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“Come to me all you that labor and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

As Christians, our job is to follow Jesus and to try our best to pattern our lives after his. 

Jesus tells us in these verses that he is gentle and humble in heart.

So let’s take a look at humility and how the humility of Jesus can inform our lives as Christians. 

Now way back in the 1300’s, John Wycliffe, who was the first person to translate the Bible into English, said that “humility always requires concrete deeds.”  

Certainly, we can see this aspect of humility played out in the life of Jesus. 

Jesus spent his time serving others as he walked with us on this earth.  He didn’t take time to think about himself because he was too busy doing these concrete deeds– teaching, healing, and performing miracles.  And in all that he did, Jesus pointed not to himself, but to the glory of his Father. 

Ulrich Luz, in his definitive commentary on Matthew, provides the following information about Count Zinzendorf’s take on humility.

Count Zinzendorf is one of the great theologians of the Moravian Church (and we Episcopalians are in full communion with the Moravians).

Zinzendorf says that being humble means that we carry out good so quickly that our left hands don’t even know what our right hands are doing. 

And—that we don’t take the time to think about our past good deeds, because we immediately have another thing given to us to do. 

Zinzendorf says that “This is what it means to learn humility from the Father.”
 

I had never heard of Veronica Maz until her obituary, written by Adam Bernstein, appeared in The Washington Post  this past Wednesday.  What an amazing woman!

The story of her life is a fantastic illustration of true humility.

In 1970. Dr. Maz was a professor at Georgetown University. 

One winter day she took two of her sociology students into Washington “to see poverty close up.  They talked to a few of the homeless people who were roasting chicken claws over fire barrels.”

What happens next is a pivotal moment in Dr. Maz’s life.

“ ‘And then I was going back to my car and my real nice comfortable home, and a man fell down right in front of me, right on the sidewalk.  And I just walked around him and got in my car.  And when I got in my car, I started talking to myself.  I said, ‘Why didn’t you help him?’  Well, I just assumed he was drunk.  He could’ve had a heart attack…All that night I didn’t sleep.  It bothered me personally.’”

Shortly after this experience, Dr, Maz left her position as a professor at Georgetown University and devoted the rest of her life to the poor, hungry, abused and homeless residents of Washington, DC.

Bothered by seeing “armies of men and women rummaging through trashcans behind the city’s fancy restaurants, competing with rats for the scraps,” Maz joined forces with the Rev. Horace McKenna of St Aloysiuis Catholic Church in Northeast Washington, and in 1971, with Father McKenna’s help, she opened, on a shoestring budget, So Others Might Eat, which became known as SOME. 

People could come to what had been an empty storefront for coffee and sandwiches supplied by a local vending machine company.

And in just two years, SOME became the city’s largest soup-kitchen operation.

Eventually, SOME became a halfway house and counseling center for recovering alcoholics.  Meanwhile, Maz, concerned about the multitudes of women who kept showing up at SOME, persuaded the SOME board to open Shalom House, which had space for eight homeless women.  When the house opened in 1973, two hundred women appeared in the first week seeking help.

So three years later, Dr. Maz opened the House of Ruth, a shelter for abused women. 

Dr. Maz’s next project focused on the vulnerable children of the city, who fended for themselves on streets filled with prostitutes and drug dealers.  This group, known as Martha’s Table, now serves over two hundred children a day. 

No wonder the Post headline describes Dr. Maz as D.C.’s Patron Saint of the hungry and the abused.

Her life is an inspiring example of Wycliffe’s statement that humility always requires concrete deeds.  

And her life is also a fine example of someone who understood the true meaning of “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Dr. Maz wore her yoke easily because she responded to the needs she saw around her with vision—this work became her purpose in life.

Her vision was  to see the reign of God being brought  into reality on the streets of DC—good news being brought to the poor, the hungry fed, the oppressed set free.

She worked toward a future described by Ernest Nichol’s hymn with this refrain, “And Christ’s great kingdom will come on earth, The kingdom of love and light.”

So today, as we leave this place, let’s  pray to discover the purpose that God has for each one of us.

Let’s pray for the strength and the humility to do the work that God has given us to do that will help God’s love and light become a reality for someone today. 

And let’s thank God that we are yoked with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who helps us to do the work that God gives each one of us to do, no matter how hard or challenging,  with gladness and singleness of heart, and with rest for our souls.  

Amen. 

Resources

“Veronica Maz, 1924-2014  Helped start 3 D.C. social service agencies” by Adam Bernstien, in The Washington Post, Wednesday, July 3, 2014. 

Luz, Ulrich.  Matthew 8-20 A Commentary in the series  Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible.  “11:25-30,” pages 155-176.  Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN.  2001. 

The Baptist Hymnal,  Convention Press, Nashville, TN, 1956, “We’ve a Story to Tell,” Hymn 455. words and music by H. Ernest Nichol. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey! 

This is America!

The land of the free and the home of the brave!

Unalienable rights—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness!

Don’t tread on me!

I’m an American.

I don’t want to be a slave of anything or beholden to anybody.   

And so when Paul tells me that as a human being, I really am a slave, I get my back up.  I get resistant. 

