A Weeding Lesson

Saint James Fordham • Proper 11a • Tobias Haller BSG
The householder said, “In gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest...”

Today’s Gospel is the second in a series of three parables about seeds. Last week, we heard about the seeds that were broadcast on all sorts and conditions of soil, and how they fared — growing or withering. And next week we’ll hear about that famous mustard seed of faith.

Today, we have what appears to be a story of early agricultural terrorism — an enemy’s plot to infect a wholesome field of wheat with weed-seed; and we also hear about the wise farmer’s response. As with all parables, this story has a symbolic message, and in today’s Gospel Jesus explains the symbol and the message it bears. And the message, for us today as for his original hearers, is “Be Patient,” or more specifically, “Don’t rush to judgment!”

Now all of us here know about impatience. We live in New York City, after all, renowned for its hectic pace, its hurrying and scurrying life style. From time to time we all experience the urge to rush things along, to hasten and hustle and bustle when we should perhaps step back and take a look before we leap.

But impatience is not a quality restricted to modern times and modern places. There is plenty of evidence of impatience in our Scriptures. Look at those hasty household servants, ready to rush in and pull up the weeds with a vengeance, only to destroy the good wheat as well. Thank goodness for the wise householder!

On the other hand, Saint Paul, who would not normally be held up as an example of patience, today picks up that same theme, the eager but long wait of the whole creation, hoping and waiting in patience for its liberation.

We might well note, however, that patience is not characteristic of Saint Paul! Always so sure he is on the right track even when he is terribly wrong — as when he persecutes Christians and thinks he is doing God a favor. And even after his conversion from time to time he displays that same old impatience. Even in today’s reading, where he talks about waiting with patience, it is a very impatient kind of patience, in which he portrays creation waiting in eager longing, groaning and crying out like a woman in labor, longing for delivery. I pity the poor husband who tells his wife, while she’s experiencing a contraction, “Just be patient, dear...” A woman in labor doesn’t want to be patient — she wants it to be over! So perhaps Saint Paul did not understand patience all that well.

The farmworkers in our parable today echo this anxious impatience. “Let’s get those weeds!” is their motto. But the voice of the Master, the voice of Jesus, says, “No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.” At harvest time, the Master assures us, the sorting out will take place, and the weeds will burn while the grain is gathered in.

Now, as I said, this parable isn’t about agriculture: it was a a warning to the early church, and it is the same warning to our church today. It would have been a warning to Saint Paul, had he been around to hear it. Before his conversion, while he was still known as Saul, he thought it was his job, he even thought he had a divine commission, to go about sorting the weeds from the wheat — to separate the blasphemous new sect, the followers of that renegade rabble-rouser Jesus, from the true pious Jews. He rushed to judgment, and sent many to prison and to death because they believed in Christ. The Scripture vividly describes him standing by as the people murdered Saint Stephen, helping the crowd in their sweaty work by holding their overcoats, like a towel-boy at a sports event, straining on tiptoe to see the action, as that Christian rabble-rouser was battered to death with stones. Saul wasn’t content to wait and see, and leave the matter in God’s hands. Saul thought he knew best, and persecuted the church to within an inch of its life.

Then one fateful day on the road to Damascus, Jesus himself confronted Saul and told him just how wrong he was, and the persecutor became a champion of what he once had cursed.

But did the church learn from this? Did it learn from Jesus’ parable? If it did, it soon forgot its lesson. Throughout Christian history there arose those who thought they could do God’s harvest work for him. Impatient for the judgment of God to show itself, they pushed God aside, and started ripping up what they thought were weeds. And how they damaged the wheat in the process! And how many young stalks of wheat were ripped up with the weeds! And how often has wheat been mistaken for weeds down through the years!

It is a sad history. The followers of Saint John the Beloved Disciple thought of themselves as the children of light, and cursed and condemned everyone else as the children of darkness. The church of the east and the church of the west excommunicated each other. The inquisition saw to the torture and murder of thousands it considered heretics. The Protestant reformers beheaded Roman Catholics, and the Roman Catholics burned Protestants at the stake.

So many weeds amidst so little wheat! And everyone thinking they knew best how to do God’s will, rushing to judgment when what God said was, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

It is a sad history, and it isn’t over. Even today, in spite of our Lord’s command in the Gospel, there are countless busy workers attempting to purify the church, ripping up what they think are weeds, and weakening the church instead of strengthening it. They may have appointed themselves the guardians of the “Global Anglican Future” but they are repeating the mistakes of a sorry past!

But thanks be to God that this is not our task here at Saint James Church, or in the real live Anglican Communion — you know, the one meets with the Archbishop of Canterbury instead of gathering separately against him! Our task is to remain faithful to our Lord in the knowledge that judgment rests with God, not us. Our task is to welcome all, not to determine who’s a weed and who’s a stalk of wheat. Our task is to grow and flourish, not concerned about whether our neighbor is of the wheat or weed persuasion — for who knows what they might think of us! It is our task to grow, and to bear fruit, and to leave the sorting at harvest time to God.

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There is an old story in Jewish tradition about the patriarch Abraham. He was, as you know, renowned for his hospitality. One evening as he was sitting by his tent, a very old man came walking down the road. Abraham immediately jumped up and invited him into his tent. He washed his feet and gave him wine and bread and meat. Abraham noticed that rather than saying the traditional blessing before eating, the old man started in right away, chewing the bread with his few good teeth and glugging the wine right down. Abraham was astonished, and asked him, “Don’t you give thanks to God before you eat?”

The old man answered, “Oh, I don’t believe in God. I’m a fire-worshiper.” This was too much for the pious patriarch Abraham, and he grabbed the old pagan fire-worshiper by both shoulders, hustled him out of his tent and pushed him off down the road. The old fire-worshiper shrugged and went on his way, still chewing the last mouthful of bread, as Abraham looked after him shaking his head and his fist, and clucking his tongue in disgust.

Later that evening God appeared to Abraham in a dream, and said to him, “Abraham.” Abraham answered, as always, “Here am I, Lord.” And God asked him, (knowing the answer of course), “Where is the old man who came to your tent this evening?” And Abraham said, “I sent him on his way because he does not worship you, O Holy One.” And God said softly, “I have put up with him for over eighty years. Could you not put up with him for one night?”

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God, we can be assured, knows weeds from wheat, and at harvest time will deal with both as he sees fit. Until then, let us be content to grow and flourish under his watchful eye, giving thanks for the opportunity he gives us to grow.+

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The Scattered Word

SJF • Proper 10a • Tobias Haller BSG

Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path... other seeds fell on rocky ground... other seeds fell among thorns... other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain.

This Sunday we hear the first in a series of gospel lessons about seeds, parables in which Jesus uses agricultural imagery. Jesus, though a carpenter, must have been well familiar with the farming and gardening that went on in the lands in which he lived and traveled — as were the people of those lands. So he often made use of these images in his teaching.

Today’s parable shows someone sowing seed by the method that goes by the name “broadcasting” — and it may come as a surprise to hear that this term has been around a lot longer than radio or television. It consists of walking through the field and tossing the seed every which way, scattering and casting it abroad. You may have seen the logo of the book publisher Simon and Shuster, that shows a little man walking along with a sack of seed, his head tilted up, not even particularly looking where he’s going, just tossing the seed behind and around him. That’s the original “broadcasting.”

Jesus tells his disciples that the seed in his parable stands for the word, so it is not at all strange that a book publisher should use this same symbol as a logo. After all, a publisher’s business is to spread the word too, in the form of books — the written word printed on paper and distributed abroad. And this is true as surely as Jesus intended it to refer to the Word we know as the Gospel, the written word of God, the word of the kingdom scattered and spread to the four corners of the earth.

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Now, it may seem at first that broadcasting the seed is wasteful and extravagant. Why not just choose where the seed is to go, choose only the most fertile soil, prepare it, plow it and till it, and only plant the seed in the furrows. Well, to pick up our publishing analogy, you might just as well say, why publish a book? Why not find out just who wants to know what is in the book and send it directly to them. But, of course, that’s not a book — it’s a letter! That’s not publishing, but correspondence.

Publishing requires a wider reach, a greater spread, a more adventuresome approach. There is a risk of some loss in publishing just as there is in scattering your seed by broadcasting it. You may think you understand your audience, and do a lot of research about targeting a particular group for your publication, but once a book is printed and distributed, you never know for certain what will become of it. It might be a best-seller, or instead languish on the shelves only to be “remaindered” and sold at a huge discount so as not to be a total loss.

But on the plus side, you never know how many hands a book may pass through in its lifetime; one book can have many, many readers: the public library is a testimony to that fact. But the same is true of our own personal libraries. As you know, Father Forsyth, who in his retirement was a member of this parish, had served as a priest for well over half a century — and accumulated many books along the way. At his death, those books came to the rectory, where they still are. And every time I consult one of them when I’m working on a sermon or an essay, I’m reminded of Father Forsyth, because his name is written in neat little letters on the inside cover of each of them. So I benefit from them, and learn from them, as he did — and who knows how many others will do the same in the years and decades to come, and gain from what they read, and bring forth fruit, thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold?

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The thing about books is that the message they contain is for people who may not even know they need to hear it. And so it is with the Scripture itself, the written Word of God, that “book of books” we call the Bible. The message of salvation it conveys is most needed by the people who have yet to hear it, the people who don’t even know about it. Now, that doesn’t mean it will bear fruit in all of them — there are some who receive it eagerly but will not profit from it: like rocky soil where the seed can’t put down roots. Some may well receive the word, and have it taken from them by others, like birds who snatch up the seed from the path. Some may embrace the word but find that other cares and concerns stifle it out, like thorns that choke the seed.

But others, ah those others, who are like good soil, not only receive the word but do something with it, understanding it and bringing forth — what? Why, more seed! They bear fruit and multiply the seed and become broadcasters themselves, eager to share the Word they have understood and put into practice.

And this is what God desires, that the word that goes forth from his mouth shall not return to him empty, but accomplish that which God has purposed, and succeed in the thing for which God sent it. God, who broadcasts the Word, does so in order to maximize the opportunities for growth and productivity — and even unlikely soil gets the chance to be productive. Who knows, maybe that crack in the sidewalk holds enough soil to sprout at least a little. Who knows, maybe the rocky soil will give a bit when the rains come and water the earth, so that the seed might have a chance; or the thorns not be so tenacious and obstructive; or the birds might even find a tasty worm to add variety to their diet, and choose it instead of the seed!

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We are, of course, called to be the good soil — receptive to the word but also productive: to bring forth a harvest of the word, and to take up the task as sowers who continue to spread it. As our collect today puts it, we are called not only to know and understand what things we ought to do, but to pray to have the grace and power faithfully to accomplish them. We are, in short, to be fruitful and multiply the word of God.

And there is none so weak or small but may find service here. The word that a Christian proclaims need not be as eloquent as a sermon or a testimony. As the old song says, even those of us who cannot preach like Peter, or cannot preach like Paul, can still “tell the love of Jesus and say he died for all.” Even a young child, filled with the love of God and the Spirit of God, can cry out, “Abba! Father!” That Spirit is planted in our hearts through the grace and gift of God, and dwells within us, taking root and bringing forth fruit, as we — all of us adopted children — join our voices together and cry out to our Abba, our Father, our God.

And others, hearing that word, will take it in as well, as it takes root within them. The word shall go forth and shall not return empty, but accomplish that which God purposes, and succeed in the thing for which God sent it: the word of salvation, broadcast and published to the furthest extent of the world. So let us join in the task, dear friends, let us bring forth abundantly, and equipped with the word to spread, and the spirit to spread it, “publish glad tidings, tidings of peace, tidings of Jesus, redemption and release!”+

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The Prison of Oneself

SJF • Proper 9a • Tobias Haller BSG

For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

+In a film of a few years back, The Statement, Michael Caine plays an aging French Nazi. As a young man he had participated in the massacre of fellow villagers who were Jewish. He himself is a devout Roman Catholic who has been shielded by the church — moved from monastery to monastery around the country — because he belongs to a mysterious organization, a “church within the church,” similar to if not identical with Opus Dei — the group given a rather fantastic interpretation in another more recent film, The Da Vinci Code. He is constantly on the run and lives between the terror of being assassinated or abducted to Israel to stand trial, and wallowing in emotional outbursts of repentance.

In one particularly telling scene, he is kneeling in his tiny apartment, resting his arms on a small table adorned with various devotional objects, weeping and wailing his heart out in a paroxysm of repentant anguish. At the end of this emotional display he seems a bit calmer and relieved; but as he stands he almost trips over his old dog, lying on the floor all this while behind him. Suddenly possessed with a savage rage, he begins kicking the dog mercilessly, cursing at the top of his lungs. And whatever sympathy the audience might have had for him, it disappears in a flash.

More importantly, the problem with this Nazi isn’t just that he can’t escape his past, it is that he can’t escape himself. He is not just a good man who did a bad thing once years before and has yet to pay the price — he is a bad man who thinks his bouts of repentance will make up for the fact that his heart has not changed in all those years: the heart that led him to betray his fellow villagers in order to preserve himself. In fact, he isn’t even really repentant — he just doesn’t want to get caught; self-preservation is still the rule. The irony is that he is already caught: he is free only in the sense that he is not in a prison made of stone and iron — his real prison is his own self - the very self he so earnestly wants to preserve.

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Saint Paul has a similar problem, but finds a better solution. He too has done something awful when he was younger, as a persecutor of the church who arrested Christians up and down the country, and even saw to it that some of them were put to death. But even after his conversion he realizes that not only can he not escape his past — even though he has really repented of it — but that he cannot escape himself. He keeps on sinning: he knows what he ought to do, but he doesn’t do it; he knows what he shouldn’t do, but he still does it. As he says, “When I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”

Now, Saint Paul is not unique in this: in fact, this is pretty much the human condition when it comes to good behavior. None of us is perfect, and all of us fall off the wagon from time to time — and even if we are able to avoid the sins of intention, the ones that we have to work at (such as pride, envy, and hatred) it is difficult if not impossible to avoid the sins that derive from the emotions, such as anger — the sins that arise unbidden and almost irresistibly.

The boundary between who we are and what we do is open and easily crossed — you don’t need a passport to go from one country to the next: and it is sometimes hard to tell the difference or make the distinction between being and doing. The late science fiction author Kurt Vonnegut once observed, “Socrates said, ‘To be is to do.’ Jean-Paul Sartre said, ‘To do is to be.’ And Frank Sinatra said, ‘Do be do be do.’” Our being and our doing are intimately connected, however you sing the song. As I noted in my sermon a few weeks ago, the sum of who we are is largely determined by the choices we make and the things we do in our lives — and we do not always choose rightly even if we want to, and we have to deal with the consequences of our wrong choices as much as we enjoy the rewards of our right ones.

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But to get back to Saint Paul: even as he complains about his situation, he doesn’t stop there wallowing in his own inability to be perfect, his own inability to escape himself, his own flesh and members, which seem to be a law unto themselves and lead him to do the very things he doesn’t want to do. He knows that there is someone to rescue him from what he calls “this body of death” — and isn’t that a powerful phrase to describe the prison of oneself, the Death Row of ones own body?

Paul knows that as bad as he is, as harsh is the sentence he deserves, he has been saved — rescued, quite literally from death, delivered from solitary confinement in the prison of his own incapacitated self, a self that without Christ Jesus can look forward to nothing but condemnation and destruction and death. The rescuer has come.

No wonder daughter Zion rejoices greatly, no wonder daughter Jerusalem shouts aloud — the cavalry has come to the rescue! Or perhaps I should say “Calvary” in this case, for this isn’t about horses and chariots, but about the Son of God come in the likeness of sinful flesh, to deal with sin, by nailing it to the cross and sealing the new covenant in his own blood, and then to rise in glory.

It is this new covenant, the covenant of the Spirit in the blood of the Savior, ratified by God in his rising from the dead, that allows us to escape the prison of our selves. He put the power of the flesh to death in his own flesh, so that those who walk according to the Spirit can find both life and peace in him; rescued and reprieved, and pardoned, to rise with him.

