What's Missing?

SJF • Proper 11c 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
In my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.

This morning’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Colossians includes one of the more difficult passages in Scripture. Paul declares that he himself is “completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” It sounds as if Paul is saying that Christ’s sufferings were somehow insufficient — as if his death on the cross was somehow not a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice of himself once offered, for us and for our salvation. Could it possibly be that Paul, the great defender of salvation through Christ alone, the great champion of the saving cross of Christ, could be suggesting that Christ’s sufferings were themselves “lacking”?

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In several of my sermons over the years I have used the image of a gift: a birthday or Christmas or some other present. Usually such gifts are beautifully wrapped. Often they come with a card. But as I have asked once before, would any of you receive such a present, such a beautifully wrapped gift, but leave it wrapped and unopened? If you did so, you might say that you have the gift even if you haven’t opened the package and don’t even know what the gift is. But in truth you don’t really have the gift until both of these things are accomplished: until that wrapping comes off, the box is opened, and you see what the gift is. Unless you are one of those who believe you can “have your cake and eat it too” — I think you will agree that there is more to really having a gift than just holding it in your hands.

Or think of it this way: there were once two good friends, Jim and Tom, who were always engaging in little friendly wagers with each other. Jim normally won the bets, so often so that on one occasion when Tom bet Jim ten dollars on whose memory of a baseball score was right, and won — Tom proudly said he would frame the ten dollar bill and never spend it. Whereupon Jim said, “In that case, can I write you a check?”

We all know that an uncashed check is something like an unopened gift. You may wave the check in the air and say that you’ve got the $10; but until you cash that check, or deposit it in your own account and wait for it to clear, that $10 is still really resting in someone else’s account — and if you never cash he check or deposit it, that’s where it will stay, in someone else’s bank. A check isn’t money, but a promise of money. And if there is nothing to back up that promise, it is worthless. It’s no good saying, “My account can’t be overdrawn; I still have checks left!” If you don’t have money in the bank, in your account, any check you write will be just a piece of paper, with nothing to back it up. For a check really to be of any value you need to have something on deposit in your account.

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The crucial word in all of this is that simple little two-letter word in. What Paul is saying is that the package has been presented and is being unwrapped — the mystery that had been hidden throughout the ages and generations — the contents of the package, what’s in it — is in the process of being revealed — but not only in the death of Christ on the cross, but also in the flesh of believers, his flesh, Paul’s that is, and the flesh of the people of Colossae, Corinth, Ephesus and wherever the church has spread the Gospel. And what that mystery is — the contents of the package, — is the mystery of the Church itself, the body of Christ: the whole company of all the faithful who are in Christ as Christ is in them. As Paul says, the mystery of God is “Christ in you.”

Thus, when the church suffers, Christ suffers. When the church suffers, Christ’s sufferings are added to. And this isn’t just a crazy idea that Paul came up with on his own. He learned it from personal experience from the Lord Jesus Christ himself. For when Paul, or as he was known in those days, Saul, was himself busily persecuting the church, rounding up Christians, members of the Body of Christ, and sending them off to prison or punishment or torture or death — when the Lord Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus what did he say? “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Persecute me!” That’s what Jesus said to Saul the persecutor of the church. Jesus was saying to Saul, “When you persecute and hurt the church, you persecute and hurt me.” For the church is the body of Christ, it is his body, that Paul, or Saul, was persecuting. This was a hard lesson for Saul to learn, but learn it he did: The suffering of the church is the suffering of Christ himself.

Now, there is nothing new in this — after all, Jesus had said, in his preaching on the end days, in that powerful passage from the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, “Whatever you have done to the least of these who believe in me you have done it to me.” Whenever and wherever the church is persecuted, perhaps most especially when one part of the church persecutes another — member against member, one part of the body against another part of the body — whenever the church suffers, Christ suffers, for the church is his body and each of us are individually members of it. As Paul also reminds us, when one member suffers all suffer — we are truly all in this together, and how we treat each other is how we treat Jesus — for he is in us as we are in him.

Which is why the sufferings of Christ are not yet complete. The package has not been completely unwrapped — the check has been deposited but it has not yet cleared. Until the last great day when all is swallowed up in that final victory, suffering continues: our suffering for and with each other, our suffering due to our own failings and sins and the sins of the world, and the suffering that we inflict on others in our ignorance and imperfection: all of this will continue to contribute to the suffering of Christ in his body the church. And all of this suffering is taken up by Christ not as a surplus added to what took place on Calvary, but rather as a working out in us of what was accomplished once for all by him — the full revelation of his gift to all of us, which is the gift of the cross that was presented for all the world on that spring afternoon during Passover-time in Jerusalem of old — but whose impact is felt in each of us as we take up our own cross day by day. This is nothing less than the full negotiation of that promissory note — the fulfillment of salvation — a check that will not clear for good and all until the last great day. It continues as long as this earthly life shall last — for there are many who yet will be saved who have not yet even been born!

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As each of us suffers, our sufferings are taken up by Christ. Paul suffers with Christ “in his flesh” — as he also said to the Galatians: “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ living in me; and the life I live in the flesh is the life of faith in the son of God.” As each of us, too, takes up our cross day by day, we participate in the sufferings of Christ.

For Christ’s work is finished but not ended — there are still many in the world who hold him in contempt, or who are ignorant of his good will and purpose for them. And as I said before, there are many yet who will come to believe who have not even been born. The mystery of the kingdom of God is in some ways like those gift boxes that you open only to find another smaller box inside, and then another inside that, and then another. We will only come to the end, an end to all suffering — both Christ’s and our own — when he comes in power and great glory to rule the world. And what a day that will be! And so we pray, Come Lord Jesus, come. +

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Very Near to You

SJF • Proper 10 Year C • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away… No, the word is very near to you…+

It was a hot summer day, so hot that the air conditioning didn’t make much difference. The hospital had that “hospital” smell; you know what it’s like: that mix of antiseptic and floor polish, covering but not concealing the evident aroma of sick and ailing humanity. It was mid-afternoon, a sleepy time of day, and I’d just as soon have been taking a nap! I’d been making my chaplain’s rounds most of the day, checking in on patients I’d seen before, and visiting new arrivals.

Then I noticed, in the posting at the nurses’ station, that one of the patients I’d been seeing quite a bit of was going to be discharged that afternoon. I headed to her room, wanting to say goodbye and wish her well. As I got to the doorway, I saw that she was on the phone, so I motioned that I’d wait in the hall. I just stood outside her door, leaning with my back against the wall, my suit jacket feeling a bit uncomfortable, that little trickle of sweat going down my back in the still air and humid warmth.

Just then, a man stuck his head out of the next room down, out of the doorway, stared at me intently for a moment, then turned his head back into the room and said, “Here he is!” I hadn’t gotten a page on my beeper, but I figured that the patient in that room must have called the chaplain’s office. Since I saw that my other patient was still on the phone, I waved an “I’ll see you in a minute” and headed one door down the hall to the other room. The man waved me in and then followed me.

I wasn’t ready for what I saw. A middle-aged woman was not in a bed — she was braced and bound almost upright in a stainless steel contraption — the like of which I’ve only ever seen used in prisons to administer a lethal injection to a strapped down criminal. She was upright with both of her arms stretched out, and was holding onto the bars at either end with all her might, and it didn’t take a medical degree to see that she was in great pain; the expression on her face — eyes clenched tight shut — told me all I needed to know. It was like walking onto Calvary — for the woman was literally crucified on that bed of stainless steel.

Then she opened her eyes and looked at me, and a wave of relief flooded over her, her arms and her hands relaxed just a bit, and she said, “I knew you’d come.” I thought to myself, “Well, this is good timing. Glad I decided to wait outside the other patient’s room for a few minutes!”

The woman relaxed a bit, some of the tension in her arms softening. We talked about how she felt, and she told me about her faith — which was great. She’d had cancer once before, and gone into remission, but now the cancer had reappeared. But she felt sure that God was with her and would be with her in and through all of her pain. There really wasn’t much for me to do as a chaplain — this was a woman who had it all together, and she knew where she’d put it. And with the gathered family we prayed and prayed and prayed — you’d think I’d been born and bred a Baptist to see me that day, and the power of Pentecost and the Spirit was upon us in that room.

As the prayer came to a close, and we all became quiet for a moment, I asked if she had called for a chaplain, so I could make the proper entry in the hospital records. That’s when I got my second surprise.

“Call for a chaplain?” she asked, looking a little confused. She looked at her husband, who shook his head. “Why no. We didn’t call for a chaplain.” That’s when I guess I looked a little confused.

“No,” the husband said, “We were praying a little while ago, and then my wife told me she’d had a vision that a man of God was coming to see her. And that’s when you came.” Suddenly her husband’s short sentence, “Here he is!” took on a whole new meaning.

Suddenly I was no longer simply talking to a woman and her husband in a hospital on the upper East Side of Manhattan. Suddenly I was sitting in a room with people for whom visions are reality, for whom faith is a certainty, for whom men of God come walking through the door as a matter of course, people for whom God is very near. This was not just Golgotha, but in its own way the new Jerusalem.

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In his farewell in Deuteronomy, Moses told the children of Israel, “The commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away… No, the word is very near to you….” The lawyer in today’s Gospel used a rabbi’s classic technique of combining two Scripture texts — Moses’ teaching in Deuteronomy concerning the nearness of the law and loving the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and that text from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But it took Jesus to show him who the neighbor was. For the neighbor is the one who, like God, is very near to you.

God and God’s word were and always had been truly and uniquely present with the children of Israel: God had led them out of Egypt with signs and wonders, had been with them in a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, God had dwelt among them in the tent of meeting, the tabernacle of the presence, God had even bent the heavens themselves and come down to the top of Sinai.

Yet, as Jesus assures us, God is just as present in every loving act of charity done to a neighbor. The work of God is as close as that, as close as the needy one placed in your path by circumstance or design — and after all, is there any “circumstance” under the grace of a God who fills his people’s hearts with the knowledge of his presence? who is so very near to all of us? God is present in the meeting of a hated Samaritan and a wounded Jew. God is present in hospital wards and nursing homes. God is present in the peace we share in this liturgy, and in the bread we break and the wine we drink. God is present to us and in us and with us, when we have eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hands to work and pray. There is no circumstance — it is all design!

The commandment of God is neither too hard nor too far away. We can all take part in it, all of us neighbors to one another, all of us working together, being present to each other as God is present to us.

And it’s not just that we become agents of God when we help others. That is true, and it is God’s will for us, and we give thanks to be instruments in God’s service, to be “good Samaritans” to lend a hand when it is needed. But God is also present in the ones who suffer; as God was uniquely present in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who stretched out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that the whole world might come into the reach of his saving embrace. God is present in the sick and wounded whom we serve, for as Christ told and assures us, when you do good to the least of these, you do it to me.

When I walked through the door of that hospital room that hot summer day, the woman there saw in me the presence of God, believing I’d been particularly sent down that particular hall on that particular day, to that particular room at that specific time. And indeed, I had been sent, though I didn’t know it at the time. God can do such things, even when we aren’t aware God is doing it; leading and guiding us to be where he wants us to be, as he led that Samaritan once long ago, as indeed he had led the priest and the Levite who instead of following God’s lead, chose to pass that gracious opportunity by. God leads us, but it is still up to us to follow.

But I’ll tell you something else: when I went through the door of that hospital room, and saw that woman with her arms stretched out, and the grip of terrible pain upon her face, I knew I too was in the presence of God, the God who in Christ became flesh and suffered upon the cross, the God who bears our griefs and weeps with us and for us, the God who is very near and not far off, very near, so near that we can feel his breath.+

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Independent for What?

SJF • Proper 9C • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
For thus says the Lord: “I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm, and dandled on her knee. As a mother comforts her child so I will comfort you.”

Today is Independence Day, but you may have noticed that the Scripture readings we heard were not those appointed for the Fourth of July, but the regular readings from Proper 9 in Year C, for the Sunday closest to July 6. Part of my reason for choosing the regular Sunday readings rather than those celebrating the holiday is exactly that: celebration.

What exactly are we celebrating on the Fourth of July? Obviously we are celebrating independence — the independence of the United States — or as they were at that time the several colonies — from the British crown. It was on the Fourth of July in 1776 that the Declaration of Independence was adopted and signed. So it is abundantly clear that independence that day in Philadelphia was independence from.

My question today is what is independence for. And that is why I chose to use the readings for the regular Sunday rather than the readings appointed for Independence Day. For although that first reading from Isaiah starts out with plenty of good news to celebrate — all of that language about prosperity flowing like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream; and being breast-fed at the glorious bosom of Jerusalem — after all that upbeat language comes that threat of the Lord’s indignation, when the Lord will come in fire with chariots like a whirlwind to pay back his anger in fury and his rebuke in flames of fire: “for by fire will the Lord execute judgment, and by his sword, on all flesh!” Does that sound like something to celebrate?

There is also sobering language in Jesus’s instructions to the disciples as he sends them out — empty-handed and like lambs among wolves. They are to beg for their food and wish peace to those who give it to them, but to pronounce an awful curse upon any who are inhospitable towards them, and who refuse to receive the good news they bear. And even when they return, excited and proud that they have been able to triumph even over demons, Jesus reminds them not to rejoice in their victory over spirits, but rather to give thanks that their names are written in heaven.

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And so, even as we rightly celebrate the fact that the United States freed itself from the dominion of the British 234 years ago — it is good to recall that even that declaration of liberty was followed by several years of hard warfare. It is also good and right and important for us to take stock of where we are now.

Is prosperity flowing like a river and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream? Most of the overflowing we’ve been hearing about over the last few months is not the wealth of nations but the waste of industry, a glutting spout of oil polluting the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and perhaps even the Atlantic shore, depending on how the waters flow and the winds blow. And the wealth of nations seems more like the wealth of notions, as any sense of value to anything seems geared not to consumable or practical things like goods and services, but rather to the relative values of the various national currencies, and of money itself; and even credit, which is merely the ghost of money, has become a commodity and object of speculation; and that latter speculation has brought about near total collapse in a financial world based on promises instead of performance.

And as for peace, is there peace to this house and to the world — or is the world as torn by strife and battle as always: druglords and criminals in the Bronx, in Jamaica and Mexico; our own seemingly unending battle against terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, with further threats in Pakistan and Iran and North Korea — surely our world is more like that world of fire and whirlwind, rebuke and the sword coming upon all flesh, than like the vision of peaceable Jerusalem. And Jerusalem itself — and Gaza and the West Bank — is this the peace of God?

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Yet in the midst of all this we still see Jesus — the perfectly innocent man who was crucified, who suffered death for crimes he did not commit, for sins of which he was not guilty. We hear the voice of the apostle Paul raised in affirmation that he dare not boast of anything except the cross, the cross of Christ by which the world has been crucified to him and he to the world. He does not boast of his successes; he does not glory in his own accomplishments; he takes no stock of those who follow the law or of those who disregard the law — for neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but only the new creation, the new life in Christ.

Jesus himself, when, as I said, the disciples returned like excited schoolboys flush with their latest victory on the pitch, reminded them not to place their joy in this passing victory, but rather to plant the banner of their joy in the firm and secure knowledge of salvation — salvation won not by them but for them — by him, when from before the foundation of the world he saw Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. It is that cosmic independence — liberation from eternal death and for eternal life — that we are called to celebrate, with names written in heaven brighter and more lasting than any earthly fireworks.

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Today is Independence Day. But my brothers and sisters, it is not only a day to celebrate our independence from the domination of foreign powers — whether from the merely human foreign power of the British crown, or from the power of terrorists and militants ranged against us both at home and abroad, or even from the natural power of a hurt and wounded world lashing back at us for the damage inflicted upon it, or even freedom from the supernatural domination of the devil. We are, it is true, free and independent of all these things when we place our trust in Jesus Christ our Lord.

But there is more: because we are not only independent from, but independent for. God has a purpose for us — not only to be dandled like children on the knees of our mother Jerusalem; but for us to take our stand as adult men and women, disciples called to serve, and sent to serve. The harvest still is plentiful and the laborers willing to do their labor far too few. We may be sent forth — on this fourth of July — with limited resources. We may — no, we will — face rejection from some even as we offer them God’s peace and a kingdom word of good news.