Paul wants me to give some serious thought to which master I’m going to serve—sin or God.

And when I get past my resistance to the slavery language Paul uses, then I can see that what Paul really is talking about is freedom.

Because when we choose to be enslaved to God, we are on the road to life and true freedom.

Harold Masback, in the commentary on Romans in the Feasting on the Word Commentary for this season after Pentecost, points out that  this passage from Romans helps us, as Americans, “to reexamine just what values we lift up on our national holidays.”

Masback goes on to say that we tend to think of our freedom as “freedom from.”

When we gather in Port Royal on the 4^th of July and our Town Crier reads the entire Declaration of Independence, we are reminded all over again that yes, indeed, the colonists did want freedom from the “tyranny of the crown,” and this tyranny is defined in a lengthy list of examples. 

But just as soon as we get focused on the idea that freedom from anything that will keep us from the pursuit of happiness and the gratification of our own desires is the only kind of freedom there is, then we become slaves to the tyranny of our own passions. 

In the opening verse of the Romans passage today, Paul says, “Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.”   

So is Paul against freedom, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? 

No!  Paul is all for freedom—the real freedom that brings with it life and happiness. 

And that’s why he didn’t want the Christians in the Roman church and wouldn’t want us either, for that matter, to get so caught up in our own personal pursuits of happiness that we fall back into sin, just doing what we desire at the moment, what feels good right now, being addicted to the avoidance of pain at any cost and the pursuit of pleasure at any price. 

Paul wants us to have the genuine freedom that, as Masback puts it in his commentary, “allows us to look beyond the moment and be obedient to a higher call—God’s call.”

Masback  says that this higher call that Paul talks about is “entirely consistent with …. our nation’s earliest conceptions of freedom. “

Masback’s illustration comes from Alexis de Tocqueville. 

In his 1835  book, Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that “I think I see the whole destiny of America embodied in the first Puritan who landed on these shores” –in seeking freedom from popes, archbishops and kings, the Puritans found “freedom for  covenantal love of God and neighbor.”

Our closing hymn today is “America the beautiful,” written by Katherine Lee Bates.  Masback says that the idea of “freedom for” echoes through the hymn—

In the first verse, we hear this phrase “Crown thy good with brotherhood” –the focus on community, the common good.

In the second verse, these lines, “O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life.”

These heroes gave up their private lives of safety and privilege because they heard a higher calling–giving themselves for the vision of a new nation, a nation that would embody the ideal of mercy. 

And this phrase, again about freedom from the immediate gratification of our own personal desires so that we can seek a greater good that has not yet been realized—“Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law.”

I especially like the third verse of this hymn because in it see a vision of our dreams when  we servants of God dream God’s dream—“the dream that sees beyond the years”  –“thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears.”

This dream brings to mind the description of our eternal lives with God where there is no more hunger and thirst, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

As an American, I believe that this is the America that the colonists sought and the America that we servants of God continue to seek—a brotherhood of all people, a country of welcome, reflecting God’s own hospitality, a country  where Jesus would walk the streets and find his disciples extending his welcome and offering living water to those who thirst. 

As Christians, this is our higher calling—to be free from our own selfish pursuit of happiness and free from the fear of what we might lose, so that we can be free to be who God would have us be, and to do what God would have us do–to be God’s servants, full of welcome and hospitality, people who follow the example of Jesus, speaking out and to working for liberty and justice for all.

Amen

Resource:  “Romans 6:12-23, Homiletical Perspective” by Harold E. Masback III, pages 182-187, in  Feasting on the Word:  Year A Volume 3 Pentecost and Season after Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16).  David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors.  Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2011.   

 

 

 

As Christians, we think of ourselves as disciples of Jesus.  All Christians do.  And so today I want to talk about a particular aspect of the nature of discipleship.   

Discipleship is not a given.  Discipleship is something we have to choose each and every day of our lives. 

Our lives of discipleship begin with the sacrament of baptism.  Generally, in our Anglican tradition, baptism takes place when we are infants or young children, too young to remember our baptisms. 

Since we are literally holding a new life in our arms we rarely focus on the part of the baptismal service that reminds us of a major part of what discipleship involves –and that is being baptized into the death of Jesus. 

In his letter to the Romans, Paul says that “therefore we have been buried with Jesus by baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” 

When we choose to lead lives of discipleship, we are indeed choosing newness of life, but in order to reach that newness of life, we must die to those things that we put ahead of God in our lives.   

As he was talking to the disciples and commissioning them to go out into the surrounding countryside spreading the good news, Jesus was clear about the necessity of making this choice to give up anything more important than God.   

He used family as an example, because for the Jewish people, families were of the utmost importance, just as they are for many of us.  But God has to be even  more important to us than our families.   

Part of choosing to be a disciple each day is to be honest with ourselves about what gives our lives meaning and what we really live for—

For some people, work is all that matters.  Without work, some people would lose their direction and their lives would have no meaning at all.  Some people are addicted to a daily routine.  Some people are addicted to money, some people to antiques.  Some people are addicted to certain ways of eating.  For some people, life is meaningless without alcohol.  Some people are addicted to religion, power and control.  Some people put guns first in their lives.  Some people are in love with violence.  For some, it’s pornography.  And the list goes on.   