And you will notice that Paul’s teaching on this is fully in keeping with Jesus Christ’s own assurance on the subject. He calls us from the weariness of carrying the heavy burden of our selves — our sinful flesh weighed down by the burden of the law, which cannot save but only makes us more conscious of how low and sinful and weary we are, as if, like villagers in some medieval town, we had our sentence carved on heavy wooden signs to carry around our necks.

He has taken that heavy, weary burden upon himself — borne the weight of the sins of the whole world, and in exchange has placed upon us only his easy yoke and light burden, easy and light enough that the weakest and weariest can bear it.

And what is that burden? Of what does the yoke of Christ consist? Not an endless quest after perfection; not a repetitious wallowing in emotional bouts of repentance that may bring momentary relief but can offer no permanent escape from the prison of self. No, what he asks of us is simple, so simple that the wise and intelligent sometimes miss it, and it is up to infants to proclaim it — what he asks is summed up in that one word, Love: to love our God and our neighbor.

Like any good yoke this one is balanced: it has two arms, and you cannot use it unless both sides are engaged — have you ever seen villagers carrying two pails of water with a yoke? It’s no good trying to carry one, or one full and one empty! So too with the yoke of the Spirit, the easy yoke that Jesus places upon us, so that we may walk in his way, bearing only the light double burden of love — a burden that steadies without wearying, for love never fails nor grows weary.

The double love of God and neighbor delivers us from the law of the flesh, from the prison of ourselves, because it turns us from ourselves towards others — towards God and our neighbor. We are no longer obsessed with seeking forgiveness for our sins in bouts of repentance — our sins have been forgiven, not because we earned their forgiveness, but because Christ died for us. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death.” We remember and confess our sins here in church week by week not to earn God’s favor, but to remind ourselves of his love for us in having forgiven them already. In that knowledge we are strengthened in the Spirit to return that love to him and share it with our neighbors.

This is the means by which are liberated from the prison of ourselves — when we recognize that the door has been opened, the chains have been cut, the locks unlocked and the gates flung wide. The King of glory has entered in and done his work in rescuing us from sin and death: his incarnation has reversed our incarceration! All we need do now is walk through the door bearing his yoke of love, and walking in accordance with the Spirit. Let us take his yoke upon us and learn from him, the one gentle and humble in heart, yet strong to save: Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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HIgh and Low

SJF • Proper 8a • Tobias Haller BSG
The Lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up and high.

In today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah we hear a warning theme that runs through Scripture from beginning to end — watch out for pride. This is summed up in the well known proverb that sometimes gets condensed into even shorter form: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” It is a warning to know who you are and where you stand in the scheme of things, and not to act bigger or place yourself higher than you ought.

When it comes to height, it seems, from Isaiah’s point of view, that the Lord doesn’t like big things. I have to say, this is a passage dear to the heart of a short person! The Lord, Isaiah tells us, is against all those big, tall and high things: big trees, whether oaks or cedars; high mountains and lofty hills; towers and fortified walls; even the tall ships; and finally, and this is perhaps the point, against the haughtiness of people and the pride of everyone — for the Lord alone is to be exalted.

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Ultimately, when it comes right down to it, the problem with pride is that it gets things out of proportion, and out of touch with reality. It is bad enough when the small imagine themselves to be big. But as Isaiah reminds us, it is just as bad when the big imagine themselves to be bigger than they are. Sure, mountains are big and trees are tall — but the Lord, who formed the mountains with his hands, and whose breath can strike down the trees of the forest, is higher and mightier than them all. When we forget that — all of us, tall or short — when we “get too big for our britches,” we are falling prey to the sin of pride. And God’s answer will be to trim us down to size. How much better to know where we stand in the order of things, rather than risking being brought low by raising ourselves up too high. How much better is humility than pride!

As you probably heard, Tim Russert, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, and a fixture recently on CNN’s panel of the “best political minds on television, was felled by a heart attack just a couple of weeks ago. I always liked watching Tim Russert even when I disagreed with him; not only did he have a sense of humor, but he also wouldn’t let politicians off the hook — Republican or Democrat — if he caught one of his guests being less than completely forthright he would press them and pin them down, and not leave them any wiggle room at all. He seems to have been a very honest man himself, and expected that honesty — that deep engagement with reality — from others.

This is a likable trait — knowing who you are and not puffing yourself up — and it was likable in Russert: he knew who he was, and what his role was — in many ways he acted much as a prophet did in biblical times: not calling attention to himself as a personality, but doing his job at trying to get the real leaders of the world to be truthful — not an easy task and one of the reasons that prophets often go unrewarded or punished.

Russert once told a story about himself that revealed his ability to keep a proper perspective. He was a Roman Catholic and had served his parish as an altar boy, and as a newsman he wanted very much to convince Pope John Paul II to appear on the Today Show. He was granted a private audience — just him and the pope — and he hoped this was his chance. Of course, as he was ushered into the presence of the head of the Roman Catholic Church, the spiritual leader of close to a fifth of the world’s population and over half of all the world’s Christians, he found himself almost speechless — quite a change for this normally self-confident man — and as he found himself tongue-tied, he simply blurted out, “Bless me, Father.” The pope smiled and put his arm around Russert’s shoulder, and asked, “You’re the man called Timothy, from NBC?” Russert answered, “Yes, Your Holiness.” The pope nodded, and observed, “They tell me you are a very important person.” Somewhat surprised, Russert stammered out, “Your Holiness, you and I both know there is only one very important person in this room.” The pope smiled, nodded, and said, “Right.”

If this is how a relatively important person (whose death was noted by many fellow reporters and commentators), if this is how an important person reacts to being in the presence of an undoubtedly more important person (the leader of a church whose death was noted even more widely)— how much more ought any human being think twice about how he or she stands before the presence of the Lord?

In fact, dare we even stand? For as the prophet Malachi said in a passage made memorable through the music of Handel: “Who can stand when he appeareth?” If even mountains fall at his feet, if even the mighty oaks and cedars topple before him, if the ships of the sea are tossed to and fro — how can we poor mortals dare stand in his sight?

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And yet, we have another assurance — an assurance promised to us children of Adam, through the Son of God himself. It is not something we rely upon because of who we are, any office we hold or any family we may be part of. It isn’t because of who our parents are; it is not because of any skills we may have, or any wealth or property we may have acquired. It is not even because of any righteousness of our own.

It is only because of him — his death, his burial, and his resurrection. It is only because he stooped down from the heights to the depths of the grave itself, to save us, that we have any right at all to stand before him. For “if we have been united with him in a death like his” — not our physical death but our baptism into his body, the Church, the assembly of the faithful — “so too we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Our old prideful self has been crucified, died and is buried — we have lost our old lives by taking up the cross day by day to follow him into whom we have been baptized — and the newly redeemed self will rise with him. We will stand at the last, with him, only because the cross is holding us up.

So the cross is our reliance — the one tall thing that God allows, the only one that stands: the saving cross that towers over the wrecks of time. Before that cross, the sign of humility, all the proud mountains and hills are brought low, all the mighty oaks and cedars tremble, every haughty tower and fortified wall crumbles to dust, and every tall ship founders and fails — and all our human pride, when we allow it to be crucified by taking up that cross to follow the one who died upon it, is taken up by grace, transformed and redeemed by his righteousness. For those who have chosen the humble path and died with him in baptism, and so are dead to sin, will by the blood of the everlasting covenant live with him, and that for ever, through him who offered himself for us in great humility, even Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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Human Worth

St James Fordham • Proper 7a • Tobias Haller BSG
Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

What is a human being worth? It used to be said that if you reduced a person down to the chemicals that make up the human body you’d have just over a dollar and change worth of carbon, sulphur, nitrogen, potassium, and so on. But one day a doctor pointed out that organic compounds, not chemical elements, are what you should go by to determine the value of a human being. Our bodies are, after all, more than mere combinations of chemicals, but rather intricate producers of complex biological compounds. Some of the hormones and secretions we generate in our bodies are very valuable, only recently synthesized by virtue of the advances in molecular biology and genetics. On this basis, the doctor calculated that just a handful out of all of them were worth over $6 million. Quite a difference from the buck-fifty we were once told we were each worth, adjusted for inflation or not!

However, I still think the doctor fell short on estimating the value of a human being. We are certainly worth more than a few jars of elemental chemicals, but we are also worth more than a few vials of steroids, hormones, and factors our bodies produce.

To reduce human worth to this sort of inventory — even the valuable inventory of a medical supply company — is like saying a painting by Van Gogh is worth more than one by Rembrandt because the paint is thicker. The worth of a great painting has almost nothing to do with the amount of paint that makes it up, and everything to do with the painter, with the love and the care of the artist who created something that others could value. We human beings are worth more than all of the chemicals on all of the shelves of all of the DuPonts and Dow Chemicals of this world. We human beings are worth more than all of the inventory of GlaxoWellcome-SmithKline and Pfizer put together. And that is because the artist who created us took great pains over us — took the ultimate pain over us — and finished us off in perfection to the last detail, down to the number of hairs on each of our heads. Worth more than sparrows? You’d better believe it!

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Yes, indeed, we’d better believe it, even though sometimes it may seem so hard to believe, this idea that each and every one of us is a great work of art by the greatest artist. As G.K. Chesterton once said, “Everyone matters. You matter; I matter. That is the hardest thing in theology to believe.” It is hard to believe, and sadly, we human beings don’t often act as if we believed it. We treat each other as less than who we are. It’s hard to remember that the person who cuts us off on the highway is a child of God. It’s hard to remember that the mugger and the addict and the prostitute are supremely valuable in the eyes of God. It is so easy, as it were, to hold the telescope backwards; to look through the end that makes everyone else look small.

I’m sure you are all familiar with Charles Dickens’ classic story, “A Christmas Carol” — most likely because you’ve seen one of the many film or TV versions of it. Most of these version leave out one of the most powerful statements in the story. When Scrooge’s heart begins to soften, as he begins to show the first glimmer of concern for little Tiny Tim, he asks the Ghost of Christmas Present, “Will Tiny Tim will be spared.” The Ghost responds by quoting something Scrooge had said that very day when he was asked to contribute some money to save the lives of the poor: “If he be like to die, he had better do it and decrease the surplus population.”

Scrooge hangs his head in shame; and that is where most of the dramatizations end the exchange. But Dickens pressed the point, and put powerful words into the mouth of the Ghost of Christmas Present, a bit too strong for popular entertainment, but not out of place in a sermon. The Ghost fixes Scrooge with a stare, and says, “Man, if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child.” Powerful words that cut to the heart.

And of course, Scrooge needed to be cut to the heart — he needed a kind of spiritual heart surgery: to have his heart of stone replaced with a heart of flesh. And he had vision problems too, Old Scrooge did: The same vision problem that afflicts so many of us, the inability to see the value of others, especially those deemed the poorest and weakest. This is what comes from looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

In just the same way, but long before telescopes, it was hard for people to see a wandering preacher, convicted and sentenced for having gone too far, stripped and nailed to a cross to die in agony — hard to see in that pitiful figure the perfection of human nature. But this is the challenge we have been given: to acknowledge the presence of the supremely worthy even in those whom the world counts as worthless, and to acknowledge them before that world, so that it might have its vision cleared and finally see, and believe, and have its cold heart melted and warmed to life, and realize just how supremely valuable is every human being made in the likeness and image of God.

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For our Lord himself became one of us — and not among the great and wealthy, but among the poor and lowly, to show us that our human worth does not consist of the abundance of our possessions or our position in society. Had he come as a mighty monarch, proud to win over the crowds by pouring out wealth upon them, it would have been very easy for them to accept and acknowledge him as Lord.

But he did not do so. He came among us as a member of the lowest class of people, the common people who toiled and worked with their hands to make a living. Even when he worked miracles, he gave the people not gold, but at the most bread and fish, and wine for a wedding party — consumables for use, not treasure for accumulation. In short, God did not bribe us or try to win us over when he came to us in the person of Christ. He came to us as one of us, as one of the least of us.

And he came not merely as one of the least of us, but for the least of us: as we heard in our reading from Romans last week, he came not only for the least of us, but for the worst of us — for all of us, while we were still weak, while we were still sinners. Which is, of course why we should never presume to judge anyone else’s sins — for all of us have fallen short; and yet God still loves us and forgives us.

That is why we who acknowledge him — with the expectation that he will fulfill his promise and acknowledge us before his Father in heaven — why we must also acknowledge our fellow human beings — all of them, including the poorest and the weakest, the most admirable and the most reprehensible — as sisters and brothers in the great human family. We dare not single Jesus out and neglect the rest of his family — for as we have done to the least of them, we have done to him.

This gives added weight to his warning that whoever denies him before others will be denied by him before his Father in heaven. For it is not only the poor we deny when we turn away from them — in doing so we are denying Jesus himself.

We have the choice — but it’s a package deal: we cannot embrace Christ unless we also embrace our sisters and brothers, we cannot claim his forgiveness of our sins unless we also forgive those who sin against us, who are his children as much as we are. To deny them is to deny him. We dare not turn aside from or presume to judge the least of these — each and every one worth more than many, many sparrows.

We are each and every one of us so valuable, that a sage of the Eastern church once said, “Before every human being there go ten thousand thousand angels shouting, ‘Make way for the image of God.’” How the world would be changed were we to treat each other — all of us, high and low — as worth what we are in the eyes of God. May we always, every time we encounter another person, open our eyes to see another child of God, open our hearts to embrace them, and open our ears to be able to hear the voices of those angels reminding us just how much each and every one of us is worth; for, to echo Tiny Tim, God has blessed us, every one.+

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Choosing God

St James Fordham • Proper 6a • Tobias Haller BSG
The Lord said to Moses, “If you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all peoples.”+

How many choices have you made today? That may seem like an odd question, and you may not even be aware that you have made any choices. But you have, I assure you. Every minute of our lives we are all making choices, some as insignificant as which shoe to put on first, left or right; some a bit more important, such as what clothes we will wear.

Even more important — and because you’re here I know what choice you made — was the choice not to lay in bed this morning with the Sunday paper, or to go to the mall or the cricket field, but to come to church.

The thing about choices is that if you choose one thing, you don’t choose something else. You can’t, as the old saying goes, have your cake and eat it too. If the right shoe goes on first, the left waits its turn. If you wear the blue dress, the red one stays on its hanger. And if you’re here in church, you are not still in bed, or at the mall or the cricket pitch, or enjoying a quiet snooze by the seaside. Making one choice, accepting one option, means that all the others go unchosen; and unlike the choice with pairs of shoes, where it is either the right or the left, many choices you make stand against many, many other possibilities, which become, in the moment you choose one out of many, a multitude of unchoices.

As we choose, moment by moment and day by day, we create, as it were, a trail of choices marked out on the map of all possible choices, a silver trail glimmering on a velvet field of innumerable possibilities passed by, innumerable paths not taken; so that if we were to look back through time and space we could see our lives drawn out like strings of pearls, each choice in each moment glistening in the early morning light. And we could say, That is my life. For the choices we make form the sum not just of how we are dressed, or where we may be, but indeed describe who we are. We become who we are by the choices we make, by the paths we choose to take, by the singular things we choose to do as well as the multitude of things we choose not to do.

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What our readings today show us is that God makes choices, too. God tells Moses that even though the whole earth belongs to him, he has chosen Israel to be his people, to be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation, a treasured possession. That means, among other things, that all the other nations of the earth have to stand by and wait for the right time, until the coming of Christ fulfilled what the prophet had promised — that light would eventually come to all nations, a light to enlighten the Gentiles. The light would have to shine somewhere before it could shine everywhere.

In the Gospel reading, we see Jesus even intentionally delay that process, soft-pedaling even the spread of the Gospel itself. He looks out on the crowds and sees them like sheep without a shepherd. But instead of sending all of his followers out to all of the world — to all those other nations apart from Israel — he chooses only twelve, and tells them to be very choosey about where they go: not to the Gentiles, not even to the Samaritans, but only to recover the lost sheep of Israel.