But let us not lose heart, and let us not allow anyone to make trouble for us — for we too carry the marks of Jesus branded on our bodies. Those marks were made when we were baptized in water and the Holy Spirit, and the sign of Christ’s cross was made upon our foreheads. God help us, if we glory in anything other than that, if we rejoice in anything but the fact that we have been saved, that our names are written above, and that we have been called and commissioned to serve this wounded world. Let us make this the Forth of July — the day we march forth from this place in the power of Christ and of his Holy Spirit, to the service and the glory of God the Almighty.+

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The Two Ways

SJF • Proper 8c 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
A man said to Jesus, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”+

I’m sure that many of you here are familiar with the Narnia series — children’s stories by CS Lewis, beginning with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. That first volume, and the second, Prince Caspian, have been made into movies — and you may have seen one or both of them. For those who haven’t, let me just say that Lewis was trying to address some of the major themes of Christianity in his imaginative portrayal of another world — and, in a way that would appeal to the imagination of children, a fantasy world of talking animals, magic and mystery.

I can attest how important these stories have been to many people over the years — including myself. They played a part in my adult return to the Christian faith when, as a teenager, I was working as a counselor at the Episcopal Mission Society summer camp, and shared these stories with the children under my care — most of them orphans or children in foster care, living in situations very far removed from the polite English world of CS Lewis or the fantasy world of Narnia! Yet they just couldn’t get enough of these stories — nor could I! They spoke truth, and truth we heard. When I returned home from that summer, I looked up the local Episcopal parish and became an active member.

In the last volume of the Narnia stories, Lewis chose to end with his own version of Revelation — a description of the last days of Narnia in a great Last Battle. And as the battle between the forces of good and evil rage through that fantasy world, one group tries to play the part of neutrality — the Dwarfs. They don’t want to get involved on either side. They do nothing to help the forces of good, to hinder the forces of evil, or vice versa. As they say, “The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.” And so they refuse to take sides in the Last Battle — off to one side in a circle by themselves.

And after the battle is over and the forces of good have triumphed and the forces of evil have been conquered and dispatched, the Dwarfs are still sitting there — off in a circle to one side. They have become blind. They literally can no longer see what has happened — that the battle is over and the world itself is about to end, folded up into a glorious new life — not unlike the biblical images in Revelation! But the Dwarfs have missed out on it all, and don’t even know it. They think they are stuck in a damp, lightless stable, when they are in fact sitting in a beautiful sunlit flowery meadow. As the new creation dawns, they sit in their circle, arms folded across their chests and chanting, “The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs!”

The children try to rouse them from their blindness, holding flowers in front of them, but they cry out, “What do you mean by shoving filthy stable-litter in my face!” Even when the great Lion Aslan — who represents Christ in Lewis’s fantasy world — goes over to the Dwarfs and gives them a low growl of warning, they all say, “It’s just someone trying to frighten us with a noise-making machine! They won’t take us in.” As the old saying goes, they have made their bed and they’re going to lie in it. Or as Aslan himself observes, “Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison. They are so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”

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I mention all of this because in our readings today we see similar failures to respond to a call to action, people failing to see the good that is set before them, and engaging in all sorts of delaying tactics. Elijah calls Elisha but Elisha wants to say goodbye to his parents before he follows on the way. Jesus gets a whole litany of excuses from various people, as to the things they need to do before they can follow him — and he gives them a stern rebuke.

More importantly Saint Paul lays two choices before the Galatians when he talks about the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. There is a long tradition in Judaism and early Christianity called, “The Two Ways” — the way of evildoers and the way of the righteous. And which way you take will shape your life.

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I think it was Yogi Berra who said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” The point is, you have to choose — it’s one way or the other. The problem is that sometimes people don’t want to commit; they don’t want to take sides — it may not be quite so clear as the contrast Paul makes between the flesh and the spirit; I mean, he make it obvious about which way is the way of righteousness!

But sometimes, even the best intentioned people can be more like the Dwarfs in Lewis’s fable, or like the would-be disciples who delay in or withdraw from following Jesus because they decided they have other, more important things to do. Sometimes people think that rather than making a choice to reject what is wrong and do what is right, it is acceptable to do nothing, to abdicate responsibility and stand in watchful waiting to see how things go.

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And the church can be just as guilty of this kind of inaction as anyone else — being made of fallible people sometimes the church as a whole fails to live up to the challenge Jesus presents us. Paul’s letter to the Galatians reminds me of one such instance in our own history. The passage we heard begins with a call not to submit to a yoke of slavery This reminds me of a sorry aspect of our own church’s history — not this parish, but the whole Episcopal Church. By the 1850s the Episcopal Church was well-settled in just about every part of the United States, North and South, East and West. And of course, because of this, the church was faced with becoming embroiled in the controversy dividing the nation — slavery. The nation was occupied with the question: shall slavery be allowed to continue or shall it be stopped; and if stopped, how.

The church decided to play it safe. To avoid allowing this important issue to become a source of division, the Episcopal Church officially decided not to take a position on the question of slavery — the church would neither approve nor condemn what was called “the peculiar institution.” The Presiding Bishop of the Church, John Henry Hopkins of Vermont, even wrote a book defending the biblical foundations of slavery. He argued that as long as slaves were treated well there was nothing to prevent Christians from holding slaves, and that going to war about it was a far greater sin than the continuation of a venerable biblical institution — after all, he pointed out, Abraham had held slaves, and he was a model of biblical righteousness. That a bishop from the far North could make such an appeal warmed hearts of his Southern confrères.

And so, during the very years when this congregation was forming, while other Christian churches split along north-south lines, the Episcopal Church was able to remain a single body — at least until war actually broke out, and with the creation of the Confederate States of America, all of their bishops and deputies withdrew from participation in the Episcopal Church of the United States — after all, from their perspective they were part of a different country. One of the southern bishops was even a Confederate general, and died in battle.

The irony is that some people will point at this history with pride — the Episcopal Church didn’t divide, except for those few years during the actual war, and came back together afterward — unlike the Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists. But somehow, I think in failing to stand for something we missed a great opportunity. By accepting slavery — for others, since few slaves were themselves Episcopalians — we colluded in injustice, and at a crucial moment remained silent; like the Dwarfs who were only for the Dwarfs, we were only interested in the preservation of our ecclesiastical union — a union that was in fact divided when the war broke out, even though the Northern bishops refused to recognize it, and continued the roll call of the names of the absent southern bishops whenever the House of Bishops met — knowing full well they were not there.

Is there virtue in such obliviousness? Such living in denial and embracing fantasy? Such collusion in injustice? Do you think so?

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For to be truly righteous it is not enough just not to do bad things — it is not enough just not to take the way of the works of the flesh, those obvious failings. It is not enough to say to Jesus, I will follow you when it becomes convenient for me to do so. No, my friends, we are called to choose — and to choose rightly; not just to avoid the way of the flesh but to get on our feet and walk in the way of the spirit — to follow Jesus. We are called to live by the Spirit, and, guided by the Spirit, to join Jesus in the proclamation of the kingdom of God. To follow him will mean to do the works of God and bear the fruit of the Spirit in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And these are the things God calls us to do, calls us to follow. Where he leads us, will we follow? Will we?+

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The Difference of One

How one life makes a difference, and covers all our differences.....

SJF • Proper 7c 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
They will look on the one whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child… On that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity.

Those of you who have seen my Christmas tree know that I am among those who can legitimately be called a “Trekker” — all of the ornaments come from Hallmark’s “Star Trek” series — though I stop short of dressing up as an alien and attending Star Trek conventions. I belong to the generation that grew up watching and enjoying the original “Star Trek”— and I’ve remained a fan of Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future through its various film and TV versions. One of the reasons I’ve done so is that“Star Trek” often deals with issues of serious social or theological significance, using the fantasy world of the distant future to hold up a mirror to our own times, in which we can see our own faults and virtues reflected, and sometimes learn a thing or two thereby. I mentioned one of these just the week before last, in reference to the character Data wanting to become fully human — an important theological theme!

Another such theme comes up in one of the early “Star Trek” movies, as the passionless Vulcan Mr. Spock sacrifices his life for the sake of the crew. As he is dying, he tells Captain Kirk, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” And he dies a heroic death to save his crewmates, one life given to save many. And, indeed, at his funeral Captain Kirk extols him as the most “human” person he had ever encountered.

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This sort of heroism, this sort of self-sacrifice, is noble and true, and you don’t have to go to the realms of science fiction or fantasy to find it. Many a soldier has performed an act of heroism to save his squad; many a doctor or nurse has risked contracting a deadly illness to continue to minister to the sick in the time of plague. And when one hero gives his or her life to save many, giving their life as a gift, then the equation makes moral sense, and we honor that giver as a hero: after all, “Greater love hath no man than this...”

But where the equation doesn’t make sense, where it all falls apart, is when the decision to sacrifice one for the sake of the many is made by someone else — is made by one of the many, instead of the one choosing to sacrifice him or herself — when someone decides not to perform a noble act of self-sacrifice, but to sacrifice someone else whom they consider expendable, or inexpedient, making them a scapegoat. Then the death of one for the many becomes the cold calculus of Caiaphas: not the free gift that shows the greatest love, but commercial capitulation to the demands of power. It was that the high priest Caiaphas who said it was better that one should suffer instead of many. He had no intention of suffering himself, of offering to sacrifice himself, of course, but to hand Christ over as a victim for the Romans to execute. Caiaphas, in doing this, rejected the teaching of his own faith in favor of the calculating philosophy of utilitarianism. For the great Jewish Rabbis had taught the supreme value of every human life. They had taught that human beings are not to be weighed by the pound in the balance of expediency; instead, they taught that “to save a single life is to save an entire world.” If you’ve seen the powerful film Schindler’s List you know just how important that teaching is.

Caiaphas chose the other way, however, and took the cold path of political prudence, turning Jesus over to be crucified, offered up as a scapegoat in order to prevent further problems with the Roman government. And ironically, his choice to reject the Son of Man, to turn him over to be killed, did indeed lead to life for many, for the death of this One was for the life of the whole world. As I’ve often noted, God can take our worst mistakes and turn them into something good.

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God through Christ was able to turn Caiaphas’ cold-blooded calculation into something positive, into the most positive thing that ever happened, something that saved the whole world. And Christ did this by accepting the cross, taking it up, and not rejecting it. Instead of being a scapegoat he became an offering — “a sacrifice of himself once offered for the sins of the whole world.” Had Jesus gone to the cross kicking and screaming, it would not, it could not, have been the means of salvation for all. Had Jesus used the power that was at his command to summon legions of angels to deliver him from death, he would never have died, and salvation would not have come. Instead, Jesus took up his cross willingly, obedient to his Father’s will that he should drink the cup of human sadness and frailty, and suffer death as one of us. And by taking it up instead of rejecting it, through his obedience, Jesus transformed Caiaphas’ selfish act into redemptive action of self-sacrifice. His life was his to lay down for his friends, and he did so — and Caiaphas and the Romans were thereby transformed into the instruments of his self-sacrifice, no more in control of the situation than the grenade upon which a hero throws himself to save his squad.

So it was that they looked upon him whom they had pierced. And three days later a fountain of grace opened as a stone rolled away from a tomb and the Son of Man was raised from the dead in glory. The one who gave himself as a ransom for many triumphed over death so that the many might not perish, but have everlasting life. Such is the difference of one, the difference one makes, the one who makes a difference, all the difference in the world.

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We are part of that many affected by that one — we gathered here today, together with all the believers who have walked this earth since the days when Jesus lived and died and was raised from death. We are the many, but we are also one in him. We who have been baptized in Christ have been clothed with Christ: we have put on Christ like a garment. Thus washed and newly dressed, our many individual differences are cleansed and covered because of the difference he made when he died for us. There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female any more, but all are one in Christ Jesus — the One who made a difference. Jesus has wiped away the old differences by which, according to the tradition, only Jewish men thought themselves special in the eyes of God.

For every day the pious Jewish man of those times would arise and say this prayer, “I thank God that I am not a Gentile; I thank God that I am not a slave; and I thank God I am not a woman” — and that’s the prayer Saint Paul was responding to point by point in his Letter to the Galatians. Paul was challenging the neat little world that the a Jewish man of those days — such as Paul himself before his conversion! — believed God had carved out for him from the rest of the world, a world of difference from all of “them” — thank God I’m not one of them, and thank God I’m not one of them, and certainly thank God I’m not one of them!

Well, Jesus upset that neat little world as surely as he wiped out the expedient politics of Caiaphas. And Saint Paul confronted that world in his Letter to the Galatians, a world in which Paul knew one could not find salvation through race or class or social position or gender, but in which salvation depends only on the one — only in God, and Christ: the one who saves us all. For with the coming of Christ, and with his “sacrifice of himself once offered,” all human beings are empowered to become the children of God, all the many to become one in the Risen Lord, the personal differences covered over with the garment of salvation, the garment of baptism, all of the individual differences covered by that spotless robe, so that it doesn’t matter any more if you’re black or white, male or female, slave or free, Jew or Greek, gay or straight, young or old — none of these things make a difference any more — all have been baptized into the one Lord through the one Faith in the one baptism, a baptism whose waters spread from the fountain that opened two thousand years ago, to cleanse us and make us one in Christ.

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All that remains for each of us — for all are together, but each is called — all that remains for each of us is that daily putting on of the Christian garment, that fits each of us like a glove no matter how big or small we are, no matter how wide or narrow, or tall or short. It is the only garment on which the label reading, “One Size Fits All,” is absolutely and completely true. And the really strange thing is that this Christian garment doesn’t look like a garment at all.

It looks like a cross, a cross each and every one of us must take up anew each day — and each of us has his or her very own cross to bear — and we are not to judge how well or poorly our neighbor might be carrying his or hers. We can only answer for our own lives — our own lives that we give to God for God’s purposes — and that it more than enough to keep us busy!

It is in taking up the cross that we join Christ in his act of self-sacrifice. In Christ we transform the assaults of the world, the attacks of the devil and the thorns of the flesh, into opportunities for grace, as Christ transformed the calculation of Caiaphas into the fountainhead of salvation, by means of the cross.

This is how we too make a difference, each and every one of us. All our individual differences fade away in the light of the cross, all our personal differences fade to insignificance. When we put on that cross-shaped garment, we no longer even look like ourselves any more, but like Christ, who offered himself for us, and for the sake of the whole world. In Christ there is no east and west, no north and south, no black and white or brown or yellow or red, but only the whole humanity of the children of God. Let us rejoice in this, brothers and sisters of the faith, brothers and sisters of the cross, that we have been clothed in Christ, anointed in baptism and marked with the sign of his cross, which we take up day by day as we learn to make a difference through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to whom we give all praise and thanks, henceforth and for evermore.+

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The Debt of Gratitude

SJF • Proper 6c • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jesus said, “I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love.”

Saint Peter once said, “God is no respecter of persons.”^{Acts 10:34} A more contemporary church leader, the late Canon Edward Nason West of our own cathedral church, put it more bluntly when he said, “God loves everybody; he simply has no taste.” What they both meant by this is that God is completely unimpressed by people’s self-righteous attempts to get on his good side, and that God is also completely at ease with sinners who struggle to turn to him in faith, however low they may have fallen.

In our Gospel today we have both sorts of people. Simon the Pharisee is a righteous man, a man who has followed all the rules, colored within the lines, payed his taxes on time and stayed within the speed limit. And he’s rather pleased with himself. That’s not to say he thinks himself perfect. He knows that he must have missed the odd requirement of the Law here or there so insignificant that it may have slipped his mind, done something in ignorance without intending to. But on the whole his conscience is clear; and to cover all his bases, every year he will have gone up to the Temple to make the guilt offering to cover any of those sins he might have committed unintentionally and in ignorance, just to keep the accounts balanced. Simon is content with his own righteousness. As far as he’s concerned, his debts are paid; he doesn’t owe God anything — he thinks.

Suddenly, into his neat and orderly world, there comes this woman, this sinner, the kind of person Simon would have crossed to the street two blocks away to avoid even coming near her. The very odor of her perfume would make him sick to his stomach. And not only does this woman of the streets come right into the dining room — along with a whole jar of her offensive perfumed ointment — but she then puts on a scandalous display, uncovering her head and loosening her hair (neither of which any respectable woman of that day would even think of doing in public) and then bending down and weeping and wiping his guest’s feet — with her hair! — and covering them with that expensive perfumed ointment.

And you can well picture the look on that Pharisee’s face as the odor of the perfume wafts down the table in his direction. And no doubt his face betrays his dismay, dismay at this woman’s interruption, and further dismay that Jesus doesn’t react the way he would, cringing from the touch of those unclean hands, if not kicking them away! Yet Jesus seems unperturbed by it all. “Just what is going on here?” the Pharisee asks himself.

