Readings:

Isaiah 66:18-21
Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13
Luke 13:22-30

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In our Gospel message today, which is from Luke, chapter 13, Jesus is traveling along, teaching, and heading towards Jerusalem. Along the way, someone asks him: “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” Jesus doesn’t answer that question. He answers a different question. He tells the person, or tells the crowd, “strive to enter through the narrow gate.” That’s His answer to this question. What does that mean? One thing we know it doesn’t mean is to actually be perfect. Following the law doesn’t save you. We know this because Jesus says, over and over again, how we will fail to follow the law perfectly. We simply aren’t going to do it. We don’t always turn the other cheek. A man may look at a woman with lust in his heart, and so forth. All these kinds of things happen. There are all kinds of things where people are simply going to fail to measure up to the letter of the law and to the spirit of the law. That’s what Jesus tells us all the time. He’s saying, you are not going to make it by trying to follow the law. Paul says the same thing, repeatedly, in his letters. The law doesn’t save us. We are saved by faith through the grace of God. That is what saves us, not following the law, because we are going to fail to do that. We are.

Jesus also says that there will be people who are surprised to see prophets in the Kingdom and that they themselves are not. What He’s talking about here, people who see people from all over the world going into the Kingdom of Heaven, when they themselves, who were part of the chosen people, Israelites, were not. This would come as a surprise to them. This is His likely audience, the person asking Him this question. So being from a particular group, being an Israelite, is not going to be enough either.

Our Old Testament reading today was from Isaiah. Isaiah tells us God is going to save all these other people who are not Hebrews. He says, “I will set a sign among them; I will send fugitives to the nations: to Tarshish, Put and Lud, Mosoch, Tubal and Javan, to the distant coastlands that have never heard of my fame, or seen my glory.” He says, I’m going to bring people from all over the world to be saved. He even says, “some of these I will take as priests and Levites, says the Lord.” That means a lot, because in the Hebrew faith at that time, in order to be a priest you had to be a Levite. They don’t have a priesthood now, they have rabbis. But back then, when they had the Temple and they had the priesthood, you had to be from the tribe of Levi in order to be a priest. You had to come from a particular group to occupy that priestly station. Here, Isaiah is saying, that’s not going to be the case. In the future, people are going to be priests of the Lord who are not Levites, who are not even originally Hebrews. So, being a particular group of people is not going to save you. Following the law is not going to save you.

There’s a story I’m reminded of. I read about it yesterday, when I was preparing this. Some of you may have seen Fulton Sheen on TV. Anybody ever seen Fulton Sheen? You won’t see him a lot. It’s from a long time ago. In the 1950s and 60s he was very popular commentator on Christianity. He was a Roman Catholic clergyman. He had a certain style. You wouldn’t forget if you’ve seen him on TV. He was a very stylish guy. Anyway, he said, people will be surprised on the Last Day. They’ll be surprised at some of the people they see in the Kingdom of Heaven, and they’ll be surprised, too, at some of the people they don’t see in the Kingdom of Heaven. This what Jesus is saying right here. Our way of thinking about people is all upside down and totally different than what God thinks about people. This is the kicker, Sheen says, people will also be surprised to see themselves in the Kingdom of Heaven. I often think that, too. I get that.

Anyway, the standards of the world are not God’s standards. It’s not what group we’re in or what other people think about us or even what we think about ourselves. None of that is going to save us. None of it. So what can we do? First, we have to understand that salvation is a gift from God and not an accomplishment. It is not something that we do for ourselves. It’s something that Jesus Christ did for us on the Cross. It is a gift. A free gift of the grace of God, and we have to accept that gift to receive it. How do we do that? How do we accept that gift of salvation? Jesus is telling us that here. He says, “strive to enter through the narrow gate.” So what does that mean? Let’s break it down. Striving. This is how we accept the gift of salvation. That is, accepting Christ as our Lord and Savior is not a one-time thing. Instead it is a way of living, and it’s something we have to strive to do, because we are all imperfect. Jesus knows that. Paul knows that. All the Saints know that. God knows that. We are all imperfect. We are going to fail to measure up. But what God expects of us, is that we strive – is that we keep trying, that we keep reaching out to accept that gift of salvation from Him. We have to be willing to give ourselves to God.

When we say Jesus Christ is our Lord, think about what that means to have Jesus as our Lord. Think about what the word “Lord” means. The Lord is the boss. The Lord is who we serve. We look to the Lord for guidance. We live for Christ, our Lord, in everything that we do. Whatever we do, we do it for the Kingdom of God: our work, our relationships, the way we treat other people, what we do with ourselves each day, we should strive to do all of these things for our Lord, Jesus Christ. This is the striving that Jesus has in mind here. That we keep trying, even though we know we’re not going to always measure up. We keep trying. We keep reaching out to accept that gift of salvation from God.

“Enter through the narrow gate.” That is the other part of what he says. What is that? Jesus is the narrow gate. Jesus is it. “Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.” Jesus is that narrow gate. We strive to be closer to Jesus. We strive to live our lives with Jesus as our Lord. This is what God expects of us. Strive, and don’t give up. This is a way to live, and this is how we enter into eternal life in the presence of God.

In Luke 13:22-30, at the end of it, he talks about a banquet. A banquet in which “people will come from the East and the West, and from the North and the South, and recline at table in the Kingdom of God.” This is reminiscent of what Isaiah says about God bringing people from all over into His salvation. “For behold, some who are last will be first, and some who are first will be last.” It’s not what we think, it’s not the standards of the world that’s going to save us. It’s that striving to make Jesus Christ our Lord. And that banquet is something we can enjoy while we’re living, too. If we strive to be closer to God, we don’t have to strive for things that don’t satisfy and that don’t have a real meaning. We all do that. We strive for all kinds of things that are meaningless and that never will satisfy us. We can strive instead for the one thing that counts above all: the presence of God in our lives, now and for eternity.

Amen.

Readings:

Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10
Hebrews 12:1-4
Luke 12:49-53

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s message is one that, frankly, is uncomfortable. It made me uncomfortable to prepare it, and it may make some of you, maybe everybody, uncomfortable to hear it. But it is what it is. It can’t be avoided. The key thing that I want to focus on today is Jesus’ statement in the Gospel. He says, “do you think that I have come to establish peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” This is a powerful, though a disturbing message. We often think that because the Gospel message is one of love, that it’s also a warm and fuzzy message. Everybody’s comfortable. Everything’s fine as it is. But that’s not what Jesus says. Remember for a minute, Jesus is the one who overturned the tables in the Temple, and whipped the moneychangers. Jesus was not a warm and fuzzy guy. He was not liked by everybody. That’s why they killed Him. He offended lots of people, and ultimately they killed Him. In his message today, He says, “there is a baptism with which I must be baptized.” And He knows what He’s talking about: His death. Imagine for a moment, being Jesus, and being aware that you have come into the earth to be tortured to death and that’s what’s going to happen to you. That is your life’s mission. Wow! He did not mess around, and He did offend lots of people.

If the Gospel is the center of your life, some people will not like you. If you read the Gospels, you will find things that make you uncomfortable. Jesus did not come here to make us comfortable. He says, “I have come to set the earth on fire and how I wish it were already blazing.” He came to foment change. He came to change the earth. He didn’t come to tell us everything is fine as it is, He came to tell us it was not fine as it is. Think about this for a moment, and this is something to do on your own, not to do with other people, at least not initially, maybe not at all: think about the world in which we live, 21st century American secular culture. Look at any department of life and the cultural norms of the world that surround us, and see if you can square that with what the Christian faith teaches us. I would suggest to you that in no department of life is 21st century American secular culture coterminous with the Christian faith. It is not. Jesus came into the world to set it on fire and He came, not to bring peace, but to bring division.

If you take a stand on anything, some people will not like you. In my day job I teach politics, and one of the things I teach my students is this: if you listen to politicians, they know that if they take a clear position on any issue, some people will like it, and some people won’t. So they are going to lose votes any time they take a clear position on anything. So what do they do? They try to avoid taking a clear position on anything. They don’t want to do that, because they don’t want to lose votes. They have to spend money and struggle for every vote they get, so they try to please everyone. Jesus did not come to please everyone. He’s saying here, “I came to set the earth on fire.” He didn’t come to please everyone. He said, “I came to bring division into the world.” The Christian faithful don’t take popular and prevailing culture as their guide. We have one guide: Jesus Christ. That is our guide. Nothing else is our guide. He came to set the world on fire. He came to set us on fire. This is not a warm and fuzzy message. He is telling us that we, as Christians, will be challenged. We will be challenged by the world around us, and we will be challenged by the teachings of Jesus Christ. We will be challenged by these things.

