Holding Fast

SJF • Proper 22a • Tobias S Haller BSG
Paul wrote to the Philippians, Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. Only let us hold fast to what we have attained.

Comedian Emo Philips tells the story of a man who was crossing a bridge one evening, and came upon a man sitting on the ledge ready to throw himself off. The stranger went up to him and said, “What’s the trouble.” The other said he had given up on life and wanted to end it all. The first man asked, “Don’t you believe in God?” “Of course I do; I’m a Christian.” “Oh, so am I; protestant or catholic?” “I’m a Protestant.” “Me too! Which branch?” “Baptist.” “Me too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist.” “I’m a Northern Baptist.” “So am I! Which conference?” “Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist, Great Lakes Region.” “Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He answered, “Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” At which point the stranger pushed the man off of the ledge and shouted after him, “Die heretic!”

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Isn’t it strange how often the Christian Church is riddled with division instead of blessed with unity. When God looks for justice, he finds bloodshed; when he seeks righteousness, he finds instead the outcry of blame andcastigation. As you know, the fabric of our Anglican Communion is being pulled and tugged in every direction, so that some fear it is near to coming apart. I don’t intend to get into the issues that are causing these divisions — because of two sad truths. First, people sometimes seem to find things to disagree about just so they can have a disagreement. Second, the things people disagree about at one point in Christian history almost always come to be seen later on as unimportant or insignificant, so that sometimes you can hardly believe people argued about such things, and even persecuted each other because of them.

Maybe it is just that people are disagreeable at heart, and Christians are no exception. Christians have been disagreeable folk for as long as there have been Christians — in Saint Paul’s day they argued about circumcision and whether a Christian could eat meat from a pagan butcher-shop. Who worries about such matters today? At the Reformation a big deal was made about whether lay people could drink from the chalice and if it was appropriate to conduct worship in a language that the congregation understood. Today the major opponent of such things back then — the Roman Catholic Church — does both! So what was the problem? Hardly a matter of eternal truth, or it wouldn’t have changed. I guess this is where we hear the old excuse: “It seemed important at the time.”

Of course, divisions like this are not unique to Christianity. There have been squabbles and divisions within Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. And the division between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims lies at the heart of much of the trouble in Iraq. But Christians, my friends, we’re the ones who are supposed to be able to get along with each other. We’re the ones of whom it is supposed to be said, “See how they love each other.” Sosurely our disagreements should be all the more rare — and all the more embarrassing when they happen. When God looks to the church for the fruits of life in the spirit, why should he ever find instead the bitterness of a thorny brier-patch, and the withered wild grapes that yield no wine, no joy.

Saint Paul dealt with a number of difficult churches during his ministry. The squabbles of the Corinthians and the Galatians nearly drove him to distraction. The Philippians, on the other hand, although they dealt with some of the same issues, seem more or less to have been able to keep themselves from splitting up into various factions. And their secret lay in the fact that they held on to what was really important, as Paul says, holding fast to what they had attained in Christ — embracing the cross with all its shame, and as we heard in the reading last week, letting the same mind be in them which was in Christ, who instead of exalting himself, emptied himself.

Paul picks up the same theme this week — hold fast to what you have attained, which is a single-minded life in Christ. Don’t get distracted by those who set their mind on earthly things and make themselves enemies of the cross of Christ. Such people focus only on the outside, the physical, what Paul would elsewhere call “the flesh” but here even more pointedly calls “the belly”: their minds are set on earthly things; obsessed with their own needs, their own concerns, their own opinions — and in this case it amounts quite literally to navel-gazing!

We Christians are called to set our minds on a higher plane, on the spiritual level, on heaven — the place in which our true citizenship is found. By holding fast to that which is true and good and permanent, even if there is disagreement or if people think differently about anything, it will all be made clear in the end. Note thatPaul is not saying, Don’t disagree. He knows people better than to ask that! What he does say is, If you disagree, hold fast to God in Christ and he will help you see your way out of the disagreement in his own good time. Avoid making the issue of disagreement the center of your lives; avoid focusing on what separates, but rather to hold fast to Christ who is the true center of your lives — for he will reveal the truth at the right time. In the retrospect of the kingdom, we will see how trivial and temporary were all the things that tended to divide us; and that what has endured is what always mattered most. We will see that what seemed important at the time, in the long run was not important at all. Only Christ matters, and he is the center who will hold the church together.

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Anyone here who has ever braided hair knows that you can’t braid with just two strands — you need three to make a braid. If you remove the third strand the whole braid will come unraveled. Christ and the heavenly call in him is like that crucial third strand without which the church will fall apart. To use our gospel language, Jesus is the cornerstone, without which the house cannot be built, and which if removed will cause the downfall of that house. But if he is the building’s sure foundation, that house will stand against time and tide.

God has put us here on this good earth as his church, in order that we might do his will and bear fruit worthy of redemption. He has prepared the ground for us, and set us to the task before us. He expects a rich harvest, my friends, when he comes in glory. Let him not find us arguing among ourselves, or worse, conspiring to snatch at the harvest for our own, trying to possess and control the riches of his blessing as if they were our inheritance and birthright. There is one alone to whom the harvest is due, beloved; so let us not be swept up into dissension, distracted by conflict, but rather work to dedicate ourselves, holding fast in submission to him, the rock of our salvation and the center of our lives, so that the people of God may bend the knee as one, and bring in a rich harvest to the honor and glory of our Father in heaven, in the power of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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The wonders of his love

SJF • Proper for 9 11 2005 • Tobias S Haller BSG

(Is 61:1-4; Ps 31:1-4,21-21; Rom 8:31-39; Mt 5:1-10)

They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

Little did our liturgical commission know, when we chose the readings and wrote the prayers for this anniversary of September 11, 2001 that before the ink would be dry on the Sunday bulletins another disaster of even greater proportions would have struck our country. Four years ago, who among us did not watch with horror, either in person or looking at our television screens, as those twin towers slowly collapsed upon themselves in a truly awful display. And how many of us did not have a similar feeling just a short while ago watching that rainbow colored pinwheel spinning on the weather-map, filling the Gulf of Mexico from one end to the other. I watched with growing concern as the outer edges of that pinwheel brushed against Florida and the Gulf Coast, moving slowly and inexorably northward, bearing down on New Orleans with menacing deliberation, spinning like a technicolor buzz-saw.

Truly we have seen horrors we never would have thought we’d see in these last few years — devastation, hardship, distress, injustice, famine, nakedness, peril, and the sword. All of these things have come, and yet the people have endured.

And more than endured. Even now, a mere handful of days after the greatest devastation ever to strike our land, ancient prophecies are being fulfilled. The ruins are being built up, the devastations raised, the ruined cities repaired — in New Orleans, in Gulfport, in Biloxi, and at the site of the World Trade Center.

Yes there have been disagreements, there has been a share of blame passed around, we have seen exposed the depths of racism and classism that still in infect our country — and yet... in the midst of it all the blessed ones still take their stand. The poor in spirit inherit the kingdom, the mournful are comforted, the meek receive theblessing of their inheritance, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are filled to satisfaction in knowing that the right will be done. The merciful give and receive mercy, and the pure of heart see the face of God in those they serve, even as those they serve see the face of God in them; for such peacemakers are rightly called the children of God and bear his likeness.

For ultimately, my friends, it isn’t about the buildings; neither the great twin towers that stood so proudly, nor the towering edifice that will take their place, nor the little frame houses on the Gulf Coast swept from their foundations as cleanly as crusts and bones and remnants are scraped from a dinner plate. No, it isn’t about the buildings.

Just the other day on CNN I saw film clip of the holy Eucharist celebrated last Sunday on the site of Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, in Gulfport Mississippi. The beautiful old church was completely gone. All that was left was the flat foundation. If you knew no better you’d think it was a tennis court. But the parishioners had set up a folding table as an altar, and managed to scrape together enough lawn chairs and deck chairs and folding chairs to hold most of the congregation. And the priest, Fr James Bo Roberts, with tears in his eyes and choking voice said: “I want you to imagine the beautiful church that once stood here: a beautiful white frame building, with a tall steeple. And inside picture the woodwork of the pews, and a red carpet, and the cushions. And I want you to know that that’s not Saint Mark’s Church and it never was. ‘Cause I want you to take a good look to your left and your right, and look at all these nasty people sitting next to you, dressed in all manner of ways, and some of them haven’t shaved for days, and I want you to know that that’s St Mark’s Church.”

Truer words were never spoken my friends. We learned after the destruction of the World Trade Center that those twin towers, as powerful as symbols as they were, were not New York City. New York City — the spirit of New York City — was in the people of the city. New York City was in the police and firefighters and emergency medical technicians who risked their lives — many of whom lost their lives — in the work of rescue and recovery. The City was in the restaurant owners who opened their doors for weeks on end providing free food and hot coffee to those working at the pit. The City was in the clergy and lay people who served as chaplains and counselors to those bereaved. The Spirit of the City was in all of these people who said, we will not be defeated; we will prevail, we will rebuild; this is the living spirit of New York City.

For the spirit of our city, of any city, lives in its people or it doesn’t live at all. The spirit of the French Quarter in New Orleans, for all its wrought-iron balconies and charming street corners, doesn’t live in those buildings and squares. It lives in the heart of the music and the soul of Mardi Gras, in the confluence of the Creole with the Cajun, the zaydeco, Louis Armstrong’s gravel voice and soaring trumpet, and the tales of Boudreaux and the mischief he got up to — I gar-on-tee!

It has always been this way, beloved. The spirit of Jerusalem was not in the Temple — no my friends, that Temple was torn down and is no more! And in the New Jerusalem that is to come, John the Divine saw no Temple in the City. But the living spirit of that holy city is in the holy people still; it is in the hearts of God’s faithful people wherever they are, in whatever city, in whatever state or nation.

The spirit of the church doesn’t live in stone and stained glass, as beautiful and inspiring as they are. The spirit of the church lives in the people of the church or it doesn’t live at all. The spirit of God, the spirit of Christ, lives within us — and that is why nothing can separate us from him. Hardship, flood or famine, assaults by enemies, or assaults by the forces of nature — “no, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us... and nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And this is why I say, in spite of all the pain and suffering of 9/11, in spite of all the pain and loss caused by the dreadful hurricane Katrina, in spite of the destruction of of the Temple, and in spite of all the hardships endured by the people of God in the centuries since, this is why I say the Lord is wonderful and blessed are his works. The Lord is wonderful and great, and he has shown me the wonders of his love in a besieged city. He has shown me the wonders of his love in a city besieged by enemies who struck down our towers, by raising up brave souls to rebuild the devastations, and to comfort the wounded and to bury the dead. He has shown me the wonders of his love in cities besieged by walls of water, by tempest and wind and wave, in the courage of those who gathered up the homeless, who brought them food and water, and carried them to shelter.

And most of all he has shown me the wonders of his love in a city in which the powers of politics and religion conspired to kill an innocent man and put an end to his teaching and ministry. For those powers did not prevail. The love of God is stronger than the hate of man. The weakness of the Son of God is stronger than the power of the world. And the power of God, who can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, is stronger than the forces of nature or the forces of human sin — stronger than death, stronger than life, than angels or rulers, than that which is or that which is to come, than the powers in the heights or in the depths, stronger than anything else in all creation.

This, my beloved, is wonderful — the wonders of God’s love in a besieged city. We are always under seige in so many ways. Danger and illness await us even in the most peaceful times, and in these unquiet days who knows what assault may come against us from earthly foes or the forces of nature. But have no fear — be not oppressed nor brokenhearted; leave off mourning and sorrow, and faintness of spirit; for the day of release has come, the day of liberation and gladness, freedom and release, purchased for us, my brothers and sisters, outside the walls of that other city long ago, on that little hill called Calvary. It was there that the Son of God bound us to himself with the bond of his sacrifice, when he gave his life as a ransom for many, besieged as he was by his own people who conspired with the Gentiles, who crucified him outside the city walls. It was there that Christ Jesus died for us, who was raised, and who is at the right hand of God to intercede for us. It was there that the cross of Christ first towered over the wrecks of time, it was there that the cross was planted, to display the glory of the Lord, and the wonders of his love.

So let us rejoice and give thanks for the remembrance of his saving grace, for liberation in him from the tyranny of sin and the oppression of mourning. Let us raise our eyes and our hearts, filled with the Spirit of God to do the work God gives us to do: to rebuild the devastations and repair the ruined cities, to lift up the poor and the refugee, the prisoner and captive, and to bring the Good News of God’s salvation to the world, through Jesus Christ out Lord.+

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Jealous to be Zealous

Saint James Fordham • Saint James Day 2005 • Tobias S Haller BSG
The mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him.+

At first glance our Gospel reading this morning does not appear to portray our patron Saint James or his brother John, or their mother Mrs. Zebedee, or for that matter the rest of the apostles, in a very kindly light. At first glance we seem not to be among the founders and leaders of the church, but back in elementary school with a group of youngsters arguing about privilege and position. The “mama’s boys” Johnny and Jimmy and their pushy mother are trying to butter up the teacher and get the best seats at the school assembly, and the rest of the classmates are pouting and fuming, wriggling in their seats in indignation and whispering or passing notes to each other.

That is what seems to be happening in our gospel reading. But that only goes to show just how misleading things can be when you take a Scripture passage out of context. And that is what has happened with this reading appointed for Saint James Day. Those who appointed this text started the story with Mrs. Zebedee and her boys coming up to Jesus. But that isn’t the real beginning of the story. If we step back a few paces to the verses that come just before our appointed gospel passage today, we find ourselves reading today’s text in an entirely different light.