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And so may we. First of all, to understand this scene, we need to picture this dinner the way it would have taken place two thousand years ago. People in those days, in that time and place, didn’t sit on chairs at a dinner table. They reclined on couches, leaning on their elbows, dining off a low table, usually C or U-shaped, with all the guests on one side. Leonardo da Vinci got the picture partly right in the “Last Supper” — everyone on one side of the table — though he placed the disciples on chairs rather than on couches. But if you’ve seen any of those gladiator movies, or stories of ancient Rome, you’ve seen what a classical banquet was like. Servants would wait on the table from inside the U, a very convenient way to avoid having to reach around or over the dinner guests to serve and clear the table. So you can picture Simon, and Jesus, and the other guests, reclining on couches. And this, of course, is how the woman of the city was able to stand “behind Jesus at his feet,” and wipe them with her hair, which would have been quite impossible had he been sitting on a chair at a modern dinner table! So as Jesus continues to recline on the couch, this woman is at the other end, weeping and wiping his feet with that perfumed ointment. And he just lets her do it.

Well, Simon is aghast! The odor of scandal is steaming towards him in an offensive cloud. Bad enough this woman has gate-crashed his dinner party, bad enough that she’s acting like this, but Jesus doesn’t seem to be bothered in the least! And that only increases Simon’s dismay.

What Simon has missed in all of this is that when Jesus accepted his invitation to dinner, when Jesus consented to spend time with him, it was just as much an act of grace as when Jesus allowed this fallen woman to wash his feet. Though Simon’s debt may have been smaller, it was a debt nonetheless.

That’s the God’s honest truth, and Jesus tells a little parable, much in the style of that parable we heard Nathan tell David, a parable to try to get the Pharisee to see. Who will show more gratitude: the one whose cancelled debt is big or the one whose cancelled debt is small?

For the Pharisee has forgotten that he has been forgiven too, that in spite of all his best efforts, he still has a spiritual debt —a debt of thanks — maybe not as much as the woman of the streets, but a debt nevertheless. But since he feels that whatever sins he’s committed and been forgiven for are so small, hardly worth mentioning, he doesn’t feel much gratitude towards God for forgiving them. After all, that’s the deal, isn’t it? The Pharisee’s attitude is: “I follow the rules, I do the right sacrifices, I fast on the right days, I say the right prayers, and if I do happen to make some small mistake, commit some small sin, God forgives me, right? So I should be grateful, too? I’m the one doing all the work!” And because he is forgiven what in his own eyes is little, he loves little, showa little gratitude. After all, he thinks he’s earned forgiveness.

The woman, on the other hand, has sinned big time and she knows it! But she also knows that she has been forgiven big time. Although she has been in the gutter — perhaps because she’s been in the gutter — she knows just how low she’s gone. She can’t go any lower! Like the prodigal son she has come to her senses because she has lost everything, but also because she has seen the rescuing hand of God, reaching out to her, the hand that is there for her. From where she has fallen she can see God reaching out to her, and her heart overflows with gratitude.

Oscar Wilde once said, when someone accused him of living in the gutter, “Sir, we are all in the gutter, only some of us are looking at the stars.” Wilde remembered what the Pharisee forgot: that all — all — are sinners in the eye of God, that “there is none righteous, no not one,” and that all forgiveness comes from God, and that “happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven.” Happy — full of gratitude! The Pharisee walks down the street so carefully, eyes downcast to avoid stepping in something unpleasant, or having to deal with people of the wrong sort, people from whom he averts his gaze as he walks with downcast eyes, he never looks up to see the grace unfolding around him: grace working in others, and grace available for him, if he only realized he needed it just as much as they.

But the sinful woman, from where she has fallen, even from the gutter, turns to God in faith and hope. And her heart overflows with gratitude in the knowledge that God has not rejected her; God, unlike the Pharisee, does not turn his gaze from her, but looks into her eyes with the forgiveness that breaks her heart, and opens it. God has not abandoned her or lost track of her no matter how far from the path of righteousness she has strayed.

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What is important to learn from this Gospel is not that those who love are forgiven the debt of sin, but rather that those who are forgiven the debt of sin still owe a debt of love. Note carefully what Jesus says: “Her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence — that is, because of that — she has shown great love.” The woman’s love does not cause God’s forgiveness any more than the Pharisee’s righteousness causes forgiveness. You just can’t earn God’s forgiveness. No way, no how! God loves us and forgives us because it is God’s nature to love and forgive. Not because we’ve earned his love, but because we are his children. Forgiveness is his gift to us. And the Pharisee and the streetwalker, and all of us, are forgiven by God as we turn to him by grace and in faith, whether our sins be scarlet, or the palest shade of pink — we all receive the forgiveness that comes from a gracious and loving God, free and unmerited. And when those waters of forgiveness pour over us we should shout out in gratitude, loving our God who loved us and saved us.

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This is a hard teaching to understand, and it has divided the church from the days when Paul wrote to the Galatians on up through the Reformation and even today. But the Gospel truth is clear, the truth Paul preached and Peter waffled on: God is no respecter of persons, and we are justified by faith, not by doing the works of the law.

That doesn’t mean we should give up on trying to do good; nor does it mean we should consciously go on doing bad — heaven forbid! What it does mean is that we should never forget that we are children of a loving and forgiving Father in heaven; and that whatever we have done or failed to do, God has forgiven us in Jesus Christ — he has nailed all of our sins to the cross, all of them — and in thanks and gratitude for the grace he has shown us we should love him in return.

We gather here to give thanks to our heavenly Father for all his goodness and loving-kindness to us. By his grace we all have been forgiven whatever we have done amiss, whether much or little. Can we do anything but give thanks to him, to show him our love for him by loving each other, as he commanded us to do? Search your hearts, my brothers and sisters, search your hearts and give thanks to God for all he has done for you, for the mercy he has shown you in forgiving your sins and drawing you close to him. Break open the alabaster jars of your hearts and pour out the abundant and fragrant oil of loving thanks to the Lord, the Almighty, and give him the praise and thanksgiving worthy of his Name, even Jesus Christ our Lord. +

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Work of the Spirit

SJF • Pentecost C 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.+

Today is the feast of Pentecost, marking the fiftieth day from Easter, commemorating that day on which the promised Spirit came down from heaven, blew through the windows, and landed square on the heads of the apostles setting them on fire. The Spirit found them gathered in one place, like a pile of tinder or a stack of kindling wood, not yet started on the ministry, not yet set on fire for the task that Jesus had called on them to do. The only thing they’d done since Jesus ascended into heaven was to choose a successor for Judas — and then they sat around waiting for God to show them what to do. They didn’t have to wait long, for God’s Holy Spirit came upon them like fire, and inspired them to action from inaction to courage and boldness from fear — and to work! A fire was lit that day that has not been put out since.

Just as what happened on the first Easter wasn’t merely something spectacular for that one particular Sunday morning, but marked the turning point for the history of the whole world, as Jesus our Lord was raised from the dead — so too what happened on Pentecost fifty days after Jesus was raised from the dead wasn’t just a spectacular pyrotechnic display for a single day. No, it was the beginning of something; what happened on Pentecost was a new beginning, so new that people call Pentecost the “birthday of the church.” For it was on this day that the disciples were converted from being followers into being leaders. They got “all fired up” and started into action!

And it is that conversion, that “firing up” I want to talk with you about today, for it is a conversion and an “ignition” to which we all are called and in which we are all empowered, if we will accept the call of God and the power of God to work in us as it worked in the apostles long ago, to convert us from simply following Christ to taking the lead and spreading the word, to build up the church for which Christ died.

For the work of the church is not just my job alone, even though I have been given a particular office and ministry — about which I spoke a few weeks ago. Nor is it only our organist Mr. Baker’s job or the choir’s job, or Br James’ or Mr Greene’s or Mr Korlai’s, or the acolytes — though some of them literally do carry fire around in the torches and the thurible — or the members of the Bishop’s Committee or the Men or Women of St James, or the members of the other parish groups. Rather the work of the church is everyone’s job, and everyone has a role to play in the spread of the Gospel, to carry that torch that was lit so long ago, and to build up of God’s kingdom. Nobody is off the hook; everyone is part of God’s inspired workforce for the work of the Holy Spirit; everyone.

Look what God says through the prophet Joel. There is no minimum age requirement, no , nor no early retirement neither — God’s spirit is poured out on all flesh, on old and young. There is no class or educational requirement — God’s spirit is poured out even on the humblest servant. And there is no sex discrimination either — and if there are even in this day and age people in parts of this world who think women shouldn’t serve the church, think how revolutionary it must have been when Joel spoke those words a thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ! God’s Spirit comes to sons and daughters — and not just the daughters of the best families — but even female slaves are given God’s spirit to proclaim salvation. God is no respecter of persons! God lifts up the lowly and puts down the mighty. God was an equal opportunity employer long before Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, and God still has a job for everyone to do — everyone! — and will pour the Spirit lavishly upon them all, to equip them for that work. There is no job shortage, no being made redundant, no layoffs, no down-sizings, no golden parachute, no laying off or laying back — there is no unemployment in the kingdom of God: all are servants of the Lamb.

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You know, when people who are out of work, are looking for work, they go to the “help wanted” ads in the papers, or in these latter days, they search the Internet. Well, Saint Paul provides us with a kind of help-wanted ad for the work of the church in his First Letter to the Corinthians. Look at all these job opportunities! People gifted to speak words of wisdom, and words of knowledge; people with the gift to bring a healing touch; people with the astonishing gifts of working unthought of things, or the ability to speak the truth so clearly that people will be convicted in their hearts and souls — we call them prophets; those with the gift to look into the heart and discern the Spirit at work, and those who can speak or interpret the language of human beings or the language of heaven. And the only job requirement for all of these tasks is the presence of the Spirit, God’s Holy Spirit, that living flame and spark of divinity who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

There are many, many gifts given to God’s people for God’s work. Note in particular one item from Paul’s list I’m saving for last: those who have the gift of faith — because that covers all the rest of us who may not be healers or teachers or prophets or miracle workers. We all have the gift of faith, and we are promised that even if our faith is as small as a mustard seed, it can move mountains more effectively than the biggest rig from Caterpillar Tractors or a ton of dynamite. Even if it is a flame as small as a spark, we all know — as the apostle James said — how great a pile of lumber can be set alight by even a tiny flame, a tiny spark.

So, fellow workers all of us, if I can (on the next to last Sunday in May) borrow and modify a phrase more often heard on the first of May: “Workers of the church, unite!” Who dares stand idle on the fruited plain: the harvest is ripe, and we have all the job skills we need to do God’s work.

Can you carry a broom? There’s plenty of cleaning up to do. Can you tell a story? There are young ears eager to hear the story of your faith, of our faith — the church’s faith. Can you sing? Lift up your voices, people of God! Shake the rafters with a joyous noise! Can you give? Who does not have the strength to carry his own weight, to share the abundance he or she has to help this church recover and rebuild from the times of narrowness, the times of fear? Who dares to stand before the throne of God and say, “God, I’ve got enough for me but I don’t have enough for you.”

Can you pray? Don’t let’s forget that, for it is something we all can do, young or old, rich or poor — to pray, even if it is as simple prayer, “Jesus, Lord, save me!” Pray earnestly, in season and out of season, pray that the Spirit will continue to bless, to inspire, to set us alight with divine fire, and pour out God’s gifts upon us.

After all, today is our birthday, the church’s birthday, and God is giving us a whole pile of birthday presents; today and every day, and all we have to do is unwrap them and put them to use! God’s gracious gifts keep coming, even before we can ask. This is the promise and the power of God, and his promises are sure, and his power is great — not only to save but to preserve.

We are no longer merely followers of our Lord — we are commissioned as leaders to carry forth his mission, and to share in his work, to do our share of that work. So be brave, sisters and brothers of the faith. Be strong in the knowledge of God. Rejoice, rejoice believers, for the Lord our God is a mighty Lord. Glory to him, glory to him, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to him from generation to generation in the church, and in Christ Jesus our Lord! +

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Mediator and Advocate

SJF• Easter 7c • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jesus said, “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”+

Just between us, I’m kind of glad that the Sunday School and Youth have gone about their activities, because I’m going to mention something about childhood and youth that is probably best kept amongst the older generation. Though, seriously, I don’t know who I’m fooling, because almost all children really know it already; soon after learning to walk and talk, they have learned a powerful secret that will help carry them on through life and into their own adulthood. It is a secret that helped the children of Israel survive in the wilderness, and in the Promised Land in which they settled after their long journey. It is a secret that helped the Apostles deal with the difficulties they faced as the church began to find its feet and take its first tottering steps and begin and speak out against idolatry and injustice. And the secret is this: when Mom says No, Dad can be appealed to, to intercede, and maybe to get Mom to change her mind.

This is the secret art of advocacy, getting someone to advocate for you, to mediate for you and take your part, to speak on your behalf when it seems that the case may be closed and the judgement final. Having been serving jury duty last two weeks, and due to go back for at least another before the trial is completed — I’ve seen with my own eyes how important it is to have a good defense attorney: someone to serve as an advocate, to speak on your behalf, to make a compelling case. Even very young children learn fairly early on that No is not always the last word, and that a little skillful diplomacy, advocacy or mediation can get even a stern motherly or fatherly mind changed. The crucial thing is that the advocate must be someone who can speak to the one who has made the adverse decision, someone who has a relationship with the one who handed down that previous order, someone whose advocacy will have an impact, just as a husband might be able to influence his wife, or, as in the case of our Gospel today — the Son of God interceding on behalf his disciples, and those who will believe through their word — who knows he will be heard by his Father in heaven. He is not just speaking into the air, but into the ear of his loving Father.

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Imagine, if you will, a child who has just knocked over his mother’s favorite vase. Now, this child might well go to his mother right off and apologize. But a wise child might first go to his father, explain the situation, and ask for his help in preparing the way for the apology to his mother. And such a father might well tell his child to rely on the love that his mother has for him, even though he’s just broken her favorite vase.

I spoke last week of how important tradition is, how important history is for knowing where you’ve been and where you are, in order to understand where you’re going. That goes for our personal history as well, the history of our personal relationships — relationships that do not simply pop into existence out of the blue, but which are built up over time and enriched by experience. And few such relationships are as important as the relationships we have with those who brought us up from childhood — whether our own parents, or foster parents, or grandparents. Those relationships begun in childhood are the longest lasting, simply because they are the earliest to start.

And so, the father in my imagined scenario might encourage his son, by saying, “Do you think that your mother, who has loved you your whole life, will turn away from you now just because you broke a bit of crockery? No, she won’t do that, because of the love that has been there long before.” Not that a few helpful words from the father to the mother might not help, mind you! — that’s where intercession and advocacy come in — but the basis is the trust that relies on the relationship that existed long before.

And that is really how advocacy works. Most advocacy, most mediation, consists in reminding people of the “big picture” or the larger context of the situation. It’s not just the broken piece of crockery, but what might have led to that accident. Justice is not just about the particular minute act in question, but about the whole course of a life, with all its ups and downs, its failures and successes, seen in relation to the circumstances of the particular occasion. This was a point made by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as part of her confirmation hearings. Some people didn’t like that way of thinking; they didn’t like to think that a woman who grew up in the South Bronx might bring a different perspective to the Supreme Court. Some people didn’t like it and thought a judge should preserve complete judicial blindness to the context of a person’s life and treat all actions in the abstract — as if they were pure acts suspended in space, apart from the actors who carried them out. But thanks be to God that God’s justice is not blind — based as it is upon complete and perfect knowledge not just of the individual actions that we perform, but of us, and of all of the contexts and conditions surrounding them.

This is why God is the ultimate just judge, and also — in Christ — the great mediator and advocate. He is the Lord of context, of inclusion, of the “big picture.” He is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, arching over the whole of creation and present in every place at every time.

God is infinite, but we are finite. God is without limit in time or space, while we have a beginning and an ending, and a specific place in the world. We human creatures, dust brought to life at the breath of God, aware of our limitations, need to be reassured from time to time that God still does take account of us, that God cares about us, especially when we’ve strayed and done wrong, and know we’ve done wrong, and rightly feel that God may turn from us.

Our collect today contains that almost heartbreaking appeal: “Do not leave us for comfortless...” And so we appeal in these moments of feeling desolated and comfortless, to Jesus our Lord, the Son of the Father, to intercede for us with the Father. We appeal to him to take up once more that great prayer that he prayed on the night before he suffered and died for us, that prayer not only on behalf of the apostles, but also on behalf of those who believe in him though their word, for us, who have received that word second-, third- or fourth-hand down through that long tradition of the church. He was praying for us as well that night: that we might all be one.

We crave the assurance of that unity, of God’s love for us, for that unity and peace in the embrace of God, like the embrace of a loving parent, that all is well; and yet we know we are far from perfect, we know we have erred and strayed, and not done all as we should do. So somewhat shy of standing before the majestic judge, we turn to Jesus, who, while he is our judge, is also our only Mediator and Advocate, and we ask him to intercede on our behalf, to restore our sense of unity with him and with each other, and with God, his Father and our Father. For it is unity that is our hope and God’s will for us: that we may all be one even as God is one. Our prayer is to be with Jesus where he is, for when we are with him who is one with the Father, we are with the Father too.

