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In our gospel today, we hear that great crowds were following Jesus as he headed toward Jerusalem and his certain death. 

But merely following Jesus did not necessarily equal being a disciple of Jesus, because Jesus turned to them and said,

“None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions…whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

Instantly, vivid scenes flash into my mind of people who have done just that.

After Christianity swept the Roman Empire, a young man named Anthony, who lived in Egypt, found himself rich by the day’s standards because of the inheritance that his parents had left him when they died.

He planned to live comfortably off of his inheritance, until one day in church he heard the gospel in which Jesus tells the rich young ruler to go, sell what you have and give to the poor. 

Anthony was so moved by these words that he did just that—sold his property, keeping back only a small reserve fund on which he and his sister could live, and so he walked out of his village, left everything that he had found so familiar and so safe.

Eventually, he ended up in the desert and a great monastic community grew up around him—the beginning of the great monastic orders that have provided us with such a powerful insights into growing a spiritual life, and have had such an impact on western civilization itself. 

And of course, St Francis comes to mind.

Some of you may have seen the film Brother Sun, Sister Moon, about St Francis.

Francis lacked for nothing.  He was from one of the richest families in the town of Assisi, who had made their fortune through the production of expensive fabrics.

And yet, moved by the words of Jesus about possessions, Francis became more and more uncomfortable with all that his family had, and finally took action.

In the movie, we see the young Francis hurling bolts of beautifully colored fabric from the windows of his father’s business, far above the street, the fabrics bursting with color, richness, opening out like butterfly wings, drifting into the streets below

—was this young man mad to be throwing away the family fortune so literally?

Finally, Francis is brought before the priest in town, and as Francis renounces the richness and decadence of the church itself,

he strips himself and stands there naked and vulnerable, to the horror and derision of the townfolk.

 Francis turns and walks naked out of the town, following God’s call for him.

And then, in our time, we have Mother Teresa, who left home at age eighteen.  She left behind her mother and her sister.  She never saw them again.   She became a nun. Later, she left  community to go to India.   

 Mr Teresa said that “I was to leave the convent and to help the poor while living among them.”

 In the first year of her new life, she had to beg for her food just as the poor people around her did.

 She was tempted to return to the comforts of her monastic life, where her every need had been met. 

And yet, she believed that, in her words, “Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross.”

 She went on to found the Sisters of Charity. 

The witness of her own poverty and her selfless life lived for the benefit of the poor has become for us synonymous with contemporary sainthood. 

Each of these saints gave up their possessions, their lives that provided security and comfort, to become, not just followers of Jesus, but disciples of Jesus in the truest sense of the word. 

They gave up all they had. Their hands were empty.   They were free to then pick up their crosses and carry them.

Now all of us are followers of Jesus in one way or another,

part of that great cloud of witnesses who have followed Jesus ever since he walked here with us.  

We’ve gathered here today, worshipping together as a community, and as a community, we care for one another, and we reach out to our community in a variety of ways.

But how do we become, not only followers, but disciples?  

My guess is that no one here is going to take the radical paths that Anthony, Francis and Teresa took.

But it’s clear that no matter what path of discipleship God calls us to,

we have to lay down what we cling to so that we can reach out and pick up our own crosses. 

And people in our midst are doing just that, in quiet ways of which we may be completely unaware. 

Periodically I spend a few hours working in the Christ Church Thrift Shop over in Spotsylvania Courthouse.

It’s my way of saying thank you to all of those people at Christ Church who were so very generous about giving up their time, by giving up the familiarity of what they were used to and to welcome me as a leader in their worship services

—they are disciples when it comes to helping those who are entering the ministry –a new seminarian will be coming to them this fall. 

And in addition to my getting to say thank you, I get to meet some interesting people–

And as Fr Jeff always says when he’s trying to drum up volunteers to work in the thrift shop, “You meet the most interesting people!”

When I went to work at the thrift shop last  Friday afternoon, I met one of these interesting people, a woman about my age with red hair, bright blue sparkly eyes, petite and energetic.

We’ll call her Tina.

She had volunteered at the thrift shop all morning and was getting ready to go home. 

We started talking, and I found out that she has been in this area for about a year.

As the conversation went on, she said that she had moved here to help her sister take care of her mother, who is failing. 

“So where are you from?”  I asked. 

And Tina told me that she has lived most of her life in West Virginia.  That is where her son and her grandchildren and her friends are. 

“It must have been hard for you to leave,” I said.

And her bright blue sparkly eyes stopped sparkling, and with a look of great sadness, but with no resentment, in a matter of fact sort of way, she said that it had been one of the hardest decisions of her life, to leave behind her family, her friends, and her boyfriend.  In fact, her move had caused their break-up, but she told him—“Right now, at this time in my life, this is where I belong.   I am called to be with my mother and my sister.  Someday I will be back.”

Tina is a modern day disciple.

She heard God calling her, calling her to help care for her aging mother, and to do so, she had to give up quite a bit.

She is missing the day to day fun of watching her grandchildren grow up, her friends will probably remain friends, but she is missing time with them.

They will develop new friends, new patterns of being together, and when she returns home, she will be an outsider simply because she has been gone.

She risked her relationship with her boyfriend, although they have gotten back together now.

All because she took God up on this call to lay down what she possessed, so that she could carry her cross, and be a disciple of Jesus.

“It’s just what I’m called to do right now,” she said, as she left the thrift shop to go back to her mother’s house. 

Another interesting person in the thrift shop is its manager. 

This woman became the manager when the store opened a few years ago, but then developed cancer, and was gone for over a year, struggling with chemotherapy, nearly dying a few times.