The preceding verses read, “While Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside by themselves, and said to them on the way, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised.’ Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him.”

That changes the picture a bit, doesn’t it? The Zebedee family come forward in response to some very disturbing news about condemnation and death, flogging and crucifixion. This places the text much more in the atmosphereof the other scripture readings for today as well.

The other passages are full of predictions of death and suffering, similar to the ominous words of Jesus that preceded the Zebedee family’s request. Look at poor Baruch. He’s Jeremiah’s secretary, just doing his job, taking down the old priest’s horrifying prophecies of doom and destruction, and when he expresses his anxiety and woe, the Lord tells him, through Jeremiah, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” God is going to break down everything he’s built, and pluck up the rich planting he has planted, the whole countryside. The Lord tells him, Don’t look for a comfortable escape, Baruch, for disaster is coming — although you will escape with your life.

Then in the reading from Acts, the prophet Agabus comes to the Christians in Antioch — the first group of believers who went by that name — and delivers the bad news that a great famine will come over the whole world. And what is the response to this bad news? Do the Christians of Antioch decide to look after themselves, and hoard their supplies against this future famine? Do the merchants among them decide, like Joseph when he was prince of Egypt, to store up the grain so they can sell it at a profit when the famine comes? No, on the contrary, they determine, each of them according to their ability, to send relief to their sisters and brothers in Judea. How fitting it is that those who were the first to be called “Christians” should also be the first to come up with the idea of Christian relief! And this willingness to serve and to sacrifice, to risk everything in the great cause, gives us a clue to the meaning of our Gospel reading.

The lead-in to our Gospel is a promise of suffering and death, similar to the promises of the prophets Jeremiah and Agabus. And this casts a different light on the personalities in our gospel reading. The analogy shifts from the schoolroom to the battlefield. We are no longer dealing with a scene in which the mother of two schoolchildren wants top seats for them at the assembly. No, here the commander has just told his troops, lined up before him, that they are about to undertake a suicide mission. Although eventual success is promised, it will only come through suffering and death. And two soldiers, together with their hard-as-nails mother, step forward to volunteer, knowing that a cup of bitterness lies before them on the path that they have chosen, and that they are willing to drink it down.

This places the anger of the other apostles in a different light, too. Their zeal is like the zeal of the Christians of Antioch, who in the face of a famine step forward to help others rather than thinking of themselves first. James and John have stepped forward in their zeal, and the other apostles too are willing to lay down their lives for Jesus — it’s just that they were slower to step forward, and they resent that James and John may have scored some points by getting there first. This is the jealous anger of “why didn’t I think of that?” But even more, this is the anger that is jealous to be zealous: to be the one seen as willing to put his life on the line, to be seen as one who excels in generosity, in courage, in self-sacrifice.

All of the apostles are eager to volunteer, but James and John have stepped forward first, with their heroic mother.

How many times in human history has such a scene been played out? How many valiant women have stood forth with their sons or husbands, ready to fight to the death if need be. As I think of this I see the faces of the early martyrs, of Blandina or Agnes or Perpetua, boldly entering the arena where the savage beasts awaited them. I see the faces of brave women standing in the doorways at Masada, ready to die rather than accept domination by the Romans. I see the faces of women brought to these shores as slaves, fighting for freedom, and their strong and proud daughters after them, like Sojourner Truth, who continued the fight; and I see the long gone the faces of the women of the native tribes who stood ready to defend their lodges to the death, though armed only with lances against the rifles and cannon of the invading “longknives.” I see the faces of women standing with their families at the gates of Auschwitz, or Freetown, or Monrovia, or Darfur, standing ready to defend, and ready to die.

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Such is the courage of Mother Zebedee and her sons. However, as Jesus rightly points out to them, the job is already taken; the position has been filled and will be filled first by him: it is the Son of Man who came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom formany. He is no armchair general, nor one who stands well behind the lines as his troops go forth to suffer and die. No, he is at the head of the assault on the forces of evil and wickedness that have assailed humanity from the days of Adam. As to who will be second or third behind him, who knows who it will be but the heavenly Father, who governs and appoints all things in their place and time.

As it would turn out, James would in fact be the “first among the Twelve to suffer death for the sake of Christ,” but Stephen the deacon would be the first of all to suffer death on account of his witness to Christ, stoned to death for the sake of the Gospel, even as that Gospel was just beginning to be preached. James would follow in Stephen’s footsteps some few years later, when King Herod Agrippa saw that he could win points with the people by suppressing the church, and he had James killed with the sword. But James’ brother John, the last surviving Zebedee, on the other hand, would live to a ripe old age in exile on the island of Patmos. Who knows which seat he or James or Stephen now enjoys in the heavenly kingdom, a kingdom of which God gave John a glimpse of revelation before he called him home?

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What does the Scripture say to us, then, this morning, this Saint James Day. It tells us first of all that there will be hard times. Death and suffering are a part of life, some times worse than others. We live in a material world, and matter corrupts and perishes — nothing lasts forever, whether flesh or stone! And in the midst of suffering and decay and perishing, in the midst of time and trial, we can chose to step forward to offer what help we can: the companionship of Baruch, the alms and contributions of the Christians of Antioch, the courage of James and John and their bold Mother, the zeal of the apostles.

When a parish comes together to address a problem, as the good people of Saint James Church have done and are doing in gathering resources to repair this building, which represents our heritage and patrimony, we are seeking to outstrip each other in virtue, in service to God through service to his church.

This is the lesson for us, and it is one we have learned well. When faced with the challenge, many have come forward, and many more will do so as the example of those who have gone before inspires them to be jealous to be zealous, jealous with the zeal of our patron Saint James, who stepped forward to the challenge and gave his life for the sake of the church. May God continue to bless us as we seek to serve him and each other, in zeal and humility, to the honor and glory of his Name.+

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The Patience of God

SJF • Proper 11 a • Tobias S Haller BSG
Although you are sovereign in strength, you judge with mildness, and with great forbearance you govern us; for you have power to act whenever you choose.

This past week I came across a phrase from an evangelical Christian writer that made my blood run cold. This is what he said: “When the patience of God has run its course, God reveals himself to be the God of wrath.” Does that bother you? It sure bothers me, for number of reasons.

The first problem is the wrath part. This author says that when you strip away all the superficial niceness of God, what you’ve got left is an angry, wrathful being; that when it comes right down to it, the essence of God is anger and wrath. Well if that’s true, then I think I’ve got the wrong religion. Because I believe that when all is said and done, when all the superficial stuff and human misunderstanding is stripped away, the essential nature of God is not wrath, but love. Indeed, I believe — and I think I’m not alone in this, as this is what the church has taught consistently for thousands of years — that our loving God is only wrathful when he needs to get our attention. Like any loving parent dealing with misbehaving children, God may have to raise his voice once in awhile. The great Anglican author CS Lewis once put it this way, “God whispers to us in our joys but he shouts to us in our pain.”

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Arthur Sueltz, in his book Life at Close Quarters, tells a wonderful story that bears out this important truth.

A mother was with her six-year-old son in a doctor’s crowded waiting room. As they waited their turn, he began to ask her all kinds of questions. In half an hour he managed to cover almost every subject known to humanity. I can relate to this because that’s just how I was when I was that age. I recall once on a train trip to Washington with my grandmother, talking non-stop to the man across the aisle from us, eventually putting him into what may have been the soundest slumber he had ever known, as I went on an on about the hundreds of tiny egg-beaters that line the human stomach and help us digest our food — or so I was convinced. In any case, this child was similarly chatty. To the wonder of all the others sitting in the room, the mother answered each question carefully and patiently. Inevitably, the youngster got around to asking about God. As the other people listened to his relentless “but how’s” and “but why’s,” it was plain to see from the expressions on their faces that they were wondering: “How does she stand it?” But when she answered her son’s next question, she answered theirs too. “But why,” he asked, “doesn’t God ever get tired and just stop?” “Because,” she replied after a moment’s thought, “God is love; and love never gets tired.”

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The writer of the Book of Wisdom put it this way, “Although you are sovereign in strength, you judge with mildness, and with great forbearance you govern us; for you have power to act whenever you choose.” God loves us, and love never gets tired. Love, as Saint Paul put it in that wonderful passage we hear at weddings and funerals, love is patient; it suffers all sorts of wrongs. God in his love holds on to humanity as it kicks and screams like an unruly child, holds on and holds fast until the child’s crying is spent, and she falls asleep safe in those great loving arms. God puts up with things thatnone of us would put up with — including putting up with us.

We see a reflection of this in the parable that Jesus put before the crowds in today’s gospel. The slaves of the master who sowed good seed in his field are ready to go and do a good job of weeding. They are ready to rush right in and start pulling up those weeds. But the patient master tells them to wait, for in their zeal to get rid of all the weeds they might also uproot the good crop of wheat. Harvest time will come soon enough; the weeds will still be weeds, and the wheat will still be wheat — and the master knows how to tell one from the other, and knows as well what he plans to do with each.

This was of course a lesson for the church not to rush to judgment but to leave judgment to God. At the end of time God will separate wheat from weed. And in the meantime, God’s patience, is not to be confused with permissiveness. Jesus is not telling us it’s OK to be a weed if that’s what we’d like to do. It is definitely not in his plan that we should grow and take up space but bear no fruit. No, Jesus wants us all to bear fruit, to be like those rich sheaves of wheat that are carried into the granary. But Jesus is also telling us that the task of separating the good from the bad, the wheat from the weeds, belongs to him and his angels, not to us.

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God wants us to be patient as he is patient. As the writer of Wisdom said, “You have taught your people that the righteous must be kind, and you have filled your children with good hope.” And what is patience but a kind of hopeful kindness, a forbearance that puts up with difficulties, that tolerates differences, rather than insisting that everything change right here, right now. Patience suffers many wrongs, in the sure and certain hope that eventually all wrongs will be righted — by the one who has the power to right all wrongs.

Still, patience isn’t easy. You have heard me speak before of the great preacher and Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts Phillips Brooks. He was a close friend of the third rector of this parish, and attended his wedding here as an honored guest. Apparently patience was called for on that day because his carriage got stuck at the train station and he was delayed in arriving for the wedding. (Usually it’s the bride whose late, but in this case it was the Bishop!) Now, in general, Bishop Brooks was noted for his poise and quiet manner. He was a big man, tall and wide, and moved and spoke with great deliberation, floating along like a great iceberg. One day, however, a friend came to call upon him in his Boston office, and found him feverishly pacing the floor like a wild animal in a cage. “What’s the trouble, Bishop?” he asked. Brooks answered, “The trouble is that I’m in a hurry, but God isn’t!”

This is a lesson we can all take to heart. In our impatience, we struggle with eager longing, subjected to futility, as Saint Paul says. We join with all of creation groaning as if in labor pains, like a woman in childbirth waiting anxiously to be set free from bondage so that we can obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. And God, our loving parent, our wise master, or in this case like a caring and knowing midwife, holds us by the hand and says to us, Hush now, keep on breathing, wait a bit longer. It will come; rest a little longer. All shall be well; and you shall see it and know it when it comes. Let the crop grow in peace, weed and wheat, there will be plenty of time to sort things out at the harvest. Be patient with one another, be kindly affectioned one towards another, patient and kind as God is patient and kind.

Beloved sisters and brothers in Christ, when we are tempted to say, or shall I say, when we do say — for I’m sure we all have said it at one time or another — “I’ve had it up to here with you” — let us remember that Jesus had up to here [arms outstretched like Christ upon the cross] — with all of us.

To the Lord and Master who sowed his good seed in our hearts, and will one day gather it in to his granary, to the ever-patient, ever-loving God whose righteousness is chiefly shown in kindness, to him be all praise and glory, henceforth and forever more. +

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No Torment

Burial of Sharice Marie Tumma 1985-2005
Tobias Haller BSG
The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.

My sisters and brothers in Christ, it is hard enough to find appropriate words at the death and departing of one who goes from us old and rich in years. How much harder it is to find a word of encouraging strength when a sister or brother is taken from us in the flower of youth. Yet were I to find no comfort, were I to offer no encouragement, I would be no better than the foolish ones, in whose eyes death and departure are nothing but disaster and destruction.

Thank God it is not so! Thank God that we know that death is not the end. Thank God that we know that the sufferings of this life — of which Sharice had more than her share — thank God that the sufferings of this life, and the suffering of death itself, are not a punishment, are not a chastisement, are not a disaster nor a destruction. All of these are, as the wise man said, a little discipline in exchange for which those who endure it will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself.

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Sharice Marie did suffer, from her early childhood on, into an adulthood cut short too soon — too soon for us, too soon for her family and friends, too soon for her son. But we dare not say too soon for her; we dare not put God in the judgment dock, and accuse him as if we had his knowledge and wisdom, and understood his ways. The prophet has assured us that it is not the task of the clay to tell the potter what to do. Rather we are to place our trust in him who is our Maker, our Savior and our God. For wisdom assures us that, “those who trust in him will understand the truth, and the faithful will abide with him in love, because grace and mercy are upon his holy ones, and he watches over his elect.”

So, hard as it is, my brothers and sisters, even as we are now in the midst of our mourning, let us place our trust and confidence in him. Let us place ourselves side-by-side with blessed John, as he looked and saw those multitudes that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.