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I began this sermon by telling about children’s skill in obtaining an advocate to be with them on their side and speak on their behalf. Writer Carol Kent, in an interview in Today’s Christian Woman, tells of one such skillful child, her little boy Jason. They were eating breakfast together one morning; she was wearing a patched pair of jeans and a fuzzy old sweater, ready to do housework on her day off. The little boy looked up over his cereal bowl and said, “Mommy, you look so pretty today!” She was surprised, since she didn’t even have any makeup on, and said, “Jason, why would you say I look pretty today? I’m not even wearing my suit and high heels.” The child said, “When you look like that, I know you’re going away; but when you’re dressed like this, I know you’re here, and you’re all mine.”

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Well, Jesus is all ours. He is our mediator and advocate, and that’s a big “our.” It’s not just you and me here at Saint James; it’s not just all the Episcopalians or all the Anglicans; it is rather all for whom Christ prayed on that night before he died, all of those who would believe through the preaching of the apostles, all one in Christ throughout the whole wide earth. That is what Christ prayed for, and that is what God granted.

Christ came to us dressed in his housework clothes, and he knelt to wash the disciples’ feet. He came to us not in majesty and splendor, robed as a king or a conqueror, but as a humble worker — a carpenter from a small town out in the suburbs, a friend and companion of common folk, of fishermen and farmers, of clerks and shopkeepers and people who lived by their wits on the streets. And he was with them and he belonged to them as he is with us and belongs to us, and all of us together belong to God through him. He is our only mediator and advocate, and he has not left us comfortless, nor abandoned us— he is ours for ever, and we are his. And even in this present seeming-absence from us, in this in-between-time in-the-mean-time since his ascent into heaven and until his coming again in power and great glory to rule the world, he has sent his Holy Spirit to be with us, so that we might have him in our hearts, comforted with that spiritual presence until that great day when we are exalted to that place where he has gone before, that where he is, we may also be, for ever, and be completely, utterly, and finally and at last, one.+

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The Idol and the Servant

What has religion to do with idols? Plenty, if you're not careful!

SJF • Easter 6c 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.

I want to talk to you today about idols: and by idols I don’t mean statues with five heads and a dozen arms — but the more insidious idols that can creep in around the edges of even Christian worship. These idols disguise themselves so well, that one can fall into worshiping them without knowing it.

Because we are not disembodied spirits, our worship requires physical expression: we need people, places and things. We are called, as the Collect says, to worship God in all things and above all things, so things play a part in our lives: our worship lives and our ordinary lives. In the church certain people are ordained to carry out special functions in our worship. Certain places, like this building, receive special honor, as a place where we gather to worship God. Certain physical things, such as the crucifix over the altar, serve to focus our worship. These people, places and things — the means of our worship — are not meant to be the object of our worship: God is.

Some years ago a priest friend of mine, who was wearing his clericals out on the street, was challenged by an aggressive fundamentalist. “Why do you Roman Catholics worship statues? Don’t you know that’s idolatry?” My priest friend said, “First of all, I’m Episcopalian, not Roman Catholic; but I will admit there are statues and images in my church. But before I answer your question, would you mind showing me your wallet?” Somewhat startled, perhaps expecting to be hit up for a donation, the man reluctantly took out his billfold. My friend said, “Would you open it for me, please. Ah — I see you have a picture of what I assume are your wife and children. Would you mind very much tearing it up and throwing it away?” The man said, “Are you crazy! I love my wife and family.” The priest responded, “But I’m not asking you to do anything to your wife and family. I’m just talking about a picture. It’s just a piece of paper.” The man — who still didn’t seem to get the connection, though I’m sure most of you have by now — said, “It isn’t the picture, it’s what it represents!” The priest said, “Well, it’s the same way with my church. We know the image of Mary isn’t Mary, and the one of Jesus isn’t Jesus. We don’t worship these images; we honor and respect them as reminders of the reality of which they are just representations and reminders: the real Mary whose obedience changed the world, and the real Jesus whose saving death on the cross purchased salvation for all of us sinners. And I’m no more willing to destroy these reminders than you are willing to do so to the picture of your family.”

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And that’s the truth. We know full well — or at least I hope we know — that this building on the corner of 190th and Jerome is not the New Jerusalem. For one thing, the New Jerusalem doesn’t require a new roof on the parish hall every 30 years! Also the New Jerusalem is lit by the light of the Lamb, not bu our lovely knew light-bulbs just installed this week. We know that the figure over our altar is made of brass and plaster, that the icons are painted wooden panels. We do not worship the physical things that we see, but we treat them with respect as reminders of the spiritual truths that cannot be seen.

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However, sometimes people in the church do become so attached to the people, places and things of the church — which are meant to guide us and lead us to God — that we lose sight of God himself. Have you ever received a birthday package so beautifully wrapped that you said, “Oh, I hate to open it!” Or been presented with a birthday cake so beautifully decorated that you said, “Oh, I hate to cut it!” I’ve heard people say those things many times. But did you ever actually leave the present wrapped, or the cake uncut? Anyone? I didn’t think so. But sometimes in worship, people get so caught up with the things of worship, that they stop there, just as it is, and fail to reach the reality behind them.

The pagan priest at Lystra — the priest of Zeus — and of course pagans were used to idols so perhaps this was natural — was ready to offer sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas, because of what they had done, and how they spoke. But the apostles cried out, “No! Not this! We are men like you! We have come to bring you the good news... to turn you from empty idols and point you to the God who made heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them.” The apostles were there to get the people to worship the true and living God; they didn’t want to be set up themselves as idols of a new cult!

Yet many times since then, we Christians have “gotten stuck” on the things meant to guide us, like a car stuck in the ruts of the very road meant to aid our journey. When this happens, we make the error of traditionalism. And when we get stuck on a church leader or minister, we fall into what is called the cult of personality. And both of these are deadly to the church.

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First, a few words about traditionalism. It is not the same as tradition. Tradition is the heritage of our religious culture. Without tradition, we are like people with cultural amnesia, ignorant of our past. As I’ve said before, How can you do what Jesus would do if you don’t know what he did? Or what the Apostles did, or the other great saints and sages of the church’s history have done down through the years even to our own time? Tradition is a vehicle for our journey in faith, but it must be a living tradition, a vehicle which moves, which brings us somewhere, not becoming an end in itself. For that’s when tradition becomes traditionalism. As a wise man once said, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Traditionalism reminds me of that tragic character from Dickens’ Great Expectations, Miss Havesham, who was jilted on her wedding day, and lived forever in that moment, in a musty room still dressed in her wedding-gown, with an untouched wedding cake covered with cobwebs, nourished only by her thirst for revenge.

But tradition is not such a musty museum. Tradition is a vital thread of truth passed on from generation to generation, linking us back to the time when Christ first promised that even as he went away he would send another Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who would continue to teach the disciples everything, and, importantly, remind them of all he had said and taught and done. This is tradition as the gift of God himself.

So the Spirit works to help us keep tradition in focus as we learn about the road we’ve traveled since the days of Paul and Barnabas. We learn from our history by asking questions, with respect and understanding. For when we can no longer tell what greater truth something points to, it is no longer a tradition in any meaningful sense. It has become just one more thing; it has become a vehicle that goes nowhere; it has become an idol.

Sadly, the church has a long history of people getting stuck in ruts of traditionalism, so focused on the thing itself that they loose all understanding and perspective. Sometimes people get so attached to a tradition that they even resort to violence against those who disagree or sooner die than give it up!

I’m not exaggerating. In the eighth century, a monastery of English monks resisted the instructions from Rome that they begin chanting the psalms in the Roman fashion. And so the king stationed archers in the gallery of the monastery, and as the monks persisted singing their traditional English tunes, they were slaughtered in the choir where they stood.

Maybe you’ll say, Oh, but that was in the dark ages; the eight century; things have gotten a lot better. Well, things weren’t better a thousand years later! In 17th century Russia, the Patriarch of Moscow instituted changes in worship, and open warfare broke out — thousands of people died defending the “old ways.” Whole villages were destroyed, people were burnt at the stake in the hundreds. What changes so angered these traditionalists, these “Old Believers”? What earth-shattering reforms did the Patriarch insist were crucial to the faith? To make the sign of the cross with three fingers instead of two, and to say the Alleluia three times instead of once. And as those Old Believers went to the stake, they defiantly crossed themselves with two fingers instead of three. I guess they had the last word.

When people worship their worship rather than worshiping God through their worship, then worship itself has become an idol: an end in itself rather than a means to the highest end of all, which is God.

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The other side of the coin, shown in the story of Paul and Barnabas, is what happens when people start to worship the messenger instead of the one of whom the messenger speaks: this is the cult of personality I mentioned a while ago. We’ve seen this happen with televangelists who rise on the wave of popularity and then crash on the rocks of scandal. But it can also happen in more subtle ways: when ministers are seen as so central to the life of their congregation that they are valued not for what they do but for who they are.

And this is why I am glad to take this opportunity to remind you about what ministers are and what they do. This is in part a message for Sahra our seminarian who will soon be exercising ministry in the church, as an ordained minister of the church.

First of all, that word minister. People will use it with respectful tones. “Oh, she’s a minister,” they might say. So it may come as a surprise to learn that the word minister comes from the Latin word for servant. And it’s the kind of servant most of us are still familiar with: a waiter! So it’s nothing to get high and mighty about! It is about serving — about serving God and the people of God.

This is why all ordained ministers especially should take Paul and Barnabas as their model: it isn’t about us; it isn’t about who we are, but about the One whom we serve. And our primary service is to help the whole people of God to come closer to God and to each other in Christ, and then to go forth into the world in the power of God’s Holy Spirit, the same Spirit Jesus promised would come to the Apostles and guide them and lead them into all Truth.

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We as believers in the One God reject idolatry. We honor those who minister not for themselves but for the sake of the mission of God and its outreach to the ends of the world. Even as we gather in this place, we reach out towards the heavenly Jerusalem, of which this is merely a foretaste, to that place beyond where all symbols and traditions and ministries have their end and goal.

For in the New Jerusalem, there is no Temple. The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the Temple. There is no special class of ministers, for all of God’s people are kings and priests to God, a royal priesthood, and all of them also and at the same time servants of the Lamb. In the New Jerusalem there are no statues or images or icons, as reminders — for we will behold sanctity and divinity with our own eyes, lit by the lamp of the Lamb. In the heavenly city we shall no longer worship through traditions or customs, or things, or places, or with the help of ministers, but face to face with the one whom we adore, serving one another to the glory of God alone. God give us strength to persevere, that we may one day walk in the light of the Lamb, in the land in which there is no night, through Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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Hearing the Shepherd's Voice

SJF • Easter 4c • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jesus said, My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.+

Last week our Scripture readings told us about people who went on to become leaders in the church getting off to an awfully inauspicious start. Peter and Paul, each in his own way, didn’t perceive Jesus when he was plainly evident to others. They had to be shaken up by God to open their eyes and see what was right in front of them. Paul, as you remember, missed God’s message because he was so full of himself, his head so full of his own knowledge, his own understanding — which was really misunderstanding — that he couldn’t hear or see anything new. Peter, on the other hand, seems to have gotten the message but didn’t know what to do with it — instead of spreading the Gospel he decided to go fishing.

Fortunately God knocked Paul from his high horse, and set Peter on the right road. Look at today’s reading from the Book of Acts, and remember that Paul is including himself among the people of Jerusalem and their leaders — as he had been at that time — who “did not... understand the words of the prophets that are read every sabbath.” Remember, as we heard last week, Paul spent his youth persecuting the church, hunting down Christians and delivering them up for trial and punishment. He started hi career as the coat-check boy for those who stoned Saint Stephen to death! Yet he’d heard the Scriptures week by week in the synagogue, heard, without understanding, the God about whom those words gave such powerful testimony.

Paul finally understood the words so often heard, and came to know the meaning behind them, and the One of whom they spoke. And Peter, too, became a changed man once Jesus got him to take his mind off his fishing tackle, and sent him out to feed the sheep, and to spread the Gospel.

Powerful things can happen to you when you let God into your life. Saint John the Divine was given a glimpse, a revelation, and he shared us with us: a glimpse, a revelation, of the ultimate destiny of those who hear and follow their heavenly shepherd, people from all over the world who have heard the saving word in many tongues, and who in John’s vision of heaven stand before the throne with palm branches, praising the Lord and the Lamb, who is their protector and their God. Secure in the place where there is no pain or grief, no hunger nor thirst — not even any sunburn — they rejoice forever because they have heard and followed him who is the Savior of the world.

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But what about those who refuse to hear, who don’t let God into their lives? In today’s Gospel, Jesus is in Jerusalem. It’s a chilly winter day, at the feast of Dedication; which we might know better as Hanukkah. The people come to Jesus with the challenge, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”

Jesus returns their challenge with a challenge equally pointed. “I have told you.” If ever there were a time for that appropriate, eloquent monosyllable, this would be it. Duh!

What more could they want? By this time in John’s Gospel John the Baptist has given his testimony that Jesus is the Lamb of God, Jesus has changed water to wine at Cana of Galilee, he has cast the moneychangers from the court of the Gentiles in that very temple; He has promised that if the temple were torn down he would rebuild it in three days; he has fed a multitude on the mountain, with five barley loaves and two fish; he has healed the sick — a little boy in Capernaum, and right in Jerusalem a paralyzed man, and even more astoundingly a man born blind; and — especially in John’s Gospel— he’s taught and he’s taught and he’s taught. Yet after all of this, the people still say, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Verily, verily, I say unto you, Duh! As Jonathan Swift so eloquently put it, “There is none so blind as them that won’t see.”

It reminds me of the young man in the movie who is tempted to go further with his new girlfriend than he knows he should, and who kneels in prayer in his bedroom. “Give me a sign, God,” he says. There’s a crash of thunder, the lights flash, the walls shake and pictures fall from their hooks and books from their shelves; and still looking up to heaven, the boy says, “Any sign!”

Just what does it take to hear the voice of God when God is speaking slowly and clearly in words of one syllable?

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Well, Jesus gives us the answer, and in words of one syllable: My sheep hear my voice; I know them; and they follow me. (O.K., follow has two syllables.) But the message is clear.

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” The blessed ones, the ones who belong to the flock of Christ, hear the voice of their divine shepherd. Notice that doesn’t mean that they necessarily understand the shepherd, any more than ordinary earthly sheep understand their earthly human shepherd. They may not even know what a shepherd is, but — and this is the most important thing, as Jesus goes on to say — the shepherd knows them.

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to understand God’s message to us. If that were the case I’d stop preaching right now! But we need to hear God first, before we try to understand, and trust that God knows who he is talking to! God does not dial wrong numbers!

People do, of course, and it’s a good example of how preconceptions — being full of yourself instead of being open to others, as was Saint Paul’s problem — can prevent you from hearing what is being said to you. Once I was working in the church office, and the phone rang. As always, I answered, “Good afternoon, St. James Church.” The person at the other end said, “Is this the Recreation Center?”

Now, if I’d really been swift I could have said something like, “Yes, we offer re-creation every Sunday morning at 11 a.m.” As it was, I just said, “No; this is St. James Church. The Rec Center is next door.” Of course, I’d said that the first time, but the person calling simply couldn’t believe they’d dialed the wrong number. Isn’t if funny how people won’t believe that you aren’t the person they wanted: I’m sure I’m not the only one here who has had to repeat several times that no, Juanita doesn’t live here. Well, in this case, the caller wanted the Recreation Center, they expected the Recreation Center, so when I said, “Good afternoon, St. James Church” they didn’t even hear the words.

But God’s sheep do hear the voice of their heavenly shepherd; and that is how our salvation begins. It is enough for us to begin by hearing, hearing without preconceptions, and in the true knowledge and trust that the one who calls us knows exactly who we are, knows us each by name. God don’t dial no wrong numbers! Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice; I know them.” And so we begin by hearing, and being known.

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And then, we follow. Yes, that’s the third essential two-syllable part of this morning’s word to us. The shepherd knows his sheep and calls his sheep, not for casual conversation, but for a high purpose: that they might follow him to the springs of the water of life, where every tear is wiped from their eyes, where they find shelter from the sun’s scorching heat, where there is no pain or grief, no hunger nor thirst. He gives them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of his hand. What is his is his for ever.