Our Old Testament reading today was from Jeremiah, chapter 38. This is a famous story about Jeremiah being thrown into the well. The way it fits into our message today is this: one of the things Jeremiah said, he was telling the people that they should not fight the Babylonian Empire, and should rather pay tribute to the King of Babylon. This was not a popular message. You could say he was politically incorrect at that point, and he was. So they talked the king into throwing him, or lowering him, into a well. We read that he stuck in the mud in the bottom of this well. He makes it out. They decide to take him out of the well. They changed the king’s mind about this. Jeremiah, in his career as a prophet, suffered rejection. He was rejected over and over again by people. That’s one of the interesting things about Jeremiah, as a person, that he was on a mission from God. He knew he was. He was a prophet. And they wouldn’t listen to him, and it really hurt him. He suffered emotionally as a result of the people not listening to him, but he continued on. He always felt he was a failure. But he wasn’t. He’s one of the major prophets – that’s why we read about him today. He didn’t fail. He did what God commanded him to do. He had one guide and that was God. Not the people around him, not the cultural norms, not the political leadership. He had one guide, and that was God. He followed God faithfully.

In our Epistle today, we read from Hebrews. The authorship of Hebrews is not certain. It was almost certainly a Jewish Christian, who was writing this letter to other Jewish Christians. The key thing I want to point out here is one part of the passage in which he says the people should “have endurance, persevere, stand firm in your faith.” This is what he’s telling the people to do. He’s saying, “let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us, and  persevere in running the race that lies before us, while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of the faith.” And then, I’ll skip a bit, he says, “in your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.” He’s saying, endure, persevere, keep trying. Don’t give up. You’re going to be surrounded by challenges to your faith and challenges to following Jesus. Don’t stop. Keep trying. If you falter, get up and keep on going. If you’re a Christian, you’re taking a side. The world may not like you, and you may be uncomfortable at times. Sometimes you’re not going to feel good about yourself. You’re going to have to turn again to your one guide: Jesus Christ.

I’m reminded of something that happened in my day job, with a student of mine. This is a wonderful, young person. She came to the United States from Vietnam, and told me that her father was a Communist Party official. She’s very bright. When l first met her, early in her college career, she was still learning the language, and figuring out how to be a college student in the United States. I never did figure out why she came here, but here she was. She was personable, very determined, and hard-working, an impressive young person. I was her academic advisor as well as one of her teachers. I said, you really ought to go and do something like foreign affairs, intelligence, something like this. With your zeal and curiosity, you should be something like that. In one our conversations, I could see she was reflecting while we were chatting. She talked about her home, how important it was to her, how much she loved her family, and how much she loved being in the United States, and how much she had come to love the United States. She looked at me and said, “I guess, sooner or later I’ve got to pick, don’t I?” And I said, “well, if you want work for the federal government, yes. Sooner or later, you have to make a decision.” About the time she graduated, she came to tell me she had gotten an internship with the United States Department of State. Really impressive, great opportunity, and the perfect thing for her. She reminded me, “do you remember that conversation we had? That was a real turning point for me.” I tell you, that’s one of the things I love about teaching and dealing with young people, is to hear stories like that. It makes me feel like what I’m doing matters. What she does, matters. I’m just kind of there to make suggestions. But – she had to pick a side.

That’s what Jesus is telling us, we have to pick a side. You can pick the world, or you can pick Christ. They’re not the same. You have to take a side. And you may suffer for it. You may suffer in your heart and soul when you realize, oh, I keep failing, and I’ve got to keep trying. You’ve got to persevere like the author of Hebrews said. You may not be liked by other people. Jeremiah wasn’t. But you’ve got to take a side, one way or another. Even if you don’t make a decision, you’re going to wind up taking a side.

Remember what Jesus said to those who expressed their faith in Him. Over and over, He says they will be with Him in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus won’t leave us alone. He won’t. We’re never alone. We take a side. If our side is Jesus Christ, we are never alone. So what I’d like for all of us to do as the week goes by, is think about this: Have I taken a side? Have I made a decision? Have I made that decision? Have I taken a side firmly? And am I persevering to stick with that decision? These are tough questions. These are the kinds of things that make us uncomfortable. Again, Jesus said, “I came not to bring peace, but to bring division. I came to set the world on fire.” If you answer those kinds of questions yourself, honestly, forthrightly, thinking about them, then Jesus will set you and your life on fire.

Amen.

Readings:

Wisdom 18:6-9
Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-12
Luke 12:32-48

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

What is faith? That’s the question I want to explore with you today. Our Epistle, from Hebrews, chapter 11, gives us a definition of faith. It says: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” That is a puzzling statement. It is. I want to try and unpack it today. It is the only abstract definition of faith that’s given to us in the Bible. The Bible does show us faith by many, many examples, and our readings for today refer to some of those. In Hebrews – we don’t know who the author was; we assume he was a Jewish Christian, writing to a Jewish Christian audience in the early church – he refers to Abraham’s faith. Abraham was told by God that he would have children. He was very old and his wife was sterile, so this was surprising to them. He was also told he would be the father of a great nation. Many, many people, numerous as the stars. All this was news to him, and yet he believed in it, and did what God instructed him to do. He traveled and wound up settling in Canaan, which was the land that God had promised to him and his descendents. Later, there’s the story of he and his son, Isaac. God instructs him to kill Isaac. This is his son, his child, and it’s also the son God promised him. It’s a terrifying story to read. Of course, at the last minute, God says, no, don’t do that, here’s an animal to sacrifice in his place. But the story is intended to show us the incredible, powerful faith that Abraham had. He did all these things just because God told him to. These are stories of faith. They illustrate for us what faith looks like. They give us examples of faith.

Our first reading for today is from Wisdom, which is one of the deuterocanonical texts. It’s part of the wisdom literature that’s intended to teach people how to live, and so forth. In this, it refers to the faith of the ancient Hebrews, when they were in Egypt. I’ll read part of it: “The night of the Passover was known beforehand to our fathers, that, with sure knowledge of the oaths in which they put their faith, they might have courage.” It’s telling the people, here’s an example of faith. Remember, they were being held as slaves in Egypt, and they were told, this is coming. Passover is coming. Be prepared for this and you’ll be spared. Eventually, they’re led out of Egypt, led out of slavery, and they go to that promised land, that Abraham had been promised by God to him and his descendants. And all this happened. God kept his promises to them. They were led out of slavery. They did go out of Egypt. They did go to Canaan. They got the things that God promised them. They had a tough time along the way. Lots of things happened to them, but they did get the things that God had promised to them. Now, those are examples of faith, though. We can see these concrete examples of faith in other people.

But defining faith, the definition of faith, is something else. What does this definition of faith in Hebrews mean? Again, the author of Hebrews writes: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” Okay, realization of what is hoped for. What does that mean? The realization of what is hoped for. The word that is used by the author of Hebrews for realization is “hypostasis”. I was looking at the words, as I prepared our talk for today, it’s a Greek word. It’s also an English word. It’s interesting in that way that it’s a word used by both languages. Of course, we adopted it for our language from the Greek. What does it mean? It means the “substance” or the “reality” of something. Faith, then, is the substance or the reality of what we hope for. This is still very abstract. What do we hope for, when we’re talking about faith? Our hope is in God. That God is really there. That God really loves us. That God really is a part of our lives. That God really did create the world and everything in it. That’s our hope. And when we reach out to God – in hope – we want God to reach out to us, too. That’s our hope. When we reach for God, we want God to reach back. That’s our hope. Now that’s where our faith comes from. Why do I say that? Remember, faith is a gift of God’s grace. This is a core idea of the Christian faith. Faith is not something we think ourselves into. It’s not something that we figure out.