Look, there among them, do you see her now? A tall slim figure with dark skin set off by the whiteness of her robe, and beautiful eyes sparkling now, not with tears but with joy? Do you see her hold aloft that branch of palm, do you hear her voice shout out loudly in praise of her Lord and God?

We do not need to ask who that is; we need not ask of whom this multitude consists. God knows we know. These are the ones we have come out of the great ordeal. These are the ones who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. These are the ones who will hunger no more and thirst no more, will no more be stricken by the scorching heat, for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to the springs of the water of life, and wipe every tear from their eyes.

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We know full well that Sharice Marie had her time of weeping; she had her time of pain, as even her own blood, with its pernicious sickle cells, turned against her. But that other blood, the blood of Christ, the blood of her Lord and Savior, has bought her redemption, has assured her salvation. For that blood was shed on Calvary’s tree, blood poured out, my friends, for her, for you and me. Christ our good Shepherd has gone before to prepare the way, and he has purchased our passage with his own blood, and by his blood has made our reservations, preparing a place for us in his Father’s house where there are many dwelling places. This is our blessed assurance, dear friends, this the trust we have, and which we share with Sharice: “though trials should come, let this blessed assurance control, that Christ has regarded my helpless estate, and has shed his own blood for my soul.”

That is why it is well with my soul, my friends, why I can share these words of comfort with you today. That is why it is well with my soul. That is why it is well with your soul. And that is why it is well with Sharice Marie’s soul — for she has passed through the sorrows that like sea-billows roll. She has passed through the great ordeal, she has washed her robe in the blood of the Lamb, and is now ready to take her place with that great multitude who give praise and honor and glory to God. So let us join our voices with Blessed John the Divine, and the voice of the multitude shouting out, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

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Free but not loose

Saint James Fordham • Proper 9a 2005 • Tobias S Haller BSG
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.

What is freedom? Surely this is a significant question to ask as we look towards tomorrow’s Fourth of July fireworks, as the flags proudly wave and our hearts are lifted at the patriotic songs of this season. What does it really mean to be free?

We can begin by trying to understand the ideals of freedom upon which this nation was founded. The American colonies were struggling with what they rightly regarded as injustices. While there was limited freedom of religion in most of the colonies — indeed that was the reason many of the colonists came to these shores in the first place — there was no true freedom of speech or the press; voting rights were strictly limited, and representative elected government was permitted only at the most local level, and with limited authority — all the most important matters had to be referred back to the English Crown through the colonial governors. There was no true representation of the people’s will in their own governance — they were to obey, be content, and pay the taxes the Crown thought it right to levy. And although the English Crown itself had long since ceased to claim the powers of absolute monarchy, the parliament that truly governed England and its colonies was very far from democratic, constituted as it was of lords and landlords.

And so, two hundred and twenty-nine years ago tomorrow, the American colonies threw off the yoke of royal government. But when they did so, they did not do away with government entirely. The American states did not devolve into a free-for-all in which anyone could do whatever he or she pleased. Nor did America become an absolute democracy in which all decisions would be reached by town-hall style meetings. Instead, the United States adopted anew yoke, a yoke of government as clearly organized as any they had known, but with important safeguards for fundamental liberty and freedom. America became free — but its freedom was not the freedom simply to do anything. The freedom of the American citizen was the freedom to live in peace and harmony, in the dynamic tension between the rights of the individual and the good of society as a whole, the balance of duty and liberty. As the words of our opening hymn put it, we address our native land, asking that God might “shed his grace on thee,” and to “confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.”

For what would society be like if we were libertines instead of liberated, if it were truly without law of any kind? What would our world be like if everyone were truly free simply to do as he or she wanted to do, without any limitation, without regard for anyone else? This would not be freedom, but anarchy — not liberty, but chaos. Given human nature — the tendency we have to seek to fulfill our own wills at the expense of others — the powerful would ride on the backs of the weak, the strong and proud would lord it over the poor and humble, and the tyranny of brute force would prevail. In the end, without a form of law to restrain the worst impulses of human nature, only some would be free, while others would suffer bondage to the will of the powerful, whether few or many.

In 1776, Americans became free from the old tyrannies of the English Crown, from taxation without representation, from the lack of a free press and free speech; but Americans did not become, and are not now, free to do simply anything we please. We still pay taxes, but our taxation is based on the decisions of a body of people whom we elect, and we are not free to pay only the taxes we personally approve of. We have freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but we are not free to write or say absolutely anything we like — there is no right to libel or slander, deceit or mischief! As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr once said, in a famous decision, “Freedom of speech does not give one the right to shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater.”

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What is true of the government is also true in the Christian faith. We are free in Christ from the law of the flesh — the old law carved in stone and delivered to Moses, and the statutes that Moses established as rules of sin and punishment. From these laws Christ has set us free. But we are not free from the law of the Spirit — the new law implanted in our hearts by Christ, the new law of love and forgiveness. We are still not free to murder, steal and lie — but as Christians the reason we do not do these things is not simply because they are illegal under the old law, but because they violate the new law: the love of God and neighbor.

It is in obedience to this new law, it is in taking up this easy yoke and light burden that we find our true freedom. It is not a freedom to do anything we feel like doing. It is a freedom to do what is most authentic and best for ourselves and others, the freedom to become truly ourselves — not conformed to the easy temptations of daily life which lie close at hand, which we sometimes find ourselves doing even when we don’t really want to do them, and consequently discover ourselves deformed by them even as we take them up. Rather we are called in this new freedom to be transformed into the likeness of the one who called and redeemed us for himself, who took us by the hand and led us forth from bondage.

We no longer set our minds on the law of sin and death, the heavy yoke that burdens the heart while providing no comfort and forgiveness, nor deliverance from bondage and condemnation. But neither do we set our minds simply on the freedom of the flesh, to do what the flesh wants — for this leads only to slavery to the flesh, following its desires down the path to destruction, captivity and wretchedness. Instead we who follow Christ set our minds on him, following where he leads in the path of love and freedom — the true freedom to become what we are meant to be: children of God and sisters and brothers of Jesus Christ.In Christ we are freed from our weary and heavy burden of trying to be something we never can be on our own. Joined to him in the yoke of love and service, the light burden that gives us balance and direction, we become all we are meant to be — truly free in the Spirit of life and peace.

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Our freedom is not absolute. Our liberty in the here and now requires a point of contact with what endures forever or it will never come to anything, never come to be all that it can be. In short, we are free, but not free to come loose! The East Indian poet and Nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore put it this way:

Lying on my table is a violin string. It is free. I pull one end of it and it responds. It is free. But it is not free to do what a violin string is supposed to do: to produce music. So I take it, fix it in my violin, and tighten it until it is taut. Only then is it free to be a violin string. Only then can it sing.

Christ offers us his easy yoke and light burden, the yoke and burden of the love of God and neighbor. Through this light yoke and easy burden we become what we are meant to be, for “he would have us bear it, so he can make us free.” We are freed from the waterless prison of the old law of sin and death, called forth as prisoners of hope to take up a new and lighter burden, a burden that does not exhaust us but refreshes us, that does not impede our progress, but helps us on our way, free but not loose, free to move but directed in our motion, guided and not lost.

The Spirit does what the law could never do, fixing our heartstrings in God so that they may be pulled taut, and our hearts made free to play the song of God.

A flag is not free proudly to wave unless one edge of it is fastened to the flagpole. The team is not free to pull the wagon unless they bear the yoke that holds them together and unites their effort towards their goal. A drawing compass is not free to draw a circle unless one end of it is firmly planted at the center. And we are not free to live as children of God unless our hearts are firmly fixed in Christ: who sets us free but neither loose nor lost.

To him who places his easy yoke upon our shoulders, to him who is our standard and our center, to him be honor andglory, and all our hearts’ best songs, henceforth and for ever more.+

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No Place Like Home

SJF • Proper 6a • Tobias S Haller BSG

Jesus sent out the twelve with the following instructions: Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, The kingdom of heaven has come near.

Towards the end of our gospel reading today, Jesus instructs the apostles on how to spread the the good news. And what is striking about the instructions is the limitation Jesus places on the mission field for the work the apostles are to undertake. They are sent out, but not to the ends of the earth. They are sent out, but not to all people, all nations. No, they are explicitly instructed not to go to anybody but Jews; they are to spread the message of God only to the children of Israel.

Now we know that by the end of Matthew’s Gospel, after the resurrection, Jesus would indeed send the disciples out to all nations. If he hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here. If the good news had only been delivered to the house of Israel, none of us would have received it. Yet we did hear the good news; we did receive the message of salvation; for at the end of his earthly ministry, just before his ascension into heaven, Jesus altered the standing orders for the apostles, and sent them off to the ends of the earth, to bring the good news to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

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The question must be, of course, why, if Jesus intended the gospel for all people, did he not send the apostles out to everyone from the beginning? Why did he limit them only to Jews. As we know, in the cosmopolitan Middle East in those days, there was ample opportunity to preach to non-Jews without having to travel at all. Galilee was so chock-full of non-Jews that it was known as “Galilee of the Gentiles.” Israel had the historic curse of being in the middle of the road: and so it got hit by traffic heading both ways! The Israelites had been conquered by Egyptians, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, the Greeks and most recently the Romans. There were even settlements of the old people whom the Israelites had been instructed to cast out at the end of their Exodus — the Moabites and Ammonites. So the land was full of Gentiles everywhere you went.

Yet Jesus said, Don’t go to them; go only to the lost sheep of Israel. Why is that? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First of all, have you ever heard the phrase, “the right of first refusal”? This means that all things being equal, someone has the right to accept an offer, or turn it down, before it can be made to anyone else. I can give you a simple example close to home. Anyone planning on getting married at Saint James Church, if they want music at their wedding, must first speak with our organist Mr. Baker to see if he is available. He has the “right of first refusal” — and only after he has been asked, and finds he isn’t available on that date and lets the couple know, are they free to find someone else to play — in which process, I hasten to add, Mr. Baker is more than happy to assist! But he has “first dibs” on serving as organist at any service at Saint James.

And just as our organist has this special relationship with Saint James, the Israelites have a special relationship with God: they are the chosen people, chosen and precious in God’s sight. As the Lord says to them in our passage from Exodus, “You shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” So this is the first reason that Jesus sends the apostles to the children of Israel first, before any others. They were God’s people to start with, and they are the people God wants first to call back to him. They have the right of first refusal.

The second reason is more practical, and stems from the sad fact of prejudice and hatred — which is still with us. Even in the conquered land of Israel, perhaps in part because it was such a much-conquered land, the native Israelites were a despised and hated group. The Romans for the most part looked down on them; the old people, the Caananites and what was left of the Moabites and Ammonites, resented them as their ancient conquerors. The Samaritans hated them because of religious differences dating back four hundred years. The cultured Greeks thought of them as barbarians and primitives. How successful would the Twelve — all of them Israelites — have been going to any of these peoples or nations with the news they had — Our Jewish master can bring you healing! A Jewish carpenter is the savior of the world, and we are his apostles! Would they not have been laughed at rather than believed? Even after the resurrection, even after the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the apostles had a hard time of it. How much more difficult, without these miracles yet to come, for an Israelite apostle to preach about an Israelite savior to people who held Israelites in such low esteem. Imagine a Ugandan immigrant trying to sell vacuum cleaners door to door in Scarsdale or Easthampton — the sound of slamming doors would be eloquent, and he’d be lucky not to have the cops chase him out of town.

So Jesus sends the disciples to the “easy” targets first, the “good leads” as a salesman might say — their own people, primed for just this message for centuries through the teachings of the prophets, whom Jesus has come to fulfill, members of the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the children of the God whose kingdom has come near and is on the point of breaking forth.

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There is a lesson for us in this for our own work of evangelism. While not neglecting the world-wide mission of the church (since after all Jesus did eventually give that mandate to go into all the world) it is important for us ministers of Christ that we also not neglect the work that exists in our own back yard, our own neighborhood. And when I say “us ministers of Christ” I do mean us. We are all ministers, ordained and lay, and we each have ministries for spreading the word and building up the kingdom. What is more, and this may come as a surprise to you, we are all missionaries! Since 1821 the official name of the Episcopal Church begins with “the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society” — and according to its bylaws every member of this church is a missionary! And while much of the mission is foreign, we don’t neglect the domestic part.

Look around you. There are empty seats here in this church! Isn’t that a shame? But isn’t it also an opportunity — to say there’s room for more? The church isn’t half empty, it is half full! Go out on the streets after our worship today, and look around you. Ask yourself, How many of these people right here in this neighborhood, right here on my block — dare I say, right here in my own house! — didn’t go to church today. Sounds to me like the harvest is plentiful, and there’s room here for anyone seeking God’s kingdom.

So I challenge you all, all of you ministers and missionaries, to do all you can to give people the option to refuse if refuse they must, but at least giving them the chance to accept the good news, the invitation to God’s house; and to do so where you are — not rushing off to the ends of the earth, not trying to convince or convert people whose language you don’t speak or customs you don’t understand — but rather to reach out to your friends and neighbors, right here, right now, and tell them the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near. You may find that there is more treasure in your own back yard than you ever imagined.