This is what it means, beloved, to be counted among the flock of the great shepherd of the sheep. It is nothing less than life eternal. Thank God that we have heard the voice of the one who calls us; thank God that he knows us and has chosen us. And thank God that we have set our feet upon the path to follow him. Amidst the distractions and the shadows of this life, amidst the distractions and noise and busyness of our lives, may we always be ready to hear the voice of the one who knows us, and to follow him when he calls, even Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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By the Dawn's Early Light

SJF • Easter 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee went to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.

It is an experience common to most of us, so common as barely to require comment, that things look different by the light of day as opposed to how they appear at night. Driving down a wooded country road at 50 miles an hour by day may seem quite leisurely — but that same road at that same speed in the dead of night may feel like a reckless thrill-ride. And speaking of wooded country roads, what child hasn’t learned that the gnarled old tree that looks so terrifying by night, is by day revealed to be nothing more than a harmless old tree. The light of day makes all the difference. We even have made the difference proverbial, by saying, “It’s like night and day” to mean almost complete opposition — far more different than “apples and oranges” or “chalk and cheese”!

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One day nearly 2,000 years ago a small group of women came to the tomb of a dear and beloved friend who had died a horrible death just two days before. He had been buried that Friday as the shadows lengthened and as the sun began to set — it had already been a day of strange and remarkable weather with clouds gathering through the afternoon so that the light of the sun was darkened even then. They watched from afar, and then as the hours passed and the friends beseeched the body from Pilate, that they might give it a decent burial, the women followed after at a distance, and saw to whom his body was commended and how his body was laid in the tomb as the darkness of night began to engulf the land. The Sabbath had begun. Then they went to prepare the spices and spent that Sabbath night and day in accord with the Law that commanded rest from all labors, and on into the second evening that ended that Sabbath day.

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But then, ah then! How different things appeared by the dawn’s early light, when they returned to the tomb the following morning. They had seen the stone set in place — only now it had been moved. They had seen only Joseph of Arimathea and the other disciples; now they saw two men in dazzling clothes — so dazzling that they terrified them! This is one time when even broad daylight had its terrors!

And the angels — for that is what they were — immediately challenged them with a question as astounding as their very presence: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

The reason, of course, was simple: In the gathering shadows, they had seen the dead one laid there, had seen the tomb sealed, had seen the others walk away with their heads bowed, had walked away with their heads bowed themselves, mournful and sorrowful. They had prepared the spices in those evening hours and now they were back with them, to do with them what they would do for the dead: gently washing the body and sprinkling it with sweet-smelling herbs and spices.

By the fading light of that evening, that is what they had seen; but by the dawn’s early light none of it looked the same. As the angels assured them, the dead was dead no longer, but living; they gave them the message, short and sweet: “He is not here, but has risen.” Everything had changed in the light of that great dawn.

Never before or since has something looked so different between night and day; never before has something been so different between night and day! Never before have people so deeply saddened been given such cause for joy. It was truly night and day!

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What difference a day makes! Will this Easter Day 2010 make a difference for you? None of us here came to church this morning expecting a funeral — unlike the women who came to the tomb, we expected a celebration. And so we are having one.

But what about the rest of our lives — are we living in the twilight, or maybe even in the deeper shadows of night, or have we stepped into the light of day, the dawning light of new life in Christ? Are there things in your life like those gnarled old trees on a country road that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up in fear? Let the light of Christ shine on them and they will be shown to be just old trees after all.

Do things sometimes seem to you to be moving so fast that you have lost all control and you can’t be sure where you are heading, like a bouncing night-time ride down a country road, swerving and twisting in the late-night hours, startled by the high-beams and then plunged into shadow in confusion? Let the light of Christ shine upon your journey and be a lamp unto your feet, and that ride may be transformed from an agonizing and gutwrenching terror into a joyful pilgrimage walked in the way that Christ has gone before us — into new life, redeemed life, risen life.

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Evening and morning — they are as different as night and day! You may know that for the Jewish people the hour of sundown, the beginning of evening, is very important, particularly the evening that marks the beginning of the Sabbath, the division of ordinary time from that extraordinary day of rest. Knowing the hour of dawn is similarly important, for the offering of particular prayers of benediction and thanksgiving for the dawn of each new day.

Once, in order to test his pupils, a Rabbi asked them how they thought it best to tell when dawn’s earliest light had come. One suggested, “When you can tell from across a field if a beast is a dog or a sheep.” The Rabbi said that was not the best answer. “Some city folks cannot tell a dog from a sheep even at midday!” Another pupil offered, “When there is enough light to see if a tree is a fig tree or an apple tree.” “That is good,” the Rabbi said, “but not good enough, for some cannot tell an apple from a fig, or a myrtle from a cedar!” Another suggested, “When you can lay a black thread against a black cloth and see the thread against the cloth!” The Rabbi laughed, “Ah, Moishe the tailor knows something! But there is still a better way.” “What is it?” the students asked. The Rabbi paused, and said, “When you can look any man or woman in the face and know that you are looking into the face of a brother or sister. For if you cannot do that, if you cannot look at anyone and know they are your brother or sister, it is still night indeed.”

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The dawn’s early light of Easter gives us all the opportunity to look into each other’s faces and see, and know, and recognize each other as sisters and brothers, as children of one Father in heaven, who raised our Brother Jesus from the dead. This dawn, this day, this light makes all the difference. We need no longer be afraid of shadows. And more importantly, we need no longer be strangers one from another, in this dawn’s early light, but sisters and brothers all.

May we rejoice in that light not just today but every day for the rest of our lives and on into the life of the world to come, where we will join our Lord and Savior and Brother in the never-ending daylight of the everlasting Eastertide.+

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The Uplifting Low-Down

SJF • Palm Sunday 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend.+

Some years ago, I heard a voice speak through a window in time. It wasn’t a supernatural experience like that of St John the Divine. It was on National Public radio. It was part of a broadcast of historic recordings — not recordings of famous people, but of ordinary folks like you or me. The recording was made almost sixty years ago, and the man who made it was 102 years old at the time he recorded it — so his voice spoke through a window of time into the middle of the century before last — the time of the Civil War.

Joseph Johnson had been a slave in the American South, already in his teens when slavery ended. He, and his family before him for three generations, had been slaves — his grandfather, Mr Johnson said with a mixture of pride and resentment, had belonged to Thomas Jefferson.

What most struck me about this recording wasn’t the reminisces of this elderly former slave, but the attitude of the man who was interviewing him: his great-grandson. In spite of the number of times he must have heard these stories at his great-grandpa’s knee — you could tell he wasn’t grasping the meaning that they held.

His old great-grandfather kept trying to give him the low-down on what it meant to be a slave, but the younger man just couldn’t get it. When the old man said, “We all belonged to Mr Smith,” the young man asked, “What kind of work did you do for him?” With some irritation, the old man replied, “We didn’t work for him — he owned us! Like he owned his horse or his mule.” The younger man couldn’t grasp what it meant to be a slave. He heard the words, but their weight escaped him. He couldn’t feel the soreness of bent and aching backs, weary, bone-tired arms, the crack of the whip, the cutting curses and insults, or more importantly the total lack of the ability to say, “I’m going to quit this awful job!” — and the deep, deep pain of humiliation summed up in the single word: slave.

He asked further, “Once you were free, did you ever want to go back to being a slave again?” With astonishment audible in every syllable, the old man replied, “Well, some folks might to have wanted to, but not me; to be a slave is to be a dog. You can’t be a man when you’re a slave.” The old man had summed up well what the philosophers say of slavery: it is the loss of self-determination that means so much to what it is to be a full person, it negates humanity by converting a human being into an object, an appliance, a tool to use until it is of no more use, and then to discard. “You can’t be a man where you’re a slave.” And maybe then that young man finally understood what his great-grandfather was trying to tell him.

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Most of us are like that young man. It is hard for us to get the full implication — the ultimate low-down — on what it means to be a slave. And so, when we hear the Scriptures today, especially Paul’s words to the Philippians, the word slave tends to slide over our ears instead of sinking in, like butter on cold toast. Paul said that Jesus, the Son of God, took upon himself the form of a slave — but we don’t grasp the full significance of these words.

So let’s refresh our memories, based on Mr Johnson’s testimony. To be a slave means to have no control over your own life: to be owned by someone else — not just to have to work hard, not just to have to follow orders — lots of people have to do that — but to have your very being rest in someone else’s hands, to have no power of self-determination: to be an object whose very existence is at someone else’s discretion.

To be a slave is to be the lowest of the low — to be at the very bottom of human society. It is to be even beneath human society: to be one step over the edge at which human likeness disappears even in one’s own eyes: as Mr Johnson said, “When you’re a slave, you are a dog.”

To apply these expressions to Jesus Christ sounds scandalous. And it is. This is the scandal of the Incarnation — that the Son of God took that step down, down to the very bottom. It is not simply that the word was made flesh, that God became a human being, but that the Son of God became— among human beings — not the highest, not a king or an emperor, but the lowest and the humblest, one not even considered human by many: a slave, treated as you or I might treat one of our appliances: something bought and paid for, valued while serviceable but dumped out on the sidewalk for collection by Sanitation when it is of no further use. A slave is one with no control over his or her own life, one who is placed at our mercy — placed himself into the hands of fallen humanity — our hands. We just said together those words said by our forebears — our hands were reached out, to “crucify him, crucify him.”

This is a great mystery: that Jesus accepted all of this willingly — for us, for our sakes and for our salvation. At his final meal, Jesus knew that his hour had come, that he was about to be betrayed into human hands by human hands, the very hands that would dip in the bowl with his. Believe me, you don’t want to fall into human hands.

But, as they say in the TV ads, “There’s more!” Jesus would go beyond the mere humility of a servant, even the humiliation of a slave. As the old language of Apostles’ Creed said so bluntly, “He descended into hell.”

Paul describes the step-by-step process in Philippians. The ladder of humility led from God’s majesty, at his right hand, to humanity (just below the angels), to slavery — that so distorts human beings that they are no longer seen as human beings, even by themselves — and then to that final step of death, where being — human or otherwise — altogether ceases. Jesus voluntarily takes these steps, even the final step into the abyss of non-being, the step into death, even death on the cross — for us.

And this is the glory of the cross: that the cross which marks the lowest point to which the Son would descend — that it should be the very means by which the Son would be lifted up, and draw the whole world to himself. This is the glory of the cross: that the abyss of death into which he was willing to descend should be forever patched and sealed by two beams of wood laid crosswise.

The cross is the mark of paradox: that He who Is should cease to be; that the death of one should bring life to all; that the slavery of one should bring freedom to all; that the highest should become the lowest. Only from that lowest point — only from the grave, the pit of death and hell — could Christ in rising again bring all of humanity back up with him from the grave. Only by getting completely under the burden of fallen human nature could Christ lift and carry it. Only by descending to the grave, the place of non-being, only from that lowest point, could he place the lever of the cross against the fulcrum of his death, and raise up a fallen world. Only from the grave could Jesus raise us to new life.

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And all the while the means of this great miracle, the means of our salvation, the cross, stands before us, there above the altar, a representation in brass instead of dark and bloody wood. This is a representation of the ladder on which the Son of God climbed down from heaven so he could be lifted up on earth, and bring the whole world to himself. This is the instrument by which a slave was revealed as the king in disguise; the one deemed no longer human, revealed to be humanity in perfection. This is the tool by which Christ, who took a slave’s form in order to bring freedom, died so that we might live again with him after our own deaths.

We are called to lift high that cross, our standard and our rallying point, the sign of victory in the midst of seeming defeat, the crossbeams that seal the portals of death, the lever the lifts a fallen world, the ladder of salvation. As we go forth today from this place at the end of our worship, to a world enslaved by riches that cannot make one free; to a world that cheapens human nature through injustice, sexism and racism, that enslaves the children of God and binds them in chains of hate and pain; to a world that refuses to recognize and honor love unless it fits its narrow understanding; to a world that is hungry for the good news of Christ but doesn’t know bread from heaven when it sees it; to a world that is dying of thirst while fountains of grace pour from the wounded side of the Lord of glory — as we go forth today at the end of our worship in the power of the Spirit let us lift high the cross upon which he was lifted up, to draw the whole world to himself. +

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God of Love or Logic?

SJF • Lent 4c 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The son came to himself and said, “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!”

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the great, memorable passages of the Gospel, familiar even to many who may never crack the pages of a Bible — it was even made into a ballet with music by Prokofiev, first performed in Paris by the Ballet Russe in 1929, and at the New York City Ballet many times since!

But in spite of how familiar it is, this parable still bears our close attention, as our familiarity can cause us to miss details revealed by taking more time with it.

We’ve just heard it, so I won’t repeat the story. But I want to remind you of where it comes in the Gospel of Luke. This will help us to understand who Jesus is speaking to, and what he is getting at, why he told the parable, and what he means by it.

The fifteenth chapter of Luke begins with Jesus teaching and preaching, and tax collectors and sinners are gathering round eagerly to hear him, like people starving and thirsting for a gracious and generous word. The Pharisees and scribes, with their focus on salvation through personal propriety and righteous observance of the law, grumble among themselves and tsk-tsk that “this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” In response to these clucking tongues, Jesus launches into a series of three parables — all three of them dealing with recovery of something that has been lost: a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son. All three accounts end with a celebration — though in the parable of the lost son, the most elaborate and detailed of the three, the celebration comes in the middle.

For though the celebration begins shortly after the prodigal son’s return, and the recovery of “the lost,” that isn’t the end of the story. There is an additional character, mentioned only in passing at the beginning of the tale, but making his full appearance at the end: the angry elder son. He complains about the celebration, and the manner of his complaint suggests he’s stored up quite a few resentments about how he feels he’s been treated by his father. And yet, the father assures him that he loves him as well, and that his inheritance is secure — but that they must celebrate and rejoice at the repentance and return of the younger son, rather than grumbling about it.

Now, given the placement of this parable in the gospel, and those to whom it was told, and why, it is abundantly clear that Jesus intends the younger son to represent the sinners who have turned their lives around and come to hear his preaching, and the older son to represent the scribes and Pharisees themselves, with their grumbling complaint about the “sinners” being paid any mind at all, including Jesus eating with them.

This is perhaps the gentlest rebuke to the scribes and Pharisees in the whole Gospel — certainly unlike the strong condemnations with which Jesus greeted them a few chapters earlier. Here the parable presents even the Pharisees with some Good News, assuring them that they too are “always with the Father,” and that “all that is his is theirs.” Perhaps this is Jesus’ last effort to reach out to them, to get them to see that they do not need to occupy themselves with judgment of those they deem unworthy, they need not be lost in their own self-righteous anger but can break free of it and find their way home, and come to join the celebration, rejoicing in the breadth of salvation, in which all who are lost are ultimately found!

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That is an important lesson in itself. However, I’d like to note one more thing about this parable. We tend to romanticize the younger son — even if we don’t make his story into a ballet! We tend to see him as a figure of heartfelt sorrow and repentance. But look closely at the text and I think you’ll see instead something more like calculation than sorrow, even if it leads him to change his mind and come back home. He’s spent all his money, taken the lowest job you could imagine for a Jew — feeding pigs! — and realizes what a mistake he’s made, comparing himself to the hired hands back home and seeing how miserable he is. He is sorry — but mostly because of the mess he’s in, sorry about his own discomfort more than for the pain he caused his father, more sorry for the consequences of his action than for the act itself.

So he makes an entirely pragmatic and practical decision to go back home — motivated not so much by love for his father, as by hunger in his belly. He makes a quick calculation that he couldn’t be any worse off as a hired hand, so it’s well worth taking the chance of returning home.

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The thought of calculation reminds me of another young man’s story — a real one this time, but with a similar theme. Blaise Pascal was a 17th-century French scientist and philosopher, famous among other things for inventing one of the earliest mechanical adding machines before he was twenty years old. He is also known for his having undergone a religious conversion and for his adherence to a strict sect of very pious Roman Catholicism.

Now, as you know, it is not common for scientists to be fervently faithful or embarrassingly pious, so it is no surprise to find that in addition to his fervor and mysticism there is also a more calculating and rationalistic side to Pascal’s faith. He knew as a scientist that he could not prove that God exists, but as one of the originators of probability theory, he had to admit that God might exist. And so, in what came to be called “Pascal’s Wager” he calculated that if God exists, it is wisest to win eternal life by placing your bets on God — for, if God doesn’t exist, you’ve lost nothing, but if God does exist you stand to win everything! It’s a compelling notion, and it has held up well for over 300 years. A modern form of this wager is the comment of a believer to an atheist: “If I am wrong about God and life after death, I will never know; but if you are wrong, you will!”