And yet, now that she could just be at home, relaxing and enjoying life, now that she has regained her health,   she came back to manage the thrift shop again when the current manager quit and left the thrift shop with no manager and no volunteers. 

This woman, who has been so ill, has chosen to lay down a well deserved life of comfort and ease at home so that the thrift shop can continue to be open and earn some extra income for Christ Church, money desperately needed as this congregation  struggles to pay the mortgage on their building each month. 

And yet, the manager does not see herself as a hero.  She simply says about coming back to work, “I missed it.” 

The thrift shop, while it makes money for Christ Church, is also run as a ministry to help people with low incomes to be able to get things they need at affordable prices.

 For instance, you can buy a whole bag of clothes for five bucks, children’s toys for 50 cents to a dollar, one woman found a car cover for $3.

She was thrilled.  “That car cover was $30 at WalMart!” she said, and she hadn’t been able to afford that $30, but she could buy that $3 car cover.    

Late on Friday afternoon, another woman came to pay for her bag of clothes, and three toys that her sister had picked out.

She carefully counted out her money.  She paid in dimes.

And then, as she turned to go, she just stopped and stared at a framed print that rested against the wall. 

“Those hands,” she said.  “I see those hands everywhere.  Whose hands are they?” 

I leaned over the counter and looked at the print.

I had walked past it all afternoon and had paid no attention to it.

“Oh,” I said, “those hands are from a painting by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel.”

And I told her about how the hand on the right was God’s hand, and the hand on the left was Adam’s hand, and God reached out, and touched Adam into being. 

She was still staring at the painting.  She said, almost to herself—“I have to have that!”

And she went over, and picked it up, picked it up reverently, and brought it to the cash register, and then set it down, and searched through her well worn purse, and found at the bottom a $5 bill.

The cost of the print came to $3.15.  I handed back her change, $1.85, and her eyes moved to a tall glass jar near the register

that said “For Christ Church” and she said to me, “What’s that for?”

so I told her it went to the church to help pay off the mortgage for the building every month.

And this woman, who clearly could have used that money for something else, looked down at the money in her hand, and calculated whether or not she could give it away, and then without hesitation dropped the $1.85 into that jar.  She then took her purchases, and carrying her print, walked out the door. 

I couldn’t get this woman out of my mind. 

For me she illustrates what it means for those of us who follow Jesus to become disciples of Jesus.

Only at certain times in our lives are we faced with stark choices—leaving what is familiar and comfortable in order to lead a life of service.

Most of the time our choices involve how we live the little mundane moments of our lives. 

This woman, who may not have even known where the Sistine Chapel is, or who Michelangelo was, was captivated by those hands—that image of God reaching out—the human being reaching toward God. 

And it is in our moment to moment choices to reach out toward God instead of holding whatever it is that we are holding onto—

whether those things are material things,

or the more intangible things that we grasp, like our need for power,

our need for control,

our temptation to react to others out of frustration,

our need to hold on to hurts from the past, our need to hold onto anger,

our need to grasp our own goodness by criticizing others

even our need to love others so much that we don’t have any room left to love God

—it is in our conscious decisions to lay all of  these things down, moment by moment, that then allows us to reach out, our hands empty, toward God.     

And when we reach out, and God touches us, just as God’s hand reached out at  the beginning of creation, life surges out from God, and surges into us.   

Every time we make the decision to reach out to God, we  choose life,

life in which we find out more and more how to love God, how to be obedient to God by loving one another as God loved us. 

And the exquisite irony of laying down everything else,

so that our hands are empty and we can reach toward God,  

our hands become full of God,

so full of God that they are empty enough for us

to pick up our own crosses and carry them,

to be disciples of Jesus.

So my challenge for you this week is to think through the moments of your days, and practice discipleship.

Practice opening your hands, letting go of the things that you grasp, the things that keep your hands bound and tied, that keep you enslaved.

Choose to empty your hands.

Choose transformation.

Choose life!

Choose to pick up the cross that Jesus is calling you to carry. 

Choose to live as a disciple.

Choose to live as if the kingdom of God really has drawn near.  

Amen   

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.

These immortal and  famous words ring out to us in the midst of the fear, dread, disgust, worry—the feelings that many of us have today when we think about the current state of the world, our nation, and even our church.

Our society is in the throes of change, and all of us are the ones suffering through the seismic shifts that are creating great fissures that threaten to swallow us up.

But in fact, throughout history, the world has continued to change.

The earth itself is in a state of constant flux, and as long as we are alive, we too are also in a constant state of change.

And change is scary. 

But Jesus Christ does not change.

While Jesus was here with us, he lived a fearless life of love for humanity, and suffered and died because of that love, and was resurrected into a new life.   

And Jesus continues love us fearlessly, even as we live in fear. 

And Jesus calls out to us, especially when we are full of fear,   to love one another fearlessly, as he loved us.    

Jesus calls out to us to “Let mutual love continue.”

Mutual love is not just God’s love for us and our love for God,  that magnificent vertical love that reaches from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven, but mutual love is also horizontal,  it’s our outstretched arms, it’s the love that God expects us to have for our fellow human beings, not just the people that we are comfortable with, not just the people that we agree with, but every one of our fellow human beings.  

And it’s the vertical love, God’s love reaching down to us, that then makes our love for one another, that horizontal love, possible. 

Jesus shows us how to love one another. 

“Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross so that EVERYONE might come within the reach of your saving embrace,” goes the prayer for mission that we will pray today. 

God expects us to follow the example of Jesus and to stretch out our arms of love as well, as best we can, in the various situations in which we find ourselves. 