It’s not something we can see with our eyes, the way today’s reading tells us. It’s a gift from God. It is God touching our lives. I want to underscore that: faith is God’s presence in our life. It’s a gift, from God. God’s presence in our life is a gift from Him. So then, this idea that faith is the hypostasis, or the substance, the reality, of what we hope for – it is the reality of God’s presence in our life. That’s part of it. That’s part of this definition. The author also writes: “faith is the evidence of things not seen.” Faith, then, is our belief in something that we do not see. A lot of people are very resistant to this idea. Think about it for a minute, we do this all the time. We cannot quantify and we cannot conduct empirical tests for such important things as beauty, justice, or goodness. And yet, we believe in these. We believe in these things that we don’t see. We know there is such a thing as beauty. We know there is such a thing as justice. We know there is such a thing as good, and yet we don’t see them with our eyes. We know they’re there.

Our faith is our belief in a God that we don’t see with our eyes. In a quiet moment, maybe in a moment of insight and awareness, sometimes when we’re under intense pressure or emotion, we can sense the presence of God. This comes to us in those moments, and it comes to us in spite of ourselves, in spite of our rationalizing and thinking, and trying to figure things out. Sometimes, the presence of God becomes a part of our awareness. We sense this, because God is reaching out to us, and that’s when we make that connection with God. We sense the presence of God with us. That is the evidence of things not seen. Our faith comes to us from God. It’s a gift from God. It’s not something we can do for ourselves and everything we try to do on our own, can interfere with that connection with God. If we try to reason things, and figure things out, it really can do that to us.

Remember, what Jesus says? “Believe like a little child. Have faith like a little child.” That seems tough for us to do. We’re adults, we’re intelligent and sophisticated. we know lots of stuff. How can we believe like a little child? That’s what Jesus tells us to do! Reach out to God. Imagine a little child reaching out to you – and you reach back. That’s what God does for us. We reach out and God will reach back. It’s a gift. Faith is a gift. It’s a gift that comes from the grace of God. It’s a gift for us to accept. Acceptance of this gift is our part of it. We have to reach out. We have to be willing to accept that gift. How do we do that? We do it through prayer, through reading Scripture and other spiritual writings, and we do it by reflection on those. We have to have that quiet moment in order to have that moment of insight and awareness. We have to try and understand God’s word in order to have that moment of insight and awareness. In other words, we have to reach out to God to accept the gift God is offering us, and that’s how we do it. We can count on God to do the hard part, to give us that gift of faith.

In our Gospel message today, which is from Luke, Jesus says, be ready. “Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.” How we do that? Through prayer, through study, through reflection, through reaching out to God. That’s how we make sure we’re doing what our part is, in order to be ready. As I say, we can count on God to do the hard part.

Amen.

Readings:
Genesis 18:20-32
Colossians 2:12-14
Luke 11:1-13

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s message is about prayer and I’ll begin with a story. There’s a Catholic author named Devon Rose and he describes the following story about how he came to faith. He was originally an atheist. He was a convinced atheist, and I’ll quote from his own writings. He says: “as I began praying, saying God, you know I don’t believe in you, but I’m in trouble and need help. If you are real, help me.” I’ll pause there. How many of us have done that, when were in trouble? There’s a saying, there are no atheists in foxholes. There’s something to that. When we’re really in a bad place, we will turn to God. This is just something about our nature. We need God at those times, and we know it. Even if the rest of the time we neglect God, there are times when we know it. So Rose began to read the Scriptures and to talk to God, even though he was skeptical. He was overwhelmed by the awareness of God that came through doing that. I have to say, I, too, have experienced this. Years ago, I had a real challenge in my life that caused me to question absolutely everything. Even, how could there be a kind and loving God who would allow such awful things to happen. A friend of mine said, look, you don’t have to believe, just believe that I believe, and pray every day. And like Rose, I said okay, you know. And it worked. Prayer really works. Prayer does things for us that we could never do for ourselves. Rose began reading the Scriptures, and praying, and even though he was skeptical, he says, “still, I persevered”. I kept reading the Bible, asking my roommate questions about what I was reading, and praying. Then slowly, and amazingly, my faith grew and eventually it threatened to whelm my many doubts and unbelief.” The rest of the story goes, he became converted, is now a Christian, and a Christian author, too.

In our New Testament reading today, Colossians, Paul is approaching people who have lots of things that are challenging them, in particular things that are alien to the Christian faith. Like Devon Rose, we all hear things that are challenging to our faith, other ideas and so forth, and that’s just part of our experience as a person. In Colossians, Paul is telling these new Christians, who are Gentiles, who live in the Greek world, where there are other kinds of ideas, religious ideas, philosophical ideas, and so forth, that are challenging them. Paul says, no, that’s something else, it’s not part of who you are as a Christian. He’s telling them about their baptism. He’s saying, when you were baptized, you were made and adoptive son or daughter of God. I’ll read from Colossians, chapter 2: “You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.” There’s a bond between us and God and that bond is forged by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. When we’re baptized, we are dead to who we were before, and we rise again as one of the Christian faithful. There’s this bond to us. This really connects importantly with the Gospel story that I will get to in a minute, but just remember for a moment that we’re adopted sons and daughters of God. I’ll return to that in a minute. In talking about prayer, we invite God into our lives, we reach out to him, and when we pray, that’s what we’re doing: we’re asking God to come into our lives.

The Old Testament story is a particular kind of prayer, relates to a particular kind of prayer, namely intercessory prayer. This is a story everybody’s familiar with. God is going to destroy the cities, because they’re so wicked. They are just awful places, everything that’s happening there is bad. Abraham’s brother, Lot, lives in one of the cities, and God says he’s going to destroy them. Abraham begins to bargain with God. He says, what if there are 50 people there who are not sinful, you will destroy the city, right? What if there are 45? What if there are 35? And so forth. He finally gets down to, what if there are only 10 people? Will you refrain from destroying the city? And God say, okay, fine. Now we know what happened. God did destroy them, but here’s the point: God is patient with Abraham and agrees to do all this. It doesn’t work out the way Abraham asked for, not because of God, but because of the people. It wasn’t because of God, it was because of the people in the cities who just couldn’t meet that expectation. But it shows us the reality of intercessory prayer. This is why the story is here in our readings today. It is about intercessory prayer in the sense that we are asking God to do something for other people.

This is a big part of our worship service. We have our Prayers for the People as part of our worship service. We pray for other people, both who are troubled now, and who have passed away. We do that every time, because it’s an important part of our worship service. Intercessory prayer is part of how we worship God. It’s a part of how we worship God, because we know that God listens when we pray. God does listen to us when we pray and God can grant the prayers that we ask. This is why it’s such a key part of our worship service, and we do it absolutely every time.

In the New Testament story, Jesus is asked by the disciples, how to pray. How do we pray? They see Him praying and they say, teach us how to pray. John taught his disciples how to pray. Teach us how to pray, too. And He teaches them the Our Father. The familiar prayer we say in our worship service, we say it on our own. It is, in a sense, the paradigm of prayer. It is the perfect prayer, that’s been taught to us by Christ. There are a few aspects of this that link up with the other things I’ve been talking about. One of these is the petitions that are in the prayer. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” These are petitions. We’re asking God for basic needs, our daily bread. We’re asking God to forgive us our sins, and were asking God to protect us from future sins. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” To protect us from sin, to forgive our sins, and we note that we have to forgive others, too. This is a part of the prayer. We know we have to do our part, too. This is one aspect of it, the requests from God that are in this paradigmatic prayer, the Our Father. Another aspect of this though, and it’s in the Gospel story today, is being persisted in prayer.