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Years ago, before this church was founded, when Edgar Allan Poe lived just around the corner in the 1840s, there was a poor Pennsylvania farmer named Smith who got bitten by the gold bug. He heard that gold had been discovered in California, and he determined he to join the Gold Rush and make his fortune. Smith sold his farm, took the money and started the long cross-country journey, finally reaching the land of promise. Well, he found to his dismay that he wasn’t the only one there. The competition was fierce, and for every man who made a fortune there were hundreds who wasted all they had, barely breaking even. Smith was among the latter, and soon was down to his last few dollars. At this point, like the prodigal son, he determined to give up and return home to Pennsylvania. Maybe, he thought, he could get a job on his own old farm.

After many months of working his way back home he arrived in his home town. It had entirely changed. The simple country town had been replaced by rows of stately homes along a tree-lined avenue. The old wood-frame church was gone, and in its place there stood a magnificent stone structure, with a tall tower and beautiful stained glass windows. And as Smith came to his old farm, he discovered it had been entirely transformed. It seems that a few years after he left to make his fortune in California, the one to whom he sold his farm discovered oil there, dug wells and became rich beyond his wildest dreams. The wealth that Smith sought on the other side of the continent had been there at home under his feet all the time.

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My friends, the opportunity is great: we are surrounded here by literally thousands of people who are thirsty and hungry for the word of God, but are like sheep without a shepherd. And we have something more precious than petroleum to offer them. You, my sisters and brothers in Christ, are commissioned as shepherds, as ministers and missionaries, to bring the sheep in to this fold. I do not tell you to go to the ends of the earth, or to go to those who will not listen to you. God has commissioned you to go to your own people, the people of your own household and neighborhood, and to share with them the great good news, that the kingdom of heaven has come near, and that there are seats available for the great banquet. Let the harvest be gathered in, let the people of God give praise to God, and let all the people say Amen!

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The Quality of Mercy

SJF • Proper 5a 2005 • Tobias S Haller BSG

Jesus said, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”

Mercy is one of those words which we hear very frequently, but which I fear we do not always quite understand in all of its fulness. At its simplest, I’m sure most of us think of mercy, or being merciful, in terms of letting someone off the hook, not punishing someone for something they’ve done — what the courts call leniency. But mercy of this sort, the lenient sort, usually tells us more about the one who is let off the hook than about the person who is lenient. The reasons for mercy have their origin not in the quality of the one who is merciful, but with the nature of the crime, or the mitigating circumstances surrounding it. The poor woman who stole the loaf of bread because her children were starving is given a job instead of a prison sentence; or the criminal who has to care for his elderly mother is given a reduced punishment. These examples do show us that the judge is not callous or unfeeling, but the focus is on the needs of the one to whom mercy is shown.

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What about the one who shows mercy? What is mercy like in and of itself? One clue is in our reading from Hosea, which Jesus quotes at the end of our Gospel today. You’ll note that the translators of the New Revised Standard Version from which we take our readings chose the phrase “steadfast love” for the Hosea text, and “mercy” for the Gospel text, to translate the very same concept. And this is an important clue for a fuller understanding of the nature of mercy — especially as the Jewish people understood it. We Christians need constant reminders that Jesus was a Jew, born and raised in a Jewish household, as a child and man growing up in a Jewish culture.

The Jewishness of Jesus is important because our present day concept of mercy comes more from the Romans than from the Jewish or even the Christian tradition — from Roman culture and Roman law, and the Roman language, Latin. in which the word for mercy is misericordia. Some of us here remember when Our Lady of Mercy Hospital up to the north of us went by that name! It tells us how the Romans felt about this concept. For the Romans’ word for mercy means, literally, heart-pain. It is not far off from the similar Roman concept of compassion — suffering-with. So for the Romans mercy is basically about feeling bad for someone, having a heart-ache for somebody, knowing how they feel, and taking the matter to heart. This is the mercy and compassion, the misericorida and compassio of “misery loves company.” And surely this kind of soft-heartedness has its place; surely we are called to feel sorrow for those who suffer pain — even when the pain is self-inflicted. None of us likes to hear, “What a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into!” And if we are to do as we would be done by, we will allow our hearts to be touched by suffering, even when we might be tempted to be judgmental instead: for we shall all be judged with the judgment we give, and be forgiven even as we forgive.

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But there is even more to the idea of mercy than this Latin view suggests. The older Jewish concept is steadfast love, which gets translated as “mercy” once the Romans get hold of it. This is about — not less — but more than feelings, more than soft-heartedness or compassion or sympathy. Steadfast love sets that false cliché from the book and movie Love Story, on its head: real love means not less, but far far more than having to say you’re sorry, or feeling sorry for someone else. That kind of mercy is good as far as it goes, but it often doesn’t often go far enough! The true steadfast love that God shows always goes the limit — that’s the steadfast part; and it is always loving — which as we know from the teaching of Jesus is intimately bound up with the very nature of God. As the Psalm says, “the steadfast love of God never ceases.” Steadfast love is as much beyond mere soft-heartedness as the power and love of God is beyond mere human capacity.

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We have just such a comparison in the passage from Hosea this morning. The people who erred and strayed from God’s ways acknowledge their guilt, and promise to return to the Lord. After all, they say, God’s mercy never ceases; God is as reliable as the spring rains! And God picks up this weather-reporter’s metaphor and responds that the Israelite’s love is like a morning cloud, like dew that evaporates even as the sun comes up, unreliable and transitory. God, Hosea assures us, does not want such transitory fly-by-night and gone-by-day love. God is not interested in a one-night stand! God wants his people to show him the same steadfast love that he shows them. When God pours out his showers of love, what does he ask in return? A morning mist, an evaporating cloud? No: as another prophet, Amos, said, God wants justice to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream. Hosea and Amos both maintain that God is not interested in sacrifices — no amount of burnt offerings can weigh in the scale as much as steadfast love, enduring love, a merciful heart that not only feels the pangs of another’s suffering, but moves out to help and lift up those who suffer. The mercy of God, the steadfast love of God, or — as Coverdale translated this same word for his English Bible, in the form still preserved in the Psalms in the Book of Common Prayer, the “loving-
kindness” of God — does not simply weigh the victim and find him pitiful, does not simply feel sorry in a pang of the heart, but stoops down to lift up the fallen, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked and visit the sick and the prisoner. The steadfast love, the mercy of God, binds up all wounds and brings healing and restoration.

And it does so out of a deep sense of relationship and covenant: the love of God for humanity is portrayed throughout the scripture in the image of a spouse caring for his beloved. God’s love for us is steadfast not simply because we may be miserable and God is merciful, but because God is faithful and true and enduring — and because, as I reminded us on Trinity Sunday, we are made in God’s image, and so capable of loving God in return. Mercy, steadfast love, is thus a double blessing.

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The greatest English poet wrote of mercy using just such language. It is not hard to imagine that Shakespeare had in mind this passage from Hosea, and indeed the incident from the Gospel, when he wrote the Merchant of Venice. You may recall that the main character, the Jewish merchant Shylock,isout for vengeance. He is a wounded man, a wronged man, but he is incapable of getting past his own hurts to understand the hurt of others. He hardens his heart, much as the Pharisees portrayed in our Gospel, apparently unable to understand generosity in others, or show mercy himself. As the court gathers to render judgment, Portia, disguised as a young attorney, appeals for mercy in these famous words:

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly pow’r doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
deeds of mercy.

This was Portia’s appeal to Shylock, and it is the appeal that Jesus made to the Pharisees, when they saw him break the rules and eat with sinners. He was showing them the power of God to forgive, and inviting them to do the same. Those who think themselves righteous, those unaware they too are “standing the need of prayer” — in short, those who have forgotten or ignored the mercy and steadfast love shown to them, and hence are unable to show mercy or forgiveness or steadfast love to others — will not enter the banquet, not because they have been excluded or kept out, but because they will not come in; they will not sit with those they condemn even though God himself is there with them.

For God came to show his mercy, to show his steadfast love. He came to lift the fallen, to bring the healing of forgiveness to those who, sick with sin, had come to think of themselves as beyond cure, beyond hope, beyond redemption. This, my friends, is the mercy and the steadfast love of God, from which we have all benefitted, and which we are all, each of us, invited to share. May we, this day and always, rejoice that God has saved us through his steadfast love, and showing thanks and love in return, spread the Gospel of his mercy to the ends of the earth.+

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The Choice and the Gift

SJF • Proper 4A 2005 • Tobias S Haller BSG

Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”

In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus greets his hearers with a lesson about how to please God. And a hard lesson it is. Put yourself for a moment in the place of those who come before the just judge at the end of days, full of their good deeds, proud to have prophesied, happy to have cast out demons in God’s name, pleased to have done many great works in his name — only to be told, quite literally (and pardon my language) “Go to hell!” All these do-gooders who have been doing good in Jesus’ name, all these spectacular miracle workers who arrive at the day of judgement ready to be thanked for their service and ushered into paradise, suddenly get a treatment as harsh as any delivered by Simon Cowell to a would-be American Idol: “I don’t know who you are; get away from me.”

Suddenly the stakes seem to have been raised, the requirements increased. The candidates who made it through the earlier rounds of elimination with flying colors now find themselves treated like no-talent wannabes! Jesus had said that many were called but few were chosen, but haven’t these people done what they thought was wanted? Haven’t they done all they could in his name, prophesied, exorcized, and done deeds of power, all in the name of the one they call “Lord, Lord”? What have they missed? What have they failed to do?

Well, Jesus makes it plain: it isn’t enough to call him “Lord” or do deeds in his name, however good those deeds may be. What is needed is to do the will of his Father in heaven.

But we might well ask, isn’t the will of the Father to do those very deeds, to honor that very Lord, to praise his name and follow his way? The shocking answer is, apparently not, or at least not these deeds alone. Something else is wanted, something else besides the acknowledgment of God as Lord of your life, something else besides just doing what you think your Lord and master wants you to do; in short, something more than just allegiance, more even thanobedience, more than hard work and diligence and sticking to the rules.

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To find what this missing something is we need to go back to our reading from Deuteronomy. There we find that God commanded, “You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead.” Ah, but what were the words of which he spoke? To find them you need to back up even further in the book of Deuteronomy to where the commandment about having words on hand and in heart and mind first appears. And there in the sixth chapter these familiar words appear: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength.” And here it is that we find the missing ingredient without which all the allegiance and obedience in the world is empty and formal and soulless: love.

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You all know how important the symbol of salt is in scripture, and how important it is in reality in the kitchen. Have you ever made pasta or rice and forgotten to put salt in the water before you cooked the rice or the pasta? Well, I have, and know there is no real remedy for it: adding the salt after the pasta or rice is cooked just doesn’t cut it — the saltiness stays on the outside and doesn’t penetrate into the food. Sure, it all gets mixed up in your mouth, but it just doesn’t taste the same!

What is true of salt is true of our love for God. You can’t throw it in as an afterthought, it has to be there from the very beginning. In fact, our allegiance and obedience need to come from our love, to grow out of our love, to be based upon our love, if they are to be the kind of allegiance and obedience our Lord desires. Love has to be the foundation.

For if we bind our selves to Jesus, and obey him only out of duty, doing the job because we are proud of our ability to carry out orders, to get the job done, we will have left undone the greatest duty of all, the duty of love. If we bind ourselves and obey only out of fear for the punishment we might incur, we will be acting apart from that perfect love which casts out fear. If we bind ourselves and obey only because we seek a reward or a reserved seat in the kingdom of God, we will be mere seekers after a prize, and not lovers of a beloved.

Jesus assures us, in his story of the wise and foolish men who built on rock or sand accordingly, that our relationship with God needs to be established on a firm foundation, the foundation of love. I saw a show on National Geographic the other night, showing the building of the Petronas Towers in Malaysia — the tallest buildings in the world, twin towers almost 1500 feet high, linked by a skyway a dizzying more than half-way up. When the builders first started to plan the foundations, they discovered to their dismay that according to the design, while one of the towers would stand over bedrock not too far down, the other tower would be out in a basin of ancient sediment, almost four hundred feet from a firm foundation. If the builders built one tower on the rock and the other on the sand, the one on the sand would slowly tilt and pull the other down with it, since they were to be connected by that skyway. The ingenious solution was to move both towers out on to the sand — but not to build on sand! Rather, the engineers made the bold decision to send down pilings nearly a third the height of the buildings themselves, deep down through the many layers of silt and sediment to the bedrock below, and each tower would then be equally supported on firm and identical foundations.

This kind of firm foundation for our relationship with God — basing our relationship with God on our love for God, and God’s love for us, however deep we have to dig to find it — is similar to any human relationship. We are all of us, in our relationships, like those two towers in Malaysia. If one person has a deep love for the other, but the other is only in it for what they can get out of it — well, that relationship will crumble just as surely as the Petronas Towers would have if built where originally planned — connected, but one on sand and the other on rock.

It is the shared deep foundation of love that gives meaning to a relationship: whether a human relationship or our relationship with God. And it is out of the shared foundation of love that the gift of love is given.

But, you might well ask, we are hardly God’s equals! How can we ever come near a balanced relationship with God? How can our human love for God ever match the great gift of God’s love for us?

Well, think for a moment of the most extreme case: what value is a gift without love? Say someone gives you a gift because they have to — say they pulled your name in the SecretSanta drawing in the office — you might enjoy the scarf or the candle or the box of chocolates — but the gift won’t mean much. Or if someone gives you a gift because they are afraid of you, or because they’re trying to bribe you or butter you up — well, that kind of a gift will leave a sour taste in your mouth. And if someone gives you a gift only because they expect one in return — then they aren’t taking part in generosity but commerce.