We can put anything in our lives before God,  even and especially the good things,  if we aren’t vigilant about consciously choosing discipleship and putting God first in our lives each and every morning when we first wake up and thank God for a new day.   

Making this choice for discipleship each day is not always easy and does not always bring peace and joy into our lives at first.  Sometimes this choice to be a disciple is as cutting as a sword and as devastating as war as we try to cut out of our lives the things that we put ahead of God.   

This life of discipleship can be as hard as carrying a cross toward the death we have to die to the things we are addicted to in order to be brought into resurrection life.   

Being a disciple sounds daunting, doesn’t it?  And it is!  The Christian life of discipleship is definitely the most challenging way of life we could ever choose for ourselves. 

In fact, we could never live as disciples without God’s help and mercy, and God’s presence with us as the Holy Spirit, as well as the companionship and support of one another.   

One of the great gifts that Jesus gave to the disciples before his death and resurrection was his last supper with them.  As he approached his own cross and death, Jesus gave the disciples a source of ongoing strength that they would receive every time they sat down together and shared the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation, the very body and blood of Jesus given for them.   

And Jesus also gives us the gift of receiving ongoing strength for discipleship every time we are present to God and God is present to us through the Eucharist.   

Last Wednesday, a group of us went to visit Maymont, a Gilded Age mansion in Richmond, Virginia.   

In this huge house full of expensive and elegant furnishings and appointments, one thing stood out for me above everything else. 

The door knocker on the front door was engraved with these words. 

“Faith shuts the door at night, and mercy opens it in the morning.” 

This doorknocker reminds me that at the end of each day of discipleship, I can close the door at the end of the day with the faith that in spite of my shortcomings, God will forgive the ways I’ve come up short. 

Tomorrow is a new day. 

God’s mercy opens the door to the new day.  And I get another chance to choose discipleship.   

And as I begin the day, I can pray as the psalmist prays, “In your great mercy, O God, answer me with your unfailing help” as I try to put you first this day and live as your disciple, carrying your good news into the world.   

Amen. 

 

Today is Trinity Sunday, the day on the church calendar that we are thankful as Christians that our God is a Trinitarian God.  So let’s take a look at this idea of God as Three in One.   

The Trinity is a theological way of talking about Unity—Unity in Community. 

In the beginning, based on what scripture tells us, nothing existed except God and chaos– the emptiness of deep, dark waters without any shape or form.

Now the wind from God, God’s breath, God’s very life, swept over the face of these waters, swept over chaos, and out of chaos came order, and not simply order, but community—

From  God’s breath and God’s word the great community of creation unfolds;  the universe, heaven and earth, and all of the teeming diversity of life in the sky and in the sea, and on the land, and we ourselves, human beings—

For  we too are born out of this breath of God and word of God, made in God’s own image, born into community with God and with all of creation.

And  God saw everything that God had made and behold, it was very good.

We all know what happens next. 

We human beings, in spite of our assignment from God to care for one another and for creation,  bring division into this perfect community. 

And so begins the story of our descent back into chaos and God’s efforts to bring us back into community. 

We Christians believe that after God tried all sorts of things and nothing worked to get us back into communion with God and with creation and with one another, God got radical.

God sent Jesus to live and die as one of us—God with skin on. 

We know who God is, because we know Jesus, the man who came among us to show us how to live in the perfect community of love with God, with creation, and with one another, the man who in his dying and resurrection defeated chaos and death,   

And Jesus has never left us and will never leave us.  Jesus still lives among us.

Matthew’s gospel  ends with these words, “And lo, I am with you always, to the ends of the age.” 

Jesus is with us now and throughout eternity. 

In Luke and John, Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to be his spirit with us, even in his physical absence.  The Holy Spirit is the way we Christians understand the continuing and life giving presence of Jesus and the eternal  breath of God in our lives. 

And we see this understanding of God as Three in One beginning to form for the early Christians,  in this ending of Paul’s Second Letter to the  Corinthians, for instance.

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

The Trinity is the perfect Unity in Community, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit dwelling together in perfect and everlasting love, creativity, order and expansiveness.

Scripture makes clear that God is always reaching out even as we and creation choose to exist in chaos rather than in this community of love.

God is always seeking to bring us and all of creation back out of the chaos, division and close mindedness  that we keep throwing ourselves into when we sin,  back into Unity in Community,  that pulsating center of love that is the Trinity itself.

I need three volunteers. 

Thank you.  Now I’d like for the three of you to join hands and make a circle.  And circle around—that’s good.  OK, everyone—we have one circle here with three parts making the circle and we’ll pretend that inside this circle there is perfect unity and love—but there’s something not quite complete  about this circle when it comes to helping us understand the Trinity—does anyone have an idea about what could be different about this circle to make it more like the Trinity?

Right!

OK, volunteers, face outward, and you’re holding your hands out and hoping to draw everyone into your circle, and your circle keeps on getting bigger and bigger and bigger as you draw more and more people in—

That’s what the Trinity is all about –Unity in Community, a community of love that is never complete until all of creation has been drawn back into this vast expanding circle of perfect love.   