He tells a parable of the neighbor in need. The story goes like this, the neighbor has a visitor, and he needs food to help his visitor. This kind hospitality was regarded as very important in Jewish life. It was just an important moral duty to be hospitable to other people. So the person really needs this, they need this help, they don’t want to be inhospitable to their visitors. So they go to their friend’s house, knock on the door and ask, can I borrow some food. To understand a little more about this and the way they lived, usually the whole family would sleep together in one big room. They had simple homes and everybody, children and adults alike, would all sleep in one big room. If you get up to go answer the door and let somebody in, you’re going to wake up the whole house. And so that’s what the neighbor is asking. I know it’s late. Can you help me out here? So in the story, the person who is in bed says, no, go away. Everybody’s in bed. Go away. Finally, though, he gets up and does it, because the neighbor is persistent. There is some humor in the Gospel, I think. He says, “I tell you, if he does not get up to give the visitor the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.” Jesus is saying even if he doesn’t like him enough, if the guy bugs him, eventually he’ll give him what he asked for. So that’s what happens. He finally gives the guy what he needs, and the guy goes on his way. Jesus tells them this parable right after he teaches them the Our Father. He’s telling them, be persistent in prayer, keep on praying. That’s the point: God will listen. God will take care of you. That’s what he’s saying. And note, what he’s doing here, what the friend is giving him in the parable, the request is to help him fulfill his duty to another person. The guy didn’t come to the door, saying can I have a new red Ferrari, or a million bucks, or whatever it is that I want to have. He’s not doing that. He’s saying can I do what I ought to do? And God grants that requests. Or in the story, the friend grants that request, because of his persistence. What Jesus is telling the disciples is about the nature of prayer. We’re asking to be what God expects us to be. We’re asking for the power, the ability to do the right thing and to fulfill God’s expectations for us. To fulfill God’s purposes in the world, that’s what prayer is about. Jesus is telling them, keep going, keep going back, keep going back to that well. Keep asking God for the power to do what you need to be able to do, to fulfill God’s purposes for you, that’s what he’s asking. So when we pray, we do ask for things, but what we’re really asking for is to enter into a relationship with God. Think about what the Our Father says: “Forgive me my sins.” Keep me alive, give me my basic needs, forgive my sins, protect me from sinning in the future, and help me remember that I have to forgive other people, too. Let me be what you want me to be. Give me the power to be what you want me to be. And when you ask God for that, you are entering into a relationship with God.

There’s a thing in the Gospels that links up with the Epistle. Remember, before, I said to make a mental note? Jesus is telling them, think about, if your children ask you for something. If your children ask you for something that was good for them, you give it to them. You wouldn’t give them something that’s bad, right, or something they don’t need, like they want ice cream at bedtime, or whatever. Jesus says, “what father among you would hand his son a snake, when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” He’s likening that to the parent-child relationship. That’s the kind of relationship that we have with God. That’s what Paul is saying in the letter to the Colossian’s, when we are baptized, we become one of the Christian faithful. We are now adoptive children of God. We are now children of God. As the Christian faithful, we are God’s children. Like our parents, if we asked them for something that we need and is good for us, we will get it. God will get us what we need in order to fulfill His purposes.

And so that’s the nature of prayer that Jesus is teaching us about in Luke today. Again, this also links up with what Paul is talking about in Colossians. Prayer isn’t just about asking for stuff that we want. That is the kind of magical practice that Paul warns against. The background of Colossians, if you read back a little further from the excerpt that we had, he’s talking about these kinds of magical practices the people in the Greek world engaged in. You know, I want this, so I’m going to do this, and I’m going to get that thing. That’s not that’s not the way prayer works. Prayer isn’t like that. Our faith isn’t like that. That was a very common kind of thing among the Greeks, in which the church in Colossus lived. It’s not just about asking for what we want, it’s about asking God into our lives, so that God can change us into the kind of people he wants us to be.

I’ll summarize with a quick vignette CS Lewis. You may have heard of CS Lewis. He who wrote a really wonderful book called “Mere Christianity” and various other books. He was a literary person, but he wrote a number of important things about the Christian faith. His faith was challenged and also strengthened through his wife’s illness. His wife had cancer and ultimately died of it. Somebody asked CS Lewis if he really thought he could change God with his prayer for the cure of his wife’s cancer. He’s asking God, please take care of my wife, please cure cancer, and Lewis replied, “prayer doesn’t change God, it changes me.”  It doesn’t change God’s intentions or will, or any of that, it does change me in the way I respond to it, by deepening my relationship with God. Even when bad things happen, we can still grow closer to God through prayer.

To sum up, prayer puts us in a relationship with God and changes us. It doesn’t give us maybe what we initially want out of our own nature, the million dollars or whatever it is, but it changes us so that we’re open to God’s will. It changes us so that what we want, as we develop our relationship with Him, is what God intends for us, too.

Amen.

Readings:
Deuteronomy 30:10-14
Colossians 1:15-20
Luke 10:25-37

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today, the focus of my talk is from our Gospel reading, which includes the parable of the Good Samaritan. This is a story everybody’s familiar with. What’s the point of it? It’s pretty clear. Jesus tells us, who is my neighbor. It could be anybody, everybody, particularly those who need help, or those who need our help. Another way to say, everybody is my neighbor. I often say that we can manifest God in the way that we live. We see this throughout the Gospels. We see this throughout the Epistles in the New Testament. This is one of the central messages of the New Testament, that we as Christians can manifest God in our lives in the way we live, and show God to other people. We can do this by loving and caring for other people. But there’s the flipside to that, too. We can also encounter God in other people – and that really is the central message of the parable of the Good Samaritan.

I’m going to start out talking about the Old Testament reading for a minute. This was from Deuteronomy, chapter 30. Moses is telling the people where the law is. He’s telling them the law is not in some faraway place. I’ll a passage from it. “It is not up in the sky, that you should say, ‘who will go up in the sky to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?’ Nor is it across the sea, that you should say, ‘who will cross the sea to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may carry it out?’ No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.” He’s telling them law is not something mysterious. It’s not something that’s far away. It’s in your hearts. The laws of God are present in us. This is what Moses is telling the people.

The Epistle for today was from Colossians, first chapter: 15-20. This is one of the churches that Paul helped to found, and after he leaves, as is so often the case, they’re visited by others who taught something different than what Paul had taught them. These visitors had taught the people in Colossus that Jesus was a man, who became Christ after his resurrection. Scholars suspect these people were, what were later called, Gnostics. People who had the idea that Jesus was an ordinary person and later became a spirit only. Of course, this is not the Christian faith. This is something different entirely. Paul is telling the people that Jesus is the full revelation of God. Jesus was divine from the start, throughout his life, before time, after His resurrection and ascension. Jesus is the full revelation of God. Jesus was human. Jesus was also divine. This is a core teaching of the church. God took on a human form. God became man. He became one of us. He took on flesh, so that he could die for our sins. God created everything, including us. God can be present in us, and we, as the church, are God’s physical presence on earth. We can see the presence of God in each other. This is what he’s telling the people in Colossus.

Now we turn to the Gospel message for today. This is from Luke, chapter 10, and it’s the parable of the Good Samaritan. A scribe is asking Jesus how to inherit eternal life. They’re trying to trick Jesus, like they so often did. They wanted to trip Him up. The scribe represents somebody who has expertise in the law. His whole job is to write, and write the laws. They come to know it very well. He regards himself as an expert in the law and he’s going to teach Jesus a lesson, he thinks. So he asked Jesus, “how do I inherit eternal life?” Jesus summarizes the law, “you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” This is a summary of the law. Now, the scribe still wants to try and trick Jesus, so he says, “who is my neighbor?” He is trying to test Jesus. Jesus goes on to tell the parable Good Samaritan. I’ll summarize, since it’s one that we’re all familiar with. A man is robbed and beaten, and he’s out on the road. He’s lying there wounded on the road. First, a priest comes by, and the priest just ignores the guy. Then, a Levite comes by. What was a Levite? Levites were people who were part of the tribe of Levi, and these were either priests or assistants to priests. They were regarded as a special class of people, in terms of the Jewish faith. So you have these two special people, who you would think would know the law and follow the law and love their neighbor as themselves, but they don’t. They go on buy and ignore the guy laying on the road. Then comes a Samaritan. Who we were the Samaritans? The Samaritans were people who were looked down upon by the Jews. They had their own version of Hebrew Scripture and they had their own temple, and the Jews thought they were less than, not as good as, they were kind of a lesser people. This was the way somebody like the scribe would’ve seen the Samaritans. So it’s the Samaritan, though, who helps the guy. He bandages his wounds, he takes him to a place where he can rest, and he pays for his lodging there. He goes all out to help this guy, who is just a helpless victim of robbers laying on the road, a stranger to him. These are strangers to each other. Remember, the Samaritan is somebody who Jews would look down upon. He was somebody who somebody like the scribe would think, well, a Samaritan, he’s not good enough, he’s not as good as we are. Jesus is making clear to this scribe that the Samaritan was one who had the law written in his heart, like we saw from Deuteronomy, right? Loved his neighbor as himself. Who was the neighbor? Not the scribe, not the priest, not the Levite. The neighbor was the Samaritan. Look at what he says. “Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” He answered, “the one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “go and do likewise.” He’s telling him, be like the Samaritan. Be like that person that you, the scribe, think is less than, not good as.