There is a similar kind of calculation in the younger son in our parable. “Better take a chance on my father welcoming me back, rather than starve to death for certain, here.” But you can also hear the wheels clicking in the mind of the older brother, too — though to a different calculation: not the younger brother’s “it can’t get any worse so what the hey, let me go home”; but the colder calculation of the older brother’s carefully tabulated column of resentments — “Working like a slave for years, never disobedient, never got so much as a goat to have a party with my friends...” I can picture him, red-faced and angry, perhaps about to burst into tears. How long has this good obedient son been holding in this catalogue of resentments and injuries? Storing up all the debt he things the father hasn’t paid him?

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And perhaps that touches something in the father, too. But it is not simply a response to the calculus of resentment, any more than his response to the younger son was based on a calculus of repentance. This isn’t about calculus, or logic, or anything like that. It is about love.

The father doesn’t love the younger son because he repents, or the older son because he remains loyal, but because they are his sons. It is not about calculation: either the calculation of a gamble that you might be forgiven, or the calculation that if you tote up enough obedience and loyalty you will get a rich reward. Like the generous employer who gave the workers in the vineyard the same wage regardless of how long or short their work-shift, the generous father in this parable loves his sons not on the basis of what they’ve done or failed to do, but because they are his children. It is not about calculation, but relationship; not about logic, but love.

This, ultimately, is the message Jesus wanted to get across to those scribes and Pharisees, the message the tax-collectors and sinners had already understood, the message that the God of Love intends for us. God’s love is not based upon what we do or fail to do; God’s love is not something we earn by being good or lose by being bad. God’s love is a gift that came to us, reconciling us and the whole world to God, even while we were yet sinners — not counting our trespasses but forgiving them, wiping the slate clean and cancelling the debt, hitting the delete key on the whole spreadsheet of human sinfulness.

Christ did not save us because we were good, or because we repented, but because we needed saving and he loved us so much that nothing could stop him from saving us, even at the cost of his own life, by which he showed us the greatest love.

This is how the lost are found, how the dead are restored to life; this is how new life begins, how new creation starts, and this is why we celebrate — as we must — and keep the feast, through Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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Understanding God

SJF • Last Epiphany 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.+

Paul the Apostle, in that beautiful passage we heard today, acknowledges the incompleteness of our knowledge about God. “We know only in part,” he assures us, and even what we do know is like a reflection in a dusty mirror, a dim vision of the heart of reality that is too much for our eyes to take in.

The simple fact is that, as the old hymn said, the full truth of God’s love — for God is Love — “is broader than the measure of man’s mind” — beyond our full comprehension.

Have you ever tried to get a good look at the Empire State Building from 34th street? Well, if you have, you know you can’t see much. Standing at its base, you are too close to take it in — it is so overwhelming. Even from across the street you are still too close, and if you get further away other buildings will obstruct your view. The only place to really get an idea of what how tall the Empire State Building is is to go blocks and blocks away, or even to Brooklyn or New Jersey — where you can then see it rising far above all of its neighbors.

Well, if this is true of a human construction, how much more of the creator of the world and all that is in it? We know from our reading of Scripture that Moses talked with God face to face — though even then we also know that God must have toned down his glory so that Moses would be able to converse with him. The one time Moses asked to see God in all his glory, just prior to the passage from Exodus that we read this morning, God told Moses he could not bear it and live, and so God made Moses stand in a cleft of the rock, with God’s own hand upon him until the fullness of God’s glory passed by, and only then did God take his hand away and let Moses see God’s back — the back of God’s glory — and that was enough to cause Moses’ face to shine with the reflection of that divine light. And ever after Moses had to wear a veil over his face, so that even this reflection of the back of God’s glory would not be too much for the people to bear.

And in our Gospel today, three of the apostles witness the revelation of God’s glory manifest in Jesus on the mountain-top; but even then the cloud of God’s presence mutes and filters and overshadows the dazzling scene — so that they might not be struck dead at the sight of God’s full glory revealed.

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So how can we come to any understanding of God? Well, first of all, as the doctor said, “Take two tablets and call me in the morning!” Moses comes down from his meeting with God, his face glowing from the encounter, but also bearing those two tablets of the covenant in his hand, God’s word, written by God’s own hand, ready to be delivered to the people. In this we may understand all of Scripture to be meant — all of the Word of God delivered to us in the Law and Prophets and Writings, in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and their letters, and the visions old and new.

And yet, just as the people couldn’t bear to look at Moses’ face, so too people then as now find even the second-hand glory of God’s Word in Scripture hard to understand — it will come as no news to you that there are as many different interpretations of Scripture as there are believers. There is an old Jewish saying that if you don’t like how your rabbi interprets the Scripture, you can always find another rabbi; and that in a room with five rabbis you’ll find at least six different interpretations. The same is surely true of Christians as well.

In fact, Christians can’t even on the whole agree on what the Bible is, let alone what it means, as Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, and Protestants disagree about which books of the Old Testament are to be included in the Bible — books accepted by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox as a part of their Bible are considered Apocrypha (suitable for reading but not for doctrine) by Anglicans and Lutherans, and not even included at all by Protestants. That’s why you’ll find different editions of the Bible with different books in different places, and sometimes going by different names.

Beyond these differences in the content of Scripture, in what the Bible is, we come to the various interpretations of Scripture. And here too, there is wide difference of opinion both between churches and within them. Every church will have a different understanding, or many different understandings, different shades of interpretation.

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So, how do we know which we should follow? Ultimately that question is rhetorical, as surely people will follow the interpretation that makes sense to them, that seems to speak to them, or else, as in the saying I quoted before, they’ll go off to find another rabbi — or priest or minister or church.

But I think there is some guidance to be found in what Saint Paul says in that passage from First Corinthians, about the need for love as the standard by which we judge whether our understanding and interpretation is in accord with God’s will. For as Paul says, even if he could speak as eloquently as an angel, or in miraculous tongues, or with powerful prophecy, or with an understanding of all mysteries and all knowledge — if his understanding and speaking and teaching were not based on love, it would all be for nothing. If his teaching or preaching or his prophecy did not ring the note of love, it would be like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And what kind of teaching would that be?

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Saint Augustine of Hippo was one of the early great expounders of Scripture. He had been a young man-about-town, living the high life, but he experienced a conversion and became a Christian towards the end of the fourth century. (He credited his conversion to the prayers of his mother, Saint Monica, and you can see them conversing in our stained-glass window in the corner.)

Augustine had a fundamental rule when it came to interpreting Scripture, and it was based on Saint Paul’s advice, under the governance of the love commanded by God — the love of God and neighbor. Augustine wrote: “If it seems to you that you have understood the Scriptures, or any part of them, in such a way that by this understanding you do not build up the twin love of God and neighbor, then you have not understood them... If on the other hand you have made judgments about [Scripture] that are helpful for building up this love, but for all that have not said what the author you have been reading actually meant ..., then your mistake is not serious, and you certainly cannot be accused of lying.” (On Christian Doctrine 1.36.40.)

This was Augustine’s standard, and it was wisdom then as now. Does how you read the Scripture, understand the Scripture, and teach the Scripture build up — or to use the old word, does it edify? Is your understanding set upon the firm foundation of the love of God and neighbor? That is a sound foundation, and Augustine makes clear that even if your interpretation of the Scripture might depart from what Moses or Isaiah or Saint Paul himself may originally have intended, you will not go far wrong if that interpretation leads to a greater love of God and neighbor. Love is the key that unlocks the Scripture, and that is true all the time, not just on Valentine’s Day!

For ultimately, love is God’s message, what God has been trying to get across to us from the very beginning — from the very first time God wrote with God’s own hand anything down to instruct the people, on those two tablets of stone, which I hope you will notice in the first tablet, the first four commandments how we are to love God (honoring God alone, not having idols, respecting God’s name, and keeping the Sabbath) and in the final six telling us how we are to love our neighbors (by honoring our parents, not killing, cheating, stealing, lying, or coveting).

And if we needed any further instruction, after all of that, Jesus himself provides us with a summary of the law of the two tablets as the very instruction that Augustine would later take as his key to interpreting the Scripture: to love God with your whole self, and to love your neighbor as yourself. On these two, as he said, hang all the law and the prophets — that is, all the rest of Scripture.

As another old hymn puts it, “What more can he say than to you he hath said?” Do you want to understand the Scripture? Do you? Let me repeat to you what God himself says in today’s Gospel in reference to Jesus, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”+

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The Net Effect

SJF • Epiphany 5c 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jesus said, “Put out into the deep water and let out your nets for a catch.”+

In spite of being the son of a carpenter, and perhaps being a carpenter himself, our Gospel reading this morning shows us that Jesus was quite a fisherman as well. This story involves another fisherman named Simon bar Jonah — a disappointed fisherman at that. He’s spent the whole night for nothing, and now faces the tedious task of washing and stowing the nets that let him down the night before even as he pulled them up — empty. Talk about adding insult to injury! But Jesus pays no mind to the grumbling Simon. No, Jesus just goes on preaching and teaching, sitting there in the front of the boat as Peter grumbles and fumbles in the stern. And this is how Jesus shows himself to be a master fisherman — for he too fishes for people.

Now, there are all kinds of fishermen in the world. You may have seen the sports fishermen who catch huge swordfish from the stern of powerboats — the fisherman’s equivalent of wrestling or in keeping with today, football. But there are also trout-fishers, the fishing world equivalent of archery — whose work is marked by the delicacy with which they cast the line, the gentleness with which the fly is twitched floating on the surface of the current, making it seem a natural treat to tempt a trout.

Jesus is a trout-fisher as opposed to a sports fisher. And the fish he’s after in this Gospel passage isn’t among the crowds on the shore — they’ll get caught in the big net later on, tended by someone else. No, the fish Jesus is after is right there in the boat with him. It’s Simon himself, Simon son of Jonah, no less. How’s that for a coincidence?

I’ve mentioned before that in Greek the first letters of the phrase “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior” spell out the Greek anagram IXΘYC, the Greek word for fish. People in the early church used the sign of the fish as a secret code for the fact that they were Christians. Some people still do the same with bumper stickers. So in our Gospel this morning we have Jesus, whose title spells out “fish” angling for Simon the fisherman who in this case is the fish Jesus is after, just as Simon’s father’s namesake, Jonah, once got caught by a fish, and later also became a fisher of men when he went preaching to Nineveh. This is some fish story! And before it is fully told, Simon will be sent, sent to fish for people all around the banks of the Mediterranean sea. He will have received a new calling.

And in today’s Gospel we see how Jesus places this important call. Jesus plays out his line, trailing the lure as he teaches and preaches. For while he speaks to the crowds on the sure, he is also targeting Simon, there in the boat with him. Simon seems to be a bystander, such is the craft of Jesus the fisher of souls. Simon doesn’t even know he’s being lured! He just sits there tending his nets, and the words of Jesus — what they were we’ll never know — they come to him second-hand, or so it seems.

Then, suddenly, the spell is broken. Jesus turns to Simon, and instead of asking to be rowed back to land, as we might expect at the end of the sermon, he tells the fisherman to put out to the deep and try for another catch.

You can well imagine what thoughts went through Simon’s head at that point. “A carpenter is going to tell me how to fish?” But something in Jesus’ command gets through, and out they go. Simon lets down the nets — nets he’s just finished cleaning — and suddenly grace breaks through, and there are so many fish he doesn’t know what to do with them, and the boats are almost swamped. And Peter, knowing now that he’s been caught, falls to his knees and appeals to Jesus to throw him back. But it’s too late. Jesus has caught his Big Fish who will become the Big Fisherman, and tells him not to be afraid, for he will now start his true calling, his calling to fish for people.

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Calling. That’s a simple English word for what sometimes gets called a vocation. Sometimes the “calling” is literal, and audible “calling out” in spoken words. Simon in our Gospel this morning gets an express verbal command; Gideon in our Old Testament gets the same; Paul on the road to Damascus got the same; Joan of Arc heard voices in the ringing of the church bells telling her to put on armor like a man and go to Orleans and tell the king to start acting like a king.

But most people in the history of the Christian faith don’t receive their calling in such a direct and literal and audible way. God whispers to our hearts more often than shouting in our ears. And just as Jesus appointed Simon to go out and fish for people, assigning him a task rather than doing it all himself, God continues to work through angels and ministers of grace, apostles and evangelists and preachers and teachers, members of our own families and friends we’ve known for years, and sometimes casual acquaintances we hardly know, or even a stranger — to gather in the people of God, to pull in the nets into his great ark of the church.

For as I’ve pointed out before, our church is a great ship, literally. Look up into the vaulting of the roof at those ribs. We’re a great upside down boat, and you are sitting in the nave. That’s why they call it “the nave.” We are on naval maneuvers! Our church is a boat turned upside down, a great boat that sails between heaven and earth. And there are nets cast out through the portals of this church that stretch off into the world, to bring in a catch.

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All of us here this morning have a calling, even if we are not entirely sure what it is or what it will be. Sometimes you have to listen very carefully to hear God’s voice speaking through the many messengers God sends out. Other times it may be as clear as a trumpet blast.

And we can’t be sure where the call will lead us. Simon Peter walked off and left the nets, the fish, the boats, and everything else. A man who thought he would spend his whole life long plying the nets by Galilee, ended his life in Rome crucified upside down, as upside down as his world had been turned, and as upside-down as he and the other Christians had turned the world— we Christians who sail the ship of the church upside down in the waters of heaven.

The call of God has “a net effect.” When we respond to God’s call it will make a difference in our lives; as Paul said in the epistle this morning, “I am what I am by God’s grace.” That grace, that call will make us be what we are, though it may change what we do: even if the calling is not to something new, but the rediscovery of something old. Sometimes God redirects a person’s skills say, from catching fish to catching people. And sometimes God opens our eyes to see God’s grace in the calling we’ve already got, the precious uniqueness of a skill we thought was common and ordinary. For there is nothing insignificant in God’s great world, and the net God casts is very fine, and doesn’t miss a single fish.

Of course, when we hear the word vocation we often think of vocation within the four walls of the church, an on-board ministry, so to speak. Not everyone, though, will be called to be a sailor, or a steward or purser — the world needs travel agents and tour guides and hotel managers too! And what I want to say to you this morning is that every calling of God is a holy calling, and every act done in the Name of Jesus is a work of the kingdom of heaven — on board the boat or out in the ports and harbors of our journey. The church is the ark of salvation, but some of us are also called to go out, out into the deep places of the world, where the Spirit of God moves where it wills, touching hearts that are hungry and thirsty for the Word from beyond the worlds, who made the world and everything in it, and who calls that whole world to himself.

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I mentioned Joan of Arc a moment ago, how she received a commission to go to the king and tell him to start acting like a king. Well, about a thousand years ago, King Henry the Third of Bavaria, thought he had a calling to become a monk. He’d been an effective monarch, but he also felt a strong sense that God wanted him to devote himself to a life of prayer. And so he went off to the local abbey, to meet with the wise old Prior. And right off, the Prior, who was very wise, said, “You know, your majesty, you’ve been a good king; but kings aren’t generally accustomed to accepting orders from other people, and here in the monastery, as you place yourself under obedience to me and the other senior monks, you may find the vow of obedience is much more difficult for you than the vows of poverty and chastity.” King Henry said he understood, but he persisted. “I know it will be difficult. But I wish to give my life to God. So I will obey you as you command.” “Will you, then, your Majesty, do as I tell you?” said the Prior. “I will,” he answered, “with all my heart.” And so the wise old Prior said, “Then go back to your throne and serve where God has put you.”

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Sometimes the call of God will send us off to the other end of the world, and sometimes the call of God will send us right back to where we’ve always been. But in any case, as we do God’s will for each of us, each of us being what we are through the grace of God alone; whether we see new things or see old things anew; the net effect is that our world will be changed, as we are empowered to change the world around us. God is calling each of us to be all that we can be, or to make new use of what we already have, for it all comes from God, after all, new or old. We may find ourselves, like Simon son of Jonah, leaving all that is familiar behind us on the beach. We may, like Henry of Bavaria, find ourselves returning to an old task with a new sense of purpose and commitment. In any case and in every case, God is calling us, and may all of our work in response, all of our calling and vocation, be to the glory of God alone, to whom we give thanks, and in whose Name we pray.+

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Prophet Without Honor

SJF • Epiphany 5c 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jesus said, No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.+

Once, long ago, there was a great city named Troy. And a Trojan prince fell in love with Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, and stole her from her Greek husband. This led to a great war, the Trojan War, as it came to be called. Helen was the woman whose face launched a thousand ships — and it had nothing to do with whacking them with bottles of champagne! No — these were warships sailing from the Greek “coalition of the willing” to lay siege to the great city across the sea in Asia Minor, in a war that would drag on for a decade — and stop me if is beginning to sound familiar!