But if someone gives you something just because they love you, it will mean everything in the world. And the important thing here is that the disparity in the gift — when you compare what God gives us with what we can give God in return — doesn’t matter. It isn’t about the gift but about the love of the giver from whom it comes. If somebody gives you something just because they love you, it won’t matter that it’s not 24 karat gold or crusted with diamonds. It can be something as humble as a child’s hand-made Mother’s Day card — such as I’m sure a few of you here received a few weeks ago. And if you have any doubt, you ask any of those who received those simple pieces of paper coated with glitter and crayon if that wasn’t one of the best gifts they ever got.

And how can we imagine that God is any different? How can we imagine that God just wants us to act like good little soldiers who say “Yes, Sir!” and do what they’re told but who have no heart or soul for their duty? How can we possibly think that God is merely a taskmaster to be feared, and obeyed only out of fear? Or how can we imagine that we can buy God’s favor, doing his will only for the reward? How can we imagine that when God sets before us a blessing and a curse, either that he wants us to choose the curse, or has made it impossible for us to accept the blessing? God gave himself to us in his great love for us, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective by faith. This is how, and how much, God loves us.

And God wants nothing from us but our love in return. God wants us — the gift of ourselves, as poor and frail as we are, as young in spirit as children holding out our handmade offerings of love, offerings that mean more to God than all the treasure of the world, more than all the prophecies and exorcisms and deeds of power. Our gift of ourselves, when it flows out of our love for God, is acceptable, treasured, and taken up into God’s loving arms. These are the words that God wants engraved on our hearts, sealed on our hands and our foreheads, and marked on our doorposts to remind us, consecrating heart and hand, soul and mind, our going out and our coming in, so that all we feel with our hearts or do with our hands or think with our minds wherever we go, will be only and all for the love of God. May we so love our Lord, beloved, with all our heart and mind, and soul and strength, all the days of our lives, through Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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The Vine Divine

SJF • Easter 6a • Tobias S Haller BSG
Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.”

Over the last few weeks we’ve been hearing portions of the First Letter of Peter, as he counseled and encouraged the church to whom he wrote, in a time of trial and difficulty. He wrote to them as the church, encouraging them and teaching them how to be the church. For this was early days yet — the time in which the church was beginning to emerge and understand itself as somehow different from both the Jews and the Gentiles among whom they lived. They were coming to see themselves not just as a group of individuals, but as a congregation, a church, a people “called out” or “called together” — which is the root meaning of the word ekklesia: church. We have heard Peter describe them as a flock of sheep being led by a shepherd, and last week as living stones being built into a spiritual temple, and as a holy people, a royal priesthood.

In the same way, week by week in our gospel readings, we have been hearing a succession of images that Jesus used to describe himself, using those words which to any Jewish ears carry special weight: I AM. For I AM is God-language of the first order; in Hebrew it represents God’s identity, the name God used when speaking from the burning bush, when Moses asked what name he should give the people, to know who this God is. And you recall, God answered, IAM who I AM.

Jesus uses this divine language to offer a succession of images for himself: the Good Shepherd, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the Gate of the Sheepfold. Thisweek he takes up an image from agriculture, a thing everyone who lived on the shores of the Mediterranean would immediately recognize, for just about family had its vine and fig tree.

Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.... I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers.”

John the evangelist included this passage in his gospel in part because at the time he wrote the church was in danger of falling apart. The pressures that Peter refers to in his Letter were having their effect. The evil and deceitful were assaulting the church; lying tongues were spreading slanderous rumors and false accusations; fearmongers were stirring things up, and the envious were intimidating and threatening the believers. And for some of those believers, the pressure was getting to be too much, and they were falling away, forsaking the church and separating from it out of fear.

So John the evangelist recalls the people to the stern words of Jesus: stern yet comforting — Abide in me, for apart from me you can do nothing. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. This is more than a pep talk — let’s work together for the good of all. This is an alert and alarm, a warning call to stay together to face the storm, like mountaineers tied together with ropes so that they don’t get separated in the snowstorm. Stay together, folks! For if a branch is cut off from the vine, that’s the end of the story: the cut-off branches wither, are gathered up, thrown in the fire and burned. There are no options here, Jesus says: we abide with him or we perish.

So both Peter and John are counseling the virtue of fortitude — a kind of patient endurance to put up with the pressures from within and without, not to pay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; not to give in to insecurities and doubts; to hold fast and abstain from evil; to seek peace and pursue it. This is what the church is called to do and be, and by doing and being so, by remaining connected to the vine, the branches can and will bear much fruit.

Now, this was the message to believers, to the people already within God’s covenant, already incorporated into him: a call for patience and perseverance. But what about those outside? What about those who have not heard the message? What is to happen to them?

Well, in our reading from Acts we have Paul’s sermon to the Gentiles, right there in the heart of Athens, the intellectual center of the Greek world, a city full of religion, but not yet acquainted with the faith.

And so Paul seizes this opportunity, taking advantage of the Greeks’ intellectual curiosity and religious sensibility — a sensibility so fine they have an altar to an unknown god just to be sure they haven’t left anyone out — for in Greek mythology offending a god can mean big trouble!

And what Paul tells these rather astonished people is that God is both bigger than they ever thought, but also far more intimately connected with them than any of them ever imagined — except for their wisest poets. God is the creator of the universe and Lord of heaven and earth, so great and grand that “in him we live and move and have our being.” God is not an object to be placed under human control, an idol ofbronze or gold or stone. Rather God lives, and is the source of our life, in whom we exist and apart from whom we can do nothing, so that we can rightly call ourselves “his offspring.” We live because of God.

So it is that Paul is giving the Athenians the same message Jesus gave the apostles, the same message that Peter gave to the early church and John recalled to them in his Gospel: God is our life. Apart from God, separated from God, either by our own choice or by falling prey to the demands of others or the pressures of life, we will perish. Like mountaineers whose rope breaks, we will become separated in the storm and perish; like the branch cut off from the vine we will wither fruitlessly, and end up in the bonfire.

God does not want this. God wants each and every one of his children to grow and be nourished and bear the fruit of goodness that comes in time for all who abide in him. There are people abroad at present seeking to divide the church, to cleave the vine or lop off the branches that don’t suit them — forgetting that it is God who is the vinegrower and only God knows how and when to prune the branches — and that he does so not to remove them from the vine but so that they can bear even more fruit! There are people out there saying that the church is falling apart, spreading fear and malicious slander. But don’t you believe them; as an old saying goes: the church is an anvil that has worn out many hammers. Plenty of branches have cut themselves off in the past, sects thinking they were in possession of “the truth” when they had merely obsessed a single issue out of all proportion, cults thinking they could do it all on their own, trying to drag others with them — and where are they now?

Rather let us, sisters and brothers, stand firm in our resolve to remain together in Christ: as a Christian family, a royal priesthood chosen and precious to God, branches of God’s vine. Let us pray for the strength of God’s Holy Spirit to comfort and encourage us to remain united in the one in whom we live and move and have our being, even God the Almighty, who with the Son and the same Spirit is worshiped, praised, hallowed and adored, now and for ever.

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A Matter of Death and Life

SJF • Lent 5a 2005 • Tobias S Haller BSG

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We return once again in our Lenten journey, after a week away with a side note to the Ephesians, to Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Our reading today ends with that justly famous quotation concerning the wages of sin, and the gift of God, how one leads to death and the other to life. And our other readings today are full of images of death giving way to life — a brief preview of Easter if you will, before Palm Sunday — as we see how God brings life out of death, by God’s own will and God’s own act: as a gift, not a wage.

When I was a child, shopping trips to the supermarket with my parents always ended with a peculiar ritual. This was long before laser scanner checkouts, and electronic cash registers — though our local supermarket had gotten as far as having conveyor belts at the checkout stands! At the end of having the bill totaled, this peculiar ritual ensued: along with the receipt, the check-out clerk would count out and hand over to my mother or father, a number of green stamps. Anyone here remember green stamps? Well, for those who don’t, my parents would take these stamps home, and carefully paste them into little booklets about so big. And as the books filled with page after page of identical green stamps, the books would be set aside and saved. Once I looked closely at the page of stamps, and saw that in very fine print on each one was the phrase: “Value 1 mil.” I asked my Dad what that meant, and he told me that a mil was one-tenth of a penny. So each page of stamps was worth about two and a half cents, and each book, when full, was worth about a dollar. Now, it’s true that a dollar went a lot further in those days than it does now, when a loaf of bread cost 26 cents. Still, it seemed like alot of work to put into pasting and saving these green stamps.

Then I learned the real purpose of the stamps: it wasn’t that they were a kind of money with an amazingly low value — rather, they could be redeemed! I learned that if you went to the S&H Green Stamp Redemption Center, which wasn’t too far from where we went to church, you could trade in your completed books of stamps for — you guessed it — free gifts! I may be mistaken, but I think the only free gift we ever actually got, for three or four books, was a table lamp. I don’t know whatever became of that table lamp — but I know an awful lot of shopping at the supermarket, and saving and pasting the green stamps went into obtaining this so-called free gift! And I think shortly after that my parents stopped wasting their time pasting green stamps into booklets!

Some people seem to think of salvation in the same way, as if when we did good God gave us a few almost worthless green stamps for us to save in a book, which we would turn in at the end of the day to get a reward. This was the way in which Saint Paul had been brought up, in which most of those to whom he wrote — Gentile and Jew — had been brought up. “Do good, and you will earn God’s favor and God will reward you.” The problem with this theory, the idea that people can be good just through their own independent effort, and earn God’s reward, is twofold.

First, as Saint Paul would put it in his Letter to the Galatians, if we could do it on our own, save ourselves from sin and be good without God’s help, then Christ died for nothing! If human beings could save themselves, they would have no need for a savior! If we could “redeem” ourselves we wouldn’t need a Redeemer. If we could do it on our own, ultimately, who needs God! (As Paul says, “I am speaking in humanterms”!) This idea of self-sufficiency is the first step on the road that leads to atheism and abandonment of God, and the worst kind of idolatry that sets up the human in the place of the divine.

Second, and perhaps fortunately for us, as Saint Paul noted in our earlier readings, people, if left to their own devices, don’t get better and better: and the truth of this is obvious. The evidence that if we are left to our own devices we don’t become more moral or more decent is plain for all to see — if they have eyes to see it.

Left on their own, even for an afternoon, Adam and Eve went off in pursuit, not of righteousness, but of power and control and self-sufficiency. And the fruit of that disobedience was death for all — quite a day’s wage for that afternoon of fruit-picking in the orchard of Eden. Left on their own, our ancient ancestors didn’t get better and better, they learned shame and death as the price of disobedience and sin.

We see another image of what happens when people are left to their own in our Gospel reading. And it lies in a detail that is easy to miss. When Mary and Martha send for Jesus to come to help Lazarus, he doesn’t do it — he doesn’t go. Right there we should wonder what is going on — for Jesus not to come to help one of his closest friends, whose relationship is described in the strongest possible terms: “see how he loved him!” But Jesus keeps waiting, waiting even after he knows that Lazarus has died. And not just for a day, but for four days after his death.

This is an important detail, easy for us to miss, but it relates to Jesus’ own resurrection. For under the Jewish law, it was held that the corruption of the body begins on the fourth day — and the fact that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day was seen as fulfillment of the Scripture,“You will not let your holy one see corruption.” So corruption officially starts on the fourth day, and as Martha reminds Jesus when he goes to the tomb, it has been four days since Lazarus was buried. He will have begun to rot, and there will be a stench.

And my friends, this is ultimately what happens to us if we are left on our own. Simply put, we die; we rot; we stink. Ultimately all that is left is a pile of dry bones. Left on our own, without God’s intervention, human beings not only get bad, we go rotten, and then simply cease to be: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

But with God — ah, with God all things are possible. God can bring life even to bones of the dead so dry that they rattle like a xylophone when God’s prophet calls them to new life. God can call out to a man four days lying in a tomb, already giving off a stench that could make you retch, but God can bring him forth into the light of day alive again, loosed from the bonds of death, and breathing the fresh clean air of the newly wakened world.

On our own, my sisters and brothers, we can do nothing. We could fool ourselves by continuing to shop at the store of mortality, slaves to the devil, the storekeeper who seems so generous and gives us those paltry stamps worth less than a tenth of a penny, so that after spending thousands we might get a “free gift” worth a few dollars, and of no more use to us than an anchor to a drowning man.

Or we can put ourselves in the employ of the Lord of heaven, who doesn’t reward us because of our works or our deserving, but because he loves us as his children, and he gives us the gift of life. He knows that if he left us alone for a few hours we’d be back into the orchard hunting for that forbidden fruit; he knows that left alone we will lose our lives and dry up and become nothing but a heap of dry bones in a valley — or a stinking corpse in a cave.

But the good news is that we are not on our own. He has called us here to this real Redemption Center — the church — where the truly free gift of life is available to all. We are no longer slaves to sin and wage-earners of death, but servants of the risen Lord of life. He is the resurrection, and the life. We who believe in him, even though we die, will live. He will give new life to our mortal bodies, and fill us with his life-giving Spirit. To him be the glory, henceforth and for evermore.

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Faith Works

SJF • Lent 2a 2005 • Tobias S Haller BSG

Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift, but as something due. But to one who without works trust him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.