God’s ways are different than our ways. We may have our vision of the world, and our idea about what’s good, and what’s special, and what’s important. This is like Moses was telling the people, the law is not in some far-off place. It’s here, it’s in your heart. Jesus is telling the scribe, all the people that you think are this special class of people, the people who are going to be the best and all that, and maybe they’re not! Maybe it’s the person that you think of as less than, who is really your neighbor and is going to be a neighbor to you, when you need it. This is the message of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan had the law written in his heart. We see this, because he lived it. When he helped the man who needed help, he helped his neighbor. And he, as Jesus put it, was a neighbor to the Samaritan. It was he, and not a special religious figure, who was a neighbor to the victim.

Jesus is telling us to emulate that Samaritan. Jesus is telling us to be like that Samaritan. So as we go out this week, we may encounter people who need us. Let’s be like that Samaritan to them. Like Jesus says, go and do likewise. Be kind to one another. Show others that God is in your heart, that the law of God is in your heart. Show other people that in the way that you treat them and in the way that you live your life.

Amen

Readings:
Isaiah 66:10-14
Galatians 6:14-18
Luke 10:1-9

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of our chief tasks as Christians is to praise God. There’s a paraphrase that I want to make of a saying. My paraphrase of it, which is pretty close to the original, is: what we pray is what we believe, and what we believe, we can live. That is my message to you today.

There’s a lot that comes from praising God in our lives. In our words, in our actions, in the way we look at the world around us, we can praise God. That does so much for us, and it enables us to do what God intends for us to do. When we praise God, we are grateful. Think about it, when we give thanks to God for everything, when we praise God, we are grateful to God. When we’re grateful, we’re humble, because we realize that everything we have is a gift from God, and when we are humble, we are with Christ. Imagine the humility we would feel, seated at foot of the cross, looking at the glory of God. We can’t help but be humble when we are with Christ, and when we are with Christ, wherever we are and whatever we’re doing, we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be. All that comes from praising God.

Our messages from our Scripture today illustrate what I have in mind. Our Old Testament reading today was from Isaiah, chapter 66. In this part, Isaiah is talking about the people returning to Jerusalem from their captivity in Babylon. They’re coming home. It’s a beautiful passage. He’s telling the people that they’re coming home, as if to their own mother, who’s going to comfort them. They’re finally going to be back from the awful journey that they’ve been on. They’re coming home. In the temple, God will be present among them. For the ancient Jews, God dwelt in the temple, and that was how they understood God’s presence among them. The temple was so incredibly important to them. This is one reason they were being separated from Jerusalem where the temple was located. It was an awful, horrible thing for them. But God will be present among them and they will flourish and find comfort. I am going to read a part of it. “As nurslings, you shall be carried in her arms, and fondled in her lap; as a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; in Jerusalem you shall find comfort. When you see this, your heart shall rejoice and your bodies flourish like the grass; the Lord’s power shall be known to His servants.” They are at home with God, that’s the point I want to draw from that. They’re at home with God. That’s where they’re supposed to be. That’s where they find comfort. That’s where they belong, with God.

In our Epistle for today, we read from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, chapter 6. There’s a little background to this: Galatia was a region in what today we call Turkey and Paul had played a role in founding churches in that region. It happened in a number of cases, after he left, other people came after him and told the people, if you’re going to be Christians, you have to follow the Jewish law. Of course, this was entirely contrary to what Paul had told them. They said, well, Paul doesn’t know what he’s talking about, you have to follow the Jewish law. So Paul gets wind of this and writes to the churches there, saying, no!  Ignore those people! He calls them Judiaizers. He’s telling them these people were Gentiles, that they did not follow the Jewish law. Paul is telling the Galatians that following the Jewish laws is not important. He says what’s important is to be a new creation in Jesus Christ. That is what you do. Don’t worry about some of the marks on the body that the Jews had, such as circumcision. There’s a powerful statement in there that’s easy to miss. Paul writes, “I bear the marks of Christ on my body.” Paul had been through a lot already. We think this is his earliest letter that he wrote. He had been through a lot already and he suffered physically in his mission. Remember all the things that happened to him. He was arrested, beaten, he was imprisoned, he was shipwrecked. I mean, golly, all the things Paul went through. When he’s telling us “I bear the marks of Christ on my body”, he means scars on his body that he got for the sake of Christ. This, not circumcision, is the physical mark of his faith.

We’re at home with God. Even if, like Paul, we go through a lot, the marks on our body can be evidence of our faith in Christ. The things that happen to us that we get through with God’s help, are the things that show us the power and love of God.

The Gospel for today was from Luke, chapter 10. In the Gospel, Jesus had appointed 72 people to travel in pairs. The number 72 was important symbolically to Jews. It appears in a number of places in the Old Testament. Basically it means a group of people who are going to go do something. That’s a crude way to put it, but this is the reason. And so He’s got a group of people who are going to go and prepare the way for Him in all the places where He was going to visit. He’s giving them marching orders, or travel tips, I guess you could say, telling them here’s how you should be ready to do this. He tells them, don’t worry about what you’re going to take with you. He’s even saying, don’t take money, don’t take this or that. Don’t worry about that. Just go. Don’t be distracted. He says, don’t stop and talk to other people on the way. He’s telling them, don’t be distracted from the place you’re going to and the mission you have to perform. When you go to a place, if the people welcome you, He says, stay with them, and if they don’t, leave them. Remember that statement about shaking the dust off your feet? That’s a part of this speech that Jesus is making, it comes just after what we read today. Focus on your mission, don’t worry about the rest of it. If the people accept you, that’s great, if they don’t, then just move on. He’s telling them, if you follow me, you’re doing what you need to do. Do what I’ve appointed you to do, and that’s exactly what you need to be doing. Don’t worry about anything else. The rest will take care of itself.

So how do I summarize these thoughts about today’s readings? Praise God and you will recognize His presence with you. And when you’re with God, whatever happens, you are exactly where you need to be.

Amen.

Readings:
1 Kings 19:16, 19-21
Galatians 5:1, 13-18
Luke 9:51-62

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The theme of today’s readings is accepting God’s call and that’s what I want to focus on in our message for today. Looking at all this, I’m reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Some of you may have heard of Bonhoeffer. He was a truly heroic figure. He was a Lutheran theologian in the middle of the 20th century and he was German. When the Nazi party took over in Germany, he became a staunch opponent of the Nazi regime, and he was a very vocal opponent of the Nazi regime. He lived his faith in his opposition to the Nazi regime. He tried to organize other pastors around Germany to oppose the regime, some agreed with him, others did not. Ultimately, because of his continuing criticism of the government, he was put in a concentration camp. While he was in the concentration camp, there was an attempt to assassinate Hitler and Bonhoeffer was implicated in that. They executed him for that. They hung him, just before the war was over in 1945.

Bonhoeffer reminds me of today’s message, because the head a book called “The Cost of Discipleship.” It contains a pair of twin concepts that are really important. What he called “cheap grace” and “costly grace”. Cheap grace, he said, is forgiveness without repentance,  it’s accepting the benefits of what Jesus has done for us without making a commitment to God. Costly grace means making that commitment to God even though it may, in some respects, be personally costly. Bonhoeffer illustrated that with his life. He stuck to principles of his faith and he paid the ultimate price for it, his death by hanging.

Jesus asks for a commitment from us. That was Bonhoeffer’s message in his book, and that’s the message of the readings today. Jesus is asking for a commitment from us. It is true, as we often say, that grace and forgiveness are freely given from God. These are gifts of God to us. We don’t deserve them, we simply receive them because of God’s unbounded love for us. Still, Jesus asks us to be committed to our faith. Otherwise it’s not a real faith. It’s like what Bonhoeffer called cheap grace. It’s something that feels good, but isn’t real.

