our family Moses is talking about. Aren’t you proud to be a part of it? They were in fact, people like us, flesh and blood, who dared in their day to respond to the voice of God.

If in these latter days, God chooses to speak again, let us pray for the courage and the insight to do as our ancestors did before us. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Amen.

07/08/07 The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

I thought to preach this morning about a word that is not heard in the Episcopal Church. That word is evangelism. Now because I have chosen to preach on the word “evangelism” and because this is an Episcopal Church you can expect the sermon to be very short, which it is.

Now many of our church neighbors know a lot about evangelism and we see them on television and other media. Evangelism is a big business, I guess with all the money and all the hype and all the personality cults that seem to arise from modern day soul saving.

But when it comes to New Testament evangelism, (with Jesus’ small flock, that is) all that we really have to look at is this weird little story of the sending out of the seventy, which actually occurs only in Luke. It’s quite the opposite of what we see today, isn’t it?

Jesus sends the disciples out (and I’m quoting here) “to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” In this account of Luke’s, the disciples are simply ordered to go, and they do it, without a peep of dissent. They are also admonished to “carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road.” Again there is not a whimper. They just do it.

Now compare that to what we see today: the websites, the policy statements, the publicity campaigns, the expense forms, the honoraria, the obligatory 800 number -- you name it. Either Jesus is nuts, or we are. What kind of backing the disciples get? And, if this stunning lack of hype and preparation isn’t daunting enough, Jesus’ instructions seem almost too simple; they are just to be themselves

Now let me go back to the Episcopal Church’s lack of familiarity with the word evangelism. Do you think it might be because the meaning of the word seems to have changed in our generation? Today evangelism means all that other stuff that I just mentioned, the kind of stuff that makes us cringe a little bit.

I want to quote my old mentor King Ohmeg in a periodical I subscribe to. He’s an Episcopalian, by the way, so he understands us. Ohmeg says about the seventy: “They are to let God happen through them to others. What Jesus is saying in this idealistic approach is that the Kingdom comes from God through human agents who are committed to Jesus.”

So maybe we don’t need the pizzazz and the hype and the money. We need instead to evangelize by example one person at a time, rather like Christ himself. Recently I’ve encountered an organization modern in scope but venerable in understanding about evangelism, the Sojourners. They were founded in 1971, and are actually the kind of evangelists we might like to associate with. I don’t normally do this, but I’m going to pass on information about them literally from the pulpit. They seem to believe in the public witness Jesus called on the disciples to make, and that impresses me. Draw your own conclusions, but hear them out please. They put the flashy TV guys and the slick appeals for cash to shame. Maybe Episcopalians can be evangelists, too one day. Amen.

06/24/2007 The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

On this Sunday, July 24th, 2007, Bishop John L. Rabb was here for our annual Episcopal Visitation.

To review a copy of his sermon, please follow this link: FAITH MADE SIMPLE

Copies are also available by contacting the church office.

06/17/07 The Third Sunday after Pentecost

I am not a psychiatrist, nor am I a particularly gifted theologian, but more a garden-variety parish priest who has to preach mostly every Sunday morning. In a pinch, however, I will turn to real theologians, such as Paul Tillich. He had an interesting slant on that unnamed woman in this morning’s gospel. He deals in The New Being (Scribner’s 1955), with the concept of self-acceptance. Let me quote a paragraph to you. It’s meaty, but slogging through it is worth the trouble, I believe:

He who is accepted ultimately can accept himself. Being forgiven and being able to accept oneself are one and the same thing No one can accept himself who does not feel the power [of one] ... greater than he, greater than his friends and counselors and his psychological helpers. They may point to the power of acceptance, and it is the function of the minister to do so. But he and the others also need the power of acceptance which is greater than they.

Tillich was not speaking directly about “the woman in the city

who was a sinner” as Saint Luke so delicately describes her, but he was right on the mark, I think. This was her big moment; this was the changing point in her life. This was that grand moment of acceptance. In contrast,

Simon the Pharisee, Jesus’ host at this unusual meal, already feels quite

acceptable, thank you very much. After all, he just basks in his own righteousness. From

whom does Simon need acceptance or forgiveness? In Simon’s mind: no

one. And Jesus, as usual, turns everything upside down. The religious

poobah loses face, and the harlot becomes the heroine.