We come now to the second Sunday in Lent, and I want to continue where I left off last week in exploring Saint Paul’s version of the gospel, as he put it forth in his Letter to the Romans. Last week I spoke about Paul’s view of sin as a kind of inherited disease that runs through the human family faster than pink-eye through a nursery school. You just can’t get away from it: there is none righteous, no not one!

That sounds like bad news until you get to the good part of Paul’s message: there is healing for this disease. Health and salvation come through Jesus Christ, who has come like a great physician, to heal all of us in our sickness, to mend what was broken, and to set us on the path from which we had strayed.

We here are all Christians, so we are used to this message and we give thanks for it. But because we know and believe the message, we are apt to miss just how strange it seemed to the people to whom Jesus and Paul first brought it. To them this word of healing was a strange message indeed. Why? Because many of them didn’t think they were sick! For most Jews and many Gentiles of that time, goodness or righteousness didn’t come from God, but from one’s own virtue — indeed that is what virtue means: some quality or characteristic of yourself. For instance, we say it is a virtue of lead to be heavy, or of steel to be strong. For many of the Gentile philosophers, what was good was evident in nature — you could rationally deduce what was right or wrong. Goodness consisted in doing what was right, and by doing right you became better and better at doing it and so became a better and better person.

Many of the Jews, who were quite a bit less trustful of nature — to say nothing of the“nature gods” that the pagan Gentiles worshiped — were also more aware, through their own history of past failures, of the human tendency not to get better and better if left to our own devices. So they believed instead that God had given Moses a legal code, a rule book which, if you followed every rule, colored within all the lines, kept your place, and minded your business, God would reward you and account you righteous.

And this is in large part why Nicodemus, who came to see Jesus one night, is so confused. He is a good Jew who has followed the rules to the best of his ability. He’s been brought up to understand salvation exactly in those terms: the righteous inherit God’s kingdom, and the ungodly are doomed; and righteousness is earned by following the law, avoiding the sins that are forbidden, and doing the good works that are required. So when Jesus comes along and instead of talking about following rules he talks about following him, believing in him — being so bold as to say “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” — well, this just turns Nicodemus’ world upside-down! And Jesus doesn’t let the poor old guy off the hook easy. When Nicodemus comes to him with his questions, Jesus tells it like it is and says, Yes, it is a whole new world I’m talking about here. It is as if you were to be born all over again, born from above, with a heavenly view instead of an earthly one. A new wind is blowing, and though you hear it, you haven’t got a clue as to where it is coming from or where it is going. The world is upside down, for the Son of Man has descended from heaven, and will be lifted up so that all may believe in him — and be saved!

So says Jesus. And what about Paul? How shocking must his words have been to the devout Jewish believers who heard him. “But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.” You can hear the grumbling: God justify the ungodly! This is unheard of! Surely God only justifies the righteous, only rewards those who have earned salvation by avoiding the sins God forbids and doing the works God demands. So to meet the Jewish challenge to his teaching, Paul reaches back to the patriarch Abraham, the ancestor to whom the Jews looked as their “founder” so to speak, much as Americans might look back to George Washington.

We heard some of Abraham’s story — or Abram as he was called at first — in our Old Testament reading, how upon God’s command to leave everything he knows and trusts, he does so. What is crucial to Paul’s argument is why Abram obeys God: it is because he has faith in God’s promise. Saint Paul is at pains to show that Abrahams’ faith comes first, prior to his action: for if he didn’t believe in God’s power to deliver on his promise, he would not have acted in response to God’s command. So it isn’t that his obedience to the commandment wins God’s approval; rather it is his underlying faith in God that leads him to do what God commands. Faith comes first, and Abram is reckoned righteous on account of it.

Now it is true that works do follow: but what Paul is trying to clarify is that if the good works we do flow not from our faith in God, but rather as a kind of commercial transaction to get something out of God, or as merely following the law to avoid punishment, then we have missed the point and are likely to end up either as self-righteous Pharisees who think they’ve earned their passage to heaven, or into despairing sinners who fear the wrath of God and give up because they know they cannot possibly keep all of the law. Saint Paul — following the teaching of Jesus — sweeps away these alternative lifestyles of pride or despair, and offers the true life that lies in God and comes from God and leads to God.

Martin Luther once wrote, “The ‘works of the law’ are works done without faith and grace, because of the law, which forces them to be done through fear or the enticing promise of temporal advantages.” As Saint Paul wrote elsewhere, the Law is like a strict schoolmaster whom you obey either out of fear or in order to please. But our good works done in faith and through faith and by means of faith, that is another story altogether. For these are the result, not the cause, of God’s love, which was so great that he gave his only Son to the end that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life. We will explore this wonderful gift next week, as we continue to study Paul’s good news that God has opened the way to salvation through Christ, who was lifted high upon the cross that all the world — Jew and Gentile — might see him and believe in him, and be saved through faith in him: not out of fear, or only for the prize, but because God so loved the world.

This sentiment is summed up beautifully in a poem which I shared with you some years ago, but which bears repeating. So I will close with this poem in the form of a prayer. It is by the great English Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins.

O God, I love thee, I love thee—
Not out of hope of heaven for me
Nor fearing not to love and be
In the everlasting burning.

Thou, thou, my Jesus, after me
Didst reach thine arms out dying,
For my sake sufferedst nails and lance,
Mocked and marrèd countenance,
Sorrows passing number,
Sweat, and care and cumber,
Yea, and death, and this for me.
And thou couldst see me sinning:

Then I, why should I not love thee,
Jesu, so much in love with me?
Not for heaven’s sake; not to be
Out of hell by loving thee;
Not for any gains I see;
But just the way that thou didst me
I do love and will love thee:

What must I love thee, Lord, for then?
For being my King and God. Amen.

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For as in Adam...

SJF • Lent 1a 2005 • Tobias S Haller BSG

If, because of one man’s trespass, death excercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ... Just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

We come once more to the first Sunday in Lent, that season of preparation and penitence that the church sets aside for us each year, a time to prepare for Easter and a time to review our faults and failings, and take the gracious opportunity offered us, to renew our commitment to follow our Lord.

We heard today a reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, and we will hear more from this important scripture over the next weeks. This is the longest of Paul’s letters, and it contains his mature and careful analysis of the human condition and the divine response to it. So over the next weeks I will focus on Saint Paul’s teaching in my sermons, and I hope that by doing so we may find encouragement and renewal and hope as we hear what Saint Paul called “his Gospel” — which is nowhere clearer than in this letter to the Romans.

The passage we heard today lays out Paul’s argument in miniature: sin and death came through Adam, and forgiveness and life come through Jesus Christ. He will go on to develop this through the following chapters of his letter; but let us follow his example and begin at the beginning.

We are helped in this by having in our first reading what filmmakers call “the back-story”. This story takes us back to the garden, and the first gardeners! And in that passage we are reminded once more of that literally fatal decision to take the advice of a snake in the grass instead of following the commandments of the Lord in the heavens.

Saint Paul takes this story, and argues that sin does not just lie in people doing what Adam did. None of us are given the option to turn down the fruit that Adam and Eve ate. Rather, Paul shows us that sin is something we inherit, a kind of genetic predisposition to a fatal disease, a contagion that spreads and kills. Paul says, “As sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin,... so death spread to all because all had sinned... Death exercised dominion even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam.”

Now we are apt to see this as unfair. It is hard for us to see why all should suffer because of one, that all people should be condemned to death because of the mistake of one person. We want to think in terms of individuals taking responsibility for their own actions, good or ill. But is that how the world actually works? Of course not. Don’t we know that the crimes committed in society touch us all; and that the wrongs we do touch others, more than we know sometimes? Saint Paul is right: sin is not just about individual choices; it is a disease that spreads, that infects even the innocent and corrupts even the good. We are all connected; we are all in this together.

I was reminded of this a few weeks ago watching Laurence Rees’ PBS documentary about the horrors of Auschwitz. What happened in that horrific place is literally beyond imagination, which is why it is so important that these documentaries continue their testimony — especially as the last generation of eyewitnesses is dying out.

This documentary was different from any other on the topic I’d seen, in that, unlike most such films which simply deal in black and white, good and evil, this film also covered the uncomfortable shades of gray. What the film made manifest was the way in which the evil of the Nazis infected everything they did, but also everyone they touched — even some of their victims.

For this documentary, in addition to showing the familiar and hard to believe horrors of the murder of infants and children and old women, also set before us interviews with Jewish men who were co-opted into the killing system, and German men who thought they had managed to slip through these horrors with their morality intact.

In order to conserve their manpower, the Germans picked out able-bodied Jewish men to do the dirtiest work: these Sonderkommandos, or “Special Units,” as they were called, were forced to herd the other prisoners to the pens where they stripped off their clothes; to conduct them into the gas chambers; and then, after the horrific screaming ended in twenty minutes or so, to open the doors and haul the bodies up to the ovens or the open pits. There thousands upon thousands of children, women and men were reduced to smoke and ash. Day in, day out, for month after month, the killing machine ground on. These Jewish men knew that if they resisted — as indeed from time to time some among them did resist — they too would get a bullet in the head, or even worse find themselves on the other side of the chamber door, huddled and naked and waiting for the sound of the poison gas pellets to drop down the chute — one task the Nazis reserved for themselves.

One of these Jewish prisoners, Morris Venezia, was interviewed in this film, and he revealed how the evil had infected him. In the last days of the war, the Nazis, eager to cover the evidence of their crimes, shipped out as many of the prisoners as they could. They were loaded on trains to be shipped off, much as they had arrived. Crowded and cramped in the train, Venezia managed to find a seat on the floor of the car. A German prisoner, probably a criminal who’d ended up in Auschwitz along with the other thousands determined undesirable by the Nazi state, offered Venezia a few cigarettes in exchange for being allowed to take his place sitting down for a few minutes. When, at the end of those few minutes of rest he refused — or was too weak — to get up, Venezia and his friendssat on him until he suffocated, and then threw his body from the train.

The shocked interviewer asks, “You murdered another prisoner, just to be able to sit down?” And the answer comes, “What? He was a German. His people killed thirty, forty members of my family. So he gave me a couple of cigarettes — for that he should live?”

It is not for the interviewer, or for you or for me to judge this man. Who knows what choices you or I might have made in the situation in which he found himself — where the only way to preserve his own life was to become a cog in the killing machine; where a seat on the floor of a crowded train car is worth a few cigarettes — or a human life.

It is for us all, however, to see how the choice of oneself over another, or one’s own people over other people, can poison and infect all that comes after— the hissing of the serpent is still loud in our ears, and the taste of that fruit is still cloying at the back of our throats. Death has spread through the human universe, and exercised dominion over us all — even though we have not sinned in the same way Adam did, we have inherited that tendency to look out for ourselves and our own, to preserve our own lives at the expense of others, even at the risk of disobeying God, and even knowing that whatever we do, we too must one day die as well.

This is the situation that Saint Paul sets up for us: the state of human life after the fall. And a dark and seemingly hopeless situation it appears to be! The good news, Paul’s Gospel, consists in the other half of his message. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Just as we didn’t get ourselves into this horrible mess, so to we don’t have to get ourselves out of it! Jesus Christ has done it for us. Christ’s faithfulness unto death has undone death, the one giving his life for the many has removed death’s sting and healed us from the fatal disease of sin. “Just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” There is light, glorious light, up ahead, no matter how dark it seems at present.

This is the word of hope that I will take up next week as we continue our Lenten journey and our reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans. But I want to end today with one glimmer of redemption that was also part of that PBS documentary. One of the persons interviewed throughout the film is a German man named Oskar Gröning. He was a young soldier serving at Auschwitz. In the interviews he tries to distance himself from any responsibility for the horrors that went on there. But the film-makers provide the harsh details he tries to soften. True, he was not one of those who poured the poison pellets down the chutes, nor one of those who divided the arriving prisoners to the left or right — the leftgoing to the labor camp, the right, mostly women and children and old people, off to be killed immediately. No, the 22-year-old Oskar Gröning, who had been a bank teller before the war began, had the simple task of collecting all the money stolen from the arriving victims, tallying it up in neat columns and bearing the loot to Berlin every few months. He was a cog in the machine of death, and even though he personally killed no one, his hands were red with blood money.

After the war he managed to avoid prosecution for war crimes. He kept his participation at Auschwitz secret, and became an ordinary prisoner of war. Posted to a prison camp in England, he joined a choir of German prisoners who traveled the country giving concerts in Anglican churches, billeted in English and Scottish homes. As he said, “Everybody wanted to have a singer stay with them, so we had a good night's sleep and got a good breakfast and the next morning we were taken back to our gathering point and off we went to the next place. It was great.”

I watched these comments with growing anger as the filmmakers documented Oskar’s happy and contented life unfolding — getting a good job as a factory personnel manager, sunning himself on the beach with his family, snoozing on the back porch with his dog in his lap. My anger was roused as these happy scenes were intercut with interviews with Jewish survivors who lost everything but their lives at Auchwitz — their families, their property, their self-respect, even for some the sense of their own humanity. And I kept wondering, is there no justice? Is there no redemption? Will Oskar Gröning ever understand?

And the good news? Yes, the good news is that finally Herr Gröning did understand. For there was one thing he would not stand. Not too many years ago a few German historians — if you can call them that — came forward and began to deny that the holocaust had ever happened, that while a few Jews here or there might have been killed or deported, the stories of Auschwitz were massive exaggerations, part of a Jewish plot to defame and insult the German people.