How do our readings today illustrate these ideas? Our Old Testament reading today was from 1 Kings, chapter 19. The central character here is Elisha, who eventually becomes a great prophet in Israel. The back story is, Elijah who is a great prophet of Israel at this time has had a lack of success in convincing the king and his wife to follow God. Everybody’s heard of Jezebel, King Ahab’s wife, and she was a follower of one of the pagan gods of the Middle East at that time, Baal, and she was overall an unsavory character. And so Elijah he felt like he was failing, and God wants to get him some help.  God tells Elijah, go and find this guy, Elisha, and tell him to come along with you, and so he does. Elisha is a young man, plowing the fields, doing his job, working to help support his family, and all of a sudden Elijah shows up and says, you’re coming with me. There are a couple of things that are not obvious in the story. It says, Elijah threw his cloak over him. What does that mean? The prophets of ancient Israel would typically have something that symbolized their being a prophet. In the case of Elijah, it was a cloak that he wore. So when Elijah throws this cloak over him, he’s basically saying, God has instructed you to come along. You’re going to be my helper, and eventually you’re going to be my successor. So that’s what that means. Elisha says okay, I’m coming, let me go say goodbye to my parents. Elijah answered, I’m reading from it, “go back! Have I done anything to you?” The way the translation comes out isn’t really helpful, because “have I done anything to you?” doesn’t really capture what Elijah is saying. What Elijah is saying to Elisha is, it wasn’t my decision to pick you. God picked you. It’s not me doing this to you, it’s God. God chose you to do this. Symbolically, what he does here is important. Elisha has been plowing with 12 oxen and now he slaughters the oxen and now he cooks them, using the plow and all the tools, the wooden tools. Symbolically, that with that represents is, he’s leaving things behind. And now he’s going to go on with his new commitment to God, as Elijah’s helper, and later prophet of Israel. “Then Elisha left and followed Elijah as his attendant.” Elisha takes up the commitment that God has placed upon him.

I think there’s another interesting point and I’d have to really think more about this. He’s got 12 yoke of oxen. We’re going to see that term a couple of times more today. The yoke. Even this thing I wear, this stole, symbolizes a yoke. It’s the yoke of Christ. I’m going to talk about that a little bit more. That’s just an interesting connection there with Old Testament reading, I think.

Our epistle today was from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, chapter 5. What Paul is telling the Galatians is that your commitment to God is your freedom. I’m going to read part of it. “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” What Paul is telling them is that Christ is our freedom. The yoke of slavery is not accepting that commitment, is just staying as we are. If we stay in a state of sin, we’re yoked to sin. We are burdened by that. It is Christ who sets us free from all those things that constitute sin. We’re also free from the law, he’s telling them. You don’t have to follow rules, you have to follow Christ. Christ is going to set you free. We’re free from the burden of sin, free from the burden of the law. We are free when we follow Jesus Christ.

Remember, in Luke 8, which is not part of our readings today, Jesus says, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. God does the hard part. God enables us, empowers us to follow him. We just have to accept that commitment, like the young Elisha did. We can accept this commitment joyfully and gratefully, not as a burden, but as freedom.

In our Gospel today, from Luke, chapter 9, Jesus and the disciples are traveling and they encountered people who say, I’ll go wherever you go, I’m going to follow you. This relates to our message, because Jesus is telling them, this is an open-ended commitment. So they say I’ll follow wherever you go, and Jesus says to this person, the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. It’s an odd phrase. What is He saying? He’s saying, this is an open-ended commitment. We go where God takes us. We can trust God. This is the point, we can trust God. Even though we may not know where it’s going to take us. Another person says, let me bury my father first, and then I’ll follow you. By bury my father, what the person means is, wait until the right time. Wait until everybody else is gone, all my responsibilities are left behind, then I can do this. Jesus is saying, that is not a commitment. Let the dead bury their dead, he says. He’s telling the person, that’s not a commitment. Another says, I’ll follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home. Again, Jesus is saying, that’s not a commitment. It is reminiscent of what Elisha says, but now Elijah says, okay now come on, make that commitment. This is what Jesus is saying to these people in Luke, chapter 9.

To sum up, we don’t have to be a heroic figure like Bonhoeffer. We don’t have to be that hero, but Jesus asks every one of us for a commitment. Look at what he’s already given us. He gave us everything! He emptied Himself on the cross for us. He gave us salvation. He gave us grace and forgiveness. He’s given us everything. All He asks for is that commitment. We can accept that commitment and we can go where God leads us. And this is this real freedom.

Amen.

Readings:
Genesis 14:18-20
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Luke 9:11-17

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is Corpus Christi Sunday, more formally the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. This is a day where we reflect on the Eucharist and celebrate our thankfulness for the Eucharist. Last week was Trinity Sunday, and last week we talked about the mystery of the Trinity. This week we talk about another mystery, the mystery of the Eucharist. I want to focus on these questions. What is the Eucharist? Why do we do it? Christ is present in the Eucharist. I’m going to talk a little bit about how that is. How Christ is present in the Eucharist. This is the thing to focus on, when we receive the host and the wine, we are receiving the body and blood of Christ. How that is, is a mystery. We, through the grace of God, believe that through faith. We receive Christ in the Eucharist, and it’s through receiving the grace of Christ in the Eucharist, that we strengthen our relationship with Him. This is why it’s important to celebrate the Eucharist on a regular basis, because this strengthens our relationship with Christ. We receive the grace of God through receiving the Eucharist. That’s one part of what I want to talk about, but a second part is this, the Christian faithful are the body of Christ in the world. When we do this together, we make Christ manifest in the world, because we are collectively the body of Christ.

Saint Augustine, in the 5^th century, reflected on the Eucharist. A couple of things he said that I want to relate to you, because they’re basically what I just said a minute ago. In a sermon that was given on Easter Sunday when people had just been initiated into the faith by baptism. First of all, he says, when we receive the Eucharist, we receive the body and blood of Christ. The host and the wine are the body and blood of Christ. That’s what the Eucharist is. The second thing, again like I said a minute ago, is that the Christian faithful are the body of Christ. He has this nice image about all the grains that go into making up the bread, and all the grapes that go into making the wine. You put them all together and you have this Eucharist, this celebration of the body and blood of Christ. So we, together, are like all those grains of that make the bread and all those grapes that make the wine. We, together, form the body of Christ in the world. Every time we do the Eucharist, at a point later in this celebration, we say that Christ dwells in us and we in Him. This is another way to think about the Eucharist. When we receive the Eucharist, we receive Christ, we receive the body and blood of Christ. Christ is part of us. Christ is present within us. Also, we, collectively, form the physical manifestation of Christ in the world, the body of Christ. He dwells in us, and we, as part of His physical presence in the world, and we in Him.

The Eucharist is a sacrament. What is a sacrament? I want to go into this. It’s not just an interesting scholarly question or something. I think it’s important that we have a pretty firm understanding of what we’re doing – to the extent that we can understand a mystery, which again, is going to be limited. What is a sacrament? A sacrament is an outward sign, instituted by Christ, to give us grace. What is grace? Grace is the unmerited favor of God. It’s a gift. God is giving us something, not because we deserve it, not because we’ve earned it, but solely because God loves us. So God gives us this gift, in this case of a sacrament. The sacrament consists, first of all of the sign, that is the thing, the res. (Pronounced race.) RES. Latin word, the res, for the thing that is the medium for the sacrament. With baptism, the res is the water. With the Eucharist, it’s the bread and the wine. Christ is present in the host and the wine. This is what’s special about the Eucharist. What is a sacrament? St. Augustine, in that sermon I was talking about a few minutes ago, says, if you take away the word, that is the prayers that we say over them, it’s just bread and wine. When we actually invoke the Holy Spirit and we say the prayers, they become a sacrament. A sacrament is a very special thing in that it’s not just a symbol. It is a symbol, but it’s more than that. It’s a symbol that actually does the thing that it symbolizes. This is what makes it special. So is not just like a picture that would be a symbol of something. If we have, say, a Golden Eagle, it’s a symbol of the United States, right? Or the flag is the symbol of the United States. But those aren’t sacraments, they’re simply symbols. They’re emblematic of something. A sacrament is different because it actually performs an action. An action that is symbolized in the sacrament. That’s a very abstract idea, but what it boils down to, is this: where the Eucharist is concerned, we receive Christ, because Christ is truly present in the Eucharist.