This is the same Israel that God chose long before, when he plucked Abraham from the midst of the populous land between the rivers, and sent him off to a country he’d never known; the same Israel that God chose when he swooped down on eagle’s wings and rescued them from slavery in Egypt. God, and the Son of God, choose and choose again, and seem to know exactly what they want, and when they want it. And what God wants, what Jesus wants, is what we all want, when it comes right down to it.

What God wants is a people who will hear and obey his voice, a people who will choose to enter a loving relationship, and return that love. What Christ wants is to gather the lost sheep of the twelve tribes of Israel, to gather the stricken flock lost in a world that has lost sight of God, and he chooses twelve apostles to gather that flock, to spread that word, the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near. Once that is done, there will be plenty of time to spread the message further.

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The fact is, you have to start somewhere before you can act everywhere. And Jesus shows the wisdom of a strategic thinker, for he knows that the best way to grow is to build a firm foundation — as we were reminded a few weeks ago when we heard about the houses built on rock and on sand. So the choosey Jesus chooses the twelve, to send them out to prepare the way by first recalling Israel to its true vocation as God’s chosen. And, as we see from the advice he gives them, what Christ seeks is to be welcomed. In the long run what God chooses is to be chosen in return.

For Abraham chose God after God chose him. He could have said, “No thanks, God, I’ll stay here in Chaldea. I’m comfortable here; I know my neighbors and they know me.” Moses could have remained in Egypt as Pharaoh’s right-hand-man, the Dick Cheney of ancient Egypt: “Look God, I’ve got a great job here; I’m second in the kingdom to Pharaoh, and if I play my cards right I might even get a pyramid after I’m gone.” What power he might have held if he hadn’t chosen to follow God’s call, to choose what was comfortable rather than what was right! And look at the apostles themselves: Matthew could have chosen to stay at the custom house, collecting taxes and making a good living; Peter, Andrew, John and James could have stayed by the seashore with their nets.

And Judas.... well, here is someone who did finally make the other choice, as Matthew reminds us. Even though God had chosen him, offering him a hope and a glory that was yet to be, to be one of the twelve foundation stones of the new Jerusalem, Judas chose instead the short-term security of silver across his palm. And his choice shaped who he was and what became of him as surely as it shaped the lives of the other eleven, of Moses and Abraham, and of us too.

For you and I have made choices as well. We could have chosen to stay in bed this morning, or gone to the mall, the Van Cortland Park or Orchard Beach. But these choices we make, in response to the choices God has made, form us into a different sort of people, not just people who are a nice enough bunch of folks, but a people who is holy, a royal priesthood, a chosen nation that chooses God right back. We are who we are because God has chosen us, and because we have chosen him in return. And that is what it means to be partakers in the kingdom of heaven.

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We are who we are by the choices God has made, and by the choices we make in return. We can choose to wander and stray — see, the door is open, and nobody’s got a gun to your head holding you a hostage here in church. We don’t live now in the days of the early church when being a Christian could cost you your life. We don’t live in a place where being a Christian can mean assault, or being thrown in prison. We live in a place and time when being a Christian requires very little — yet how many are reluctant even to part with that little of their time, talent and treasure? We are free to choose the comfortable cushion and worship at the Church of Saint Mattress if we want to. We can slip off to the mall or the park or the seaside. I’m old enough to remember when the stores were closed on Sunday; not so much because the merchants respected the Lord’s Day as due to the lack of customers who did respect Sunday. And I remember — how many of you do too? — when Macy’s broke the barrier and was the first store to open for business on Sunday. Maybe they heard there was someone outside with thirty pieces of silver to spend! Oh, yes, we have many choices we can make.

This is Fathers’ Day, and we know that fathers can choose to be good fathers, sons to be good sons. Or they can follow the way of neglect and abdication, of abandonment and disdain. Oh yes indeed, there are many choices.... But by such choices we shape what kind of people we are, and what kind of future we will enjoy, in this life and the next. May we always choose the way that brings us ever closer to the one who chooses us: the Son of God, the Son of his Father in Heaven, Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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Purposeful Spirit

St James Church • Pentecost A• Tobias Haller BSG
I will give them a new heart, and put a new spirit within them.

Given the options for the readings appointed today, I have chosen to omit the account of the descent of the Spirit from Acts. This passage describes the day on which the Spirit blew through the windows of the house where the apostles were huddled together, appearing as a flame on each, and giving them the gift of miraculous speech. I omit this reading today in part because the story is so familiar, but more importantly so that we can focus on the readings from Ezekiel, Corinthians, and the Gospel. For today I want us to reflect together not about the story of the Spirit’s descent, but its purpose; to focus not on the what, but the why.

Why did God’s Holy Spirit descend in tongues as of fire? Why, after all, does anyone light a fire? Well, might one do so for warmth, for light, as a signal, to clear a field of a rank overgrowth, or destroy a pile of refuse? Or to create a fire-break in a forest or field, to prevent a wild-fire from spreading? In short, what is the use of fire? If we can answer that question, we will gain a better understanding of God’s purpose in sending the Holy Spirit down to earth — a Spirit sent not as a showy display like a fireworks celebration, but sent with a purpose to do God’s work, not to entertain, but to empower.

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In his First Letter to the Church at Corinth, Paul catalogues the uses of the purposeful Spirit. And these uses reflect the fire of the Spirit at its most fruitful and productive. These are the gifts of the Spirit that nourish and build up the church itself, making it grow strong. This is like the fire that bakes the bread and cooks the food that nourishes us; the fire that warms our spiritual home, the church in which we gather; the flame that gives light, that drives away the darkness and gives us the knowledge of God’s presence, and serves as a light to our feet so we may follow in God’s way — — as it has from the days the children of Israel followed that pillar of fire in the nights of their Exodus. The Holy Spirit is called the “Comforter” and here we find the gifts that give comfort — which doesn’t mean “make cozy” but “make strong” — to fortify. The Spirit provides gifts that feed, that protect, that enlighten and encourage. And, as Saint Paul assures us, though there are varieties of gifts, the source is the same, the one Holy and purposeful Spirit of God.

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But what about the other side of fire? For in addition to its comforting ability to provide us food, warm shelter and light, fire can also be used to burn. Fire has two sides: it can build up but it can also tear down. This other side of fire — the destructive side — is reflected in the spiritual mandate described in our other readings. It is the power to find out evil and to expose it to the light and heat of God’s forgiving and yet all-consuming love. This fire burns up and removes all that is detestable, the prophet Ezekiel assures us. This fire is so powerful it can change our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, like the refiner’s fire that takes hard, lumpy and unpromising ore and melts out the precious, ductile gold. This is a fire turning us towards obedience and away from reckless wandering, calling us together like a great flaming lighthouse beacon, assembling us from all the places to which we have been scattered, turning our backs upon our foresworn foolish ways, so that we face the light — and the shadows of darkness lie behind us, and we gather together around the cleansing flame, to unite our transformed and refined hearts with a spirit to obey and love the Lord our God.

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This power is reflected in the gift Jesus gives to his disciples, as he breathes on them and opens their hearts to receive the soon-coming Spirit. In doing this he gives them the power to forgive sins.

The fact is, sin makes good kindling. It burns easily. And the important thing about the burning of sin is where you stand in relation to the fire! If you are caught up in your sins, if you try to hold on to them, you’ll be burned up with them; and we all know the name of the place where that fire burns, the place where soul and body are destroyed. If you’ve ever wondered why hell is so hot, it’s because all the dry wood of sin burning there so easily.

But Jesus offers us the better way, the way out of the destructive fire, so that the sins can be burnt up apart from us, burnt up like the discarded rubbish and trash they are, as we stand free and clear, able to see our past debts cancelled and forgiven, and reduced to ash, never again to harm us.

You know, there used to be a custom — it may still be done this way — that when churches took out loans so as to construct their buildings, when the loan was finally paid off they would have a mortgage-burning ceremony. The fire would consume the paid-off debt as if it never was. The fire of the Spirit can do the same with sin — Christ gave his church the power to do this, to cancel the sins of its members, and make them as if they never were, burnt up like a bill that has been paid off, or better yet, cancelled! We do often speak of a cancelled debt as having been “forgiven.” And surely Jesus calls us to remember this when we pray the prayer he taught us, as we ask God to forgive our debts even as we forgive the debts others owe to us. To forgive a debt doesn’t mean that it’s been paid off, after all — it means it has been set aside, the slate on which the debt was tallied wiped clean, the bills dropped into the fireplace, as the one to whom the debt was owed says, ‘Forget about it.’ That’s what forgiveness means.

This is good and great news, that there is a way to defeat sin, and Christ has committed it to his church. It is the flame of forgiveness that burns sin away, cleansing and purifying and giving life. The original Pentecost — not the one in Acts, but the one God commanded Moses to celebrate — came to be commemorated as the day on which God gave the law from Mount Sinai. But the Pentecost that we celebrate is not about the giving of the law but the giving of the Spirit: for the letter of the law kills, but the Spirit gives life. Some think the way to fight sin is to keep battering people with how bad they are, reminding them how sinful they are, beating them over the head with the law, like a creditor who keeps sending you past due notices. That is the way of the law.

But the way that Jesus shows us is the way of forgiveness, the way of setting sin aside. He takes all those bills and past due notices and drops them in the incinerator of forgiveness, the flame that burns urged on by the breath of our Lord, as he gently blows on that flame to burn up the debts of past sins. That is the way of the Spirit. And it is the way God means us to follow.

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These then are the powerful uses of the fiery Spirit, God’s great gift to the church. It is the beacon that calls us together, reassembling us from wherever we have wandered. It is the giver of the comforting gifts of nourishment, enlightenment, and protection, the gifts that build up the church. It is the fire that gives light to discern the way, to reveal our faults, and then consume them — to liberate us from their power, as we lay our sins upon the fire of God’s love and they are consumed and removed and forgiven forever —
— even as we set aside the sins of others against ourselves, allowing the flame of forgiveness to consume all we might otherwise hold against each other.

May we always respond to the beacon that summons us, rejoice in the light that renews us, be comforted with the warmth of the flame that enfolds us, and be freed from bondage of sin by the promised gift of the purposeful Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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Athirst for God

Saint James Fordham • Easter 6a • Tobias Haller BSG

For thee, my God, the living God,
my thirsty soul doth pine;
O when shall I behold thy face,
thou Majesty divine.

As many of you know, Jerome Reservoir a few blocks north of us is closely connected to the history of this church. It was built starting in the late nineteenth century as part of a new water supply system to meet the clamorous thirst of the growing metropolis just south of here: the New York City of which, in those days, the Bronx was not yet a part. (Back then we were still part of Westchester County.)

Jerome Avenue running past our doors is named for Leonard Jerome, the Wall Street wiz and horse-racing fan who lived just across the street, about where the Post Office now stands. (He was also Winston Churchill’s grandfather, and rumor has it, though the parish records don’t confirm it, that his daughter Jennie was baptized here.)

Mr. Jerome owned much of the property around here, and where Jerome Reservoir now stands he built Jerome Park, the racetrack where the first Belmont Stakes was run in 1867. When the thirsty throngs in Manhattan called for more water, that spot was singled out as of a perfect size and shape to convert into a reservoir, and so it was. Our additional parish connection is through two members of this parish, Hugh Camp and Mayor Franklin Edson, who appointed Camp to the team for the design of the new reservoir (at the time the largest in the world) and the new aqueduct system that would convey plentiful water to the people of New York City. The water came from the Croton system upstate, making a brief stop at the Jerome Reservoir before continuing on its way through the aqueduct underneath Aqueduct Avenue just up the hill from here.

And all of this in response to thirst — the thirst of people for clean, pure water. We all know from personal experience what ordinary thirst means; and we also know the effects that global warming has had on the supply of what you need to satisfy that thirst. If you pass by Jerome Reservoir with any frequency, you will note that unlike former days, it is now rarely more than half-full, and is often as dry as a proverbial bone.

Drought brought on by a lack of water can be a terrible thing — and we’re lucky that this past year broke the string of dry summers we’ve had for a while now.

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But there are worse things that a drought of water. Think for a moment how much worse would be a drought of God — the drying up of knowing God’s presence and grace, the receding and sinking of the pools of spiritual nourishment, drained away, lost and gone, replaced by the sandy desert or dry lake-beds of desolation. People have a built-in need for God, a thirst for God, in whom, as Saint Paul assures the Athenians, we live and move and have our being. Imagine what a drought of God would mean— to be cut of from life, motion, and ones very being, withering like a parched plant in a desert.

Saint Paul compliments the Athenians — a rare thing for this often grumpy saint — he praises them for their religious impulse, for their effort to search for God, even if they do not have a clear idea as to who God is and how to find, know, and love God. Still, Paul credits them with seeking and searching for God, groping for God, much as a persistent tree will send its roots out in search of life-giving water. The search for God is a universal human reality, Saint Paul assures us, as in our human thirst for the divine springs we seek, grope and explore to find the source of our being and life, like people roaming the fields with spiritual dowsing rods, or searching the empty sky for the sign of a cloud, seeking the signs of God’s presence, the quenching of our spiritual thirst with the living water of God’s being.

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Yes, people need God and seek God. For without God we dry up, wither, fail, and die. Jesus uses the image of the Vine and the Branches to make this clear. Just as in the past weeks we’ve heard Jesus refer to himself as the “gate” for the sheep, and the “way” to the Father, so today he assures us that he is the “vine,” apart from which we branches are useless and fruitless, able to do nothing at all but wither and dry up, good for nothing but firewood.

Anyone who has done any gardening knows this well. If you cut off a branch, you cut off its life-support system. No branch can thrive on its own, whether a branch of a vine or a tree. Without the source of life, the connection to life, there is no life.

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And God is the source of our life. In him we live and move and have our being. He is the reservoir from which we draw the water of life, the vine from which our nourishment flows. Disconnected from God, we wither, fail, dry and die — just as if you cut off the aqueduct there will be no water in Manhattan. Without the source and without the means to transmit it, no water will get through to quench our thirst.

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Sometimes people will say they have no time or place for God in their lives. How wrong they are, for it isn’t that God isn’t in their lives — it is their lives that aren’t in God! They are cut off, wandering in a desert, and the oasis of earthly success is just a mirage. They struggle to reach that green and welcoming spot on the horizon, only to discover it is not an oasis, but just more dry and dusty sand, a tempting vision created by reflected heat. Meanwhile, their connection to the vine has been cut, and though they may not feel it yet, soon their leaves will begin to wilt and wither. Their hand-made idols will be of no help to them, and they will merely cling to them like the dead vines cling to a ruined and forsaken building.

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But the good news is that God the True Vine is merciful, even to those who think they can live apart from God, even those who think they can bear fruit without being connected to the vine, even those who worship the idols of their own making.

We’ve all known people who devote themselves so whole-heartedly to their careers that they have no time for anything or anyone else. They imagine that they are self-sufficient, not realizing how much depends on others, how much depends on God. Yet the merciful God does not forsake even these preoccupied, self-centered people. The merciful God allows some hardship to come their way, some drought, some thirst, some pain that recalls them to themselves, and recalls them to him. God overlooks human ignorance, and prompts the ignorant and thirsty heart to repent, to seek, to grope its way back, to turn to the true spring, to quench its desires in the cool water of grace, the cool water of baptism into Christ.

And when even we who are incorporated into Christ get so preoccupied with our work that we forget who we are part of, and who is the source of our life; when we begin to rely too much on our own gifts, become too proud of our own work and our own accomplishments, Jesus gently reminds us who he is and who we are. He is the True Vine; we are the branches.

Hugh Nesbitt Camp and Franklin Edson were both successful men of their generation. They were the cream of high society, risen to the very top. But they knew on whom their success — and not only their success, but their very living, moving and being — depended; someone far greater than themselves, someone apart from whom they could do nothing. If you cut off the flow, the water will stop. If you cut off the branch from the vine, it will dry up and die.

It is fitting that the man who assisted in the design of New York’s water supply system, is remembered here at Saint James Church in that stained glass window, The True Vine, here in the church where he worshiped the God he loved and served, the source of his ability to live and move, to love and serve his fellow citizens.