Isn’t this the lesson that the church so often forgets to teach? Acceptance, regardless of that keen awareness of our own failings, is

what it’s all about. We talk about it, we sing about it, but how often do we apply it to our own often desperate situations? Jesus is there, just waiting for us to wake up to the reality.

Richard Lake, who loves to play the roll of spoiler at staff meetings when we finally decide on the Sunday bulletin, proposed changing the entrance and exit hymns for today. Now this was on last Tuesday morning, but there’s something about his choices that always meet the mark, though I’m not sure even he always knows why. Yet the entrance hymn he chose for today, Lauda Anima, says this all so clearly. Oh, and thank you again, Richard, as usual.

We sang these words: “Praise my soul the King of Heaven; to his feet thy tribute bring; ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven; evermore his praises sing. Alleluia.”

And then again, concerning the exit hymn he was right on the money, Listen to his choice, Hyfrydol: Try these words out: “Jesus, thou art all compassion; pure unbounded love thou art. Visit us with thy salvation. Enter every trembling heart.” Does that apply to this morning’s gospel or not?

And in conclusion, a final quotation form Paul Tillich: The church would be more the Church of Christ than it is now if it did the same, if it joined Jesus and not Simon in its encounter with those who are judged unacceptable. Each of us who strives for righteousness would be more Christian if more were forgiven him, if he loved more and could better resist the temptation to present himself to God by his own righteousness.

Amen.

06/03/07 The First Sunday after Pentecost, Trinity Sunday

For those of you who were here on Pentecost, you may recall that I spent the sermon time talking about the Trinity, thus giving myself not a lot of wiggle room for this morning. “Live for the Day” is not always the best motto, I’m afraid.

So instead of repeating myself, I decided to have a little fun – church can be fun on occasion, can’t it? -- and respond to a grand piece of foolishness I saw last week on the internet. Today’s sermon is a part of an occasional series of sermons written over the decades called “Why Episcopalians Should Not Be Biblical Literalists.”

A few weeks back, we heard, on Rogation Sunday, Martha Montgomery read the story of creation form the Book of Genesis. What she read then was actually, the second story of creation, which was, in fact, many written many hundreds of years before what you just heard this morning, that being the first story of creation. This is not a big secret; any serious scholar of the Bible, lay or clerical, knows the story: during the time of the Hebrew ascendancy about 1000 B.C., Hebrew priestly editors had their way with Genesis, and altered it considerably. The ancient and actual beginning of Genesis starts at Chapter 2, Verse 5. That’s what you just heard this morning. There are some nuances and subtleties that you might have noticed, but actually the two stories mesh in a way that we can accept.

I myself am not a creationist, but I can surely buy the essential parts of the story: that God is the creator, that man is made in the image of God, that our job is to tend to creation, and finally, that creation itself is GOOD.

I do not however, worry too much about the length of a biblical “day” or the duration of a geological epoch. That stuff has little interest for me. On the other hand, I do get exercised when someone tries to tell me what I should believe and how exactly precise the book of Genesis actually is. It’s rather an offense to the brain that God granted me, to tell the truth, as it were.

I’m going to quote in part the item I picked off the internet last Tuesday.

Petersburg, Ky. A museum that tells the Bible’s version of Earth’s history – that the planet was created in a single week just a few thousand years ago – attracted thousands to its opening as protestors rallied outside. The dozens of demonstrators argued Monday that the Creation Museum’s central tenets conflict with scientific evidence that the Earth is over several billion years old. Overhead, an airplane pulled a banner with the message “Thou shalt not lie.”

The privately funded museum has more than 4,000 guests on opening day said Mark Looy co-founded of this $27 million facility twenty miles southwest of Cincinnati… The guests were very happy with the museum experience” Looy said. “of course we had some naysayers come through and engage us in conversation, and that’s fine – we want them.” … The museum features high-tech exhibits designed by a theme-park artist, including animatronic dinosaurs and a wooden ark at least two stories tall, plus a special effects theatre and a planetarium.

Some exhibits show the dinosaurs aboard Noah’s ark and assert that all animals were vegetarian until Adam committed the first sin in the Garden of Eden.

My first thought was negative, but not for the reasons you might think. Our dear daughter MEG worked in the Appalachian Mountains during her gap year from high school to college, and we’ve been there. Trust me: Appalachian poverty makes urban poverty look absolutely middle class. So the first thought was “What a waste of $27 million.” But, hey, it’s this guy’s money, not mine.

A few minutes later the rest of my objections kicked in. This attempt at mind bending goes up against one of those things I guess I finally figured out in seminary, and have lived by ever since.