I’ll pause for a moment, because last year we had a conversation about this very subject after Corpus Christi Sunday. Does it mean that the host and wine are physically transformed into the body and blood of Christ? In the Middle Ages, people began to debate what that meant. I started out by saying this is a mystery. It is a mystery how Christ can be present in the host and the wine. Broadly speaking, there were two camps within the Catholic world about what this meant. Eventually, this hardened into this very specific doctrine that the Roman Catholic Church has always held, since the 12^th century anyway, namely that the host and wine are actually physically transformed into the body and blood of Christ. Much of the rest of the Christian world has believed that Christ is spiritually present in the host and wine, so that they’re not physically changed into something else, but that Christ is present in them. They’re consecrated, Christ is spiritually present in them, rather than physically present. I’ll tell you, you can believe either one you want. Okay? Whatever works for you, is fine, because again we’re talking about a mystery. That’s the really important thing about this. This is a mysterious gift that God gives to us. How you understand it, is okay. Do understand that you receive the body and blood of Christ! We’re not just doing this is as a Memorial or as an empty rite or something like this. We really do receive the grace of God through the Eucharist. Christ is present in the Eucharist, and we deepen our relationship with Christ through the Eucharist. Those are the really important things to get about it.

I talked about what the Eucharist is. Why don’t we talk for a minute about why we do it? I’ve kind of alluded to this already. By receiving the Eucharist, we deepen our relationship with Christ. We should do it every week, because this gives us more strength to get through the week. We go out into the world, we face all kinds of challenges, and having that grace imparted to us through the Eucharist each week, helps us to get through that. It’s also a communal activity, something that we do together. We don’t do it alone, we do it as the body of Christ, we do it as the church. Even like we say in our liturgy, the whole of the Christian world is doing this today. Across the globe, people are doing the same thing that we’re doing. All of us together are the body of Christ, and Christ is present among us. Remember what Jesus said, when two or three are gathered together in my name, there I will be in the midst of them. Christ is present among us right now, and we together are Christ’s presence in the world. We are part of that body of Christ in the world. Individually, by receiving the Eucharist, we deepen our relationship with Christ. Collectively, we help to bring Christ into the world. We bring Christ into the world among us, by gathering together to worship and to celebrate the Eucharist.

To summarize what I talked about at the beginning. We wanted to talk about what the Eucharist is. It’s Christ. The spirit of Christ is present in the Eucharist. Christ is present in the Eucharist and we receive the grace of God when we receive the Eucharist. And the Christian faithful are the body of Christ in the world. All of us together are part of this. This is why our faith is something that we practice together as a community. Jesus expected us to do that. We bring him into the world through worshiping Him every time we receive the Eucharist.

Amen.

Readings:
Proverbs 8:22-31
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

This is Trinity Sunday. Most of the special days in the church calendar refer to some historic event. This is different because it refers to the Trinity, the Holy Trinity, which is at the center of our faith. We often don’t reflect on it. It’s hard to reflect on it. That’s one of the things I’m going to talk about. Just to illustrate what I mean by saying that the concept of the Trinity is at the center of our faith is this: every time we pray, we pray in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That’s the Trinity. Every time we pray. We probably say it 10 times during the church service. It really is at the center of our faith, and so today is devoted to thinking about what the Trinity means to us.

Now, the Trinity is a concept that the human mind simply cannot grasp. I want to suggest that’s really what it’s about. It tells us about the nature of God by giving us something that we simply cannot wrap our minds around. The way our faith defines it, is as follows: God consists of three persons that are one God. They are co-equal, co-eternal, uncreated, and omnipotent. That is a nice definition, but the human mind simply cannot comprehend what that means. It is a mystery. It is the central mystery of the Christian faith. There are many things that are important to our faith that are simply a mystery. How is it that Christ becomes present in the host and the wine? It is a mystery. What is the Trinity? It is a mystery.

There’s a funny video on YouTube, I think it’s called “St. Patrick’s bad analogies” and I watch it probably every year on St. Patrick’s Day. The idea is they got these two characters asking Saint Patrick to explain the Trinity to them. In the video, Saint Patrick starts saying, well, the Trinity is like this, and they say, oh no no that’s this ancient heresy. And he says, well okay, I’ll try something else. The Trinity is like this. No no no that’s this ancient heresy. The point of the video, which is actually very good, is that if we try to compare the Trinity to something that is understandable to us, we can’t do it. Our minds simply will not do it. We can’t compare the Trinity to something that we can observe and see in the world, because it’s not like that. It’s just not. It is a mystery. This underscores that our minds cannot comprehend God. This is so important for us to understand, that it’s simply too big for us to get. Why is that important? It’s important because it tells us, first of all, that there is a God, like you’ve heard the saying, and it is not us. God is way bigger than we can understand. We are God’s children and we can understand our relationship to God in that way, but God is more than we can understand.

This is not one of the readings today, but I often think, in connection with this, of a passage in the book of Job. The Old Testament book in which Job undergoes all the suffering and Job does not understand it, and finally Job cries out in agony to God. Why are you allowing all these awful things to happen? And God’s response is, where were you, when I created the earth, and the seas, and the mountains, and the rivers, and the animals, and everything else? And the point is, you don’t know. It’s not for you to know. And that is what the Trinity is like, in that sense. It’s not for us to understand. It’s for us to look upon, to the extent we can, with wonder and awe.

What do we as people get out of understanding, not the Trinity itself, but understanding that it’s a mystery that we can’t understand? I think what we get out of that is a sense of humility, and with humility comes gratitude. We can realize that we are God’s children. We can be grateful for that, even if we can’t understand what God means, what God is, or understand the ways of God. We can still be grateful for the existence of a loving God, even if we don’t fully comprehend Him. We’re not God’s equals. We are not God’s peers. We have to have respect, awe, and wonder for God. That’s what the sense of mystery, that’s conferred by the Trinity, can tell us.

The Trinity is, of course, a Christian concept. There are actually suggestions of it in the Old Testament which I’ll mention, because I think they’re interesting. If you look in Genesis, there are a few that I can mention. One is Genesis, chapter 1:26, God speaks of creating man in our image. The Hebrew word there is plural. It’s not my image, it says, let us create them in our image. In Genesis 18, Abraham is visited by three men or three angels. When you see those kinds of appearances in the Old Testament, they’re understood to be God and there are three of them. In Genesis 11:7, the story of the Tower of Babel, and here, God referring to Himself says again, let us go down among them and confuse their speech. So God is referring to Himself in the plural and the Hebrew is like that. It’s a plural word in the Hebrew. Those are interesting kind of foreshadowings, or implications, of the Trinity that are in the Old Testament.

Now today’s readings all relate, in one or another way, to the concept of the Trinity and so I want to talk about those for a few minutes. I’m going to try and relate each of them to this, which I think is the common thread that ties them together, namely that God has poured Himself out in love for us.

Let’s look first at the Old Testament reading for today, which is from Proverbs, chapter 8. Proverbs, chapter 8, is a long speech. If you look at the whole thing, it’s a long speech by a character called Wisdom. Wisdom is a character that appears in a number of what are called the Wisdom Literature books of the Old Testament. Wisdom is typically referred to, in the third person, as a woman. The idea is generally, the wisdom of God is something to be desired. These were used to educate young men, because that was the way the society worked – but you would love the wisdom that God can confer on you, like a young man loves a beautiful woman. You desire wisdom, you desire this relationship. This part of Proverbs that we read today is beautiful poetry, and I think this is a way in which this reading relates to the concept of the Trinity. Even if we can’t give a nice pat definition of Trinity that we can understand, God sometimes discloses Himself to us through poetic imagery in Scripture, and that’s what happens here, even if we can’t give it a definition. Think about it for a minute – what is beautiful? When you see something that is beautiful, how do you define its beauty? You really can’t. Right? This is one way God can disclose himself to us, is through poetic imagery. I’ll just read a bit of it, to give you a sense of what I have in mind. This is Wisdom speaking, “thus from of old I was poured forth, at the first, before the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no fountains or springs of water; before the mountains were settled into place, before the hills, I was brought forth.” And it goes on with this beautiful poetic imagery about the creation of the earth, at the time the earth was created. This is something that gives us a picture of the wisdom of God. What is this wisdom? Again, it is this concept that appears in a number of Old Testament writings, and basically it means what it is that connects God with human beings in an intimate loving way. When the wisdom of God is referred to in these Old Testament writings, such as Proverbs, that’s the ideas that’s being conveyed. God wants to have this loving relationship with us, and we have this desire to connect with God. Wisdom is that connecting thing that binds us together in an intimate loving relationship with God. The Old Testament reading is saying, this was there from the beginning, this was there when all was created. Even before there were any human beings, there was this desire of God to be connected with God’s creation, which includes us.