It is a reminder we can do nothing apart from God. Apart from him we will wilt, wither, dry, and end in the flames. But in him; ah, in him we draw the sweetest draft of satisfaction from the pure source of life itself. In him we branches are nourished and strengthened to bear much fruit. And if we get too confident of our fruitfulness, he will prune us back, and we will bear even more fruit — such is his care for us. So rejoice, sisters and brothers, that our Lord has recalled us to himself and to ourselves, reminding us who we are and whose we are. He is the end of our drought; he is the gentle rain upon our desert-weary hearts, the spring that appears in the midst of the wilderness to quench our thirst and satisfy our deepest needs; he is our reservoir and his cross is our aqueduct, bringing us new life; he is the true vine in whom we find our nourishment and shade, from whom we derive our life, our movement, our being — and our fruitfulness. Let us rejoice in that life, and bear much fruit, so that all may give glory to God, the source of all being, henceforth and for evermore.+

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Chosen and Precious

Saint James Fordham • Easter 5a • Tobias Haller BSG
…like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house.—1 Peter 2:5

Today we are called to think about one of the strangest ideas in all of Scripture: living rock. Remember your high school geology class: igneous rock comes from lava, sedimentary rock is made of layers of clay, and metamorphic rock arises from the action of heat and pressure on the other two kinds. That’s your science refresher course for the day! But whatever kind of rock you’re talking about, rock is as dead as dead can be.

In fact, there are countless legends and fairy tales of people cursed by being changed into stone. It is a fear buried deep in our collective unconscious as a symbol of death, coldness and finality. You may remember Medusa, the young lady who was so beautiful that her pride led her to think herself more beautiful than the goddesses. Mistake. They cursed her so that she ended up nut just ugly but ug-LY! As they say, she had ought to stop chasing parked busses. How ugly was she? Well, she could turn you to stone if you got one look at her ugly mug and serpentine hair-do. She was ugly enough to petrify — literally.

On the other hand, there are the stories about statues coming to life, marvelous legends, myths and fairy tales, where the curse is reversed by a blessing. My favorite is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which actually formed a part of my reconversion to Christianity as a teenager. Perhaps you saw the film version a few years ago. The imaginary land of Narnia is enthralled by a wicked witch who has cursed the land so that it is always winter but never Christmas, and she has punished anyone who opposes her by turning them into stone. Her prisoners return to life when the Great Lion comes to breathe upon them and lick them back to life, like a mother cat licking her kittens.

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So perhaps it isn’t so strange after all that this idea of living stone should be in Scripture. As with all else, it starts with Jesus, whom Peter, in our reading this morning, describes as the cornerstone for God’s temple. And the building-stones of that temple are ourselves, our souls and bodies, reasonable and holy, transformed into building blocks for God’s house. We are called to be living stones!

This is what Easter is all about: life coming to what is dead. The dead stone is rolled away, and the living Rock of Ages is revealed. And just as Jesus Christ is the Church’s one foundation, the cornerstone chosen and precious, so we are called, through Baptism, to be the living stones building up the New Jerusalem.

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I began this sermon by reminding us where rock comes from. Let’s revisit that a moment. One particular kind of rock is built up from sediment. Dust of the earth, or sand of the hills, and fragments of organic matter, washed away by rainfall, flow downstream to the sea, settle and become a deposit of clay. And over the years, that clay hardens into sedimentary rock. You need look no further than our own slate roof, which millions of years ago was a lake-bottom in Vermont.

The surprising things is that as more time goes by, and shale or slate or sandstone that lies deeper in the earth is compressed further, and heated by the pressure of the layers above, it can change into yet another kind of rock: it undergoes metamorphosis. Sometimes, if all the factors are just right, the compressed and heated sediments become precious rock — gemstones, jewels — diamonds and rubies and sapphires.

Now, as we are reminded on Ash Wednesday, we are dust, and to dust we shall all return. We are also clay taken from the riverbank, molded, and given the breath of life by God himself. And water flows over us — the water of Baptism flowing from the same living rock that quenched the thirst of the children of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness.

They doubted God could give them water from the rock, no doubt a reasonable doubt. But God is not particularly fond of reasonable doubts or reasonable doubters, and that generation was punished by not being allowed into the Promised Land. They put God to the test, though they had seen with their own eyes all the mighty works he had done in Egypt and at the Red Sea. If he made the sea into dry land, could he not do the reverse, and bring water from the rock?

But not only did that Rock become the source of water, of life and salvation for all who believe, it also became the head stone of the corner. The stone that the builders rejected — the stone that didn’t fit their plans, that seemed to big or too small, or the wrong shape — became the very heart of the building.

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Peter was the first to proclaim Christ as Messiah, head and cornerstone of the new Israel. And Jesus reminded him that his name “Peter” means “the rock” — and a few verses later Jesus called Peter “a stumbling block” too! Surely these words must have been in Peter’s mind when he wrote the Letter from which we heard today! Peter was one of the twelve foundation stones of Christ’s Church, but he had also been a stumbling block. He is a perfect example of the old advice, If you can’t be part of the solution at least don’t be a problem! Get with it or get out of the way! Be of good use, not just an obstreperous obstacle.

This is a warning for us as well. Just as Peter got in Jesus’ way, just as the children of Abraham, the chosen people precious to the Lord, doubted in the wilderness, we too — people of God by adoption, people who “once were no people” — could stumble if we were to fall into “malice and guile and insincerity and envy.”

To help us avoid this Peter reminds us of the wonders to which we are called in Christ. Chosen and precious, a holy priesthood, a chosen race, a holy nation, we declare the wonderful deeds of the One who gives us life everlasting. Each of us is unique, chosen and with something precious to offer — a greater purpose to serve other than just getting in the way. Each of us is marked out with our own special place, just as each stone in this church has its own place, its own shape and size.

Back in the nineteenth century there was a craze as wealthy businessmen, hungry for antiquity in this new land, bought castles and cloisters in Europe, had them disassembled, crated up, and shipped to America for reassembly. As the castles were taken apart stone by stone, each stone was labeled and marked, so that each could be put back in its place when the time came. We are like that, each marked as Christ’s own forever in Baptism, and each with our own place in the new Jerusalem, a place which no other stone can fit so well as we. For the stones at the top of the wall couldn’t be there if it weren’t for the stones under them holding them up — each has its place and its function. Well, Jesus, by his grace, takes us lifeless stones and raises us up as children of Abraham and children of God! Each of us is unique, yet all work together in the new building plan. Once we were no people, but now we are God’s people, children of Abraham by adoption.

And like the wandering Israelites our spiritual ancestors, we are in the presence of the living Rock Jesus Christ. We have passed through the Red Sea of Baptism, and have been washed in the stream of living water that flows from the side of the Rock. Through the incomparable gift of grace, we have stand in the presence of the One who is a temple that was destroyed and rebuilt in three days — the temple of which we are invited to become part, living stones built into a spiritual house, the cornerstone of which is the Rock of Ages, the Rock of Salvation.

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This is our call: to be living stones built into a spiritual house. But we often feel, in moments of distress and depression, that we are still just dust and clay. How can we be living stones, as he is?

Through the movement of water, bits of earth and clay are broken off and washed down to very deep places. Pressed with the weight of the earth, these bits and pieces are transformed into rock, and sometimes into gemstone. In time, further washing of water uncovers the rock and exposes it to the light of day. This is death and rebirth, the death and rebirth that comes to us in Baptism by water and the Holy Spirit. Baptism breaks us up and washes us down to the very depths, in unity with Christ’s death. The heat and pressure of the Holy Spirit continue to form and shape us, metamorphing us into the image and likeness of Christ, the living Rock. In moments of grief, frustration or depression, we can remember that throughout our lives God is working to mold us, to break us, to form and reshape us.

For God does not just create us — God recreates us, redeems us and makes us new — no longer dust but living stones.

The dust that is buried becomes the rock that emerges, or the gems that are quarried and mined. The stone and gems are brought forth from darkness into the marvelous light. The stones — living stones, all of us, you and me and all the saints of ages past and yet to come — are carved and polished and set in precious metal. A new temple, a New Jerusalem, is built, with firm foundations, a house with many mansions, with each of us in our place — a place appointed us from before the foundation of the world — with Christ the head and cornerstone, standing bright and clear in the eternal light of a never-ending Eastertide. Alleluia, the Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!+

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Signs of Our Times

SJF • Easter 2a • Tobias Haller BSG
God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations; I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”

Our Gospel hymn assures us that “we walk by faith and not by sight.” It refers, without a doubt, to Doubting Thomas, the disciple who lived by the old motto “seeing is believing.” Jesus assures Thomas that those who believe without seeing are indeed blessed; and so we earnestly hope they are — for we are numbered among those whose faith in Christ is not based on a personal encounter, not on seeing, but through hearing the lively word preached, the good news told to all nations.

And yet we too have signs and sights to go by. We are not left completely in the dark, depending only on the spoken word to find our way, as if the Christian faith were a sort of blind man’s bluff, or pin the tail on the donkey, or a child’s game of “you’re getting hotter, you’re getting colder” as we feel our way guided only by these spoken instructions. No, we have visible signs that God has given us, signs that help us to find the way, to find the one who is “the Way, the Truth and the Life.” God has not left us totally without evidence.

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And so it has always been, even for earthly matters. From the very beginning human beings have learned to read the signs of the world around them, to tell from the way the wind is blowing or how the sky or the sunset looks what the weather will be. The islanders of the South Pacific Ocean even learned to navigate that featureless expanse. On the pages of an atlas it may look like nothing but blue, the islands mere pinpoints smaller than their printed names; but those islanders have learned to find their way by watching the shapes of the waves on the open ocean — truly a miracle for us landlubbers, for whom all waves look more or less alike. The sea is very good at keeping its secrets!

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So it is quite natural for poor old landlubber Noah to feel completely lost at sea, even after the rains have stopped. Everywhere he looks is water, no sign of land, just the monotony of the clearing sky and the lapping waves spreading off to the featureless horizon, as far as his eyes can see. And strangely enough, God — who before the flood has been in regular conversation with Noah — God is now silent, no longer instructing Noah what to do next.

So Noah goes to the birds — literally! He gets the idea to send out a raven, and then a dove, to see if they can find any foothold in this watery world. We don’t know what becomes of the raven, but the dove comes back, finding nowhere to set down — a sign that the flood still covers the ground. So Noah waits, and then sends the dove out again, and this time back she comes with a fresh olive leaf — a sign that the waters have drawn back enough for the trees to begin to show their branches. And again Noah waits, and lets the bird free once more, and this time she doesn’t return — a sign that the waters have receded and the dry land has appeared, and the bird has found a place to take her rest. Then, and only then, does God break his silence — acting a bit like proud parents who stand by and silently watch their children work out a hard problem by themselves, and only when the problem is finally solved speaking words of congratulation. “Go out of the ark,” God says. And then, to punctuate the end of this era, God sets his sign in the clouds, the glorious rainbow, as a sign and a testimony of his covenant promise never again to destroy the whole earth by a flood.

All of these signs were significant long ago — but what do they mean for us? God has kept the promise of his covenant, and we are not deluged by a flood of waters to wipe out all the world; though I’ll tell you the folks who lived through Katrina, and in the present floods out in the midwest might not feel that way.

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But are we not in the midst of another kind of flood, another kind of incessant rain — not a flood from God to destroy the world, but a flood from the world to try to drown out God? Think about that for a moment.

The world has grown more and more turned in upon itself, the selfish and self-seeking world of pride and riches and power, and this selfish world seeks to drown the people of God, pulling us into its whirlpool of acquisition, drawing us under into the quicksand of greed and selfishness.

We look about, and all around us we are assaulted by waves of terrorism, fear and anxiety. I don’t know about you, but I can no longer hear a jet plane fly overhead, or see one flying low through the sky quite the same way as I did prior to September 11, 2001.

We lie awake at night and hear the drumming rain of anger and racism and hatred, incessantly muttering the same old lies, the same old cutting and wounding falsehoods — the incessant muttering of hatred only briefly silenced when, as comedian Jon Stewart said, someone like Barack Obama has the courage to address us as if we were adults.

But comes the dawn, the mutterers are back at work with their incessant rain of criticism and negativity. We awake in the morn a look out the window — you know the window I mean: the electronic one, that TV screen through which we see so much of the world, running all day long like a spigot of criticism and carping — we look through that window to see the continued drizzle of confusion and despair, of hunger for the word of God, of disillusion and deceit, and we are moved to shout out, “Are there no signs left for us to see? How long, O Lord?”

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And then we remember Noah, how he too must have felt as he watched the featureless sea, longing for a word from God now that the long rainy time was over. And like him, we send out the dove of hope — a pilgrim to assay the state of the world. And when she comes back we know it is too soon. It is not yet the time for us to step out into action. But we don’t give up hope; we just keep still for a time. We wait a bit and then we send her out a second time, our hopes launched again into a world of disappointments, and this time she brings back that precious olive leaf, that first glimmer that we are not alone, that even if the time is not yet fully ripe, still there is emerging somewhere a green promisethat will one day bear fruit. And our hope is renewed, and we wait in stillness for yet another opportunity. And then we send her out a third time, and learn that the world is ready at last, ready for us to get out of the ark, to be about the work God gives us. Our hope then impels us to action.

And if there is any doubt, any temptation to hold back rather than to march forward, God then speaks to us with the command to go forth, forth into the world in the power of the Spirit. And if we are afraid that the flood of the in-turned world, the selfish world, the false and fearful world, will drown us, or the rains of hatred or the drizzle of confusion and doubt dampen and dismay us, God sets his sign in the cloud to assure us that never again, never again will such things trouble us. Never again will we need to fear the selfish world, the rains of hatred or the drizzle of despair. For God has set his sign in the clouds for all to see.

And the sign he has set for us is now no longer the ephemeral and fading rainbow of Noah’s day. No, the sign in which victory is assured is the shining cross of the Risen Christ, the standard and ensign that flies on high, the banner of salvation raised over the world, the sign, as Peter said, of a victory and inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for us, who are protected by God’s power through faith for salvation. This is the sign our blessed Lord has left us, the sign of his saving cross, the sign in which we glory as it towers over the wrecks of time, as the light of the gospel story gathers to it and around it.

For when the woes of our earthly life threaten to drown us, when the world’s false promises deceive us and the persistent badgering of the babble and draining fears of the worldly city annoy us — the sign of the cross shall never forsake us. This is our standard, this is our sign, the sign for our time and for all times, the sign of the new and everlasting covenant — the cross of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. And this is our story and this is our song, that Jesus Christ our savior, through that cross has won the final victory over death for all who believe, and to whom we give, as is most justly due, all praise and honor and glory for ever and ever.+

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Emptied Graves

Saint James Fordham • Easter Day • Tobias Haller BSG
Seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.+

Easter Day dawns for us as a great day of rejoicing. We wake up and get dressed in our Sunday best, some of it new and some of it old, but all of it special. We get ready for church knowing the liturgy will have some wonderful music, that the Easter lilies and hyacinths will be decorating the church, and that the festival day will truly be well-hailed. It is a holiday of holidays, a wonderful day whatever the weather is like, though planned always to come at the beginning of spring.

But it wasn’t like that the first Easter Day. When Mary Magdalene made her slow and weary way to the tomb that morning, she wasn’t wearing her Sunday best. She probably hadn’t changed her clothes from the night before. She wasn’t heading to a festival celebration, but to a lonely and solitary funeral, to weep by the tomb, as Mary and Martha of Bethany had wept by the tomb of their brother Lazarus, as people have been weeping at tombs and grave-sides for tens of thousands of years. Since prehistoric times people have buried their dead with flowers and tears and ceremony, and marked the spot with everything from a simple pile of stones to the great pyramids.

There is something consoling about visiting a grave. I remember those trips to the cemetery from my childhood. Usually on a Sunday afternoon, we’d pile in the car and head out to the cemetery, flowers in hand, to visit the graves of grandparents and uncles and aunts, great aunts and great uncles, most of whom I’d never known — their names familiar from being heard spoken of, names I shared with some of them, a last name or a Christian name, but names to which I could attach no face other than the ones in the photo album, names familiar and yet distant, carved in stone or on a brass plaque, but not known by me in living flesh and blood.