As Christians, our first challenge is to long to be in this circle of love with God and with one another and with creation,

And longing for it, to stay in it—but that’s not all.  We can’t simply be in a circle looking within –

Our challenge as Christians is also to look outward, reach outward, to draw others into this great circle of love, so that they, in turn, can do the same.  

Jesus puts it this way at the end of the gospel according to Matthew—

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Longing for God, living in God, reaching out with God’s love—

With the hope that someday, God will once more see everything that God has made and be able to say—and Behold, it IS very good. 

Amen.

Today we celebrate the arrival of the Holy Spirit. 

Of course, the Holy Spirit has been present in the story of our salvation since the beginning of creation–

This Holy Spirit is the same wind/spirit from God that blew over the waters in the beginning and contained all of God’s good creation, and still constantly renews the face of the earth. 

But we human beings love clear beginnings—days we can mark and celebrate, so this day on our church calendar, this day of Pentecost, we celebrate the arrival of the Holy Spirit to the earliest followers of Jesus.

Scripture, in its wisdom, gives us two separate accounts of this event.

John tells us in his gospel that on the day of the resurrection, Jesus appeared in the house with the locked doors where the disciples had gathered out of fear of what might happen next.

“Peace be with you,” Jesus says. 

And then, after greeting them, Jesus gives the disciples the gift of the Holy Spirit that he has been promising to them throughout his ministry –

“Receive the Holy Spirit.”

–his very breath of life, the wind that will sweep through their lives, renewing them and filling them with joy, peace and power –the breath that will send them out on missions to places that they cannot begin to imagine.  Jesus tells them, “As the Father sends me, so I send you.”

Now Luke’s timing for the arrival of the Holy Spirit differs from John’s account.  The early church fathers based our church calendar on Luke’s writing. 

Luke tells us at the beginning of Acts that our resurrected Lord has been appearing to the disciples during the forty days after his resurrection.  He has instructed them to remain in Jerusalem until God’s power comes on them from on high.

And now that day has come. 

Luke tells us that “suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.  And all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”

The Holy Spirit, like the rush of a violent wind, fills the disciples with fearlessness and power.  

And in a great foreshadowing of the fact that they will carry the Good News of God’s love  to the ends of the earth, the disciples find themselves speaking in languages of people from all over the world. 

So, joy, peace, fearlessness, power, and a mission—these are the gifts of the Holy Spirit for the early church.

Paul gets even more specific about the gifts that the Corinthians have received—the list we heard read just a minute ago—and the important thing to remember here is that the Holy Spirit activates unique gifts in each one of us, and these unique gifts that manifest themselves in us are given to us by the Holy Spirit for the common good.

And not only that, but the gift of the Holy Spirit draws us together and makes us one body. 

We are baptized into one body, and we are made to drink of one Spirit, the living water and breath of life that flows from God into each one of our lives. 

The spirit blesses us in baptism by bringing us into this one body, the church. The Spirit blesses us through the Eucharist, giving us the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation, feeding us and making us strong and holding us together as the Body of Christ.

Sometimes, like the disciples locked in that room on Easter Day, we are so anxious and full of worry that the Holy Spirit comes as our Comforter, as intimate as a lover’s gentle kiss, giving us strength we didn’t know we had to get through a hard time.  The Holy Spirit comes alongside us to accompany us and to help us get through the difficult times in our lives.  

And other times, we are like the disciples waiting in that room in Jerusalem, waiting for discernment and for power to come on high so that we can carry out the mission that God has given us to do. 

Gentle as a mother’s arms around us, as powerful as a violent wind, as cleansing as fire, the Holy Spirit comes into our lives when we least expect it and when we most need it.   And we can give thanks to God for this gift.

So today, this day of Pentecost, is a new beginning, not only for the early church, but also for each one of us because this day is the day that we are called to imagine what can happen when  the Holy Spirit suddenly comes roaring into our lives and into this church  like  the rush of a violent wind, or even like the very breath of Jesus, breathing peace on each one of us. 

How will life change for us if suddenly our anxieties are blown away so that there’s space in our lives for God’s peace and power? 

What if we can’t stop shouting out the Good News to anyone who will listen that God loves us and Jesus Christ is Lord?

What if suddenly the old things in us are being made new, and being brought to their perfection? 

What if we suddenly realize that we have gifts we haven’t even known about—and the power to use them? 

What if we let the Holy Spirit drive us out of our places of comfort and peace to be sent wherever God wants us to go for the common good? 

As the Holy Spirit has spoken at the beginning of creation and to God’s followers throughout history, now the Holy Spirit speaks to us. 

“Be filled with God’s creativity, God’s power, God’s peace, God’s joy, God’s mission.”

Now let’s pray. 

“God of all power, on this new day, breathe into us the breath of Your life, and through the power of Your Holy Spirit send us out into Your world.

Give us the strength and courage of your Holy Spirit, so that filled with the Spirit, we can go where you would have us go, and love and serve you with great gladness, and singleness of heart, from this day forth and for ever more. 

Amen.   