The Epistle for today is from Romans, chapter 5. This, too, is a nice statement of the Trinity. As is typical of many passages in Paul’s writings, it’s kind of densely reasoned,  the chief ideas, I think, are these: Paul is telling the church in Rome, Jesus has imparted grace to us. This was Jesus’ mission, to give us the grace of God. Why? To have peace with God. Again, to have this intimate connection with God, to have peace with God. Jesus gives us His grace. We are able to have this connection with God through that. Paul refers to the Holy Spirit. He says, “the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” What does that do for us? Paul says, “it has given us hope.” This, too, is beautiful language. He says, “we can even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” This intimate loving connection with God that we get through the redemption we received through Jesus Christ, and the guidance, the counseling, the comfort, we get through the Holy Spirit, these give us hope. This is a gift of God, hope, that we have this continued connection with God.

The Gospel reading for today is from John, chapter 16. I think the chief idea conveyed here is the unity of God in the Trinity. Jesus is talking to the disciples and He’s saying, I’m going to send the Holy Spirit to you. I’ll read a little bit from John 16. “He will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.” This is what’s conveyed here, really, is the unity of God in the Trinity. Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Everything the Father has is mine. Jesus says everything the Holy Spirit has, comes from me and from the Father. All of it is coming from us. We are one God. This is the idea being conveyed in John, chapter 16.

Even though we can’t define the Trinity in a way that makes it easily comprehensible to us, or makes it comprehensible at all, there are some things we can say. These different persons that are the Trinity. God, the Father, we know as the Creator. We saw this in the Old Testament reading today. This imagery about the creation of the world. God is also the Son, and our Brother, in the person of Jesus Christ. In this, He’s our Redeemer and our Savior. So we’ve got Creator, we’ve got Redeemer, we have the Savior. And God, the Holy Spirit, is our Guide and our Comforter.  Jesus says, I will send you a comforter, the Holy Spirit. I will send you a guide. We talked about that in the reading for today. So we have a Creator; we have a Redeemer; we have a Savior; we have a Guide; we have a Comforter; all in these three persons that constitute one God. So what can we distill from those images that God has given us of what He is? We know that on the one hand, God is mighty and awesome. We know also that God is loving and wants to have a relationship with us. We know that God guides us and comforts us. God gives Himself for us. We see this in the life, passion, and death of Christ, that God gives Himself for us. God pours Himself out for us.

So, to look back to where I began. On the one hand God is a mystery to us, but we do know that God is bigger than us and infinitely powerful. We also know that because God wants to have this connection with us, we are not alone. Even in our darkest moments we are never alone, because we are always in the presence of an all-powerful Creator who loves us and wants us to reach out to him.

Amen.

Readings
Acts 14:21-27
Revelation 21:1-5
John 13:31-35

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This is the Fifth Sunday of Easter and today I’m going to focus on the Gospel message. This is Jesus’ last discourse with His disciples. It’s right before His passion and death. Jesus gives them a new commandment – to love each other as He has loved them. That’s a new commandment. It’s a new commandment for all of them. It’s a new commandment for us. So first of all, what is it? “Love one another as I have loved you.” I want to talk more about the nature of Christian love as we go along. How does Jesus demonstrate it? Jesus demonstrates it by what follows after the last discourse. His obedience to God, even unto death. His sacrifice of Himself for all of us. This is how Jesus shows us, demonstrates to us, the nature of love. Jesus always does this, He doesn’t just tell us something, He shows us, too. He shows us how to follow His example. This is why God became one of us, so that he could show us what we are to do. And that’s the message for today – to love each other as Jesus loved us.

In the Gospel passage for today, Judas leaves and everything is being set into motion, all the things that will unfold to Jesus’ passion, His death,  and ultimately His resurrection. All that’s now going forward, and Jesus tells the disciples that God will glorify the Son of Man. He says, He will “glorify the Son of Man at once”. This is something that’s about to happen now. So what does this mean? Glorification, here, lies in Christ’s perfect obedience to the Father. He knows what’s going to happen. He accepts what’s going to happen to Him. Remember, he was God, but he was also a human being. He suffered. And He knew he was going to suffer intense agony. He knew what was coming. He knew more than anybody could have known. This reference to the Son of Man is something that harkens back to the Old Testament. Jesus does this all the time. He refers to the Old Testament to show us how His life is the fulfillment of prophecy. And in Daniel, chapter 7, the prophet there writes: “Behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him.” This is what Jesus is talking about when He refers to the glorification of the Son of Man. Jesus is Christ and He’s going to be presented to the Father because of His perfect obedience to God. This glorification at once, that’s about to happen, means His passion and death. His glory lies in His obedience to God. Jesus is perfectly obedient to the Father, and God glorifies Jesus as the Son of God.

The prophecy that’s in Revelation, 21st chapter, that was our second reading for today, also illustrates the glory of God. I’ll read part of it: “Then, I, John, saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” But then comes a new thing, new things, the “new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” There’s a new heaven, there’s a new earth, all things are made new. To read on from Revelation, John writes: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away.” The One who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And, of course, the One who sat on the throne, is Christ. Christ has made all things new. The world will be a new place. This particular part of Revelation is really special, because all scholars agree this is, in fact, a prophetic passage, it’s forward-looking. It’s telling us something that will happen, on the second coming of Christ. The world will be made new. Everything will be made new. The new Jerusalem is a reference to the new community governed directly by Jesus Christ on His second coming. The old order has passed away, all the tears, all the pain, all the sorrow, all that is gone. We are now all together governed directly by Christ, who loves us with perfect love.

Now, I want to turn again to this question about the new commandment, to love one another as Jesus loved us, because it relates directly to that whole idea about what Jesus means, and what He’s done, and what He’s going to do.

In the Gospel passage for today, the disciples are there with Jesus. In the part that precedes what we read today, Peter and others want to argue with Jesus and question what’s going on. They did this on occasion. Jesus gives them a simple instruction: “Love one another, as I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” Jesus is giving them a new commandment. Again I have made all things new, right? Jesus is telling us something new. This is a new commandment to you. Love each other. Love each other in the same way that I have loved you.

Let’s talk about this for a minute, because this goes to a very core concept in the Christian faith, which is love. The Greek word, which you see on occasion, Agape, means love. And this refers to the kind of love that Christians are supposed to have for one another and to have for everyone.

So what does it mean? It doesn’t just mean a warm feeling. It doesn’t just mean a warm and fuzzy feeling or a good intention, but it means an actual willingness to serve other people. Remember, Jesus said love one another as I have loved you. Jesus gave everything for us. As Paul writes, He emptied Himself for us. He gave everything He had for us. That’s true love. That is the love he wants us to have for one another. A willingness to serve one another. A willingness to help. Not just to feel something, but to do something. That’s what Christian love means. So His command to us, love one another as I have loved you, reflects the love of the Father and of the Son for all of us. And it reflects the love that we are to have for one another, among the church and in the world, for other people, because, again, people can see the love of God through us. This is a reason we’re here, as the church, as all the Christian faithful around the world, to demonstrate for all humanity the love of God for us. That can shine through when we follow this new commandment, to love one another as Jesus loved us. Jesus tells them, “all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” That’s what He’s saying. The people can see God through us. We can serve God by loving each other as Jesus loved us. That’s His new commandment that he gives just before the end of His earthly ministry.

Now, I talked a few minutes ago about glorification, Christ’s glorification. Remember, Jesus said the Son of Man will be glorified at once. And, again, this is because of His obedience to the Father, His willingness to undergo the passion, and the death, and all the suffering that He experienced. This is glorification is His obedience to the Father. His perfect obedience to God is what glorifies Him. Now, we are commanded to love one another. This is a commandment. This is an order. This is something we are to do. If we do that, we glorify God. We glorify God through following His commandment in obedience to Him, to love one another. We glorify God by loving one another.

The prophecy from Revelation shows us the glory that awaits all of us in the future with God. This is something that will happen. It’s not just a picture or an image, it’s something that will become real. We can do our part, in the meantime, to bring His kingdom into the world now by loving each other. In obedience to Him, love one another as Jesus loved us.

Amen.