When we pray this prayer in a few minutes, we will acknowledge our limitations, knowing that we fall far short of  stretching out our arms in love, but that the least we can do is to “reach forth our hands in love.”

But who do we hold one another in mutual love, and how do we carry it out? 

The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we are to hold in mutual love the stranger. 

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” 

Strangers are different.

We are naturally afraid of those who are different, and yet we are, as Christians, to show hospitality to them,

To reach out our hands in love to them….and in doing so, we may be welcoming Jesus himself without even knowing that we do so. 

The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we are to hold in mutual love those who are in prison.

The writer was probably referring to other Christians who had been jailed and tortured because of their beliefs.

For us, today, this injunction is a reminder that our solidarity as Christians offers a powerful testimony to rest of the world, just as our divisions among ourselves damage our testimony.

Ideally, we want people who are not Christians to be able to look at us, even in our differences, and say to one another, “See how they love one another.”  

The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we are to hold in mutual love not only the stranger, but those who are closest to us.

We are not only to love those in our families, but we are to be faithful to them, even when we can’t LOVE them.

And being faithful means that we keep our promises to one another.

We keep our promises to our spouses and remain faithful to them, not only physically, but also emotionally.

We keep our promises to our children, and love them and teach them not only with our words, but with our active  love for them.

We honor our parents, and care for them and love them, especially when they can no longer care for themselves. 

The writer of Hebrews also reminds us that we keep our lives free of the love of money, and be content with what we have.

As Christians, when we put Jesus first, the way that we use our money becomes a witness to the world as we use it to promote mutual love, to help love continue to change people’s lives.  

This list can sound like a list of impossible challenges, a utopian dream.   How can we possibly do these things?

On some days, to love anyone seems like an insurmountable challenge, much less loving the stranger, remaining in solidarity with people we disagree with, remaining faithful to those closest to us, the ones who can hurt us most deeply, to be content with what we have when we feel that we barely have enough….

But the writer of Hebrews answers us, quoting from Psalm 118—

“The Lord is my helper; 

I will not be afraid

What can anyone do to me?”

Even when we are full of fear, we must remember that the Lord IS our helper, so that instead of acting out of fear, we can act out of love. 

The autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran  is one I turn to time and time again when I find that I am lacking in love and I’m feeling full of fear.

I want to share part of his story with you today, because his story is the perfect illustration of this verse—“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.  What can anyone do to me?” 

Jacques was born in Paris.

 Because of a childhood accident he became blind when he was eight years old.  

When he was 15 years old the Germans occupied Paris. 

The next year, at age 16, Jacques began a resistance movement of 52 boys who are all under twenty-one years old, and in just a year, this group had grown to six hundred people.

Eventually a member of the group betrayed them all, and Jacques spent fifteen months in Buchenwald, the infamous German concentration camp.

At the end of the war, he was one of thirty survivors of the shipment of two thousand men who had been sent to Buchenwald at the same time.   

Because Jacques was blind, he avoided the labor details.  “Every morning at six o’clock all the men who were fit left the camp to the blare of the orchestra….the whole day these men moved rocks and sand in the quarries, hard manual labor in the bitter cold until five in the evening, when they returned, “but never all of them.  The yards were littered with the day’s dead.”

They died of many things, but Jacques writes that many of them simply died of fear, for “fear is the real name of despair.”

Jacques was placed in the Invalid’s Block, everyone who was not whole was placed, and where people died at an unprecedented rate.  Because he was blind, people constantly stole his food, and he became weaker and weaker. 

Jacques, not surprisingly, became ill.  Of course there was no medicine, and he was given up for dead.  He was taken to the hospital, the place where they put the dying—and the person lay in the hospital until he died or got well. 

Because his own words are so powerful, I want to read directly this part of his story to you from his book.  As you listen, remember what the writer of Hebrews tells us– “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.  What can anyone do to me?”

“Sickness had rescued me from fear, it had even rescued me from death.  Let me say to you simply that without it I never would have survived.  From the first moments of sickness I had gone off into another world, quite consciously.  I was not delirious…..

I watched the stages of my own illness quite clearly.  I saw the organs of my body blocked up or losing control one after the other, first my lungs, then my intestines, then my ears, all my muscles, and last of all my heart, which was functioning badly and filled me with a vast unusual sound.  I know exactly what it was, this thing I was watching:  my body in the act of leaving this world, not wanting to leave it right away, not even wanting to leave it at all.  I could tell by the pain my body was causing me, twisting and turning in every direction like snakes that have been cut in pieces.

Have I said that death was already there?  If I have I was wrong.  Sickness and pain, yes, but not death.  Quite the opposite, life, and that was the unbelievable thing that had taken possession of me.  I had never lived so fully before. 

Life had become a substance within me.  It broke into my cage, pushed by a force a thousand times stronger than I.  It was certainly not made of flesh and blood, not even of ideas.  It came toward me like a shimmering wave, like the caress of light.  I could see it beyond my eyes and my forehead and above my head.  It touched me and filled me to overflowing.  I let myself float upon it. 

There were names which I mumbled from the depths of my astonishment.  No doubt my lips did not speak them, but they had their own song:  ‘Providence, the Guardian Angel, Jesus Christ, God.’ I didn’t try to turn it over in my mind.  It was just not the time for metaphysics.  I drew my strength from the spring.  I kept on drinking and drinking still more.  I was not going to leave that celestial stream.  For that matter it was not strange to me, having come to me right after my old accident when I found I was blind.  Here was the same thing all over again, the Life which sustained the life in me. 