The other day I was clearing away a pile of what turned out to be mostly trash against the back wall of my in-laws’ house in Fredericksburg.   

And I found this old shovel.  And I asked myself, “Is this something I could use later, maybe fix up?”   

After all, this shovel is something that used to be in great shape, functional, and useful.  I found myself wondering who had used it—maybe my mother-in-law had used it for gardening.  And  I can halfway use it, even now.   

Maybe it could be fixed up again and take on its former glory.  So in spite of the fact it’s not that useful right now, maybe I’ll just keep it and think about getting a new handle for it.   

And so I brought it home and put it under the house and promptly forgot about it until I read today’s reading from Acts. 

At the beginning of Acts, we find Jesus has appeared to the disciples many times during the forty days after the resurrection, and has asked them to stay in Jerusalem until God sends them power from on high.   

So now, Jesus and the disciples are together again, and the disciples say to Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”   

The disciples are looking backward, into the past.  They were asking Jesus an old question, one that had been on their minds during their time with him before his crucifixion and death.   

They’re still caught up in the idea that the Messiah will restore Israel to its former glory.  They’ve gotten stuck in a construct from the past .  Their question suggests magical thinking—that God is going to swoop in and instantly change the current reality into something they remember as a glorious past.   

Now Jesus doesn’t come right out and tell the disciples that their question is focused on the past—that they have themselves stuck by looking back and wondering if what used to be is going to be restored.   

Instead, Jesus responds to their question with an answer that moves the focus of the disciples away from the past and gets them to look into the future, to think in a way unlimited by the confines of what used to be the nation of Israel. 

He tells them that it isn’t for them to know God’s timing, and MEANWHILE—they will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them, and they will be witnesses for Jesus in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. 

And Jesus is going to give them  the power to do this through the gift  of the Holy Spirit.  And they will be involved in establishing God’s kingdom on earth.   

Joseph Campbell once said that we must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned so as to live the life that’s waiting for us.   

And that is exactly what Jesus is telling these disciples.  Time to get rid of this plan in your mind of restoring the kingdom of Israel as it once was so that you can go forward and live the life that’s waiting for you  as my witnesses.   

And then Jesus is lifted up and a cloud takes him out of their sight.   

And before they even have time to look away from this amazing vision, two men in white robes are standing next to them asking,
“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” 

Because the  disciples  are in danger of getting stuck a second time—stuck right on this spot, with their eyes continually lifted and watching and watching and watching for the return of Jesus,  and in so doing forgetting  to seek  the life that Jesus has laid out for them.   

And so, remembering that Jesus had asked them to stay in Jerusalem until the coming of the Holy Spirit, they stop staring into heaven and travel back to Jerusalem, to the upper room where they are staying, and they all devote themselves to prayer while they wait to receive the power to carry out their mission when the Holy Spirit comes upon them.   

Today, we are the disciples, and Jesus has also called us to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth.  And it’s just as easy for us as it was for the early disciples  to get stuck.

When we’re stuck, we find ourselves dwelling in the past, wishing for what used to be and praying over and over–“Lord,  is this the time that you will restore the church to its former glory of several decades ago before this decline began?”   We can’t move ahead in our witness because we’re too busy looking back at what used to be and longing for it.   

And in this day and age, it’s also easy to get stuck looking into heaven and asking, “How long, Lord?  How long will it be before you come back and get this world straightened out?” 

As you know, we are spending some time in discernment here at St Peter’s, thinking about the various ways that God might be calling us to be witnesses in the world.   

And while we’re waiting to receive some input and power from the Holy Spirit regarding how God is calling us, this church in particular, to be witnesses to Jesus in this world, 

this is a good time for us to follow the example of the early disciples, and to come together on a regular basis and to devote ourselves to fervent prayer as we wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon us, 

because without this shared discipline of prayer,  we’ll be about as effective in our witness  as this old shovel.  Yes, I can still dig with it, but without a good handle, I won’t have the power to use this shovel effectively. I’ll be limited in what I can actually do with it.   

So as we prepare for next Sunday and for the coming of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the life of this church, 

Let’s be in prayer about this future that Jesus has set before us.   

“You will be my witnesses in Port Royal, and in Caroline County, and in Virginia and in the United States and to the ends of the earth.” 

Keeping  this future before us,  we can let go of those parts of the past that have  us stuck, and be free let Jesus lead us into this moment, this day, and this age with intention– to  give God the glory through our witness– so that God may be glorified in each one of us, in this church and to the world.   Amen.

 

Today is Rogation Sunday, the day on the church calendar that we ask for God to bless our labors and to give us a good harvest.  This custom dates back to the early centuries of the church, when people lived in communities that were much more agrarian and closer to creation than we tend to be today. 

You might say that Rogation Sunday is the church’s Earth Day, predating our current Earth Day by hundreds and hundreds of years.  

So I want to share an image of  God that is particularly appropriate for today, because this image helps to carry us into a closer relationship not only with God, but with all of creation. 

Imagine a huge radiating  golden circle, a circle great enough to hold all of God’s creation, including this earth, with its amazing diversity of life, and all people. 

Let’s call this huge golden circle The Body of God, based on one of the metaphors that theologian Sally McFague uses to describe God in her book, Models of God.     