It’s a simple compound sentence, but if people said it out loud every day, things would be easier in the Episcopal Church, and maybe the world. It goes like this.

“If it’s true, you will always find it in the bible, but on the other hand, if it’s in the bible, it’s not always true.”

Now that has to do with the role of women in the church, with the rights of homosexuals, with the holding of slaves, and of course, with the description of creation in that wonderful Book of Genesis. We need to look at the bible as a whole, not line by line, as the literalists do, to their peril.

Not much of a sermon on the Trinity, I’ll admit, but then again Jesus never talks about the trinity, does he? It’s implied, but not spoken. Interesting.

If it’s true, you’ll always find it in the bible, but if it’s in the bible, it’s not always true.

Amen.

Pentecost 05/27/07

We talked last week about the Ascension and how bizarre it seems to our modern tastes, and how, actually, it’s a bit more believable than Pentecost. And to a degree, it is.

But, now, about Pentecost. It represents a particular challenge to the preacher, even more so than last Sunday. Often it is advertised as the birthday of the church. It isn’t. It’s vitally important, but not like a birthday is, which signifies something new is happening. Pentecost is more of a transition, and a transition that has repercussions for all of us.

Pentecost, my friends, is serious business. It is a feast, and moreover it is our feast --- more than Christmas or Easter ever will be. I say this every year because I really want you to hear me:

What Pentecost means is that until Jesus returns and the world comes to a sudden halt, we are responsible for preaching the Gospel.

Now we have help, mind you, and that help is in the presence of the Holy Spirit – guiding us, encouraging us, but as the years have passed, the Holy Spirit has become increasingly more difficult to ascertain or define.

The charismatics seem to think that they have the Holy Spirit all locked up

And we mainline types haven’t a clue. Their version if the Trinity isn’t my

version of the Trinity, to put it mildly. If I were to castigate poor old Jerry

Falwell any more than the press has already done, it would probably be for

this: Christian churches are trying ever so hard to promote a rebirth of

spirituality in the ranks, (which is good) but oftimes the nature of the trinity

gets lost in these efforts, these revivals if you will (which, I believe, is bad).

So I want to look at this Pentecost by talking about the Trinity, that

classical three-way scheme we have at looking at God. Now I know Trinity

Sunday is next week, but I’m going to go ahead anyway.

God the Father is the right place to start. Despite the problems we

might have in imagining a force that can create something out of nothing, we

at least have that parental image of one who sets all things up and keeps

them running (or at least the parts of the universe that we have discovered). God the Father creates, maintains, and controls the forces that are

continually at work in creation. (As an aside, the discovery last month of

earth-like planets in other solar systems, really rocks my boat! Is there more

creation out there? Maybe another sermon.)

In the trinity, we deal secondly, though not on a subordinate level, with God the son – Jesus -- elevated by his link to us creatures, into the role of redeemer. How can such a miracle happen we wonder. Through the grace of God comes the answer. It’s something we cannot fully understand though we certainly sense it. The incarnation of God as flesh and blood astounds and mystifies. To love and live as we do, to develop human relationships and to die for us are all aspects of what we call God the Son.

But Jesus is no longer with us on this world. We dealt with that very issue last week when we explored the manifold aspects of the ascension. Human relationships are severed, sometimes with understandable remorse. The funeral of Jim Rarey, unknown to most of you, but Rose’s cousin and the husband of one of Margy’s colleagues, makes that clear to us. When one of us dies, we are all diminished, and as survivors, we feel as though, bit by bit, we are left on our own. But are we?

The answer is “no.” We are never left alone.

That brings us to the third part of the trinity, that is the Godhead, as we perceive it, the Holy Spirit. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, The Holy Spirit is even harder to define than the aspects of God as creator and redeemer.

The Holy Spirit slips into our consciousness in a rather vague form when we hear about the incarnation of Jesus. The Holy Spirit appears ever so briefly in passages about the temptation of Christ in the wilderness, and Jesus himself refers to the Holy Spirit in a number of miracles. But today, here it is, full blown and powerful.

So how do we react to this miraculous power? Are we to speak in tongues, heal and curse in its name? Again, the answer is “no.” That’s the Falwell technique, and it’s inappropriate.

I think rather that we wait patiently, expectantly, praying to this aspect of the godhead that we might be of use to others in manifesting god to them.

We pray to let the spirit to use us rather than usurping the spirit’s role.