The Lord took pity on the poor mortal who was so helpless before him.  It is true I was quite unable to help myself…

But there was one thing left which I could do:  not refuse God’s help, the breath he was blowing upon me.  That was the one battle I had to fight, hard and wonderful all at once:  not to let my body be taken by the fear.  For fear kills, and joy maintains life. 

Slowly I came back from the dead…on May 8, I left the hospital on my tow feet.  I was nothing but skin and bones, but I had recovered.  The fact was I was so happy that now Buchenwald seemed to me a place which if not welcome was at least possible.  If they didn’t give me any bread to eat, I would feed on hope. 

It was the truth.  I still had eleven months ahead of me in the camp.  But today I have not a single evil memory of those three hundred and thirty days of extreme wretchedness.  I was carried by a hand.  I was covered by a wing.  One doesn’t call such living emotions by their names.  I hardly needed to look out for myself, and such concern would have seemed to me ridiculous.  I knew it was dangerous and it was forbidden, but I was free now to help the others; not always, not much, but in my own way I could help. 

I could try to show other people how to go about holding on to life.  I could turn toward them the flow of light and joy which had grown so abundant in me.  From that time on they stopped stealing my bread or my soup.  It never

happened again.  Often my comrades would wake me up in the night and take me to comfort someone, sometimes a long way off in another block.

Almost everyone forgot I was a student.  I became ‘the blind Frenchman.’  For many, I was just ‘the man who didn’t die.’  Hundreds of people confided in me.  The men were determined to talk to me.  They spoke to me in French, Russian, in German, in Polish.  I did the best I could to understand them all.  That is how I lived, how I survived.  The rest I cannot describe.”

Because of this near-death experience, Jacques found himself resurrected into a new life, a fearless life, a life in which he was free to help others, to stretch out his arms in love.

He experienced the power of the love of Jesus, Jesus who is the same, the same yesterday, the same today, the same forever, the one who when we are in the deepest throes of our own fears, will come to us too,

Come to each one of us, in the way that we need him most, as he did to this blind man as a shimmering wave, as the caress of light.

 Jesus comes to each of us, to touch us and fill us to overflowing,

Jesus comes to each of us as the celestial stream from which we drink and drink, drawing strength—

and from his unchanging love, we will find the strength to live in hope,

we will find the strength to let mutual love continue, and finally, we will find the strength to stretch out our own arms in love to all the world.   

Extended quote from

Lusseyran, Jacques.  And There was Light.  New York, Parabola Books, 1991.  (pages 280-283)

First published by Little, Brown and Company, 1963. 

This past week has been full of hard times for members of our parish.

Life has a way of trampling on us, and trampling on those we love.  Today we are grieving for the tragedies that have beset our church family. 

Experiencing death, tragedies, things in our lives over which we have no control reminds us that God, ultimately is a mystery— as the writer of Hebrews reminds us, something that cannot be touched. 

God is not only like a blazing fire, but a darkness, a gloom, a tempest. 

God’s voice is as powerful as the sound of a trumpet, but we cannot fathom God’s words.

This transcendent God is the one we stand before in awe and with trembling, and I must say, sometimes with frustration. 

A few weeks ago I talked about going to God in prayer in order to become more aware of God’s presence in our lives.

But sometimes prayer just doesn’t seem to work.

God doesn’t seem to hear us, much less to answer us.

God seems to a great secret, lost in a swirling mist that we can never penetrate.

As Christians, when we hit those rough spots in prayer, we know we need to keep praying anyway, opening ourselves to God even if what we get is frustration.   

In fact, God knows that sometimes we will get frustrated and discouraged with prayer, so God gives us an additional way to open ourselves to God’s presence.

God gave us the Sabbath day, so that we can join together like those innumerable angels we just heard about in Hebrews, so that we can find God in community. 

At the very beginning of creation itself, “God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.”

The Sabbath day is the day that God gave to the Israelites, a day that Jesus, a Jew who followed and practiced the laws of Judaism, observed, and the Sabbath is a day that we Christians have also set aside for the Lord.

God asks us to be intentional about coming together in community and to put aside, for this one day of the week, our own interests, our own pressing affairs, and to spend the day together delighting in the Lord. 

As Isaiah so poetically puts it, when we can put aside the things that trample us, worry us, and drive us crazy, and spend time delighting in the Lord, then, Isaiah says, “the Lord will make us ride upon the heights of the earth.”

Imagine the freedom an eagle must feel, caught up in a current of air high above the earth, wings spread wide, gliding silently along a mountain ridge.  Releasing ourselves completely into God’s presence must feel something like that.

And yet, we are so rooted to the earth, crippled by what life has dealt us, bent over and crippled by the things that happen to su.  And after a while we can’t even stand up straight anymore because we are too beaten down. 

Luke tells us of one such woman, a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years.  She was bent over and could not even stand straight.  The only thing she could see was the ground, because she was physically incapable of looking up.

In spite of her infirmity, this woman was doggedly honoring the Sabbath day by going to the synagogue on this particular day that Jesus was there teaching. 

We don’t know what Jesus was teaching that day, but Luke has told us earlier in his gospel that at the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus goes to the synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath day and preaches from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. 

Perhaps now, Jesus was also teaching from Isaiah, perhaps the reading from Isaiah that we have just heard today.

In this passage we’ve just heard, Isaiah gives us four specific things that we must do if we want to open ourselves to God’s guidance.  And these four specific things also tell us how God wants us to be together in community. 

The first is to refrain from gossip, blaming one another, accusing one another.

The second is to feed the poor.

The third is to satisfy the needs of the afflicted.

The fourth is to honor the Sabbath. 