We know that we are made in the image of God, and Jesus came to dwell among us, to pitch his tent among us, in a human body, the body of God. 

And Jesus also described himself with images from God’s creation. 

Jesus is  bread made from grains of wheat ground and baked into a loaf, and Jesus is wine, made from the crushing of grapes.

The Holy Spirit appears as a bird, as wind, as flame, as the breath of life itself. 

Water flows through our scripture and liturgies, gushing up to eternal life, as Jesus puts it. 

Creation is not God, we are not God, but we and creation dwell in God .  We are intimately related to one another and to all of creation. 

Think  of St Francis—in his Canticle of Brother Sun, he writes about all of creation praising God, and he refers to Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind, and Sister Water. And I love this– Sister Mother Earth.  St Francis understands that he is intimately related to this creation of which he is a part, because he is dwelling in the Body of God. 

Today’s scriptures also provide some illumination regarding this way of understanding God. 

The Greeks in today’s reading from Acts intuitively know about the Body of God.  Paul helps them name what they already know but cannot describe.

Paul tells them that their unknown God is universal, the creator of all things, who gives to all things life and breath.  And it is within this Creator God, this Body of God, that we live and move and have our being. 

“In him we live and move and have our being,” is a familiar line in the Collect for Guidance that will pray this morning when we get to the prayers. 

And Jesus describes this great golden circle, The Body of God, to his disciples in the comforting and strengthening talk that he shares with them before being lifted up on the cross. 

They have already known what it is like to be surrounded by and to live in The Body of God—and Jesus reminds them of this fact when he says to them, “You know him (the Spirit of Truth—Jesus, that is),  because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” 

And the disciples will live even more completely in The Body of God when Jesus departs and sends the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, to abide with them.

“On that day you will know that I am in my Father,  and you in me, and I in you.”

Another way of saying this, which I have said many times, is that we are being drawn up by God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit into the very life of the Trinity—yes, another way of thinking of that huge golden circle is that God longs to draw all of creation and all people into this Trinitarian circle, the circle of God’s golden, eternal and infinite abiding love.

If we believe that life with all of creation, with one another and with God takes place within this golden circle of The Body of God, then we begin to see creation differently.   

We no longer see the created world as simply something to be used for our own benefit. 

Instead, we come to know that we are in an intimate relationship with creation,   because we, along with all of God’s creation dwell within the Body of God. 

At the beginning of today’s gospel, Jesus said to the disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” 

And the two great commandments are to love God with all our hearts and minds and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. 

And our neighbor includes the natural world around us. 

Unfortunately, many issues that have to do with creation have been politicized in the last several decades and people automatically take sides on things like climate change, and strip mining, and water rights and a host of other things based on their political persuasions. 

But today’s lectionary passages remind us that how we care for creation is not a political issue, but at its very heart, a theological issue.  How we care for creation is an indication of how we care for ourselves, for one another, and for the Body of God itself. 

When we fail to love one another, when we fail to care for creation, then we are bringing suffering and pain and sickness into the Body of God. 

And when we do our best to love one another and all of creation, and to love God, we are contributing to the health of the Body of God. 

Paul tells the Greeks that Jesus will judge the world with righteousness.  With these words, Paul reminds us that how we choose to  care or not care for one another and creation matters to God. 

And Jesus said,

“Because I live, you also will live.  On that day you will know that I am in my Father,  and you in me, and I in you.”

Today is our day to love Jesus, and to keep his commandments. 

Today is our day to let ourselves be drawn into that great radiating golden circle that is the Body of God, to find God present in those around us and in all of creation,

Today is our day to live and love in Jesus, to care for one another and for all of God’s magnificent creation,

And today is our day to be enfolded and embraced and healed and strengthened and empowered within the Body of God. 

Amen.   

Resource: 

McFague, Sally.  Models of God:  Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age.   Philadelphia:  Fortress Press, 1987.   

 

 

 

 

Do you remember this song? 

“Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam  and the deer and the antelope play.  Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.”   

All of us know the words to this old folk song.  In addition to presenting an idealized view of wide open spaces,  I think the ongoing popularity of this song has to do with the following line– 

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word. 

No one likes to be discouraged.  And so today’s lectionary is particularly valuable for us. 

Because encouragement is at its heart.     

In today’s epistle, Peter tells the people in the early church, and this is also an encouraging message for us.   

We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.    

God has chosen us and called us. 

God has chosen us and called us to proclaim God’s mighty acts. 

How we are to proclaim God’s mighty acts as this church is going to be something we will consider right after lunch with the help Sally O’Brien, who is from the Episcopal Church Building Fund.  Eunice and I heard Sally speak at this past year’s Council, and she was so encouraging!  She got us thinking about the incredible potential that this church has to make a difference in this community.  We came home encouraged and excited.   

And so I wanted all of you to have the opportunity to hear what she has to say, so that we can all work together to dream about the best ways we can proclaim God’s mighty acts and to be part of God’s mighty acts in this place and in this time.   

So I’m going to lay a foundation for what’s ahead for us this afternoon based on today’s scripture.   