But for those who had know them, to be able to stand for a moment in those spots, and to remember, and to mourn — this is consolation, a momentary sense of connection with the one who has died.

So imagine for a moment the desolation that pierced the heart of Mary Magdalene, and later of Simon Peter and the beloved disciple as they saw the empty tomb. They knew the body ought to have been there — they saw the body of their Lord laid in the tomb themselves. And yet now, it was — gone! What a horrible thing to greet them; what cruelty to rob them even of the chance to offer a final farewell to their beloved Lord. Who could possibly have done such a terrible thing, as to steal a body from its tomb!

The wonderful Tiffany window at the north side of the church, entitled “The Easter Morn” sums it all up. It has always amazed me how daring Mr Tiffany’s design of the weeping Magdalen is, how he risked piling up the glass and pigment to be so dark and thick that even when the window is lit by the full rays of the sun, the figure of Mary Magdalen in desolation at the tomb is still be too dark to make out completely, more of a sculpture than a window.

That is the desolation that Mary felt, there at the empty tomb. For Mary and Peter and the beloved disciple the empty tomb was not good news — it was just an empty tomb, a second loss of their beloved Lord, lost from life, and now lost from death.

You see, they had yet to realize the truth of the resurrection. All they could realize at this point was the shock and horror of a desecration, the aftermath of a stolen body, an insult added to an injury. Novelist Iris Murdoch described this feeling with a wonderfully painful phrase, “a blow upon a bruise.” Instead of a place in which to mourn and remember, they were left with an overturned stone, an empty hole, a few scraps of linen cloth, and a sense of desolation that robbed them even of the small comfort that mourning brings. Who could do such a thing?

It was almost beyond belief: and the disciples didn’t believe Mary when she first brought them the terrible news, news not of resurrection, but of grave-robbery. Only when the disciples saw for themselves did they believe Mary’s story — not that he had been raised from the dead, but only that his body was gone, stolen from the tomb — for at this point, as John tells us, they still did not “understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” All they knew was that someone had stolen the body of their beloved friend.

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What is that emptiness like? With a heart and stomach as empty as the tomb, what does it feel like to have even this small comfort taken away? On how many windswept coasts throughout the world are there monuments to sailors lost at sea, empty tombs that mark the absence of a loved one? How many war memorials stand in our cities and squares to commemorate soldiers dead and buried half-way around the world, in graves their families may never see? How many young faces peer out of pictures on the sides of milk cartons and billboards, lost and missing children whose absence is felt like a wound that will not heal, like a continued battering against a heart already numb with grief. How many dear ones’ bodies are there never to be recovered from the tragedy of 9-11, how many vaporized in an instant by the flames of hatred, crushed to dust beneath the weight of malice? How many who are now simply as if they never were, only photographs remaining, last voicemail messages retained for those left behind to hear, and remember, and weep; but with no place to go to other than a memorial or a monument, unable even to say for sure, “Here my beloved one rests”?

The angels ask Mary Magdalen, “Why are you weeping?” And Mary thinks, Don’t they know? How can they be so cruel? How can they mock my grief? “They have taken his body!” Jesus asks her the same question, and Mary’s eyes are so filled with tears, tears of grief and anger and desperation, that she cannot even see who it is that asks the question. Her only hope is that perhaps he knows something — perhaps it is all a mistake and this stranger may even be the one responsible.

But finally, he says her name, Mary! And with that one word, all her grief, all the wounding of the cross, all the desolation and anguish of the empty tomb, is wiped away. The empty spot where her heart had been is suddenly filled with a joy so great she cannot contain herself, and she reaches out to him — he who is her Teacher and ours, her Lord and our Lord, the true and only and living Son of her Father and our Father, of her God and our God.

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The same joy awaits us, that same Easter joy of which our celebration today is only a rehearsal for the real thing that awaits us at the end of time. On that great day we shall each be called by name, and see through our tears our Risen Lord holding out his wounded hands to us. And with him we will find all who have gone before, all the grandparents and uncles and aunts, and fathers and mothers, and all the sailors lost at sea and the soldiers buried far from home, and the comfortless widows now comforted, and the children lost and slain in innocence, and those killed by the flames of hate, and those crushed by the weight of malice, and the spirits of the righteous made perfect.

This, my beloved sisters and brothers in Christ — in the Risen Christ — is what we are called to set our minds upon this Easter Day. Not on the things of earth, the empty tombs and comfortless griefs, the unhealed wounds and inconsolable hearts, the continued strife, the unending battles — but upon the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, where we are hidden with him, and in him, until that great day comes, when Christ who is our life will be revealed, and we also will be revealed with him in glory. For the earth will give up its dead, and the sea its dead, and the graves will be opened — all of them emptied at last! And we shall be raised, incorruptible, to see the Lord in his glory and to live with him for ever and ever. Alleluia, the Lord is risen, The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.+

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Dry Bones

SJF • Lent 5a • Tobias Haller BSG

The Lord set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?”

Well, here it is the Fifth Sunday in Lent and already we are beginning to get hints of what is to come on Easter — the resurrection of the dead. We hear Saint Paul’s reminder to the Romans, to which I referred two weeks ago: that the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life. And Ezekiel and John present us with two very explicit and compelling images of death and life. The prophet tells of being set down in the midst of something that looks like it came right out of a horror movie, a valley full of dry human bones — all that’s missing is the Terminator’s metal foot crunching up the skulls; and the evangelist shocks us with what must have been an equally terrifying moment for the crowd of people gathered at that tomb, as the mummy-like figure of Lazarus emerges still tied and wrapped in the linen bands of death.

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These are vivid images and powerful testimonies in part because they go against our common sense everyday experience of life and death. Death we have seen; but resurrection is not in our actual experience. Who among us here has not lost a friend or relative to death? Who among us has not known that empty feeling, and the knowledge that things don’t work the other way — the way they are described in these biblical passages this morning? The film doesn’t run backwards. Dead people don’t come walking out of their graves; the doors on the fancy mausoleums up at Woodlawn never get opened from the inside. Skeletons don’t put on flesh and stand up to take a breath of fresh air. This is just not the way things work.

And yet, in spite of our experience — or perhaps I should say in this case our lack of experience — still we have this faith that this will not always be the way of things. Still we have this faith that death is not in fact the end, and that the miraculous events of which we hear from prophets and evangelists alike are still awaiting us out there at some future time when the world is fully redeemed and reborn through the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

And why is it so? Why do we believe in the resurrection of the dead — since none of us have actually seen it happen? What is it that gives us this sense that there is more to life than just this one go-round. You know, Christianity isn’t the only religious tradition that teaches that there is more to life than just a “once-through and then you’re done.” It isn’t even only the three religious traditions deriving from the faith of Abraham — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — that teach there is a life in the world to come. Even ancient pagan Greek philosophers believed in the immortality of the soul; and the Egyptians built their pyramids and wrapped their mummies with a purpose, not just to kill time — or to ensure full employment or a big government budget! The Brahmans and the Buddhists believe in reincarnation, and the Confucians honor their ancestors as if they were still alive. Very few people who have walked this good earth of ours have ever believed that “this is it and that’s the end.”

But why? Is it just our sense that it simply isn’t fair; that it’s like taking children to a wonderful amusement park and then telling them they can only have one ticket for one ride and then you have to leave? Is it just wish fulfillment, just a forlorn hope in an outmoded faith? Well if it is, then we are, as Saint Paul said to the Corinthians, “of all people the most to be pitied”!

There is, of course, the other possibility — and it is why we are here instead of sleeping late on a Sunday morning, especially having lost an hour to Daylight Savings Time — or sitting at home reading the Sunday Times. It is because of faith, and because of hope — faith and hope in things we have not seen, things reported to us from thousands of years ago that we have no reason to believe except our own inner conviction, that feeling you get deep inside when you know something is right. And it is the source of that inner conviction of which I wish to speak — for it is the source of that inner conviction that gives breath and life to the dry bones of what might otherwise simply be a doctrine, the source of that faith that moves us beyond the Scripture itself into the life which the Scripture promises — just as the story of the valley of dry bones is itself much more than a historical episode — it is a prophetic vision of how God works and is at work even now.

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When the Spirit of God sets Ezekiel down in that valley of dry bones, God challenges the prophet with a question, much as we are challenged. “Mortal, can these bones live?” The prophet’s answer, if it were based on his own experience, would likely have been, “Of course not. Dead people stay dead; that’s what death means. After a few days the body begins to stink and decay; and as for these dead here in this valley, well they’ve been dead so long the flesh has long since turned to dust.”

Thus Ezekiel could have answered in the practical fashion of Mary and Martha in our gospel. Mary shows her anguished disappointment that it is too late: that if only Jesus had come sooner he might have prevented this death. And Martha, as much as she believes in Jesus, and the eventual resurrection of the dead, right then and there she reminds Jesus that her brother’s body is four days dead, and ripe.

Ezekiel, however, is a prophet. He knows that God is up to more than simply planting him in a valley of dry bones and asking him a question to which a negative answer seems obvious. No, God is clearly up to something, and so, as a prophet — or as some might say an astute politician — rather than answering yes or no Ezekiel says to God, “You know.”

And indeed, God does know; and commands Ezekiel to begin to prophesy, and the bones come together just like in the old song, shin-bone to knee-bone to thighbone, with a whole lot of rattling! And then comes the sinewy cartilage and then the fleshy muscles and finally skin covering them all nice and neat and newly packaged like fresh-made sausages in their casings.

But they are still as dead as sausages. The bodies are reconstructed, but there is no life in them. Something is missing. God knows it and Ezekiel knows it. And just as Jesus speaks at the tomb of Lazarus, not out of his own need, but for the sake of those standing by, so God commands Ezekiel one more time, to prophesy to the wind from the four corners of the earth to enter and literally to inspire those bodies and bring them to life.

This breath, this inspiration, this spirit is the missing element, the spirit of faith and of hope that lifts up and revivifies people who claim their bones are dried up, and their hope is lost, and that they are cut off completely from any future, hopeless and faithless.

The breath that brings them back to life is the spirit of faith and hope that fills us with the knowledge of the truth of God’s call from death to life. This is the spirit of faith and hope that fills that gap in our experience of the world — a world in which we have yet to see a resurrection — and yet convicts us in our heart of hearts with an assurance so deep that nothing can shake it.

This is the Spirit of life and inspiration that fills us when we take up the Scripture — its pages are as dry and lifeless as the bones in the valley. But they can come to life as the Spirit flows through our hearts and our minds as we encounter their testimony: and by faith and hope are raised from the dead. This is, in the long run, the difference between the pagans and us: God has given all humanity a glimpse of the truth that this is not the end, but has given to us a written Word in the Scripture, and what is more, a living Word in Jesus Christ — whom we encounter as we worship in Spirit and in Truth.

It is nothing less than the Spirit of God himself that is within us that gives us life. It is nothing less than the Spirit of God himself that teaches us truths of which no mere mortal experience can instruct us. This Holy Spirit teaches us that if God can give life to our mortal bodies by means of the earthly breath we first take in when the doctor or midwife holds us up and gives us a good slap to shock us into mortal life — how much more will God’s own Spirit give new life to our immortal bodies by the spiritual breath that rushes upon us and calls us from our graves. Even in the midst of Lent, this is our Easter hope and Easter faith, which we proclaim as true not because we have seen it, but because God’s Spirit has been poured into our hearts to ratify the testimony of the Scripture that it is true — the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

As God said to Ezekiel, it is by the Spirit we shall know that God has spoken and acted. What now we discern in the Scripture and hope for in our lives, what now we hold by faith, we shall then behold in earnest, as called from our graves by the powerful Spiritof the one who calls us forth, we take full possession of the new life promised us in Jesus Christ our Lord — the promise fulfilled, the bonds of death dissolved, so that, unbound and free, we will rejoice and live with him for ever and ever.+

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Surprised by Grace

Saint James Fordham • Lent 3a • Tobias Haller BSG
God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. - Romans 5:5

Grace is amazing — as amazing as water in the desert. Today’s readings show us two acts of amazing grace, two desert oases in our Lenten pilgrimage, as we examine the dry patches in our lives and discover some surprising water-springs.

The children of Israel received water from rock— the last place anyone would have looked. They had looked in empty river-beds, where they thought it should have been, rather than in the rock, where they were sure it couldn’t be. What was their problem (and do we share it)? Why don’t we find what we are looking for?

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First: we can look for the right thing in the wrong place. There’s an old joke about man crawling about under a lamppost late one night. A passing cop asks, “What’s all this then?” The man explains he’s looking for his watch. After helping him for a few minutes, the cop asks, “Are you sure you lost it here?” He answers, “No; I lost it up the street.” “Then why in thunder are you looking for it here?” Said the man, “Well, the light’s much better here.”

Are we that foolish? Do you remember the old song about looking “for love in all the wrong places”? How often do we do things we think will make us popular or well liked, rather than the things we really enjoy? How many people start drinking or smoking or using drugs so that they can be in the “right” crowd? It is good to be loved, but there are healthy ways and unhealthy ways to seek it.

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Second: we can possess the gift and not know it, or even reject it. Have you ever walked around looking and looking for something only to discover that it’s right in your pocket. Or even worse, have you ever been sorting out your mail and accidentally thrown away an important letter that got mixed up with the junk mail or the empty envelopes? It is possible to have all you could possibly need and yet not know it, or even lose it, through carelessness or lack of awareness.

God was never quite good enough for the wandering Israelites. They treated him like one of those envelopes from Publishers Clearing House — you know, the ones that tell you you’vepossibly won a million dollars, and you get all excited, but then you open it and find out it is about magazine subscriptions, and you throw it away. The treated the wedding invitation as if it were junk mail. They were never satisfied: When God gave them water from the rock, they asked for bread. When they received bread from heaven they complained there was no meat to go with it.

Are we that foolish, that ungrateful? How often, when blessed with life, health, reasonable success, and so on, do we hunger for more? There is a chilling judgment on this kind of selfishness in Psalm 106: “God gave them what they asked, but he sent leanness into their souls.” Leanness of soul, hunger that can never be satisfied but always craves more, is what keeps people looking for the right thing in the wrong place, and not knowing or accepting the gifts they’ve received, or even throwing them away.

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Let’s turn now, though, to some good news, to look at a figure from the Gospel. She’s an unlikely character who found grace in an unlikely way. She shows the same tendencies to look in the wrong place, or for the wrong thing, but she accepts the gift with enthusiasm. We don’t know her name, only that she was a woman of Samaria.

Jesus asks her for water. This is natural: he has no bucket, and he is thirsty. The surprise is that Jesus has living water for the woman, even though he asks her for well water.

Her response to the surprise is to try to “trim the mystery down to size” as all of us do, when confronted with the amazing. We human beings can turn the most beautiful poetry into prose at the drop of a hat. When offered the best things in the world we often try to tame and limit them. We like to put easy handles on big ungainly ideas like “Love” and “Peace” and then think we understand them because we’ve given them those short little one-syllable names. Well, love and peace are hard work, as a look at our lives or the world will tell us, and just because you can say the words doesn’t mean you can put them into practice; just because you can talk the talk doesn’t mean you can walk the walk.

When Jesus offers the woman living water, she asks “How can you offer me living water? You don’t have a bucket!” Then, when Jesus brings up the subject of her husband, she adopts another standard strategy to avoid taking a hard look at her life — she starts to talk “religion.” Here she is, a Samaritan woman, with a real live Jewish prophet cornered: what an opportunity to get a few quick answers.

Does this sound familiar? “Gee, Doc, I know this is a wedding party, but I’ve been having these funny pains in my left elbow for a while now...” Well, here’s the Samaritan woman’s opportunity to get some questions answered by an expert — and to avoid the uncomfortable look at her own life that Jesus has brought up. And, if you’re going to change the subject, there’s never been a more popular subject to change it to than religion!