In other words, God expects us to respect one another and to care for one another, to put one another first rather than putting ourselves first, because we know that we are all one in God’s love. 

Now Jesus gets to carry out what he is teaching about God’s guidance for us.   He looks out into the crowd and sees a person who is truly afflicted, this bent over woman.

Jesus doesn’t just notice that she is there and then look away.  He sees in the truest deepest sense of the word.  He sees that she has been trampled by life, afflicted, and that she can’t help herself out of the condition she is in. 

The woman, who cannot look up, is probably not even aware that Jesus has seen her until she hears his voice.  He calls her over to him.  And then she hears these words, the words she has given up the hope of ever hearing if she ever expected to hear them at all. 

“Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”

And immediately, she stood up straight and began praising God. 

For Jesus, taking action on another’s behalf is directly connected to the way in which God expects us to observe the Sabbath. 

And Jesus expects us to take action on behalf of one another, even though we are all crippled and stuck and in need of healing ourselves. 

Actually, it’s at this point of our individual stuckness that the power of honoring and observing the Sabbath day together as a community becomes evident. 

After all, even thought we are all crippled by something in our lives, we’ve gathered together anyway.  We’ve made it here to worship God. 

And we come here making our best effort to do what Isaiah tells us we must do on the Sabbath—to lay our own concerns down, for this hour, in order to be more available to God’s healing power in our lives.

And in being intentional about opening ourselves to God, we then find the true power of Christian community, not just for one hour on Sunday, but all day every day.

The true power of Christian community is that we can become the channel of God’s healing power for one another.

I have seen  and felt you all be channels of healing, putting aside your own crippling problems to reach out to one another through the healing power of God—praying for one another, feeding one another, reaching out to one another, even when God seems to be far away, in a darkness and in a gloom.   

God is counting on us—counting on us to gather together in community week by week, to gather in love with one another, to lay down our own burdens, to open ourselves to God’s healing power even when we can’t see or hear God in the swirling mists of tragedy and frustrations that beset us, because even when we can’t see or hear God, we can see and hear one another.

Because through one another, and through the love, healing and blessing that we do our best to offer one another,  an invisible God once again takes flesh, as Jesus himself became flesh and dwelt among us, when he walked among us, and lived and died as one of us. 

So when we join our voices with one another in prayer and in praise, in love, in mercy and compassion for one another, every week, Sunday after Sunday, we hear God’s voice.

At last, in God’s time, our ears will be opened, and we will finally be able to hear Jesus say these words to each and every one of us, and to us as a church, “Woman, man, child, church—you are set free from your ailments.”

Let us pray. 

Come Lord Jesus,

gather us together every week,

come among us and heal each and every one of us,

and in healing us, give us mercy and compassion for one another,

so that we may go out from here together in peace,

to love and serve You and one another,

so that we too, caught up in the wind of your love,

may bear one another up  like eagles,

soaring up together high above the heights of the earth. 

Amen

Jesus is the light of the world.  At the beginning of the gospel according to John, we hear that “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Jesus came to bring light, not only into the darkness of a sinful world, but also to bring light into the darkness of our own sinful hearts. 

For the past few weeks, we have heard about Jesus as one who comforts us, who reminds us not to be anxious, or to worry, because it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.

This is the sort of comfort I sometimes experience get when I go to Jesus in prayer. I settle into his loving presence, his warmth, his comfort, as if I am sitting in front of a warm cozy fire. 

But our gospel passage today reminds us that Jesus is not a warm, cozy fire in our fireplace, a fire that we build for our own pleasure, one that is under our control.  

Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”

This fire is not one that we keep safely contained in our fireplaces. 

No, this fire is a raging fire!  A forest fire that burns away everything in its path!  The sort of fire that every human effort

in the world could never control, a fire that no human being could ever put out.  And we are reminded—

Jesus not only comforts us, but he also confronts us.

Jesus confronts us with the fact that he is here to purify us, to subject each one of us to this raging, purifying fire of his, to burn away our sins, because each and every one of us here today is a sinner.  Every one of us.    

I don’t know about you, but it’s much easier for me to be very aware of someone else’s shortcomings and faults than it is to be of my own.  And when I think of those other sinners, especially if I feel they have sinned against me, I’m all for Jesus as a raging fire!  Purify them!  They need it!  I want to watch from a distance, cheering Jesus on as everyone else gets purified.

So when Jesus says, “Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!”  I want to  say,  “Of course there’s no peace!  This world needs to be purified, of course it’s divided, but fortunately, I’m on the right side!”

But ARE we on the right side of the devastating divisions that Jesus describes?  And do we even have to choose sides at all?  Can’t we just roll with the punches?  Go with the flow? 

Jesus doesn’t comfort us here.  He confronts us, confronts us with the fact that we DO have to choose.

We can no longer go along as if we’re fine the way we are. 

And because the worst, most destructive division of all  is within each of our self-centered hearts, the choice comes down to this.

Am I on MY side, or am I on the side of Jesus? 

Jesus asks us to open ourselves to this raging, purifying fire that he brings to earth, because Jesus knows that we are victims and prisoners of our own sins.

Let me give you an example of what I mean about this division within each of our hearts and the purifying fire that Jesus brings with him. 

Many of you have probably read the writings of C. S. Lewis, one of the greatest Christian apologists of the 20^th century. 

Lewis wrote a series of children’s books about the imaginary world of Narnia, and the most famous of these seven books is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. 

In this story, Peter, Susan, Edmond, and Lucy, who are brothers and sisters, have been sent away from London during the air raids of WW II to the safety of the  house of an old professor who lives in the country.

And in that house is a wardrobe which hides the entrance into the land of Narnia, a land that is under the rule of the White Witch.  And in Narnia, it is always winter, but never Christmas.