As you have probably know, the 9-11 Museum on the site of the World Trade Center  in New York City is set to open o the public next week.   

Now one of the interesting things about this museum is that it is 70 feet below ground, built directly on the bedrock that anchored the foundations of the twin towers that collapsed on that fateful day in September.     

Visitors have to descend those 70 feet, to the bedrock, to enter into the heart of the museum—to the foundation, the secure rock that remained untouched in the incredible destruction that took place above it on 9-11. 

My guess is because of the fact that the museum is built on bedrock,  one of the things visitors may think  about is the fact that our nation is resilient and strong, and that acts the acts of mercy and compassion that were shown that awful day are part of our strong foundation as a nation.   

The psalmist writes about bedrock in Psalm 31.   

“Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe, for you are my crag and my stronghold.”   

Peter uses a similar supporting and encouraging image in his letter to the early church as he quotes the prophet Isaiah. 

 “See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious,” our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 

“Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” 

And Jesus himself talks to the disciples about the permanent dwelling place that he is preparing  for them.   

“In my father’s house are many dwelling places.  Believe in God, believe also in me.” 

The  foundation, the bedrock of these dwelling places that Jesus tells the disciples about is God’s merciful love for each and every one of us and our faith in that unfailing love.   

So that’s the first encouraging  thing for us to remember today.

God is our strong rock and Jesus is our cornerstone.   

And here’s another encouraging piece of today’s gospel– 

These stunning words of Jesus— 

“Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and in fact will do greater works than these because I am going to the Father.  I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” 

What an encouraging promise! 

Jesus, even in his physical absence, is still present to us whenever we come together to worship and work in his name. 

Jesus promises the disciples and us that when our worship and work glorify God and God’s presence in the world, then God’s strength will be present in us. 

The writer of Ephesians sums up what I’m trying to say. 

“Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. “ 

“Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever.” 

We are God’s chosen people, who have Jesus Christ as our foundation and cornerstone, and God answers the prayers that we pray in Jesus’ name.   

So today, let’s begin the encouraging process of discerning together, with thanksgiving for all the gifts that God has given us.   

Let’s discern what things  God is asking this church to do in the world to glorify God in the name of Jesus Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Amen. 

Lying awake in the darkness in the middle of the night, my friend Brian heard a voice.

“Hello,” the voice said. 

The voice was warm, somehow familiar, but Brian didn’t know whose voice it was.  The voice didn’t belong to his wife or his son.

Brian wasn’t scared by this voice, but he was puzzled. 

The next morning, Brian told his wife about the voice. 

They were both mystified.

And then about a week later, Brian was hit by a car and killed.

And all of us remembered the warm familiar voice that had greeted Brian in the middle of the night. 

And we wondered.  Was this God’s own voice, preparing Brian for what was about to happen?   Did Brian only imagine the voice?  Was the voice something dangerous?  Was it a voice of warning? 

Who knows?

Unfortunately, some of the most beautiful and beguiling voices in the world are death dealing.

We all know in the depths of our very being the voice of the tempter who first spoke to Eve in the Garden of Eden and made that forbidden piece of fruit sound so enticing that Adam and Eve ended up biting into it and in the process, set the course of human history, a history of losing our way, having to leave Paradise and wander through the wilderness, always seeking and never being quite able to return to that place of perfect peace and God’s presence that Adam and Eve first knew in the Garden. 

And many of us will remember having read the Odyssey, the story of   the adventurous and seemingly endless journey of Odysseus, who is trying to get back home to Ithaca after the Battle of Troy.

On this journey, he hears the song of the Sirens who live on an island that his ship must pass on his way home. 

The Sirens’ song. 

The Sirens have voices that no man can resist.  Sailors who hear the song steer their ships toward the island and end up wrecking their ships on the rocky coast.  The Sirens are surrounded by the bones of those who have died following their voices. 

Odysseus wants to hear their song, but he doesn’t  want to die, so he has  himself tied to the mast of the ship.  His crew, their ears stuffed with beeswax, keep him bound there until the voices of the Sirens fade and Odysseus can no longer hear their irresistible voices. 

What about us? 

How do we know which voices to listen to? 

In today’s gospel, Jesus, is talking to the Pharisees, whose voices had been leading the people astray for quite some time. 

Jesus says,

“The sheep hear his voice.  He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out…and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”

This shepherd leads us toward the abundant life that God longs to give to each and every one of us.  

This abundant life is being part of a flock in which we can draw closer to God and to one another.

Abundant  life is about being brought together by the Holy Spirit into a community where God is in charge and we, the sheep, are intentional about  and dedicated to the study of God’s word;

a community in which we sheep feed and care for and tend one another as God tends to us;

and a community of worship and of prayer—a community in which we intentionally and regularly gather and pray for one another in our deepest and most heartfelt  prayers,

a community into which God brings us, a community that has within it green pastures and still waters and the banquet table set before us,

a community constantly refreshed so that the shepherd can lead it out  into  the world in service.

Now we have a way to test the voices that call to us throughout our lives by asking this question. 

Where is that voice calling us and what is it asking us to do? 

 God’s voice will be calling us into fellowship with the Holy Spirit and with one another.