Yet her question is superficial, as is so much talk about religion. “Where is the right place to worship?” — that’s the question she wants settled. Christ answers that the “where” isn’t important, but the “how” — true worshipers worship in Spirit. This answer about the Spirit confuses her, much as poor old Nicodemus was confused in our Gospel reading last week when he was told he needed to be born into the Spirit that moves where it wills, to be born again, born from above. The Samaritan woman too doesn’t understand, and says, “Messiah will make it clear.”

Then comes the climax, the turning point of the story, of her story and ours: Jesus says, “I am He.” He is Messiah, talking to her right there! That moment is portrayed in one of our stained glass windows,

right over there, just as Jesus tells the woman that he is what she has been looking for. Now, we’ve got some lovely stained glass windows here at Saint James — and this isn’t one of them! This was an American window made by a well-meaning craftsman trying to imitate the kind of work you see in the German stained glass windows in the sanctuary. The architectural details in his effort end up looking more like bananas than pinnacles. Still, look at the Samaritan woman’s face, caught in the moment of recognition, as she looks up just as Jesus points to himself and says, “I am he.”

There is some real skill showing through the artist’s vision of that moment, isn’t there? And what a moment it was: “I am he, the one speaking to you right now.” He is the real fount of living water brimming up in the middle of the desert of her life.

And hers is the proper response — she goes off to the city to spread the word. She doesn’t stake a claim to the living water: she doesn’t try to cap the well, she goes off to tell the town the good news. She becomes the first non-Jewish evangelist, the first to spread the Good News to the outcast and despised people of Samaria, the Good News that the Messiah has come not just to the Jewish people, but to them as well, to a people despised on account of their ancestry and their beliefs. Like Andrew, whose first act was to find his brother, this woman spreads the good news throughout the town, and a whole thirsty community is enabled to drink in the living presence of the Messiah among them.

+ + +

This story shows us several things about grace, most importantly that grace is undeserved. It is a gift, not a wage. Neither we nor the Samaritan woman nor the children of Israel earn it — we sometimes even refuse it without knowing it — we often avoid it as if it were hurtful. We sometimes pass it by as if it were not there. Grace is a gift, not a wage. It takes us by surprise. We don’t earn it. The only thing we earn, our only wages in our sinful state — well, as we are reminded in this Lenten season — the wages of sin is death.

But as the everlasting good news of Eastertide reminds us: the gift of God is life, life in abundance, like water in the desert. God’s love was poured out for an unlikely woman with a questionable past by a well in Samaria. And God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For the gift and giver are one and the same: the giver is the gift. Jesus gave himself, gave his life for us, even while we were sinners. We’ve earned only death: we’ve worked hard for it — instead we are given a gift of life. And that is the wonderful and amazing surprise of grace: it’s what grace means — not getting what you deserve for your failings, but being forgiven in spite of them.

Christ continues to pour these gracious gifts upon us, through word and sacraments. We receive that grace, mediated through outward and visible signs. And the first of these, the one by which we first come into unity with Christ and the church, is the water of baptism, which flows into the desert of our lives.

We are the vessels for that water, vessels of clay made by the potter’s hand, ready to be filled to the brim with grace. The woman at the well said that Jesus had no bucket for the living water. But he had her: she would be a receptacle of grace, and carry it carefully back to her city, not spilling a drop, to quench the thirst of other yearning people, to invite them to the well of living water that is Jesus Christ.

The water of baptism is the same living water that burst from the rock to quench the thirst of the wandering children of Israel, the same living water that Jesus promised to a lonely woman by a well in the Samaritan outback, the same water in which you and I were baptized, and in which children and men and women will continue to be baptized until sacraments shall cease and we are one in Spirit and in Truth.

As we continue our Lenten pilgrimage, think on the gift of grace we have been given: how it is unexpected; how it is undeserved; how amazing grace is, that through word and sacraments we have come to know the One who is “indeed the savior of the world.”+

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Heirs of the Spirit

Saint James Fordham • Lent 2a • Tobias Haller BSG
What is born of the flesh is flesh, what is born of the Spirit is Spirit.+

As you know, this is Black History Month, and various programs on TV and elsewhere have been sharing some of that rich history with us. Another way you can look into that history is by going on-line to the Archives of the Episcopal Church, where you can visit an exciting exhibition called “The Church Awakens: African Americans and the Struggle for Justice.” (You can find the internet address in today’s bulletin.)

However, this year, due to Lent starting so early, and overlapping with Black History Month, we are also given the opportunity to reflect on some powerful Scripture lessons in the context of our heightened awareness of race and kinship. These are the matters of flesh and blood that offer so much promise and yet have caused so much division and led to so much injustice and anguish down through the years.

And the problems with racism are apparent from the very foundation. For right there in the book of Genesis, we are shown God choosing Abram, making him the father of a great nation, a “chosen” people — a clan to be given God’s special care and attention, who would pass that inheritance down in the flesh of their bodies, carrying the blessing in their blood, and literally marked in their flesh with the sign of circumcision. As to the Canaanites who live in the land that Abram’s people will possess, well, they’re expendable second-class citizens in this view of things. They will be wiped out as inferior people, pushed aside to make room for the chosen ones, the blessed ones who will spring from the seed of Abram. For it is to his offspring, and to his alone, that God promises the blessed land.

This was a view that many Israelites found comforting in the years that would follow. Surely it is true that believing yourself to be blessed is a comfort when you actually find your life not going well. When you’re down and out the memories of a golden age when your ancestors were on top can help salve your wounded pride. Race pride, pride in your kin and your heritage, in this sense, is a sort of consolation prize.

And this promise of being chosen comforted the people of Israel through their slave years in Egypt; it kept them going in their captivity in Babylon, and it inspired them when the time came to rebuild the temple in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah.

But something else began to happen to the Jewish people while they were in Babylon. Slowly some of them began to find their perspectives broadened as they saw new things in this bigger world, beyond the old borders of the Holy Land, and their minds were stretched by a small group of inspired men and women who were touched by God’s spirit and given the gift of prophecy.

Now, as I believe I’ve said before from this pulpit, prophecy is not about making predictions like a psychic friend or supermarket tabloid! Prophecy isn’t something you can get for $1.95 for each additional minute! On the contrary, prophecy is about being able to see the world clearly, to be able to see the truth and to speak it boldly, even when it means getting into trouble for it.

And the truth that began to dawn in the minds of the prophets, most especially the prophet Isaiah, was that there had to be more to God’s plan for the earth than just blessing this small tribe of Israelites. The prophets began to see that Israel was not to be the end of salvation, but the beginning, and that from Israel light would spread to enlighten all the nations of the world. The prophets began to see that it wasn’t a matter of just one race and clan, but of the whole human family — whose common kinship after all traced its way back to Adam and Eve. It wasn’t just one people who were the object of God’s redeeming love and care, but all people everywhere.

+ + +

Such was the message of the prophets, but, as we know, the words of prophets are often ignored. And sure enough, after the end of the captivity in Babylon,

when Israel got back home and started rebuilding the Temple, they soon fell into the old “us-versus-them” mindset that has plagued racists and nationalists of whatever complexion or clan from the very beginning. One of the first rules they put in place, for example, was “no intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews.” Laws as strict as the old anti-miscegenation laws of the American South, Nazi Germany, or Apartheid South Africa were put in place, to restrict and nullify such “impure” marriages, such “race mixing,” especially when Jews had married women from the hated remnants of the Canaanites and Moabites who still eked out a sad existence on the fringes of Jewish society.

It took another anonymous prophet to raise a voice at that point in history, and we only know this prophet from the story this wise person recorded, a very short story in one of the shortest books of the Bible, so small it is easy to lose it between Judges and Samuel— the story of Ruth. This wise prophet told that story to remind all those so keen on stopping intermarriage that Ruth, the grandmother of the great king David himself, had been a Moabite.

Sadly, this beautiful story of love and inclusion was lost on the nationalistic zealots, and the racists had their way, rebuilding the Temple, ultimately defeating the hated Greeks and establishing a Jewish state once more, until the Romans dealt the final crushing blow to Jewish pride in Jewish ancestry and blood.

+ + +

And it was in those days of Roman rule that once more voices began to be raised, one voice in particular, that of a humble carpenter who lifted up the prophecies of Isaiah and dared to suggest that they were being fulfilled even then. Jesus dared to challenge those of his day who regarded Samaritans as less than human outcasts — and we’ll hear more about that next week! In today’s Gospel, one of the Jewish leaders comes to Jesus by night, curious to hear more about this radical message that seems to overturn so much that he held dear.

Now, to give Nicodemus his due, at least he makes the effort. Later in the Gospel he would be bold enough to speak out to defend Jesus, but at this point his confidence in Jesus is partial, so he comes to him in secret.

I can’t help but think of Nicodemus as I would of a well-meaning white liberal coming to visit Dr. Martin Luther King during the bus boycotts; some white Montgomery businessman with his heart in the right place, but worried about his reputation, offering to help — as long as nobody finds out!

But Jesus answers Nicodemus as I’m sure Dr. King would have answered such a well-meaning but fearful person. What is born of the flesh is flesh, what is born of the Spirit is Spirit. You must be reborn from above, from the Spirit. You’re still hanging on to that flesh of yours, full of pride in heritage and blood, when what is truly needed is liberation in the Spirit, freedom to move where you will and say what you think and stand tall and proud not because of who your earthly parents were, or where you were born, or where you went to school, or how much money you make, or what color you are — but because you have a Father in heaven who pours out his Spirit upon you.

This is the Gospel message: that salvation does not lie in race or in matters of flesh and blood and heritage; it does not lie in who your parents are or where you were born; it doesn’t even lie in the works you do or the laws you follow. Abraham showed us that, he whose faith — not his works — was reckoned to him as righteousness. No, salvation comes by grace through faith, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the new birth as a new person who is a child of God by adoption, not descent. Only one has come down from heaven, Jesus the Son of God, and it is he in whom all our racial, ethnic and national differences are swallowed up in salvation, when we are baptized into him by water and the Holy Spirit.

For in him there is no east or west, no north or south, black, white, yellow, brown or red. In Christ there is one great fellowship throughout the whole wide earth, in which, thanks to the grace and mercy of God, through the generosity and abundance of his Holy Spirit given in baptism, we have been blessed to find ourselves numbered. And so to him, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, to him be glory from generation to generation, not in the flesh, but in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever.+

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Doubt That Kills

Saint James Fordham • Lent 1a • Tobias Haller BSG
The tempter came to him and said, If you are the Son of God…

Today is the first Sunday in Lent, and just a little while ago we sang a long litany that included a striking petition: our earnest appeal to God that we might finally one day “beat down Satan under our feet.” Satan is, of course, the Adversary, in particular humanity’s Adversary, from the time he misled Eve in the garden to the day he tempted Jesus in the desert, the greatest troublemaker there ever was. The trouble Satan makes comes in the most part through what he tempts us to do.

As I say, he’s been at it an awfully long time. Right from the beginning, Satan has been at his work of temptation. In the garden, as a snake in the grass, he tempted Eve. We all know what that led to. Later on, he tempted Jesus in the wilderness, coming at him at the end of a long and weary fast, when he was weak and famished, hitting him when he was down. In both of his assaults on humanity — humanity at its very beginning and at its culmination — Satan tempts his victims to doubt.

Now, doubt is not an entirely bad thing. A little healthy skepticism is an important part of common sense, particularly when you get an email telling you someone has found $10 million in an abandoned account and if you just send them all of your private information they’ll do the transfer for you. Right. Some doubt can save you from some trouble. But the person who doubts everything is in some ways as much a fool as the person who doubts nothing at all. Some doubt, then, makes common sense. But the doubt towards which Satan tempts Eve and Jesus, and all of us — every man, woman and child since — is not the reasonable doubt of common sense, but the unreasonable doubt that assaults both who we are and who God is.

This is the doubt that kills: to doubt God and God’s promises, and to doubt ourselves at the very core of our being. These two doubts, so pointless and so hopeless, are the doubts Satan lays before us, setting his snare: Who am I? and Where is God? These are the doubts that lead to despair and death of the soul. They make us feel like less than we are, and also rob of us of trust in the only one in whom we can become more than we are, leaving us high and dry in the desert of despair, of loss and isolation, ready prey for Satan to snatch us up and carry us off to hell. These are the two sore points that Satan has worked away at endlessly and tirelessly since Eden, and they leave their marks on the human soul like the twin punctures of a serpent’s fangs.

+ + +

The crafty serpent came to Eve, and the hidden assumptions behind the advice he gave to her planted those seeds of doubt. “You will be like God...” the serpent said. But Eve was already like God, made in God’s image and likeness. Satan put his advice in the future tense and conditional mood, as if to say, “You are not like God now, but you could be, if only you eat the fruit.” So the serpent led Eve to doubt herself, her own likeness to God, her very being. He made her feel like less than she was, and then offered a way to feel better about herself.

Does that sound familiar? Haven’t women and men been caught by the same nasty doubts ever since? How many products are are marketed precisely by making people feel bad about themselves and then offering them a quick solution. The modern day serpents whisper to us that we are too fat or too thin, that our hair is the wrong color, or not shiny or plentiful enough, and on top of that — we smell bad; and then offer us the diet plan or exercise machine, the hair color or shampoo or baldness cure, — and the mouthwash and deodorant. Satan was, it seems, the first creature to get someone to use a product they didn’t want and didn’t need. And he did it by getting Eve to doubt herself.

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He also got her to doubt God. That’s the second fang in the serpent’s mouth. Satan’s crafty temptation to Eve calls God a liar — “You will not die; you will become like God! God hasn’t told you the whole story! And how can you trust him if he isn’t on the up and up with you? Who is this God, anyway? Where is he? But look at that fruit; it’s a sure thing! It’s right here... Where is your God?” And Eve, without responding to the devil, silent in the face of the doubts he has raised, takes the fruit.

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How strong is the power of doubt! Eve has known God’s blessings all her short life. She’s never even been out of the garden, in which God has been such a gracious host. She has been cared for and watched over, God graciously providing for her every need. Yet against her whole short life’s experience, she is prepared to listen to the hisses of a snake in the grass, and turn from God in mistrust, without so much as a word.

Again, doesn’t this sound familiar? How many relationships have been wrecked through a casual bit of unfounded or malicious gossip? How many reputations have been ruined by false accusation, by devilish doubt ready to leap out against even the most trusted, most belovéd person, pouncing like a rattlesnake. Oh yes, Satan is still busily at work, and ever since Eve, people have been giving in in silence to the doubts that chill the heart and kill the soul.

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Yet Jesus shows us a different response to Satan and the doubts that Satan spreads. Satan confronts Jesus in the wilderness, and he bares the same two fangs of doubt he’s chewed on people with since time began. “If you are the Son of God...” he begins each assault. If? If? Is Satan trying to get Jesus to doubt that he is the Son of God? You bet he is! And with his one-two punch Satan follows up with temptations that try to poke holes in Jesus’ faith in God’s providence, God’s protection, and God’s authority.

But Jesus, unlike Eve, knows that silence will not do to clear away these powerful doubts. Jesus knows that just ignoring Satan won’t make him go away! The hissing of doubt must be answered, the murmur of doubt must be silenced by the voice of faith. And so Jesus answers every doubt that Satan raises. He will not let the devil have the last word, and it is Satan who ends up retiring from the field, silenced at last by Jesus’ rebuke.

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Jesus talked back to the devil, to the one who tried to get him to doubt God and to doubt himself. We too can talk back to the devil, whether he appears in the guise of friend or family member, co-worker or public figure, or as that more familiar devil, that nagging little voice within you. You’ve heard him — don’t deny it! He is that little voice of insecurity who tells you you are less than you know you are, or that bids you not to trust the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.

To the voices that seek to whittle you down, to cut you into little pieces, to nibble at your insecurities, you can boldly respond, “Quiet! I am a child of God, loved by God and made in God’s image!” To the little devils who spread rumor and distrust, you can boldly respond, “I’ve known my friends far longer than I’ve known you, and I trust them more than I trust you.” And to the deep, evil voice that asks us “Where is your God?” we can confidently respond, God is with us, among us and within us, and we can go nowhere out of his providence, his protection, and his power.