And then Edmund accidentally finds his way into this cold and snowy land.  And as he stands in this strange world, lost, scared, and shivering with cold, the White Witch passes by on her sledge and stops.   She is on the lookout for human beings because legend says that they will be part of the destruction of her reign. 

Now Edmund is scared by the White Witch at first, but she beguiles him by taking him into her sledge, wrapping him in her mantle, giving him a drink that warms him right down to his toes.

And then she gives him Turkish Delight, Edmund’s favorite candy.  What Edmund doesn’t know is that this candy is enchanted Turkish Delight, and anyone who eats it will want more and more of it, and will do anything to get it. 

So the White Witch convinces Edmund that in order to get more Turkish Delight, he must bring his brother and sisters to her, and then he can have all the Turkish Delight he wants. 

Fast forward—all four of the children end up in Narnia, and they are taken in by the Beavers.  The Beavers fix them dinner, and as they’re eating, the Beavers tell them about all of the horrible things that have happened in Narnia since the White Witch has been in power. 

No one is safe.

And as this conversation goes on, suddenly the others notice that Edmund has disappeared!

They all know that he has gone to find the White Witch, and that they must flee for their lives, because the witch will come to get them. 

In spite of his initial suspicions of the White Witch, all Edmund could think about was himself and what he wanted.  His heart was divided.  So he made a choice based on his own self-centeredness.  All he could think of was that delicious Turkish Delight, and so he divided himself from the others, and left to find the castle of the White Witch.  In doing so, he betrayed his brother and sisters, and he put all of the creatures of Narnia into even greater danger. 

Edmund’s self-centered actions divide this family– brother against his brother and his sisters.

And all because Edmund is divided in his own heart. 

When the White Witch realizes that the other three children have escaped from her clutches, she decides to kill Edmund.  Just as she is getting ready to slit his throat, Edmund is rescued. His rescuers take him to Aslan, the great lion who has returned to Narnia after having been gone a very long time.  Aslan has brought warmth and springtime to Narnia with him.

And  Aslan has a long conversation with Edmund. 

Now I imagine that the conversation that Aslan  had with Edmund was like a purifying fire, burning away all of the bad

things that Edmund had done since he had taken that first bite of Turkish Delight. 

After the conversation with Aslan, Edmund apologized to his brother and sisters, and they could tell that he was truly sorry for what he had done—because Edmund had made the choice to let Aslan’s purifying fire sweep through him and burn all of those bad deeds away.

The winter in Edmund’s heart melted away.

And so, as Aslan came to Narnia, so Jesus comes among us, bringing not only warmth and comfort, but also bringing fire to the earth—a fire to which he himself submitted. 

 — his own baptism of fire, his baptism of death on a cross.  Luke tells us that Jesus died as he had lived.

 As he was crucified, Luke tells us that Jesus cries out, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” 

And Jesus comforts the criminal being crucified with him, who begs him, “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom,”

Jesus comforts this sinful man, “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” 

Jesus can offer forgiveness to his enemies, and comfort to a dying criminal, because Jesus has opened himself to his own baptism of fire, and so God’s love burns passionately in him and through him, even through the very darkness of his death on a cross.   

So this day, I pray that each of us can go away from here and open our hearts in prayer.

I pray that each of us will ask Jesus to confront us. 

And I pray that each of us will find the strength to step  into this purifying fire.

I pray that we will let that fire rage, like a forest fire, through that wilderness in of self-centeredness that keeps us divided within ourselves and divided from others,

that we will  let that fire burn all of our sinfulness away. 

And I pray that at last, after that purifying fire has burned our self-centeredness to ashes, that we too, will rise into new lives with Jesus and with one another,

To live as if we ourselves are on fire, our hearts burning within us,  not with a self centered love,  but with a burning love for Jesus,  for one another, and for all of God’s creation. 

Amen

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.” 

Ever since human beings have walked on this planet earth, God has been calling us, each and every one of us, like Abraham, to set out for the place that we are to receive as an inheritance.  

And that inheritance, that promise, is the one with which Jesus reassured his disciples on their way to Jerusalem.

 “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” 

But as one of my doubting friends keeps reminding me—

“God’s kingdom hasn’t come on earth!  Jesus died and nothing changed. “

“What kingdom was he talking about?” 

After all, along with the whole human race, like those who lived and died before us, and like those who live now, we’re still waiting.

We’re still waiting for the kingdom that Jesus brought near in his lifetime. 

Jesus walked all over Galilee proclaiming this kingdom. 

He walked through the fields, and along the Sea of Galilee, calling out– 

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near!” 

And he sent evil spirits out of people, and he healed them, and he fed the people.  He loved the people.  

These actions of casting out evil spirits, healing one another, feeding one another, and loving one another are the actions of people who long for God’s kingdom here on earth. 

And this inheritance that God promises us  is not only defined by action, but we also have a great vision of what that kingdom will look like, the vision that  we have in the great book of Revelation.

A new heaven and a new earth have come to pass. 

“And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down on this earth out of heaven from God!” the writer of Revelation reports. 

Now there is no temple in this city,

because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb, the one who died for us, dwell  there,

and from the throne of  God and of the lamb flows the river of the water of life,

bright as crystal, flowing from the throne through the middle of the city

And on either side of this gushing river of pure water is the tree of life, with its leaves for the healing of the nations. 

But in reality, we still wait.

And like those faithful people that we heard about in Hebrews today, the chances are great that we believers will also die in faith without God’s kingdom being fully realized on earth. 