And that is when Oskar Gröning came forward. He’d kept his secret all those years, never letting anyone know he had even been at Auschwitz — not even his wife or his children. But faced with the monstrous lie of the revisionist historians, he stepped forward: He said, “I see it as my task, now at my age, to face up to these things that I experienced and to oppose the Holocaust deniers who claim that Auschwitz never happened. And that's why I am here today. Because I want to tell those deniers: I have seen the gas chambers, I have seen the crematoria, I have seen the burning pits — and I want you to believe me that these atrocities happened. I was there.”

This took a change of heart, this ability to confess and testify. And it renews my hope that even in a world infected by sin, the truth can sometimes shine forth. I cannot and I will not put Herr Gröning’s act at the level of heroism or virtue — but it was the beginning of repentance and a recompense, a first stepfor him on the pilgrimage back to true humanity.

How much more powerful is the free gift of the truly innocent one, the one who had done nothing wrong at all, when he offered himself on our behalf? Beloved, let us think on these things this Lent, how far we have fallen, how much we owe, and above all, let us give thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ, the one whose abundant grace and free gift of righteousness exercises dominion in life, now and to the end of the ages.

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Finding Your Brother

SJF • Epiphany 2a 2005 • Tobias S Haller BSG
One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah.”

This second Sunday after Epiphany is also a special Sunday for Saint James Church: this is our first “Hospitality Sunday” — a special dedication of the third Sunday in each month as a time to be intentional about inviting a friend, a co-worker, or a family member to join you in church. I won’t ask for a show of hands, but I do note a few unfamiliar faces from my vantage point here in the pulpit: so welcome to Saint James Church, one and all.

There could hardly be a better gospel text for this Hospitality Sunday than the one we heard this morning. For at the end of that scripture passage we hear an example of the very thing we hope to do. One of John the Baptist’s followers, Andrew, upon receiving Christ’s invitation himself, doesn’t keep it to himself, but goes off to find his brother Simon Peter. So it is that Andrew becomes the patron saint of evangelism: spreading the good news and not just keeping it to himself. He finds his brother, and brings him the word of salvation.

How people react to good news will tell you a lot about what kind of people they are. Think of the folks who win the lottery. Some of them will first thing call an accountant, ditch their cell phone, get an unlisted number, and disappear to the Bahamas. The other sort will throw a party, invite all their friends and buy them lavish gifts, like the woman in the Gospel who was so happy to have found her lost coin that she spent it to throw a celebration! And this same difference between the worldly-wise stinginess of the tight and mean, and the open generosity of the caring and sharing, can be found in the faith. There are some folks who want their churches to remain small and select.

No, I’m not kidding! There are some people in some parishes who let it be known right up front that they want things to stay just how they are, and just who they are, and let visitors or newcomers know, in no uncertain terms, that they aren’t welcome. There was a member of my first parish who would actually mutter insults under her breath whenever someone new came to the parish — fortunately she moved away and went to a new parish herself, where I hope the welcome she received was warmer than the one she gave!

Of course, this un-welcome is not always intentional, and not even always obvious. It can take the form of “not noticing” the outstretched hand that wants to shake yours; the turn of the head that avoids eye contact; the subtle “dis-invitation” that speaks louder than words.

Fortunately, Saint James is not such a place, and is doing its best to welcome and reach out — but these are always factors to be aware of, since it is always easier to relate to the familiar than to the new. May we always be open to the new person who will enrich our common life, and strengthen our church.

I want to say one last thing about Andrew before I close, because there is more to this welcome than simple sociability. It is, in fact, at the heart of a much more important gospel truth.

We don’t hear much more of Andrew in the Gospel. He pops up once or twice, but is nowhere near so prominent as the brother he went to find. Simon Peter moves right to the head of the class, so to speak, and becomes the leader of the church, part of the inner circle with James and John, while Andrew fades into the background.

So finding my brother may mean more than simply welcoming him into the fellowship: it may mean giving up my own place and privilege to let him use his gifts and talents to God’s glory — gifts and talents that he might have that I lack, or that overshadow mine in excellence or depth. There is no place for pride of place in this place, the church. Though I may be an agent of God’s call, I am not in charge of that call, nor of its results. If I am to be truly generous with the Gospel message, that means accepting the results of that Gospel message: to let it work in the hearts of those who hear it, that they might bear fruit and bear it abundantly, perhaps producing more than I could ever ask or imagine to the glory of God. It is not for me to say of my brother, “Who does he think he is?” but rather, “Look at how well my brother does!” and glorify God with him.

Andrew, as a disciple of John the Baptist, had a good instructor in this generous work. John, knowing himself not to be the Messiah but only his forerunner, said of Jesus, “This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me...’” When Jesus came, John stepped aside to let Jesus enter the spotlight of history. Andrew did the same with Peter.

And there is one more person of whom I want to make mention today who did the same. He spent his life working to help his brothers and sisters, reaching out and spreading the word, not only the word of the gospel but the word of liberation, the word of justice and equality. He not only found his brothers and sisters, but he worked tirelessly to raise them up. And while towards the end of his short life he knew that forces were at work that would soon remove him from the scene, yet he persisted in proclaiming the message. He kept calling his brothers and sisters, spreading the word.

For rumor was abroad: they were after him and would make an attempt on his life. Yet on the night before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr gave a great speech, filled with hope. And this is the conclusion of that speech, a speech delivered in the spirit of John the Baptist, a speech delivered in the spirit of Saint Andrew, showing concern not for himself, but for his brothers and sisters, and showing as well his trust in the promise. He said:

I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

May we always, my sisters and brothers in Christ, always be people of welcome and hospitality like Andrew the Apostle, spreading the word to our own sisters and brothers, and bringing them into an ever-growing, ever-changing fellowship of faith. May we be like John the Baptist, stepping aside when the time comes to let the gospel happen in all its surprising glory. And may we be like Martin Luther King Jr in setting nothing in the place of the vision of God’s good kingdom, God’s promised land, in which all people will one day rejoice together in unity and liberty for ever.

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Waiting for God

SJF • Burial of Marilyn Cotton • Tobias S Haller BSG

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. For the Lord will not reject forever.

About a dozen years ago, a group of elementary school children in Portland Maine were studying the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream. You know, that’s the current that runs up from the warm Caribbean, along the east coast of the US and Canada, and then flows on across the ocean towards Europe — a river of warm water running through the chilly cold of the North Atlantic. Well, these school children decided to see if they could use this invisible stream as a means of communication. They wrote messages with their names and addresses on slips of paper, and put them into some old empty bottles. They sealed the bottles tight, and then handed them over to a friendly fishing boat captain, who took them out to sea and dropped them into the Gulf Stream.

For a long time nothing happened. Months went by — and you know, when you’re ten years old a few months is a long time! But then two of the students got letters — from Canada! Their bottles hadn’t traveled very far at all.

For some years nothing further happened. Maybe the bottles hadn’t been as tightly sealed as they thought. Maybe a big fish had come along and gobbled them up — like Jonah! Or maybe whoever found them just didn’t bother to answer the message.

Time passed; and then, one day, after the children had reached their teens, one of them got a letter from France: one of the bottles had made it all the way across the ocean and down to the coast of Normandy, where it had been found on the beach.

Jeremiah wrote, “It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” Sometimes the wait seems long. Sometimes, since our prayers to God are like so many bottles cast adrift, we might be tempted to wonder if we will ever get a response. But we never give up waiting, we never give up sending off new bottles day by day and year by year, each one a prayer and a hope.

Marilyn Cotton never gave up on the Lord for whom she waited. In her many faithful years she cast many a message on the waters, many a prayer and many a hope, waiting, always waiting, for the answer to come back. Little hints did arrive from time to time, little indications that the message was getting through — you saw it in the joy she had in her eyes herein this church. Even when her earthly vision was fading she still caught sight of something better and brighter. It brought her here to this church, to this altar, week by week, borne on the warm stream of God’s love through the icy waters of this world of ours.

And then, last Sunday, her wait came to an end. God himself took her by the hand, guiding her along the path her many prayers and messages had gone, on up along that warm stream of God’s grace, on to the place of rest and peace — to that farther shore.

“For the Lord is good to the soul that waits for him, the soul that trusts in him.” He knows his own as his own know him. He’s received more of those messages than it may have appeared to us in our times of stress and loss and pain. In fact, he’s gotten every single last one of them. And it’s not that he ignores them — Oh, no! It is just that he is so very careful that not a single one be lost.

Marilyn — “Mame” — has left us, carried away in God’s own arms, to the place where there is no further pain nor grief, nor tears nor sighing, where vision is clear, and the heart rejoices. She has sailed on the course she charted inherprayers, along that warm stream of God’s love, to be with those who have gone before, to rest on that farther shore, and there in glory shine.

It is for us, still feebly glimmering in the midst of a cold winter — in the midst of a world of terrorism and tidal waves, of broken hearts and broken boilers — but Christmas! — to do as Marilyn did and resolutely keep on sending our messages, proclaiming who we are and whose we are — God’s children — sealing our prayers with the seal of faith and hope, and sending them out into the stream of God’s love. They will not go adrift. Not one of them will be lost. They will reach the hands of God. And though he appear to tarry, be not dismayed — he is patient and careful and will not miss a single one. We too one day will hear him summon us by name, and we will listen to his voice, and know it to be the voice of the one for whom we have longed. We will know that our messages have been received, and we have been received, for we will have heard from the one from whom we sought a word, the Word of God himself, now speaking his loving word to us.

We too one day will join with Marilyn and all our beloved sisters and brothers at the throne of God, where no hunger nor thirst nor heat will touch us, and where all tears will be wiped from our eyes. And there we will rejoice forever, with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, our Good Shepherd and our King, to whom be ascribed all might, majesty, power and dominion, henceforth and forever more.

The story of the elementary school class experience with the Gulf Stream is based on a Reuters account.

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Power of the Word

SJF • Christmas 1 2004 • Tobias S Haller BSG

Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.

Merry Christmas! It is a joy to see you all here on this Christmas Sunday morning. It is at this gracious time of the turning year that we most need each other, most need to hear the word of God, and most need to give thanks for the greatest word of all, the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ, who came down at Christmas to be with us and to save us.

God spoke this word to us on the first Christmas long ago, a word of comfort and encouragement, a word that “met us where we were” and helped us get back on our feet.

It wasn’t always so, of course. Originally, as the old, old story goes, God wanted just to be with us, to stroll with us in the garden and take the evening breeze, to take it easy and treat us with the familiarity of a loving parent with loving children gathered around playing on the grass. But did our many-times-great-grandparents leave it that way? You know the story. Did they relax and take it easy and trust God? Nooooh! They went for the fruit salad, the one that God had told them was full of toxic ingredients and would do them no good. So it was that we lost that easy familiarity with God, that one-on-one personal relationship with our creator. We didn’t take him at his word, and so his word became a curse: our ancient ancestors were evicted from the garden of Eden, condemned to a life of hard work, pain in childbirth, and the ulimate sentence of death itself: fitting punishment for those who seek to become as wise as God before their time.

Now, God did not abandon us, of course, but did have to change the tone of his word to us. Instead of his own loving word delivered in person, he sent the Law and promise by intermediaries — Moses and the prophets — and the Law treated us as a disciplinarian does while the promise awaited fulfillment.. After all, we’d earned all the discipline God could hand out though our disobedience, and we were not ready for the promise! So the word of God became the words of the Law given through Moses.

We all know the power of words, how a word spoken in anger can resound and echo for years, nursed in a wounded heart to come back and bite you unexpectedly. And we know that a word of love spoken at the right time can do just the opposite, sometimes far more than we could imagine.

Let me give you a real example of what a difference there is between harsh and loving words, and what an impact they can have.

There was once a country church in a small village, where a boy was serving as an acolyte at the altar. As he was presenting the wine for the priest to fill the chalice, the boy accidentally dropped the wine cruet, and it shattered on the floor making a terrible mess. The village priest barely controlled himself and shouted out, “Leave the altar and don't come back!” Meanwhile, halfway around the world, in a great cathedral, a similar scene was being enacted. An acolyte was serving the bishop at the high altar, and in just the same way accidentally dropped the cruet of wine. The bishop paused and looked the boy in the eye, and with a smile said softly, “Someday you will be a priest.”

Well, you may say, such accidents must happen dozens of times. And so they have. And no doubt harsh or kind words have been spoken. But in this case, the first boy did leave the church and he never came back. His name was Jossip Broz, better known by his adopted name Marshal Tito, leader of communist Yugoslavia. And the other boy did become a priest. Fulton Sheen grew up to become a bishop, one of the greatest Christian communicators of the last century, the man who brought the Gospel to television.

So it is that the disciplinarian’s harsh words may well have the opposite effect from what was intended. The harsh command and the strict regimen do not produce the desired results. Saint Paul spoke eloquently of this in his letter to the Romans: how all the Law did was to make us aware of our sin, but did nothing to help us out of it.