 This fellowship begins in our hearts as God draws us into the fellowship that the Trinity shares within itself.  The very nature of God is loving community, seeking to draw all into itself and transform all of creation, time and eternity into sheer and shimmering love.

This fellowship may be found in our families, in small groups where two or three are gathered together.

I hope you find this loving fellowship when we come together as this part of  Body of Christ known as St Peter’s.

And this fellowship extends out into the Holy Catholic Church—in our tradition, out through the Diocese, The Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican communion.

And this fellowship extends even into heaven, because the communion of saints still shares in fellowship with us, especially as we gather around the banquet table and share God’s love as we take and bless and break and receive the bread of heaven.

This is the fellowship, with God as the shepherd,  that helps us to figure out and to resist those voices that would lead us astray into a land that is waste.

This is the fellowship that will support us through the times of inevitable suffering that we will endure in this journey through life. 

This is the fellowship that is not afraid to travel with one another through the valley of the shadow of death, because we know that our good shepherd is leading us. 

What about that voice that Brian heard in the middle of the night?

I believe that voice was God, calling Brian toward the gate of eternal life, promising that the Good Shepherd would go ahead of him through the valley of the shadow of death and lead him to his place at the heavenly banquet already spread out for him in the midst of the communion of saints. 

Who knows when you might hear a voice, a warm familiar voice in the middle of the night, a voice on a mountain, a still small voice, or a voice as loud as a trumpet call, an irresistible voice, a tempting voice.

Before you follow that voice, listen closely.  Where is that voice asking you to go and calling you to do? 

If it is calling you to draw closer to God and to others, if it’s the voice of the One who will lead you safely even through the wilderness and painful parts of this life with your cup running over, then you’ll know it’s God’s voice, calling you ever more fully into abundant life. 

Would you open your door to anyone who knocked on it? 

Early in the morning?  Late at night?

To homeless people, drug addicts and dealers, prostitutes, people with nowhere to go? 

And not only OPEN the door, but also invite these people in

And not only invite them in,

But feed them,

And not only feed them,

But have them stay with you,

Sometimes for years?

Leah and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove , who live in Durham, North Carolina, have been welcoming strangers into their lives for over ten years now, and Jonathan has written about some of their experiences in his book, Strangers at my Door, the Story of Finding Jesus in Unexpected Guests. 

Jonathan and Leah are much like the monks of St Benedict’s time, who treated one another and welcomed every guest as Jesus himself.   St Benedict believed that we should see Jesus in the face of every person that we meet and act accordingly, being both the givers and receivers of grace and love toward one another.

And so they created a community called Rutba House.   They  welcome anyone who comes to the door. In spite of the inevitable heartaches and problems they’ve experienced, because of course there have been plenty of those, Jonathan and Leah have found the risen Christ right there with them in these unlikely guests. 

In a less radical way, Shrine Mont is something like Rutba House.  All are welcome.  And our churches, which in many ways are strangers to one another, have also been practicing Benedict’s hospitality by joining together in this time away in our programs, in the dining room, and in our worship.

We too have found the Risen Christ in this place. 

In today’s gospel, two people left Jerusalem and  headed out for the village of Emmaus on the first day of the week toward the end of the day.  They were in shock, and broken hearted because of what they had witnessed, the death of a good man, betrayed by his own people, a man they had hoped would be the one to redeem Israel. 

And on their way,  they met a stranger.

Or rather, a stranger met them. 

And chose to walk along with them, entering into their grief and pain and disappointment;  willing to listen to their story, willing to take the time to help them place their story in the great story of God’s love for them since the beginning of creation.   

And so as evening fell, and darkness neared, the two returned this favor of hospitality and invited the stranger to stay with them.

And so he went in to stay with them. 

And because it was the end of the day, and they were hungry, they sat down to eat.

And the stranger  took the bread in his hands and held it.

And then he blessed it.

And then he broke it.

And then he gave it to them.

In this simple act, one that all of them had participated in thousands of times, the breaking and sharing of bread, Jesus, the Risen Christ,  broke open the meaning of his whole life for these two who had now become his guests. 

Because this is what Jesus did while he was among us.

He took up his life among us, and lived it as one of us.

And Jesus lived a blessed life, completely in tune with God, turning to God, following God’s will for him, living true to what it means to love one another, even when that love meant dying on a cross.

Jesus lived a broken open life, holding onto nothing for himself, holding out all he had to all who needed it—God’s healing unconditional love. 

Jesus was not some sort of fancy artisan loaf of bread that you’d pay a fortune for at a bakery. 

Jesus was just plain old nourishing bread, truly Wonder Bread.   

Bread taken up, blessed, broken, and given. 

God’s gift to us.

We rejoice in this gift of God, taken up, blessed, broken and given, and we receive it with gratitude. 

But that’s not the end of the story.    

Now it’s our turn.

Now it’s our turn to welcome strangers into our midst,

to share the story of God’s great love for us and for all of creation throughout time and eternity.

Now it’s our turn to turn our hearts to one another.

It’s our turn to be bread.

Our turn to let God take us,

Bless us,

And to break us. 

To hold us out to a hungry world.

Amen.