But because we are believers,   we long for God’s kingdom anyway, even in the face of death,

And we try our best to live as if God’s kingdom really HAS come on earth, because

we believe that God has promised us an inheritance.

And we want those we love to have this longing too. 

A friend of mine grew up as an atheist. 

His parents had given up the faith of their childhoods and taught him that God did not exist.

They convinced their child, and my friend loved to argue with anyone and everyone about God.  For him, God did not exist. 

To him, faith was a fairytale. 

But this young man had two grandmothers who were Christians, who had heard God calling to  them all their lives.

And they were travelling toward God, toward their inheritance.

And both of them wanted their grandson to be on that journey with them. 

So unbeknownst to my friend, because he was too little to remember,

and unbeknownst to each other, but they both knew  that the parents of my friend never would have their son baptized, 

each grandmother secretly  baptized her grandson.

One of them baptized him in her kitchen sink one afternoon when she was giving this little baby a bath.

The sunlight poured in through the window and shone on his wet little body. 

The other baptized him in the bathtub as he was splashing and playing in the water. 

And then those grandmothers waited.  They waited in faith. 

During college, my friend started hearing God call. 

God was calling him to the place that he was to receive as an inheritance.

And my friend argued and argued against God, and shut his ears, but God longed for my friend so deeply ,  as God longs for each and every one of us,

that finally, my friend  could no longer resist. 

He listened to God’s voice, and became a Christian. 

That’s when his grandmothers confessed, and he found out that he had been baptized secretly as an infant, not once, but twice! 

His grandmothers, in their own longing for him, had set him out on his journey toward God.

This past year, he graduated from seminary, and he will soon be ordained as a priest. 

But let’s face it.

This is a wonderful story,

But when we look around, we see that God’s kingdom has not come on earth,

And when we listen for God’s voice, it seems to come in the faintest of whispers, and sometimes we can’t hear it at all.

So we live as best we can in the present while we long for the future. 

And every day, we set out anyway, believing that our lives have a destination. 

not just a casket when we die, but the kingdom of God itself.  

Baptism marks the beginning of our intentional journey toward God.

Today we will baptize our newest member, Chester Nelson Duke, into this great community of Christians who have sought God and set out on this journey throughout the centuries. 

The water that we will pour into our baptismal font today has in it water from Israel. 

This water springs out of a great mountain in the northern reaches of Israel, springs out in a mighty stream, bright as crystal,  flows down the mountain, and shapes itself into rivers, one of which is the Jordan River, the river in which Jesus himself was baptized.

Normally, this water would have flowed through the Sea of Galilee,  and continued its journey down the Jordan River,

but I was lucky enough to stretch out on my stomach on the earth beside this living water, and reach into that water, and to fill a water bottle, so that I could bring some of this living water back to us, so that it could mingle with our own water. 

And now these drops of water, after this baptism, will end up in the Rappahannock River, the great river that flows right past our church, and this water will journey into the Chesapeake Bay, and then out into the Atlantic Ocean. 

At some point, it will evaporate, and then fall again as rain somewhere else, who knows where, back to earth.   

Water, too, is constantly on a journey. 

When we baptize Chester Nelson, he too, will  set out in faith on a great journey, a  mysterious journey, that will take him who knows where during his life. 

Today, even though Chester is still a baby in his parents’ arms,

today he will take his first step,

his first step in faith, in obedience, his first step toward the place that he is to receive as an inheritance. 

We do not know where life will take Chester, and we don’t even know where life will take each of us, but now we know this. 

Chester will soon be on this journey with all of us. 

And all of us are journeying with that great multitude who have died in faith before God’s kingdom came on earth, but who could still imagine that kingdom. 

They, too, travel with us, and they too, long for us, and call out to us. 

So in faith, along with the communion of saints, we continue to seek God’s kingdom, that vision of a heavenly city with its great rushing river of heavenly healing water,

the water of life, that flows from the throne of God and through the Lamb,

we seek God’s final kingdom of love and healing.

We hear God’s call, and so we journey as if we have already arrived,

walking in love with one another,

imagining the day when we will splash and play together in that river of the water of life, 

the day when we will rest beneath the tree of life,  looking up into the sunlight that shines down on us through the leaves for healing of the nations,

for  the healing of the whole world. 

Amen              

“What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun?  For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest.”

“So I turned and gave my heart up to despair.”

Throughout the great sweep of human history, people have puzzled over the same questions that the writer of Ecclesiastes asked over 2000 years ago.

In fact, this teacher might be writing about us, and our own concerns.

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. 

The writer of Ecclesiastes was concerned with how God fit into this despairing way of life.  Hadn’t God made a covenant with the people of Israel?

After all, if they kept God’s commandments, then God had promised to bless them, and yet crops failed, disasters took place without God’s intervention and people died early after leading very difficult lives. 

The writer of Ecclesiastes, along with the writer of Job, asked the following question.

“God, do You really care?”

“Will you keep your promises to those who keep your commandments?”    

These are the questions that we also ask.  Here are some examples of what I mean. 

Think about parenting.  Parents work hard to raise their children, to give them everything they need to go out in the world and to succeed. 

But we can all think of stories of young people  who die unexpectedly before they even have time to live into their potential.   A neighbor lost her son to leukemia when he was only thirteen.  She wrote in her book, Dear Brian, Dear God,

“Dear God,  Well, you let me down Lord!!  You broke your promise to me!  I am so angry at you right now!”

“Why, God, why?”  “Do you really care?”

All of us have prayed for those among us who are sick.

And we wonder, “God, will you really keep your promises to this person who loves you and has followed you?”

Several years ago, I received the horrible news that my best friend in college had cancer.