I charge you, as a priest in God’s Holy Catholic Church, to wait and pray. Creation on this planet is a past event, but what about all those new worlds? Our redemption occurred here once and for all many years ago. But the Holy Spirit is not bound by time or distance. Today, for us on this orb, it is the now-ness of god in our lives. And your charge is to listen for godly direction. On Pentecost, we learn to LISTEN, and then maybe to preach, as it becomes us. Actions, as you know, speak louder then words, and to act out the gospel is our job as well

I warned you that Pentecost was a hard thing to talk about, so in fact I invoked the trinity, those three perceptions of God as we have perceived God: the loving parent that we can see by all that is around us, the redemption of that world by Jesus that we feel so clearly in our hearts, and the guiding and governing of the Holy Spirit that will happen as we LISTEN.

Today is not the birthday of the church, it is instead, rather the commissioning of us to do what the we the redeemed are called to do.

Amen

Ascension 05/20/07

As I normally do on Tuesdays (though in this case it was a Wednesday), I looked over past sermons to give me a clue about the current one for today. One thing I learned was that they were all of a similar nature: that a physical ascension was a bit hard to swallow in this age. Then, after reviewing about a half-dozen of them, the thought occurred to me that maybe there was another way to approach the topic: head on.

Why not just accept the ascension as it is and move on to Pentecost, which is just as bizarre an event as the resurrection and the ascension?

Galileo, Newton, and Einstein might take issue with me, but they’re all dead, and we proclaim Jesus as alive still.

The now thoroughly disputed “discovery” of Jesus and his family in Israeli tombs leave us with that central issue: the resurrected Jesus did in fact have a body, one that ate fish, as we mused about a few weeks ago.

So I ask you for a moment to consider the ascension as a fact perhaps, rather than holy myth, concocted by the evangelists.

As far as the story goes, we have several issues to deal with. They are these:

First, we are told that the resurrected Jesus has a body – a real body – and if he is to go to heaven from which he came, he needs to do something with it. He can’t just say “poof” and disappear. Real bodies, as we know, don’t do that.

Secondly, for the Holy Spirit to do what happens on Pentecost, Jesus needs to have his final parting with his faithful band of brothers and sisters (and mother, actually). He says, quite earnestly, “I am going to my father, but I will not leave you comfortless”.

But he has to go somewhere with that body of his, and he had to leave his friends. His task here was over.

Third: Now I understand that you and I don’t have much truck with a three-decker universe, but to the ancient mind, there wasn’t much question about it. Heaven was up there, Hell was below us, and those of us on the Earth were in the middle. It was easy to comprehend, and it made some sort of sense, since the ancients didn’t have Copernicus or NASA to contradict them.

So, what makes any more sense that what is presented to us?

Issue Number One: The body of Jesus needs to go somewhere.

Issue Number Two: The Holy Spirit is on its way and Jesus is going to return to the Father.

Issue Number Three: If the universe is perceived as three-layered, what better way to demonstrate departure that to go UP to God?

The resurrection is all but inconceivable, as is the miraculous commissioning at Pentecost. Of these three post-crucifixion events, the ascension actually seems the most logical, so why do we seem to have trouble with it, given Easter and Pentecost staring us in the face?

We Episcopalians like to think of ourselves as “sophisticated” Christians, but I’m beginning to wonder how wise we may be. Often we forget that God can do whatever God pleases.

If God invokes natural law, then God can revoke natural law at God’s pleasure.

Dead bodies can become alive.

Jesus can ascend

Apostles can speak in tongues

Well, just for this year, think about it in these terms. Amen.

05/13/07 Rogation Sunday

You might have noticed that I asked Joel to put the word homily where the word sermon regularly appears in the bulletin for this morning, and you may have heard me make that distinction before. The word sermon connotes more of an exhortation, whereas the word homily more properly implies instruction. This morning I have chosen to be instructive when it comes to the inclusion of rogation days in our liturgical life.

Rogare incidentally, from which rogation comes, is Latin for “to ask,” and what was asked for in ancient times, was the help of God to make things grow, not a bad idea, actually. Until recently, they seemed like quaint little throw backs in the liturgical year.

You see, we live in a post agrarian society. As recently as the generation of our grandparents, this country was all about farming. Margy’s grandfather, George Holmes, was a prosperous man, raising sugar beets in California’s Sacramento Valley. In those older days, rogation meant something. Today, it seems a bit of our Elizabethan an