And God knew this too, and more. God knew that his own harsh words to Adam and Eve, “Get out of the Garden of Eden and don’t come back,” would, in the long run, not bring an end to wrongdoing. Though our ancient ancestors had tasted of the fruit that gave them the ability to tell good from evil, still some of their descendants, starting with Cain their firstborn son, would chose the evil rather than the good. So God saw that further instruction was needed, that a time of preparation and discipline was needed to supplement the common sense that helps people to tell good from evil. And so God sent the Law to further instruct his people. But God also knew in his infinite wisdom, that times of discipline come to an end; and the time comes for the promise of freedom to be fulfilled as, instead a disciplinarian, God sends his own Son as a great high priest, to help us as one of us by showing us the way of forgiveness. So it is that God, in the fullness of time, when things were ready and ripe and receptive, sent another word in place of the Law of Moses, a personal word, a priestly word, a word of forgiveness, full of grace and truth, a word not spoken by the prophets, but by God himself, his own Word, the Word that was with God in the beginning, the Word that in some mysterious and incomprehensible way was God in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be!

God sent his Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, God from God and Light from Light, who was from before time and forever, down into the womb of the Virgin Mary, in which was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is God’s Word to us in these latter days. This is his Word spoken not by intermediaries or messengers, however gracious and righteous, but by God himself. This is God’s Son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem us who lived under the law, so that we might be freed from the law of discipline and come into our promised inheritance as children of God, and, yes, as priests of his kingdom!

And because we are children of God and share in Christ’s eternal priesthood, — having been restored by God through the act of his Son coming among us as one of us — we are able to join with God’s Son in calling God our Father, through the power of the Spirit at work in our hearts.

So let us give thanks, my sisters and brothers, sisters and brothers of Jesus our Lord and Savior — let us give thanks this Christmas season for the greatest gift of all, the best word ever spoken, knowing that even if we occasionally fail and falter and drop a wine-cruet, God will look upon us with forgiveness and grace, and speak to us a word of comfort and truth, assuring us that nothing — nothing — can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The story of Tito and Sheen is based on an account in James W. Hewett?s Illustrations Unlimited.

What are you waiting for?

SJF • Advent 3a 2004 • Tobias S Haller BSG

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient.

Over the last weeks I’ve been talking about some of the virtues we practice in this Advent time of year: love and welcome — not that the practice of these virtues should be limited to Advent, mind; but the church does call us to think on these things in a more intentional way in this time of preparation. So today I want to reflect upon a third virtue, the virtue of patience, which is a big part of what Advent is all about, this season of watchful waiting, not only for the coming of our Lord at the end of time, but for the more down-to-earth waiting for our own celebration of Christmas in a couple of weeks.

Waiting for Christmas is something children are well used to, though I dare say they have yet to master the virtue of patience in that regard. And sometimes adults aren’t much better! Now that the Christmas displays go up in the stores even before Hallowe’en, it seems like we have more pre-Christmas time to wait through than ever! And not all people handle the waiting equally well. If you’ve ever stood back and watched the shoppers at work at the sale counter, you might come to think that this was the season of impatience! It is sometimes just plain hard to wait, especially when you know what you are waiting for.

In a scene in last year’s comic film “Love Actually” a woman catches her husband at the jewelry counter of a high-class department store. He quickly conceals the purchase — because, as the audience knows, he’s buying a necklace for his secretary. When the couple return home, the wife can’t resist the temptation, and she takes a peek in the pocket of her husband’s coat as it hangs in the hallway. Sure enough, in a lovely small box is a very classy gold necklace. It’s years since he’s bought her anything so nice. She quickly returns the box to her husband’s coat pocket. Weeks later, on Christmas day, the family is gathered and the packages are being opened. The wife finds the box under the tree, and the husband says, “Oh I was hoping to save that for last. It’s rather special.” The wife, with a knowing smile, opens the package to discover, not the necklace, but a Joni Mitchell CD. Emma Thompson, the brilliant English actress who plays the wife, very capably expresses the mixture of disappointment, anger, bewilderment, and — remembering these are Brits — gratitude and a perfectly polite and gracious, “Oh it’s just what I wanted” — though of course she has to excuse herself for a moment to have a good cry as she realizes all the implications of what wasn’t in the box.

As we approach Christmas we too are waiting for Christmas presents of one sort and another, no doubt planning to buy things for our loved ones that we hope will express our love. But we also know that sometimes what we give will disappoint those to whom we give, just as, if we are completely honest, we will admit there have been times when we have been disappointed. Ultimately it isn’t so much about the gift itself, as about how well or poorly the gift matches our expectation. It all depends on what you are waiting for.

So what are we waiting for? And I don’t mean in terms of Christmas presents, but in the larger terms in which the church poses this question to us every Advent season, when we are called to remembrance of our “in the mean time, in-between time” situation, as we await the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. What are we waiting for as we wait for the Lord to come? What do you think is in that gift-wrapped box with our name on it?

Jesus himself asked much the same question of the messengers from John the Baptist, and of those who came out to see him and John the Baptist in the Judean wilderness. When John’s ambassadors asked Jesus if he was the one they were waiting for, he basically answered, “What you see is what you get! Let my actions speak for themselves. I am healing people of their inability to see or to walk or to hear; I am even raising the dead, and above all preaching the good news. Doesn’t this say who I am and what I am here for? If I am not the one you have been waiting for, then what are you waiting for?”

To those who had sought out John, Jesus posed the question, “What did you come out here to see? A reed shaken by the wind? Hardly worth the trip! Did you come to see somebody dressed like a prince — you’re looking in the wrong place! Did you come for a prophet — well you got the greatest prophet of them all — and yet remember he is just the advance man, the forerunner who prepares the way for the real main act.”

So what are we waiting for? What do we expect of God or from God? The answer to that question will tell us a great deal about how we understand God. “What are you waiting for?” — in this case — is another way of asking, “What do you think God is like?” For ultimately what we are waiting for is not something from God, but for God himself. So what are we waiting for? What is God like, and what do we expect from him?

Many people — not just today but throughout history — have been waiting for God to come as the judge of the world, with the expectation that the vengeful judgment will fall primarily on other people! A few of us, perhaps more aware of our own limitations and failures, are looking for a judge who will be more lenient, or even for an advocate who will speak in our defense! It was exactly of this that Job spoke when he said, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he shall stand, and I shall see him on my side.” It is a great comfort to know that we are not only waiting for a judge, but for a defender and advocate.

Another thing we hope for in the coming of the Lord is liberation from mortality and all that it entails. We are waiting for God who, as the prophet Malachi said, comes “with healing in his wings.” We are waiting for freedom from weakness of body and impairment of mind, liberation from death itself. Both of these hopes are testified to in the wonderful passage from Isaiah, where God comes not only with vengeance but with salvation and healing. Clearly Jesus had this passage in mind when he spoke to the messengers from John: you are seeing the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf opened, the lame walking and the mute singing for joy! The kingdom of God is among you, and blessed are those who can see it and hear it and walk in it, and who take no offense that it has come, not in the royal palace, but out here in the wilderness.

What are we waiting for? Whatever we expect God to be like when he comes again in glory, we already know what he was like when he came among us long ago: he came as a child born to a humble family, a child whom some proclaimed and worshiped, but whom others sought to kill. He came to us as one who brought liberation from bondage to disease and limitation, who brought freedom to the captives and capability to the incapacitated.

What are we waiting for? I’ll tell you what we aren’t waiting for: we are not waiting for a gift that will turn out to have been given to someone else. We are waiting for our Lord and our God, our Creator and Redeemer. “So be patient therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.” Be patient like the farmer who waits for the early and the later rains to nourish the crop. Let us wait with that patience nourished by hope, with hope fortified by faith, and all bound up in and wrapped in and sanctified by love, the love of God for us his beloved, to whom he gave himself in ages past, and who is our hope for years to come, even Jesus Christ our Lord. +

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Love fulfills the Law

SJF • Advent 1a 2004

“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”+

We have come once more to the beginning of the church year: the first Sunday of Advent. This season is a time of preparation for our annual celebration of Christmas in a few weeks, the memorial of Christ’s having come among us two thousand years ago; but it is also a time of preparation for the second coming of Christ, which as I noted a few weeks ago, and as our Gospel reading today reminds us, will come at an unexpected hour — and so we are called, like the Scouts, to “Be Prepared.”

Over these next four Sundays I will explore with you several factors in this preparedness, this “state of readiness” in which our Lord calls us to be. And I want to begin this week with the age-old tension between the Law and the Spirit of Love, emphasizing Saint Paul’s teaching that love fulfills the law.

Many of you here work in various aspects of the field of medicine, as nurses, technicians and care-givers; and as I’ve often reminded you, our church has a long history of connection with the medical arts, including having the inventor of the modern stethoscope among our early lay leaders. So you may know about the ancient Greek and Roman physicians Hippocrates and Galen, and the traditional covenant made by doctors and other health care workers going back to ancient times. One cornerstone of this tradition is the counsel to “do no harm.”

That is well and good as far as it goes — certainly that is why we trust ourselves to the care of physicians, and often literally place our lives in their hands. But promising to do no harm is not enough for a follower of Christ. Our promise is not just to refrain from doing wrong, but to pursue the right; as Saint Paul says, and as our Collect today reminds us, not only to lay aside the works of darkness, but to put on the armor of light.

It seems so simple as Paul describes it. All those commandments about not doing wrong — you know, the Big Ten, of which he names four in our reading today (adultery, murder, theft, and envy)— all of these are summed up, he says, following Jesus own teaching, in the commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself.” For love naturally tends not only to do no harm, but to do good. And it does this without additional instructions or commandments. Goodness bubbles up naturally from love — just as the perverse will to do wrong can be provoked and incited by too heavy a reliance on law.

Perhaps you remember the old song, “Why did the children put beans in their ears?” You may also recall the answer to the question: “They did it because we said No!” Such is the perversity of human nature that we sometimes do — not only what we know we should not do — but what we really don’t want to do, simply because someone has told us not to do it. The minute the law is laid down, we have an urge to break it. Saint Paul described this process in his Letter to the Romans, and went on to say that the only way out was to return to love as the basis for human good — not more law. The more you lay down the law, the greater the natural orneriness of people will percolate to the surface — so the best approach is to appeal not to law, but to love.

For example, the autobahn, the German highway system, even though it has no upper speed limit, has fewer fatal accidents than our own highway system, with its strictly enforced laws against speeding. The rules of the German highway system are based on respect for other drivers and care in driving, not some arbitrary and external limitation on how fast you can drive.

Let me give you another example of this principle at work. The nineteenth century evangelist H A Ironside tells a story of his missionary work out in the wild west. He had a little school for young Indian men and women, who came to his home in California from the various tribes in Arizona. One of these was a young Navajo man, who joined the Bible class one evening. The group was discussing just this question of the Law and the Spirit of Love, and the thoughtful young man told this story. "Well, my friends, I have been listening very carefully, because I am here to learn all I can in order to take it back to my people. I do not understand all that you are talking about, and I do not think you do yourselves. But concerning this law and love business, let me see if I can make it clear. I think it is like this. When Mr Ironside brought me from my home we took the longest railroad journey I ever took. We got out at Barstow, and there I saw the most beautiful railroad station and hotel I have ever seen. I walked all around and saw at one end of the station a sign, 'Do not spit here.' I looked at that sign and then looked down at the ground and saw that many had spitted there, and before I could even think what I am doing I find I have spitted myself! Isn't that strange when the sign says, 'Do not spit here'?

Then I come to Oakland and go to the home of the lady who invited me to dinner today and I am in the nicest home I have ever been in. Such beautiful furniture and carpets, I hate even to step on them. I sink into a comfortable chair, and the lady says, 'Now, John, you stay here while I go out and see whether the maid has dinner ready.' I look around at the beautiful pictures, at the grand piano, and I walk all around that room. I am looking for a sign; and the sign I am looking for is, 'Do not spit here,' but I look around that beautiful sitting room, and cannot find a sign like this. I think, 'What a pity when this is such a beautiful home to have people spitting all over it — too bad they don't put up a sign!' So I look all over the carpet, but find that nobody has spitted there! And I wouldn’t think of spitting myself, the place is so beautiful and lovely.

So isn’t it strange that where the sign says, 'Do not spit,' a lot of people spit. But where there is no sign at all, in that beautiful home, nobody spit. Now I understand! That sign is the law, but inside the home it is the spirit of love. They love their beautiful home, and they want to keep it clean. They do not need a sign to tell them so. I think that explains this law and love business."

My friends, that does explain it. You will not — in spite of what the song says — hurt the one you truly love. For as Saint Paul told the church of Corinth, in that passage read at so many weddings:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Love never ends, my friends, love never ends. As the young Navajo might have said, love doesn’t need a sign to tell it what not to do.

At this time of the year, we cast our minds upon the greatest love possible: the love of God shown to us in the incarnation of his blessed Son. God gave himself to us, fully and completely. This is the love we are called upon to emulate, this is the love we are called upon to express to one another, loving each other as God loved us— not because we’ve promised to “do no harm” but because the love we feel for each other in Christ leads us naturally to do what is right and good.

So as we approach this Christmastide, my beloved sisters and brothers in Christ, let us treat each other with the respect that young Navajo instinctively felt for the beautiful furnishings in that welcoming home — for surely we are worth much more than satin sofas and grand pianos! Let us treat each other with the deference and care that German motorists are schooled in before they ever sit behind the wheel — surely we are worth more than even the flashiest BMW! Let us treat each other with the same respect and dignity with which we too wish to be treated, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and giving thanks to God for the opportunity to join with one another in worship and praise of the One who is the source of all light and love, even Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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Welcome to this new blog

Sermons will soon be posted to this blog, beginning with Advent 1 2004.
Peace,
Tobias