She was a devout Catholic, a woman who loved God, a church organist, and a person who had always taken good care of her body.  When the diagnosis came, at first she felt betrayed by her body, and by God.    How could this be happening to her?  She suffered through several years with cancer, and then died. 

And  I was left on my knees, asking, “Why, God, why?”  “ How could you let a person who loved you so much and had so much left to give the world die now?”  “Do you really care?”    

My mother inherited a piece of her father’s farm.  She has loved it, tended it, cared for it.

Now she is 82, and she wonders, “Who will take care of this when I’m gone? “  “Will any of my children ever want to live here?”  “Will this property be a burden that they can’t assume?” 

She lies awake at night worrying about what will happen to this land when she dies.  And I’m willing to bet she wonders, “Why did I, and my parents before me, work so hard to hold onto this land, only to have my children scattered far and wide, and I can’t figure out who to leave this land to, or whether or not to sell it?”

And on her questions go. 

Will her father’s legacy be forgotten?  Will she be forgotten?  These are the same questions that we find in Ecclesiastes. 

“God, do you really care?” 

Hundreds of years after the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote his book,   Jesus weighs in on the question of “God, do you really care?”

Right before the gospel story we heard today, Jesus tells his disciples not to be afraid of the various tragedies that will happen to them as his followers.

Jesus tells us, “Do not be afraid; you of are of value to God.”  Jesus is saying that God really cares for us.   All of disciples will be put into difficult situations, but Jesus says to them, “Do not worry.” 

And right after the story of the rich fool who stored up his abundance for his own pleasure, Jesus says to his disciples “I tell you, do not worry about your life.”

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you his kingdom.”    

Do not worry, be rich toward God, do not be afraid, because God cares for each one of us.  

Great words, but how do we experience God’s care for us? 

Do not worry, be rich toward God, do not be afraid.  The phrase “be rich toward God” occurs in the middle of these three statements because being rich toward God is the key to opening our hearts to God’s care for us. 

The story of the rich fool reminds us that if our lives are too full of our own stuff, our possessions, our worries, our anxieties, our despair, our greed, our need for control, then we have no space left in which to receive God’s care for us.  

I worked for Mary Washington Hospice for seven years before going to seminary.   In that time I met many families and many people who were struggling with this very question. “God do you really care?”

The many different people I visited dealt with that question  in various ways.  But this person’s story, which I’m sharing with you

with her permission, teaches us about facing change and death without fear and anxiety, while being rich toward God. 

This person lived in a very isolated place, and she was caring for her mother, who was bedridden and wasting away. 

She was the patient’s only daughter.   She  was providing this care almost singlehandedly.  Many, many families I worked with in this situation were full of worry, fear, and even anger over the situations in which they found themselves.

But this woman was one of the most serene people I have ever met.   To her, every day with her mother was a total gift and a joy, and she had no resentment at all about having to organize her entire life around another person’s illness that was completely out of her control.  She could feel God’s care for her, and in doing so, could then care for her mother with graciousness and compassion.

Her secret?  She began every day in prayer.  She placed herself in God’s presence and opened her heart up and waited in silence.   To her, this time with God every morning was a total gift and a joy, just to be in God’s presence.  She intentionally gave her worries and anxieties to God each day, and then offered herself to God—no words, just her open heart. 

Although she did not describe her prayer in this way, the way in which she prayed falls into the category of prayer that we know as contemplative prayer, a way of praying that has fed the hearts and minds of Christians for two thousand years.

This prayer, done over a period of years, creates a deep serenity that puts worry and anxieties away.  It is not the only way to pray, of course, but it is a very fruitful way to pray—because it is only in spending time with another that we truly come to know the depth of their care and concern for us.

So spending time with God in prayer gives us the space to feel God’s care for us. 

One day when I was visiting this person, she said to me, “Come downstairs, I want to show you something.”  So we went down to her basement, and there, leaning against the wall, were two caskets, one for her mother, and one for the daughter.

I remember at the time being totally shocked by the sight of those two caskets.  I couldn’t  imagine having such a visible reminder of death before me every day. 

The daughter had made her own casket.  While doing this, she meditated on her own life and her own death.  

The casket in her basement is her visible ongoing reminder that God, not she, is in control of both her life and her death and that God will care for her in life and death.   Then she is free to care for others.     

In contrast, the rich man in the story we heard today could think only of himself, and his own selfish pleasure. 

The writer of Ecclesiastes felt only despair.

But this woman, by putting her life into the context of eternity, is rich toward God.  She empties herself, and in doing so becomes rich toward God because she makes the space within to feel God’s love and care for her. 

Now I am not suggesting that we all go out, build our own caskets and then put them in our basements. 

But I think that what we can learn from something from this story.

When we let go of the things that obsess us, we make space in our hearts not only for God, but for one another.   We discover a space for God and for others within ourselves that is greater than we had ever dared to imagine or believed was possible

—a place of freedom  and joy, a place where God can truly dwell in us and we can feel God’s tender compassion—

God’s kingdom, which it is God’s pleasure to give to us.     

So I challenge you this week to examine your lives.

 Even if you have major doubts about whether or not God really does care, give some serious thought to what it is that gives you worry and anxiety, and causes you to despair.

I challenge you to take those worries, anxieties, and despair into God’s presence through prayer—to make an appointment each day, write it on your calendar, to go to God and to hand those things over to God.

Give God a chance to care for you. I challenge you to search your hearts, and to open up that space where God wants to dwell.   Enter that space, and welcome God in.  Be rich toward God, and toward one another.    

Amen. 

Recently, a friend of mine sent me a whimsical children’s book called If…..