In any case, you probably remember the famous strategy by which the Greeks won the war. After nine years of fighting, they pretended to give up, and left a giant horse as a peace offering. The Trojans took the bait, and wheeled the horse into their fortified city. That night, the Greek soldiers hidden inside the horse crept out, opened the gates, and let in the rest of the army — who had just been a few miles out to sea — and the city fell in flames and destruction.

Now, what made this particularly tragic is that the people of the city had been warned in no uncertain terms, but they paid no attention to the warning. The Trojan king had a daughter, Cassandra, who was cursed with a terrible gift: she could foretell the future, but only on the condition that no one except one old man would believe her — and no one believed him either. So while Cassandra yelled from the highest parapet of the city, warning her people not to be fooled about that horse — Beware of Greeks bearing gifts! — no one believed a word she said. They thought the Greeks had gone, and they had won. What they thought was a trophy turned out to be a weapon of mass destruction — and they hauled it themselves right into their city.

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In today’s Gospel we also witness doubt and destruction turned against the prophet himself. Jesus is in his hometown. The people have heard of the wonders he’s done in other towns and can’t quite believe it. Someone starts the word going around, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”

Imagine the buzz and whisper through the crowd. “Isn’t this the same Jesus we used to see playing with mud-pies when he was a little boy? Isn’t this the same Jesus who had to be taught how to read and write on this very synagogue porch? Don’t you remember his Bar Mitzvah? And remember the first time he tried to make a chair in his father’s workshop? And that time that he gave his parents grief, when he got lost in Jerusalem and ended up in the Temple?” And in that buzz and chatter, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ — who has just delivered the message of salvation, that the hope of Israel has dawned; that as we saw last week, that the words of Scripture have been fulfilled in their hearing — by means of wagging tongues this Jesus is whittled down to a little boy with muddy hands, an awkward youth trying to handle a saw, a nervous boy reading a Scripture passage for the first time, or a bad little boy lost in the big city, and causing his parents grief. Instead of receiving his message that the Scripture is fulfilled in their hearing, it’s as if all the congregation can find to say in response to this divine revelation is, “My, doesn’t he read well. What an improvement from when he was a boy!”

+ + +

No, no prophet is honored in his hometown. Cassandra couldn’t get her people to listen to her warning. “She’s the king’s daughter; naturally she’s over-excited about these things, worried about the war in which her whole family is involved — after all, her brother started it all when he ran off with Helen!”

And as for Jesus — he would not find ready hearers among the people of his own hometown. So he would carry his mission elsewhere, to other towns, to people who hadn’t known him, people free from preconceptions and expectations, from prejudices and the familiarity that breeds contempt — to people ready to hear because not only was the message new to them, but the messenger as well.

Saint Paul had a similar experience. His own people largely rejected him — even the rest of the Apostles were clearly uneasy around him, and though Peter and he shook hands, it was only so as to agree to go their separate ways: Paul would spend most of his ministry preaching and teaching Gentiles in the same Greek cities that centuries before had banded together to launch those thousand ships.

+ + +

Why is it that people can’t seem to accept the word of salvation from those closest to them? Why are missionary churches so often more vital and vibrant than those that are domestic?

I mentioned the old saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” But it also breeds expectations. We think we know what those we know best are going to say, so we don’t really listen to them, we don’t really hear them even when they say something we don’t expect to hear. Expectations drown perceptions, and when they do, it becomes impossible for us to see what is right before our eyes, to hear what is being shouted in our ears.

An old friend of mine, a print shop manager, used to keep the front page of a copy of the Daily News on the bulletin board up behind his desk. And whenever he interviewed people for proofreading jobs, he would ask them to read the banner headline aloud. And most would read the simple three-word headline, in letters four inches high, “Liz Taylor robbed.” And they wouldn’t get the job. Because what the headline said, was “Liz Talyor robbed.” T-a-l-y-o-r. A typo! How could anyone — from the original typesetter to the publisher of the Daily News — miss a misspelling in letters 288 points high? Simply because it wasn’t what they expected, and expectations, even the expectations of skilled proofreaders, can drown their perceptions.

+ + +

John the evangelist, in the prologue to his Gospel, said, “Jesus came to his own, and his own received him not.” They couldn’t hear what he was saying to them, because they knew who he was, and where he came from; or thought they knew where he came from. They couldn’t accept the good news he tried to tell them, because they thought they knew it all already, just as they knew him already.

In our gospel from Luke, Jesus tried to show them the way out, that they needed to become like foreigners, like a Phoenician widow or like a Syrian general if they were truly to understand the amazing grace of God. These were stories from their own tradition, from their own Scriptures, and they knew them backwards and forwards, but they had missed the point until Jesus made it — and when he made it they didn’t like it, if they even understood it. For the people of Nazareth didn’t want to become like foreigners in their own country! Instead they became enraged and hustled Jesus off, ready to throw him off the cliff. But they couldn’t lay hold of him with their hands, any better than they could lay hold of his message with their ears. He passed right through the midst of them, just as his teaching had gone in one ear and out the other, so he passed through the midst of them and went on his way, on to the other towns, on to new ears better tuned to hear a new message, and to be astounded by the authority with which he spoke.

+ + +

Can we here at Saint James Church become, as it were, foreigners in our own land, strangers in our own church? Can we be willing to hear the message of Jesus regardless of who it comes from — from one of our own or a stranger? How often has Jesus passed through our midst but not been seen? How often have we passed him by in the street without knowing it? How often have his words slipped past our ears, or in one ear and out the other, because we’ve treated them as the same old story instead of hearing them as the good news?

On a more personal level, can we hear our spouse or child or colleagues, really hear them, really pay them the respect we should pay to even a stranger, a messenger with important news, and not face them with a kind of “Oh-I-know-what-you’re-
going-to-say-already” attitude — talk to the hand — that misses the heart of the matter? Who knows what gracious word may come when you least expect it? Who knows what familiar voice may speak a word of salvation in your ear.? We dare not say, “It is only a boy... or my wife... or someone I’ve heard a thousand times.” For the word of God is always new, whoever it comes from, and it can pierce the soul and light up our hearts if we will allow it to do so.

Let us pray. Dear Lord, be at home with us in exile here, as our own familiar friend, and help us hear your good news, whether it comes from neighbor or stranger; open our hearts and minds and ears, to hear you when you speak, to embrace your word in our hearts, to love and serve you all our days, until we come to our true homeland, where with the Father and the Holy Spirit, you live and reign, one God for ever and ever.+

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Good News for Now

SJF • Epiphany 3c 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jesus said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”+

You’ve probably all heard the old saying, “No news is good news.” What I’d like to suggest to you this morning is that old news is good news, too. For in the Gospel passage we heard today, Jesus wasn’t being original. He wasn’t telling the people in the Nazareth synagogue anything they hadn’t heard many times before. No, he was reading from a scroll, a copy of a copy of a copy of an ancient document, handed down for almost five hundred years: the scroll of the prophecies of Isaiah, old news from long before his time, but good news at any time.

Who wouldn’t want to hear about release for captives, sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed? This is good news that addresses universal human longings, universal human hopes, whether preached as they were originally, to those facing captivity in Babylon, or centuries later in Jesus’ day, preached to Palestinian Jews suffering under Roman domination, or again centuries after that to African slaves brutally torn from their homes and shipped across an ocean to toil on plantations of the American South or the cane-fields of the West Indies, or then again in living memory to their descendants in the ghettos of Montgomery, Alabama or New York City. This is old news, but it is also good news, preached again, even more recently, amidst the ravaged ruins of Haiti.

This good news had been repeated for centuries, by the time Jesus took up that scroll,. and it has been often repeated since. What is different, the crucial difference, in the news as Jesus delivered it, lies in his closing one-line sermon on the text: (the shortest but most powerful sermon ever delivered!) “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Isaiah’s words had been read for centuries, and would continue to be read, but always with an eye to the future, to some unrealized liberation not yet come, and in that they provided encouragement and support for people in their suffering, to comfort them. Yet Jesus, with that authority for which his ministry and preaching were known, says in that one line that these promises are not for some future yet to be realized time, but are unfolding even now, even as he says them. Promises from a distant past for a future yet to come suddenly meet in the glorious Now of their realization.

This kind of spiritual “time travel” is deeply embedded in the Jewish tradition into which Jesus was born and in which he grew to maturity. The annual Passover meal was not simply a re-enactment of that night in Egypt from the distant past, that night when the spirit of God hovered over the city, slaying the firstborn of the Egyptians while passing over the houses of those marked with the blood of the paschal lamb. The annual Passover meal was and is timeless, so that those Jews who gather to this day to break matzoh and eat bitter herbs and roasted lamb in haste and with girded loins — it is as if they are dining at that same original Passover meal. So too for us, our weekly celebration of the Holy Eucharist where we share in Christ our Passover is not simply a re-enactment or a recreation of the last supper, but a present participation both in that historic event and in the heavenly banquet that awaits us in the future. God telescopes or folds up the distant moment of salvation into the present commemoration, and has and will for ever and ever.

This is the spirit and attitude we need to adopt if we are to understand what Jesus means when he says the year of the Lord’s favor has begun; that release, new vision, and liberation have arrived. The ancient prophecies of a distant future time are happening now, all around us, if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear. The day of liberation has come!

+ + +

Yet what an odd person to bring such a message! We know what would happen to Jesus in very short order: arrest, trial, sentence, torture and death. Hardly evidence of the Lord’s favor! The one who proclaims release will betaken captive; the one who announces new sight to the blind will be blinded by the sweat of his own thorn-wounded brow; the one who proclaims liberation will go to his death while a criminal goes free. Could there be anything more tragic, more ironic?

But my dear sisters and brothers, what I proclaim to you today is that it is neither tragic nor ironic. What Jesus spoke that day in Nazareth was true then and it is true today. Just as the Passover Seder and the Holy Eucharist are for ever new instances of the same meal, a kind of second seating, if you will, so too the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled in our hearing, today and every day — if we have ears to hear. For what Jesus shows us in his life and in his death and in his rising to life again is that the kingdom of God is among us. What Jesus reveals to us in his victory over death, is that liberation is taking place even in the midst of our pain and our suffering; that the presence of the Holy One of Israel abides among the faithful even when they are oppressed; that the knowledge of the love of God survives and thrives even as we pass from life. This is the incredible fulfillment that Jesus proclaimed that day: that the liberation of the spirit transcends and transforms the suffering of the flesh; that the vision of the heavenly city can illuminate our eyes even when they are blinded by the tears of this transitory life; that the yoke of oppression can be lifted from our shoulders even as we sink into the grave, singing all the while, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

+ + +

This parish church has from its foundation been blessed by the presence and ministry of people in the healing professions. I’ve spoken before of Dr. George Cammann, the inventor of the modern stethoscope, who served this congregation in the nineteenth century as a lay leader. And among our members today are many who work in the hard but vital field of medicine. Those who exercise these ministries share in the vision of fulfillment that Christ preached that day so long ago. And what we celebrate and honor in them is not simply the skill to cure, but the gift to heal.

To bring about a medical cure is no small feat, but as we all know, ultimately medical science comes to an end, and there is always that one last malady or injury that will not or cannot be cured.

But healing — healing that is so much more than a mere cure — healing can happen and does happen even in the midst of death, perhaps even especially then. Most physicians and nurses know this, they’ve seen it — anyone who serves in a nursing home or hospice knows it for a certainty— that even in the midst of death itself liberation can be proclaimed. The healing of the spirit can encompass the death of the flesh, the vision of the heavenly city can shine forth even in the most unexpected places.

I spoke last week of the sign of transformation that Jesus gave at the wedding party at Cana; how it wasn’t so much about wine as about the new life to which he called the people. So too, the sign for us this week is not the sign of miraculous cures, but of unshakable faith that survives even in the face of death, that transcends the grave and outlives it — that hope for the resurrection. Those who serve in the works of mercy are themselves signs and agents of the heavenly reality that comes to birth even in the midst of earthly pain and death. They are the members of Christ’s body, the body which suffers when any member suffers, the body that rejoices when any member of it is honored. These workers of mercy are those most acutely charged with reaching out to touch and comfort in times of pain and suffering, to cool the fevered brow and grasp the hand of the wounded.

In their hands and hearts that scroll has been placed, to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, not merely the temporary respite of relief but the eternal manumission of salvation; not the mere glimpse of a furtive hope but the steady vision of the love of God; to set free the oppressed and proclaim the Lord’s favor; not for a time or a season but for eternity, and not with the relative freedom of even the best earthly society but with the true and lasting freedom of the children of God in God’s own house; This is not an unrealized promise from long ago. This is not a hoped for vision deferred to some distant time to come. This is the power and the presence of God with you and the present power of God among you — you, the Body of Christ, filled with his life-giving Spirit. As he promised, so it is. Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Here. Now. Always. Everywhere. In all places and at all times. From the heights to the depths and to the end of the ages. “Publish glad tidings, tidings of peace, tidings of Jesus, redemption and release!” To him whose promises are secure and fulfilled, to him be the glory, henceforth and for evermore.+

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The Sign of the Wine

SJF • Epiphany 2c 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The steward said, “You have kept the good wine until now.”+

Have you ever heard the expression, You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? It’s one of those proverbial impossible tasks, like spinning straw into gold, herding cats, getting blood from a turnip, or sculpting with Jell-O. Today we come to the wedding feast at Cana, like uninvited guests looking on from the sidelines, and getting a glimpse of an interchange between Jesus, his mother, and what we’d now-a-days call the head waiter. In this little drama, we witness the first sign through which Jesus revealed his glory, changing water into wine.

Now, just as a sow’s ear is no place to start if you’re making a silk purse, or straw to make gold, or a turnip to get blood, or cats for a parade, or Jell-O for a sculpture, water is not what you start with if you want to make wine. What you need is the fruit of the vine: grapes. The only water that comes into it is the rain that waters the vineyard: it’s grapes that wine comes from, and all of the water from the Creation through the Flood would have done no good to Noah, when it came to making the first wine, if the ground after the flood had not brought forth grapes. Everybody knows that, and they knew it in Jesus’ day just as well as we do now. Perhaps even better: Because every town back then had its winepress, and wine was the everyday drink of just about everyone.

So they knew then as we know now, that water doesn’t change into wine. In fact, water doesn’t really change into anything, all by itself, does it? Left to itself, it evaporates! Even ice and steam have to be frozen solid or boiled up if they are to change into another of H₂O’s three states: fluid, vapor, and solid. Let solid ice melt, or vaporous steam condense, and you’re back to plain old liquid water. (That’s our chemistry lesson for the day.) Fact is, you can try to change water all you want, but all you’ll get is wet.

Nor can you simply add things to water to change it into wine, at least not good wine. You may remember the story of the stone soup that I some years ago. Of course water can become soup if you add onions, barley, carrots, meat, and salt and spices. Even if you added “wine concentrate” to water — something to make any wine-lover cringe — you aren’t really making wine — any more than stirring a teaspoon of Tang into a glass of water “makes” it into orange juice! Remember Tang? Whatever you do, no human power can change water into wine all by itself.

So that’s why what Jesus did is a miracle, which isn’t just something to amaze, it isn’t some magic trick, but something to instruct: it is, as our Gospel calls it, not a miracle but a sign — a sign that points to some great truth about who it is Jesus is. It is a sign that doesn’t just amaze but also reveals something about Jesus; it reveals his glory and leads his disciples to greater faith in him. Only Jesus could take water and make it change its very being, its very substance, until it simply wasn’t water any more, but wine — and good wine at that!

+ + +

Of course, the sign that Jesus performed isn’t ultimately about wine, but about transformation, about the kind of transformed lives that Jesus calls us to live. The amazement may have been about the wine, but the sign is about the change — the change that begins in him, when he became one of us, and changed human nature.

Sometimes we think that transformation is modifying how we act in response to the world around us. But transformation isn’t about a change in external shape or state or form, like water changing to ice or steam in response to the changing temperature. All of us know, from how many years of new years’ resolutions that have dissolved themselves early in the year, that simply promising yourself that you’ll keep your cool under stress; or telling yourself to build up a head of steam to finish a project long overdue, or that you’ve postponed, just won’t work. The pressure (or lack of pressure) of a changing environment doesn’t really change us but instead reveals what we really are, just as changing temperature and pressure show what ice and steam really are: water.

We will lose our cool under stress, and get burned out when the heat and pressure of responsibility rises, and we do get lazy and unproductive when the pressure is off. So human transformation isn’t about changing how we act or react.

But then is transformation about adding something to ourselves? No, for as we saw with water, transformation isn’t about adding ingredients to make either soup or reconstituted wine, or the beverage of astronauts! That doesn’t change the water, it just flavors it.