We can talk back to all of these faithless chatterers, internal and external; and with bold words of rebuke beat down Satan under our feet. And there are few more choicely worded rebukes to the talkers of doubt (within and without) than these from Ella Wheeler Wilcox, with which I close:

Talk faith. The world is better off without
Your uttered ignorance and morbid doubt.
If you have faith in God, or man, or self,
Say so. If not, push back upon the shelf
Of silence all your thoughts, till faith shall come;
No one will grieve because your lips are dumb.+

Don't Tell It In The Valley

SJF • Last Epiphany A • Tobias Haller BSG
Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

Today is the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, the season of “showing forth.” It was a very short season this year, only four Sundays counting Epiphany itself; yet some significant things have already been shown forth to us these few weeks. We have seen how God hides and reveals himself, and come to understand how utterly known to God all of us are — known through and through, and loved by the one who made us in his own image.

We have heard gospel readings describe Christ’s showing forth to the world. A dove settled on him at the river Jordan, showing John that Jesus was the one he waited for. John’s followers answered Jesus’ call to “come and see,” and Jesus himself went to the far reaches of Galilee of the Gentiles, and netted himself an assortment of fishermen, who left their nets and boats and families behind, to follow him. But on this last Sunday before Lent, Jesus is revealed in a different light, and delivers a paradoxical command to three of those fishermen.

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First, the revelation. Jesus is revealed for a moment in his full glory. He had promised his disciples, in the verse before our gospel for today begins, “There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” Peter, James and John get a preview of Jesus’ divine majesty, a down-payment on the final fulfillment. No wonder Peter wants to stay on the mountain!

However, not only don’t they stay on the mountain, but Jesus issues a strange command as they are coming down from the heights. “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” And we wonder, Why reveal, then conceal? Why reveal the good news and then order them not to tell it? I spoke two weeks ago about how God plays hide and seek with us, and this may be yet another instance. But I think there is more to it in this case.

And the “more” begins in our Old Testament reading. Here too is a mountain on which God is revealed, though not in human flesh, but in cloud and majesty and awe, carving the Law in stone. God gives this written revelation to Moses, who brings it to the people. And we all know what happens. The people are not ready to receive God in the form of sublime and righteous laws. God is ready to meet them half-way, to enter into a covenant with them. But they don’t want to go half-way; they don’t want even to be near the mountain. They will reveal themselves to be happier with a god they’ve made themselves, a golden calf they can dance around, who won’t do anything for them— but who will ask nothing of them.

So God is faced with a dilemma. God loves humanity, and sends Moses with the Law, a covenant into which the people were invited, but which they reject before the ink is even dry, so to speak. So God sends the prophets, like Elijah, reminding the people of the promises, of the love, of the forgiveness that awaits them if only they will turn to God and forswear their foolish ways.

What happens to the prophets? Some are heeded—briefly. But others are beaten, some killed. So God decides to send his own dear Son — not a letter, not an ambassador, but one who shares his being, one who is God— one who is glimpsed in majesty on the mountaintop by three disciples, and will only later be revealed in the mighty act of resurrection from the dead.

This is why Jesus orders the disciples not to tell the people about what they have seen on this mountain... until after. The people already have Moses, for the Law is read week by week in the synagogue. The people already have Elijah and the other prophets, whose deeds and warnings are also recounted. Jesus knows that this is not enough— the Law and the Prophets alone cannot save. Following rules and hearing warnings will not save people — they don’t need another teacher or lawgiver: they are too hardheaded to be instructed. They don’t need to be taught, but rescued; not instructed, but saved! And that goes for us too. What is needed is for someone to rise from the dead, mighty in power and strong to save.

So what happens on the mountain is the preview, not the feature presentation! It is a private screening, to encourage the apostles — not for general release! And even what they see on the mountain is not enough — it is not salvation, but promise. Peter wants to stay on the mountain, to bask in the momentary glory, to live in the promise rather than the fulfillment.

But God has other plans: When Peter offers to build three shelters, God speaks, “This is my Son. Listen to him.” God is saying, The Law and the Prophets, Moses and Elijah, have had their day and did their part, but now you have the Son himself: listen, and do as he says. There is something better even than this to come.

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Saint Paul understood this difference well, a lesson learned at great personal cost. He had been a man of the Law and the Prophets, but he learned that, in the light of the resurrection, all his learning was just so much rubbish. Jesus is working along the same line when he tells the disciples to keep the vision secret until he has risen from the dead. Don’t give away the ending, he’s says, perhaps the first spoiler alert! The best part — the important part — is still to come— but not before suffering, pain and death. Jesus does not tarry on the mountain. He goes down to the challenges still waiting. For he knows that only through his death and resurrection can people finally be saved. The promise is not enough — there must as well be performance.

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We, too, have our mountaintop moments. Like Peter, we are tempted to remain in them, enjoying them, trying to make the experience last. But we too have challenges awaiting us. The parish church is one mountaintop for us. We come each week, hear the words of the Law and the Prophets, and of Jesus, and then go out on our way. Surely, it is good to be here. We feel restored, renewed, encouraged and comforted.

But all of these feelings are meant to impel us to action, not as ends in themselves. We receive the promise in order to equip us for performance, in God’s name. It would be easy to stay in the comfort of community, but we are challenged and equipped to go out to face a world in need.

It is good to be here, and we need a weekly return to our mountaintop: just as Christ himself went to hills to pray. But he also went back to the valley for ministry. We are fed by the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel; but we know that the Law is without power to save on its own, that the prophecies will pass away, and that the gospel will perish if there is no one to preach it. So we are reminded today that we have a mission, a mission to all the world. We go back to our weekday lives equipped with gifts of the Spirit, as ambassadors of Christ.

Us? Ambassadors of Christ? Yes, us! We have been transformed, changed into messengers of Christ, so that what is unchanging may be revealed through us. The great news is the resurrection has happened — we are not bound like James and John and Peter, to keep it secret until it happened — for it has, praise God! We live in the time of “until after” — Christ is alive! That is the Gospel, the Good News. And so we’ve received the commission to tell it out, to tell abroad the Good News that salvation has come, and we are its heralds and ambassadors.

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Christ came down from the mountain to a valley that led towards Calvary. He didn’t stay on a mountaintop with three booths, but marched steadfastly on toward a little hill with three crosses. But there is more; do you see it? As we begin our Lenten pilgrimage, as we enter the valley of challenge before us, keep your eye on the mountain there ahead —— not the little hill called Golgotha, but the mountain that rises behind it, the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven like a bride adorned for her bridegroom. Though Lent is about to begin, we know the end of the story, the greatest story ever told, we know that Christ is alive, risen from the dead and powerful to save, and we — we servants of God — equipped with that knowledge and filled with the Holy Spirit, we can go forth from this place on our mission, empowered to tell that story and do great works in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.+

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Can't Hide From God

SJF • Epiphany 3a • Tobias Haller BSG
Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You trace my journeys and my resting-places and are acquainted with all my ways.+

Last week I was away on retreat with my Brothers, and we spent much of the retreat meditating on and discussing Genesis 3:1-7. So that ancient tale of the fall of our distant ancestors is very much in my mind. So I want to begin my sermon by casting our thoughts back in that direction.

From the time that Adam and Eve first ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and discovered that they weren’t dressed for dinner — indeed not dressed at all! — and hid themselves in the shrubbery so that God might not see them, people have been trying by one means or another to get away from God. Well, as Adam and Eve learned, and as people ever since have learned, you can’t get away from God. God has his eye on you, on me, on every single person on this world of ours, and there’s nowhere you can go to hide, no hiding place from the Lord’s piercing vision. And this strikes us most, we most keenly feel the relentless watchfulness of God, when we’ve done something wrong.

When I was about four and a half years old, I took it into my head one day when my parents were out of the house to disassemble my mother’s wristwatch, which she left on the dining room table. I always was an inquisitive child — I had tiny little hands perfectly designed for mischief — but unfortunately I was no watchmaker: I could take the watch apart all right, but I had no hope whatever of putting it back together. And I realized this fact with that awful sinking feeling that must have been very much like what Adam and Eve felt when they experienced the cool evening breezes and realized they weren’t wearing anything. And so, knowing of course that I couldn’t hide myself, I decided to hide the watch — or what was left of it! Going into the living room, I reached up as high as I could and put the watch, or I should say the remnants of the watch, up onto the mantlepiece over the fireplace, out of sight.

Out of my sight, that is. For of course, as soon as my parents got home, they found the disassembled wristwatch lying in pieces in plain sight at a very convenient level for them to see — I could hardly have chosen a more obvious place to display my misdeed. Well, suffice it to say I went without dinner that evening, and got a good whupping in addition. And I did, I hope, learn my lesson. And the lesson I learned wasn’t to pick a better hiding place, but to respect other people’s belongings!

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Sadly, down through human history, there are plenty of people who haven’t learned their lesson, who haven’t learned that you can’t just do what you want and not expect the consequences, who think that their misbehavior will remain out of sight and out of mind. The examples come so frequently one need only pick up the newspaper or listen to the TV news. Most recently, it seems, some people have forgotten that you can erase as many e-mails as you like, but eventually things will catch up with you! In fact, the supposedly missing e-mails more than anything else call attention to the problem, as glaring and obvious as a dismantled watch sitting on a mantlepiece. Yet so many times people will act like children who cover their own eyes and say, You can’t see me. Well, that just doesn’t work: you can’t hide from God, you can’t get away from God.

The prophet Amos reminded the people of Israel that not only could God see them, but that of all the families of the earth, God most particularly had his eye on them. And Amos called out to them in that ringing series of questions, questions that challenge us even today with a resounding, Who do you think you are? Don’t you know God has his eye on you? Don’t you know God has kept his appointment, and is here to judge you? Don’t you know that God is roaring like a lion in anger over you because he’s caught you? Don’t you know you’ve stepped in the bear-trap, and that disaster is coming to overtake you? Tremble, tremble: for God has his eye on you, and you can’t get away from God!

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The people of Corinth, now they tried a different approach to get away from God. They played a sort of a theological Three Card Monte, a kind of ecclesiastical shell game, choosing up sides and dividing themselves into subdivisions according to whom they liked the best, hoping, one supposes,

that God would get confused with the shuffling between allegiance to Apollos, or Cephas, or Paul, or yes even Christ, who in that congregation just became one more option among many. And the Apostle Paul, like the Prophet Amos, confronted them with a ringing series of questions. Do you think God is divided up among you? Don’t you know into whom you were baptized? Don’t you not know that Christ was crucified for you? Don’t you realize that Christ is our unity, not our division? Tremble, tremble: for God has his eye on you, and you can’t get away from God!

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Yes, brothers and sisters, it’s true; and we can’t get away from God, either. But we need not hear that as bad news; indeed we need only hear it as bad news if we are set in our ways to perdition, if we insist on persisting in wrongdoing — for those who choose that path it is indeed a frightening thought to know that there is no escape, that they can’t get away from God. Those who are trying to hide from God, to get away from God, will hear as bad news the fact that God knows where they are.

But we are not trying to hide from God. We’ve learned our lesson, and know it’s pointless trying to hide anyway. What we’ve come to understand is that we are not hiding, trying to get away from someone, but lost. And that changes everything.

If you are lost, the one thing you want to know most of all is that someone is looking for you; better yet, that someone knows where you are, that someone has his eye on you, and is coming, not to judge, but to rescue.

That makes all the difference, doesn’t it? You could look at Psalm 139, which we sang in a hymn version today, as the complaint of some guilty person who has been found out, someone who has tried to get away from God and found that however much he tries there is no escape. And perhaps with our obsession with the right to privacy (no doubt going back to Adam and Eve!) it is natural to read this psalm in this way. But think about it in a more positive light, and you will see that it is not a song of a guilty criminal confessing, “You caught me fair and square.” No, it is the song of praise to God, who is so vigilant and watchful that he will not allow a single one of his children to be lost, no matter how far they stray, to the ends of the earth, the far reaches of the sea, the height of the dawn or the depths of darkness.

And it is the same God who seeks the lost who comes to us in Jesus Christ, as he came to that land of Zebulun and Naphtali, that far off province of Galilee, a land looked upon by the other tribes of Israel as no better than a suburb of the Gentile Philistines and Phoenecians, people who, as far as they were concerned, were sitting in darkness, in the region and shadow of death. Jesus came to what the people of his day thought of as the most God-forsaken part of Palestine, in part to make the point that no place on earth is God-forsaken. There is no place that God will not go, no place that God’s Spirit will not penetrate, no place that is beyond God’s reach.

And whether that hand of God is reaching out to punish or to rescue will depend to the greatest extent on whether you are looking for a judge or a savior — for God is both! You can’t get away from God, either by running or hiding, or by getting yourself lost. Christ comes to the backwater of Galilee, and starts his ministry of recovering the lost ones, calling fishermen who will fish for men and women and children and bring them in, in to where God wants them to be.

We can’t get away from God — that is the good news of the kingdom, the cure for the disease of fear, the remedy for the sickness of hatred, the antidote for the poisonous debility of division, the healing balm for the malady of loss and despair.

And so let us rejoice, sisters and brothers, in the knowledge that God has his eye on us, he knows where we are when we stray, and will guide us back on to the right way; God is with us whether we walk in the light or in the dark, whether we walk with open eyes or closed, and his amazing grace and holy Spirit will seek us out and bring us home, and heal our sin-sick souls. We can’t get away from God, thanks be to God! +

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Hide and Seek

SJF • Epiphany 2a • Tobias Haller BSG

John the Baptist said, “I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed...”

As I said in my sermon two weeks ago, Epiphany means “showing forth.” By implication, something that is now shown once was hidden. Now, it’s clear that curiosity is very much a part of our human makeup. Even very young infants appreciate a game of peek-a-boo, and what game is more universal the world over than hide-and-seek?

The very idea of something hidden being revealed builds up anticipation. Perhaps I am aging myself, but I can well recall, not so very many years ago, car manufacturers would all bring out their new models at the same time each year. And in the weeks before the new models were set to debut, the car ads on TV would feature the new models — draped in sheets, so that all you could see was the outline of the car’s shape. And only after weeks of anticipation would the sheets be pulled off to the oohs and aahs of the eager public.

Of course, here in church we are interested in more important things than cars. But it seems that God works in much the same way as the car dealers, taking advantage of the human desire to look into secrets. We curious creatures want to break the code, Da Vinci or otherwise, to solve the mystery, finally to see what it is hidden under that sheet. So God takes advantage of our curiosity, and hides, and then reveals himself.

God, who remains to us unknowable in full (because a limited human mind cannot contain the infinite actuality of God) still allows himself to be known in part. As author H.G. Wood observed, “God would not be God if he could be fully known to us; but God would also not be God if he could not be known at all.” The question is, How do we know God? And the answer, as we will see, involves both God and us in give and take, a divine game of peek-a-boo or hide-and-seek or tag that God plays with his beloved children.

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The starting point, in this as in all else, lies with God. Our knowing God begins with God knowing us. God knows us completely, all that we are and all that we ever can be, because “God made us and we are his.” As Isaiah says, God called his chosen servant Israel before he was born; while still in his mother’s womb, God gave him a name. God didn’t simply see the future Israel; God saw all of the possible Israels that yet-unborn child might become, and worked with loving care to “form him in the womb to be his servant” like a potter slowly modeling a pot as the clay spins under her firm hands, urging the clay, balancing her own strength against the resistance of the clay so that it takes shape exactly as the potter wishes.

Yet clay would be no use to a potter if it didn’t also have its own inner strength, its own cohesiveness, its own native ability to take on form. God knows us, and knows what we are made of, and knows that what we are made of is suitable for the work he has for us to do. God does not sculpt with Jell-O; but rather with more enduring and solid stuff — for even if our flesh is grass, even if Adam was made from clay, still we are inbreathed with God’s own breath, and capable of bearing God’s likeness. What we are made of, that inner reality of what it means to be human, lies is our being made after God’s image, which means that we are able to know, and to love. So God’s revelation to us begins in this: God knows us, and so, knows that we are capable of knowing him.