Sometimes we think that if only we could add something to ourselves, if only we had more money, or a different job, or even different clothes, we’d become different people. But we all know that more money doesn’t really change a person or a personality. The winner of the lottery may turn out to be just as miserable as she was before, when she discovers all those “friends” she didn’t know she had. A new job may bring out hidden talents, or even perhaps help you develop new skills, but you will still be you. And in spite of the proverb, clothes do not make the man — and he can end up being all dressed up with no place to go! True transformation has to go deeper — right to the heart.

Some years ago, Adolph Coors IV, then heir to the huge Colorado brewing industry, was at a prayer service and believed he had undergone a conversion: so he swore he would give up the beer-brewing business and lead a new life. Shortly thereafter, however, he recalled how Jesus transformed water into wine, and decided it was OK to stay in the beer business after all! His conversion was short-lived and his transformation was superficial and temporary.

The long and the short of it is that on our own we can (for a time) change what we do but we can’t for good and all, and on our own, change who we be. If we aren’t transformed inour very nature, no outward addition or action, or subtraction or restraint of action for that matter, is going to make us something other than what we are.

That water at Cana of Galilee couldn’t do anything or have anything added to it to make it into wine. What it needed was a word spoken by Jesus, to be poured into jars, and to be ladled out and tasted and enjoyed. True transformation doesn’t happen apart from Jesus. Those jugs of water could have sat in Cana from the wedding day to the day of doom, and never would have changed to wine unless Jesus had chosen to do as his mother asked. And when he did, all it took was a word of command to the servants: fill up the jars with water, and then draw out the wine.

So too, we will not change — we can not change — unless we are open to Jesus and the word he speaks to us. Unless we hear his commandment to be filled with his love, and then to pour out that love to those around us, we will never be transformed. We cannot do it on our own. We will remain empty jars standing in the corner unless we are willing to let his love be poured into our hearts, where by means of his word he can transform it into the joyful wine of God’s Spirit, which we can then share in rejoicing and fellowship.

+ + +

All of us are keenly aware of the horrific tragedy that has struck the people of Haiti this past week. All of us are, I am sure, strongly hoping that this tragic situation can be transformed. And to some extent it can — as we too are inwardly transformed and empowered by God’s Holy Spirit, in a burst of generosity to send help as soon as we can to those suffering people. As you know, tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day, and we normally take up a collection to support the MLK Scholarship. I want to suggest to you today that we split what we would normally send to that scholarship fund in half, and send the other half to Episcopal Relief and Development for their coordinated push to help the people of Haiti. I think Dr. King would approve, and I hope you do, too. Do you? Through the transformation of our hearts, our offering too can be transformed into practical help — we can’t change water into wine, but we can change money into food, medical supplies, and feet on the ground — we can convert our dollars into life-saving help.

And so in our own small way, may we, who have died with Christ in the water of baptism, heard his word of command in the Gospel, and drunk the wine of his most precious blood, be inwardly transformed by him who died for us, and who lives in us, even Jesus Christ our Lord. +

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That is My Name

SJF • 1 Epiphany 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Now when all the people were baptized, and Jesus also had been baptized, and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove; and a voice came from heaven....+

Suddenly, it got awfully quiet. Moments before there had been splashes of water, the loud voice of John the Baptist, the clamor of the crowd. People waiting in line had asked those ahead of them how cold the water was, and some complained, even those used to walking barefoot, about how the rocks hurt their feet. Others were too full of emotion to speak, too aware of their past failings, too full of hope for a new beginning to pay much mind to the chatter around them. Then, after the baptisms, when the crowd had settled on the shore, some talked quietly among themselves about what it was like. Just as people who have just seen a movie talk with each other about their favorite parts, the people on Jordan’s bank talked about how it felt when John had held them firmly by the shoulder, then pushed them under the cold, clear water. They recalled how all the normal sounds had disappeared to be replaced by a humming burbling pressure as they held their breath and waited for John to let them back up. They could hardly make out his words through that humming pressure: “I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire!” They came up sputtering, blinking, and feeling and knowing that something great had happened to them: they felt new-born, re-born. “That’s what it was like,” they said to each other as they sat on the shore, drying in the warm sunlight, resting a little before the long walk back home.

Then something unexpected happened. A deep voice spoke, just loud enough that everyone could hear it, like distant thunder: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Then, silence. Everyone looked around. Who said that? Where did it come from? A little way down the stream a man was sitting by a rock, praying. “What is that on his shoulder?” someone said. “A dove?” “And why is John the Baptist looking at him so intently, so excitedly?” There was a good reason. For in John’s heart a question and a hope began to form: “Is he the one?”

+ + +

Is he the one? We might well ask, Who is this “one” about whom John wondered and hoped? For what — or for whom — had he been waiting and watching? It had been a long wait, you see, longer far than John’s own life. Hundreds of years before John was born a promise had been given to the people of Israel. A deliverer would come, one chosen by God, an anointed one, a Christ (for “Christ” is simply the Greek word for “one who is anointed,” which in Hebrew is Moshiach — Messiah.) This chosen one, this anointed one, this Messiah, this Christ, would not only deliver Israel, but establish justice on the earth.

But who was he? Was this prophecy about some individual person, or symbolic of Israel as a whole, personified? Was it Cyrus the Persian king, who would indeed be called God’s chosen and anointed one, to return the people from exile in Babylon? Return them Cyrus did — that prophetic detail came true — but still injustice held sway on the earth... He was not “the one.” Time passed; other prophets spoke, other kings ruled; wars were fought and won and lost. And still, justice was not established on the earth, and Israel was delivered from bondage only to be conquered yet again a few years later by another earthly power.

+ + +

But lately in the days of John the Baptist, in the days of the latest occupation, by Rome, a new hope had arisen in Israel, Could John the Baptist himself be the one? Well, John answered them directly: No. He was merely the forerunner, the advance man for the one who was to come. He, too, had been given a personal assurance: “The one upon whom you see the Spirit descending..., is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.”^{John 1:33}

John understood he had been given a prophet’s task, the task I’ve spoken of before: Prophets point — and not to themselves! Prophets bubble with holy enthusiasm that cries out, “Look! Behold!” Prophets aren’t interested in starting a cult; true prophets point people to God.

I reminded you a moment ago about what people do when they’ve enjoyed seeing a film together. No doubt you know this from your own experience. What’s the first thing you do when you’ve experienced something wonderful? Whether it’s a book that you think is the best thing you’ve ever read; or a movie that delighted you; or a fascinating exhibit at the museum. What do you do? You tell people about it, of course. And the way you tell them is filled with special kind of enthusiasm. You can’t wait till they’ve seen it, or read it, or been there. And as I mentioned, we all know that special extra delight, the added pleasure in discovering that someone else has already read the book, or seen the movie. That’s when the real fun starts. “What part did you like best? Wasn’t that a great scene? I’m going again next week! Want to go together?”

Prophets and enthusiasts both point at something else, not at themselves. They don’t say, “Follow me!” but “Come with me!” And if for some reason they can’t go along, like John when he was in prison, they say, “Go, follow him. He is the one. I told you I wasn’t the one; I was only preparing the way.”

+ + +

God, in this as in all else, is different. God also points things out, directs our attention, shows us the way; but God does it differently. God does say, “Follow me!” Not only that, but God says “Don’t follow anyone else!”

Compare for a moment: listen to John the Baptist’s humility: “One who is more powerful than I... I am not worthy to untie his sandal...” Then hear the emphasis in God’s description of his coming chosen one, the Messiah. Notice how much God uses the first person singular! “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him... I am the Lord, that is my name...” We might say that God is “the first person singular” — for when Moses asked for God’s name, he was told, “I AM.”

Names are the point for naming is perhaps the most important way to point something out, of giving it an identity, and directing our attention to it. When God spoke at Christ’sbaptism, the great “I AM” gave Jesus a name too, “My Son, the beloved.” Names identify both the person, and the person’s relationship to others. We have a “given” name, given to each of us after we are born, and a family name as well, the name we arere born with, the name that was there before we were born. One name belongs to us, the other name says we belong to something else: a family. At his baptism, Jesus (the name he was given when he was born) received a new name, a name that describes his relationship to God: Jesus belongs to God: he is God’s beloved Son. He is Christ — God’s anointed one.

The same is true for us in our baptism. We receive our baptismal name, our “first name” as we say; we receive our family name, officially as it is pronounced over us; but we are also given a name, a hallmark, like the thumbprint a potter presses into the bottom of the pottery he makes, to mark it out as his very own creation. We too are anointed, “Christened” as we say, and given a mark and a name that transcends both our individuality and our family, a mark that doesn’t say so much who we are but whose we are. We are “marked as Christ’s own for ever” and we are given the new name “Christian.” We belong no longer to ourselves alone, but to Christ, who is Lord of all. We are his, because we bear a new name, Christian.

As we come up from those cold Jordan waters, blinking and sputtering, perhaps (I can tell you from experience) gasping and crying and perhaps wriggling around, we are given a new name, we are marked with an owner’s mark, in the shape of a cross — right here. Baptized into Christ’s death, we share in his resurrection.

And we have a job to do. The Baptismal Covenant is our Christian job description — and we’ll have our annual review in just a few moments. Among the accountabilities in that job description is the task to “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers,” which is what we do here each Sunday. But we are also assigned the task “to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.” It shouldn’t be hard to do the latter when we’ve done the former. Isn’t life everlasting better than the best novel you ever read, the most exciting movie you ever saw? Isn’t the Lord’s table the greatest feast? Isn’t the Word of God proclaimed the most important thing you could ever hear? Can you leave this time of worship with a glow of enthusiasm; filled with excitement? Can you tell your friends about it? You are the evangelists and prophets, sent to proclaim the word: you are the messengers of Christ at work in the world.

And when you spread the word of what you have seen and heard, of what God’s saving grace has meant for you, of how you have heard his word, known his forgiveness in your heart and been fed at his table, when you have shared this good news, of God’s presence in and with the church on earth, you can always end by saying, “I’m going back next week! Do you want to go together?”+

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Evil in High Places

SJF • Christmas 2 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.+

Merry Christmas! Christmas season isn’t over yet, remember; it’s 12 days long. Today is the 10th day of Christmas and the second Sunday after Christmas. So we can still say “Merry Christmas” for another two days! But just to round things out, let me say, Happy New Year.

Merry and Happy...hmmm. Our gospel today, however, is a sobering reminder that all is not well in the world. It introduces one of the great villains of world history: King Herod the Great. (Don’t confuse him with the other Herod, his son Herod Antipas, who would later rule over Galilee, and cause trouble both for John the Baptist and for Jesus some thirty years later. I suppose one might well observe “like father, like son.”)

This earlier Herod is a prototype of evil in high places: a stereotype of tyranny and wickedness in the place where justice and good should sit. We only hear the first part of the story in our Gospel this morning — but you can tell that something is up even if you didn’t know the rest of the story: that after the Wise Men don’t come back to Herod, he too knows that something is up, something is going on to threaten his position, that there’s a rival king out there somewhere, and he orders the massacre of all of the little boys up to the age of two in the town of Bethlehem — and the Holy Family only escapes in a flight to Egypt because of Joseph’s dream.

Herod is so bad that he became proverbial. The historical Herod merged with the legendary to produce the perfect villain. In the religious plays that the merchant guilds of England performed in the Middle Ages — for the benefit of the common people, few of whom could read or understand the Latin bible — the part of Herod was always played by the biggest ham actor. The man who could shout and scream and roll his eyes the most would get the part to play horrible Herod. This style of overacting became the rule for Herod to such an extent that a few hundred years later Shakespeare could joke that a really bad actor “out-Herod’s Herod!”

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But what I would like to suggest to you today is that the really scary villains aren’t the ones that scream and roll their eyes, and run up and down the stage stamping their feet. The ones who scare me are the ones who go about their villainy calm, cool, and collected.

If you watch the History Channel at all, no doubt you’ve seen films of Adolf Hitler — certainly one of the worst if not the worst villains of the last century. If you’ve seen him speaking at one of his party rallies , you’ve seen how he gestured and emoted like the ham actor he was — in fact, one of the reasons he was able to come to power was that the moderates in the German government didn’t take him seriously, and couldn’t understand how anyone else could either; they considered him a blustering buffoon; more fools they! And by no means wishing to diminish or downplay the evil or the villainy of Hitler, I just want to say that I always find films of his Soviet counterpart, Josef Stalin, even more disturbing. “Uncle Joe” as he was sometimes called, was a man as ruthless and murderous as Hitler. But when you see him speaking to the crowds in Red Square, he barely breaks a sweat. Instead of the silly posturing of the Fascist salute, Stalin gently waves like the Queen Mum. But he could send tens of thousands to their deaths in prison camps with just such a dismissive wave — and he did, time and time again.

And I tend to think that Herod was a bit more like Stalin than he was like Hitler. He’s a smooth villain, is Herod. He knows how to make nice, and be polite, how to cozy up to the wise men, and get them to act as his agents — until they too are warned in a dream not to buy what this smooth villain is selling.

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And isn’t this a warning to us? Avoiding evil and malicious people would be very easy if you could always tell who they were by obvious clues — if all the villains really wore black hats, or had pencil mustaches and favored cheap suits and loud neckties. The fact is, con men and crooks are successful precisely because they look just like the rest of us, or maybe even better than us — the con man has to get you to trust him, after all.

While not wanting to put him in the class of Hitler, Stalin, or Herod, Bernie Madoff would not have been able to make off with all that money if people hadn’t trusted him. Villains in high places, whether the merely financial evil of an embezzler or swindler, or the literally murderous evil of the manufacturer who spikes infant formula with poisonous chemicals to make it look more nutritious, they often get away with it precisely because they seem so courteous, solicitous, and upstanding. You know the old expression of “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” — well evil in high places often clothes itself very comfortably in the robes of state and privilege and propriety. And they fit like a glove.

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So what are we to do? Perhaps the dreams of Joseph and the Wise Men, warning them not to trust Herod were in part a result of some sixth sense that tells you something is wrong even when it seems all right on the surface. There’s a story of a woman who managed to escape the Bernie Madoff disaster because one day she passed him on the street and noticed his shoes weren’t shined — and she pulled out all her money from his care, and escaped the disaster. Perhaps that is how the Holy Spirit works some times — as Paul mentioned in Ephesians, opening the eyes of our hearts — to see those little things that the eyes of our head might not catch. So it is important to keep both sets of eyes wide open. More importantly, much more importantly, because we will still miss things, and still be fooled — no one escapes that all the time, as Lincoln observed: that you can fool most of the people some of the time — we can have trust, more importantly, that while there may well be evil in high places, as Saint Paul reminds us in our reading from Ephesians, we also have a friend in high places! The battle with the forces of evil is not ours alone, and that is good news! As Martin Luther said in his great hymn, “Did we in our own strength confide, our winning would be losing; Were not the right man on our side, the man of God’s own choosing!” We do not need to tremble in fear at the “Prince of darkness grim” or any of his third-rate imitators seated in high places of power and prestige.

For there is a word of power above all earthly powers, a living Word and wisdom in whom we are empowered to live, and who lives in us, and that is a big part of what Christmas means. He has endowed us with a glorious inheritance and has given us a spirit of wisdom and revelation, when we open the eyes of our hearts as we have come to know him, by his becoming one of us. This is Saint Paul’s message of hope and encouragement to the people of Ephesus, and it is a message of hope and encouragement to us as well.

We do need to keep our eyes open and to be, as Jesus himself warned us, as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves —
— there are crooks and villains aplenty in this world of ours; corruption loves its comfortable seat in the halls of power and some seated there are smooth and clever, able to deceive even the elect.

But only for a time — their doom is sure. Justice may be deferred but it will not be denied, and the villains in high places and on their lofty thrones — or in their posh boardrooms or their corner offices — will find their stolen power slipping away, slipping through their greedy fingers. The Holy Family will escape. Christ will spend that safe sojourn in Egypt, return to Galilee, and grow to manhood. And even when that other Herod, Herod Junior, joined with the priests and scribes and Pharisees, with the power of the Romans at their disposal, think they have finally succeeded, and defeated Jesus, and nailed him to the cross, they will be proved wrong. Mourning will be turned to joy, and Christ will rise again, never to die again.

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And so, good people, take courage. Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Have confidence that though evil and wickedness may seem for a time to run the show, the curtain will soon come down on their last performance. Christmas is the preview of that promise, and it reminds us that God has come among us to give us power to discern and avoid evil, and ultimately in and with his strength, to defeat it. This is the hope to which God has called us, that we may know what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe. So let us rejoice and be glad, and believe that Christmas promise, in and through Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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