If you are traveling in a foreign country and don’t speak the language, what’s the first thing you look for? Why, someone who speaks your language, someone who knows what you’re saying, right? God comes to us precisely because of all things in creation, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, we were made to know God, and to love God.

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So the game of hide-and seek continues. God has found us, “searched us out and known us,” God has tagged us, and we are now “it” — and it’s our turn to seek for God. So when we run after God with our questions, like the disciples of John we run after Jesus full of excitement and wonder. And how does Jesus respond? Well, the game of tag continues, and rather than giving a pat answer right away, he says, “Come and see.” God in Christ keeps the game going. Just when we think we have him cornered, he is off in another direction.

But not without a leaving a trail! When we get to where we think God is hiding, we find another clue to yet another hiding place, clues in the form of words and acts, of Scripture and Sacrament, each one an invitation to come to know him better. God continues the ongoing revelation, as he opened himself and revealed himself to his people Israel, step by step as they grew to know and love him better, and then in Jesus himself, and in the Spirit who continues to lead us into all truth: adding moves to the game, recurring surprises and unforeseen turns of events, each of which brings us deeper into a relationship.

Like all relationships, the relationship each of us has and all of us have with God — personal relationships and corporate relationships, as Israel and the Church have learned — will have their ups and downs. There have been times in my life when it seemed like God was completely hidden again, completely distant from me, utterly silent to my search for an answer. There are times I’ve felt like “It” in a game of hide-and-seek, in which all the other kids have been called home to supper, and I’m all alone in the gathering dusk, looking for people who aren’t even there anymore.

Isaiah experienced the same sort of desolation. Look what he says in today’s reading: “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing.” He feels like he’s wasted his time trying to redeem Israel. They just won’t play! Then look how God responds, finally, out of that silence and desolation. God doesn’t just say, “There, there. Yes, you’ll redeem Israel; yes you will.” No, God tells his servant, “It is too easy for you to redeem just Israel… I’m going to give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth!” God doesn’t just restore the relationship, God raises it to a higher level.

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Like all good and lasting relationships, the relationship we have with God grows and expands in unexpected ways. And the primary way that relationship grows and expands is in community, the community of the church. For it is here, where the Word and Sacraments are shared, that the knowledge of God is opened up, that the love of God takes form. Here we become God’s agents for letting God be known.

What’s the first thing you do when you’ve had a wonderful experience? What was the first thing Andrew did after meeting Jesus and spending a day with him? He went and found his brother Simon Peter. Building on his own relationship with God, he opened that relationship to his brother, bringing him into the growing circle of disciples. The church reaches out to those who feel abandoned, surprising and reminding them that they are not alone.

What, after all, is the church? It’s as if you finally found all your friends, who you thought had gone home for the night, all hiding in the same place — and it turns out it’s a surprise party just for you! This is how the church grows, sharing the knowledge of God; and it is the only way in which it grows right and true and firm and secure.

A church that grows on slogans and gimmicks, on false promises or glitzy promotions, will quickly crumble when problems arise. But a church that grows in the knowledge and the love of God will endure. This is the kind of church we are called to be: a church built upon the truth that God has known us and chosen us; a church built upon the relationship each of us has with our loving God and Father in heaven and upon the relationships we have with each other; a church in which each and every one of us, illumined by God’s Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that he may be known and loved, worshiped and adored to the ends of the earth.+

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Debuts and Renovations

SJF • Epiphany 1 • Tobias Haller BSG

See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before the spring forth, I tell you of them.+

Many cultures around the world have developed ways of recognizing important transitions in young people’s lives. Some of these are social, and some are religious — and some are both. A Jewish boy, for example, can look forward to the day of his bar mitzvah — the day on which he becomes responsible for observing the Jewish law, at about the age of 13. In many Latino cultures, a young woman looks forward to celebrating her 15th birthday with a Quinceañera — often a lavish party that looks a little like a junior version of a wedding — and like a wedding, can set back her parents a pretty penny!

In high society circles in Europe and the United States there used to be an event in the social calendar each year when young women from the leading families would make their first appearance in polite society, usually at a ball or some other formal function. This would be their debut, and so they were called “debutantes.” This was the time when a young woman — who had up till then lived a fairly private life in her father’s house — was presented to all of the eligible young men to begin the process of matchmaking leading to marriage — and her transfer to her husband’s house. Although I’m told this still goes on in some circles, I think we have moved rather far from the days of Jane Austen and Scarlett O’Hara!

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In today’s Gospel, however, we hear of another kind of debut. It may seem odd that in just two weeks we have jumped all the way from the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, and the visit of the Magi last week, to his baptism in the River Jordan at about the age of 30. But it is no secret that the Gospels tell us almost nothing about Jesus from the time of his infancy to the time of his baptism — the only exception being Matthew’s passing reference to the fact that Jesus lived in Nazareth, and Luke’s account of that visit to Jerusalem about the time of Jesus’s own bar mitzvah, when he worried his parents, and to calm their fears said he must be about his Father’s business.

It appears, though, that he took his time in preparing for that business, for from the age of 12 or so until he was about 30, the gospel record is silent. Many people have offered speculations about Jesus’ childhood, youth, and young manhood; but the speculation remains just that. All we know from the gospel itself is that Jesus reached the rather ripe age of 30 or so without making any particular kind of splash in the world.

Until that day at the River Jordan. And what a splash that was — and what a debut! Perhaps the most interesting thing about this incident as Matthew describes it lies not so much with Jesus as with John the Baptist. For John immediately recognizes Jesus as someone very special — Matthew’s Gospel suggests he recognized Jesus as the very one who’s coming John had prophesied! And he recognizes this without Jesus having done anything spectacular for those 30 or so years of his life in Galilee. Even before Jesus has begun to teach or preach or work a miracle, John the clear-eyed prophet can see the importance of what is going on right in front of him, and recognizes the one who comes to him. He immediately perceives Jesus to be the bringer of grace, the bringer of blessing, the one who is to come to make all things new, the one who will begin the great renovation, not just of the house of Israel, but of the whole world.

And so John and plays his part, like the good matchmaker he is — after all, John would later call Jesus the bridegroom, and John knew he was not the center of the story — John steps aside. John is like the manager of the banquet hall who sets up the Quinceañera or the bar mitzvah or the sweet sixteen party, or the coming-out ball for this season’s debutantes; and then steps aside and fades into the background, as the proud father — in this case the Father in heaven — beams with delight in his beloved Son and pours out his Spirit upon him, visibly descending like a dove.

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Does that sound familiar? We’ve all seen fathers or mothers at parties such as the ones I’ve described — at a graduation or a prom, or a wedding, beaming with pride and delight as their child steps forth into the world as a new person.

And so we shall see that today — for baptism is itself the fundamental great new beginning and it makes those who are baptized into new persons: it is both debut and renovation, all in one. Although we aren’t at the River Jordan, still the baptism here will be like the baptism of Christ; for these children here today at Saint James Church will be baptized into Christ, in water like the water in which he was baptized, and they will be anointed with the same Spirit with which he was anointed: God’s Holy Spirit. And the parents and godparents here will beam with delight, a delight that God himself shares — for God will have gained new children by adoption this day.

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I said last week that the Epiphany season is about the manifestation of Christ to the world. His baptism marked his own first step into that world — the debut of his active ministry, emerging from the shadows of those 30 years of quiet life in Nazareth of Galilee. And the baptism of these children here today will mark a new beginning for them; and it will also be a manifestation of the presence of God. They will have become members of Christ’s body, the church. From now on, where ever they go, whatever they do, they will do so as members of the Christian family, marked as Christ’s own, forever. As they grow to maturity, they will do so within that context, in that environment: for their parents and godparents will promise that they will, with God’s help, bring these children up “in the Christian faith and life.” And all of us here will promise that we will, by our “prayers and witness help these children to grow into the full stature of Christ.”

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We have come to the beginning of a new year, and it is so fitting to celebrate baptism at this point. We celebrate both the baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the baptism of these children. In their debut, we find renovation. For it provides us an opportunity to make a new year’s resolution of a very particular sort. We will in a few moments renew our own baptismal vows even as we support the vows made on behalf of these children. That renewal is an invitation to renovation, for all of us and each of us.

And we will pray for God’s blessing, and we will sing of God’s redemption, and we will give thanks for the gift of water — through which the world was created, and judged, and redeemed. And these children, and all of us, will begin a new life on this day — brand-new or re-newed: our common life as members of the household of God, all of us children of a loving Father in heaven who pours out his Spirit upon us.

“See, the former things have come to pass, and new things are now declared! Before they spring forth, I tell you of them.” In the power of the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit may we all become anew God’s servants, his chosen ones, in whom his soul delights.+

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Three Gifts for the Child

Saint James Fordham • Epiphany • Tobias Haller BSG

Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.+

This year is one of those rare years (about one in seven) when the feast of the Epiphany falls on a Sunday. Epiphany is the day that marks the beginning of the post-Christmas season, the day after the twelfth day of Christmas — I assume the day when people go to the department store return-desks with arms full of geese a-laying, calling birds, French hens, a pair of turtle-doves and a partridge complete with pear tree. Perhaps they should go to the poulterer’s instead of the department store! I suppose one would hold on to the five gold rings, of course...

Which brings me to my serious reflection for this day; for gold was also one of the gifts the wise men brought to the Christ child on that first Epiphany so long ago. What a strange name, for a day of strange gifts from strange people! Epiphany — it’s an old Greek word that has a simple meaning in English. It means showing forth! And the subtitle of this holy-day helps us understand just what it is that is being shown forth. For the Prayer Book, on page 31, tells us that the subtitle of Epiphany is “the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.” Starting today, and throughout the season of Epiphany, we will hear in our Gospel readings just how Christ manifested himself in his earthly life, what he did to show himself forth not only to his disciples but to the whole world.

So it is on the feast of the Epiphany we start at the very beginning, with the coming of the foreign wise men to bring their gifts to the infant Christ. Many traditions have grown up around this event, most of them not actually included among the scriptural details in Matthew’s gospel. We’ve come to think of these visitors as the Three Kings, but the gospel doesn’t call them kings, nor does it even specifically say there were three of them. The gospel calls them “wise men.” It tells us that they came to find a child at the prompting of the rising of a star, a child who was to become the new king of the Jews. And the gospel tells us that they brought three gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh. Because of the three gifts, tradition assigned a wise man to each — for who would show up without a gift!

In addition the tradition portrayed the three wise men as representing three different races of the Gentile world, joining with the shepherds reported by Saint Luke, who represented the common poor Jewish people of Judea. In this way the faithful down the years wove together Matthew and Luke, and added imaginative details to fill out the story, and fill up our table-top creche. And this is not entirely out of keeping, even though it isn’t strictly speaking scriptural — for as my old liturgy professor used to say, “Listen to the people of God.” The church has its wisdom, and that includes all the members of the church — and the wisdom in this case lies in seeing what this feast-day is all about: the opening of the doors of salvation, so that the whole world, Jewish and Gentile, is represented kneeling at the Christmas crib — the Jews represented by the shepherds first on Christmas, and the Gentiles represented by the wise men following on the feast of the Epiphany.

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However, today, rather than exploring the possible ethnic background of the wise men, or the church’s embroidery on the story, I would like to stick a bit closer to the fabric of the gospel text itself, and take a careful look at those three gifts that the wise men brought. For here the text is clear and explicit, and we need rely on no uncertain tradition. The gifts presented to the young child were treasures of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Although in these days the latter two gifts are widely available and reasonably priced — the frankincense we burn in our censer costs only about six dollars a pound, and a little goes a long, long way — at the time of the birth of Christ all three items were very valuable, and the frankincense and myrrh were even more costly than gold.

But in addition to their value as mere commodities, and far more important, is the symbolic meaning of these gifts. Remember, Epiphany is about showing forth, it is about symbolism and demonstration, and manifestation. In short, it is about revelation. So what do the gold and the frankincense and the myrrh reveal to us? What do these three gifts tell us about the one to whom they were given?

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Gold is the symbol of royalty. “Born a king on Bethlehem’s plain, gold I bring to crown him again” — so we sang in the hymn before the gospel. Royalty in just about every human culture for as long as we can tell were adorned with gold — from Pharaoh to the Inca to the Emperor of China. The first prehistoric person who found gold in the earth or in the river-bed recognized its special qualities: a shining metal that did not tarnish, flexible yet durable, which could be made into almost any kind of ornament; heavy and yet subtle, solid and substantial, and yet capable of being beaten into leaves as light as air, glowing in the firelight or the sunlight, a truly royal metal. So it is that golden crowns and necklaces have been cast for royalty for centuries. And so it was that the wise men offered gold to this child who was to be the king not just of the Jews but of the whole world.

Frankincense is the symbol of prayer and praise. Again, as our hymn at the gospel said, frankincense “owns a Deity nigh; prayer and praising gladly raising.” In ancient times frankincense was offered in temples all over the world as a sign of worship. As Psalm 141 puts it: “Let my prayer be set forth in your sight as incense; the lifting of my hands as the evening sacrifice...” This costly resin was harvested from trees that grew in Ethiopia, carried by caravans to the distant East, and into Europe, valued all over the known world, and offered in the worship of many faiths. We continue to do the same to this day. For we still burn frankincense in our liturgy, the symbol of prayer ascending in a cloud, a gift that is utterly consumed as it burns, something we must give up completely and offer to God, for once it is burned we can’t take it back; and as we offer this up, we commit to God’s gracious hands all our needs, concerns, and gratitude. And so it was that the wise men offered frankincense to this child who was the Word made Flesh, the nearer presence of the unapproachable God who dwells in inaccessible light, come down to earth to receive the prayers and praise of all people.

Myrrh is the strangest of the three gifts to be offered to this child. Yes, myrrh was another valuable kind of incense, a resin used in a number of different ancient brews. But the primary use of myrrh in the ancient world was in embalming the dead, preserving dead bodies and preparing them for burial. “Its bitter perfume breaths a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb.” Hardly the kind of thing one brings to a baby shower! Yet this was the third gift of the wise men, and their wisdom was vindicated in the end. For myrrh is the symbol of death, and this gift reminds us that even in the joy of Christmas death is not that far away. Matthew’s gospel continues its story to tell how Herod would soon send soldiers to murder the innocent children of Bethlehem, so set was he on wiping out the threat to his throne. Only a dream to warn Joseph, and another to warn the wise men not to return to Herod give the Holy Family time to escape to Egypt. So even at the manger, death is looming not far away. And let us remember as well, that the village of Bethlehem where Christ was born is only five miles from Jerusalem where he died; Golgotha and its cross are also not so very far away from the stable and its manger.

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Gold, frankincense and myrrh: these are the gifts that the wise men gave to the Christ child, symbols of royalty, worship, and death. They show us what these wise men thought of the one to whom they brought the gifts. They honored his kingship, they acknowledged his divinity, and they foretold his death.

But these three gifts also show forth and reveal what Christ gave to us. He gave us his humble royalty, not lording it over us but coming to us as one of us. He gave us his divine presence, assuring us that we are not forsaken and alone, but companions with him on our earthly pilgrimage, as he walks with us to teach us and opens his words to us even as he hears the words of our prayers. And he gave us his saving death, that precious gift that opened the way of everlasting life. These are the gifts that Christ gave to the world.

And the gifts the wise men brought also show us what we are to give to Christ in return. For in return for his royalty and divinity and death, we give him our obedience, our worship, and —not our deaths — but our lives, dedicating ourselves to the pure service of the love of God and neighbor.

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The Epiphany season has begun, the time to behold God revealed to us as one of us, and it starts with the gifts at the birth of the babe of Bethlehem. May we throughout this Epiphany season remember the meaning of those gifts, and offer to our Lord and God all obedience and all worship, and the tribute of our selves, our souls and bodies, as a reasonable and holy sacrifice to him who saved us, even Christ our Lord.+

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