A sermon offered on the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 26, 2018.  The scripture readings are Joshua 24:1-2a,14-18, Psalm 34:15-22, Ephesians 6:10-20, and John 6:56-69. 

Listen to the sermon HERE. 

Gareth Southgate has become known for wearing a waistcoat.  He’s the manager (or coach) of the England National Soccer team, made famous in the recent World Cup.

What do we “put on” that makes us feel strong? What do we put on ourselves that helps us fight the things we fear? Do we put on a particular label? A lucky shirt? Makeup? Jewelry? Does wearing a cross help us when we’re afraid. Do we carry a talisman or a lucky object?

Most of us probably have something. The tie we wore when we got the big job. The shoes we wore when we fell in love. The ring, the blouse, the t-shirt… you name it. In today’s second reading, St. Paul suggests a whole wardrobe, but he’s not really talking about physical, material things. Just the opposite, in fact. Paul is suggesting that when we’re afraid, when we’re insecure, when we’re not sure we’ve got the strength or the confidence to get through the morning (much less the day), that there’s an entire closetfull of things at our disposal that well keep us safe. In fact, they will save us.

“Put on the whole armor of God,” Paul says. The physical things we fear, though they might be scary, are not really the things to fear at all, Paul says. Rather, it’s the spiritual things that can level us, that can bring us down the deepest, and that can even kill us. And then Paul goes on to talk about these various things we might do well to put on, or at least to try on.

Put a belt of truth around your waist. The waist is at our center. What if truth were really at the center of all that we are, and all that we do? There would be no fudging, no little white lies—instead, I guess we’d simply keep silent, rather than telling a lie.

Put on a breastplate of righteousness. The breastplate would cover the heart. Paul imagines our hearts to be covered with righteousness. “Righteousness” comes from an Old English word, “right-wise”—to be both virtuous and wise, to be right wise. To live from the heart, remembering that the heart and the head are in separable.

Paul says that for shoes, whatever makes us ready to proclaim a “gospel of peace” will do. He’s talking about our having a good foundation, a foundation that allows for peace, for us to talk about peace, to work for peace among other people, and to encourage peace in what we say, in where we go, and in what we do. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.

Faith, itself, Paul says, is like a shield. It protects us from all kinds of things. Even if our faith is weak, it’s a shield. Even if our faith is confused, even if it’s conflicted, when arrows from the evil one come toward us.

Senator John McCain died last night and for most of his life was a faithful Episcopalian. He knew so much of the Book of Common Prayer by heart that when he was captured as a prisoner of war, he could recite whole sections, psalms, and prayers. He could lead religious services in prison that helped sustain himself and helped sustain others.

God gives us a helping hand and our shield of faith is enough. Whatever faith we have is enough, and God works with that, and God honors that.

Any faith, any faith at all, becomes what Paul puts so dramatically as the “shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.” A “helmet of salvation” and a “sword of the Spirit” might sound vague, like they are accessories that we really don’t need. Except that the sword of the spirit is the Holy Scriptures, and the Holy Scripture is the way in which we come to understand salvation—salvation being, God’s plan from the beginning of time, to save humankind from itself.

So, here, St. Paul gives us an inventory of a kind of holy closet … The things we can use to protect us, to strengthen us, to keep us strong and faithful against any foe.

Julian of Norwich had a vision of God, and in reflecting upon it, she writes “God is our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces us and shelters us, surrounds us for his love, which is so tender that he may never desert us.” (Showings, Chapter 5, Long Version)

Clothes do, perhaps, make the person. But not the physical clothes—it’s the spiritual ones that count. And the best thing is that we don’t have to worry about back-to-school sales, or being up on the new fall fashions—God provides us with the means to be clothed in exactly what we need.

In the Gospel, the disciples say to Jesus, “This is a hard saying.” But Jesus suggests they clothe themselves in his spirit, in his light, in his love.

God gives us armor: a belt of truth, a breastplate of righteousness, peace-making shoes, a shield of faith, a helmet of salvation and sword of the Spirit— and all of them are custom-tailored to be exactly what you and I need. God does not give us a size that’s too big, or too small, but always knows what will be right. It is for us to step into that which God provides.

As Julian says, “God [himself] is our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love.”

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

A sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 19, 2018.  The scripture readings are Proverbs 9:1-6, Psalm 34:9-14, Ephesians 5:15-20, and John 6:51-58.

Listen to the sermon HERE. 

Why is it that food just tastes better sometimes?

After a long day at the beach, you’re sunburned and tired, but no matter what you put on a grill, it tastes better. Or in other seasons (that will be here before we know it)—cleaning out or volunteering somewhere on a chilly or cold day and the soup, the lasagna, the pizza from around the corner— whatever it is, just tastes better.

The food tastes better, I think, for at least three reasons.  It tastes better because we come tired, because we come hungry, and because we come in need.

And it’s those same three conditions that draw us to another table, to another meal, to a meal in which the superlative has less to do with taste than it does with substance.  At this meal, we receive life.  We gain the life of Christ, now and eternally.

Sometimes we come to Holy Communion tired, tired from what the great prayer calls those things “we have done, and those things we have left undone.”  Sometimes, we approach the altar with a feeling of having had a good day, or a good week.  We’ve done our best.  We’ve thought of other people. We’ve shared.  We’ve offered help.

And so we approach the altar tired, needing a little renewal, a little push to keep on.  But other times, we’ve maybe fallen down a lot during the week.  Things have not gone well—we have mis-spoken and we have mis-stepped.  Maybe we’ve even stepped on others.  And so, again, we’re tired, we’re beaten down, and so we almost limp through the liturgy and reach for the table.  We come tired.

I’m tired, this week, of more horrible news of abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, and the continued reliance upon a system that encourages power, greed, and silence. At such times, it’s tempting to champion the Episcopal Church—catholic in worship and theology, but reformed with lay leadership, transparency, shared power, and publicly aired dirty laundry. And yet, we all suffer. Victims look for healing.  And those who are already skeptical of history faith point to the latest news of why they should simply spend a Sunday morning with yoga, the park, and brunch with friends.  [Those interested in Holy Trinity’s Policies and other resources can look here.]

I get tired—we all do—of trying to say to a cynical, over-informed but under-read world, “But our church is different.”  And so, I bring my weariness to the table.

We come hungry for various reasons.  Often we “travail and are heavy-laden,” and we look for refreshment.  We’ve eaten too much of the junk food of the world, and so we look for nourishment, for things are taste like what they are, rather than what chemicals or preservatives have made us imagine.  Some starve for friendship, for healing, for work, for purpose.

Writing about food has grown over the last last twenty or thirty years, and with it the word, “umami” has come into our vocabulary from Japanese to describe a kind of “fifth taste,” beyond sweet, sour, bitter, and salty.  It’s a pleasant, savory kind of taste.  It’s brothy, and meaty, and mouth-watering. As the Umami Information Center says, it is “subtle and blends well with other tastes to expand and round out flavors, most people don’t recognize umami when they encounter it, but it plays an important role making food taste delicious.

I think the Bread of Heaven has a kind of spiritual “umami,” to it.  It fulfills a kind of hunger, offers its own taste, and while it satisfies, it also encourages us to want more, to ask for me, to live for more.

This brings us to the third condition we bring that makes food so good.  If we’re honest, we bring some kind of need to the table.

I say, “if we’re honest,” we acknowledge our neediness.  Sometimes we come already full—full of ourselves, full of resentments (against God or other people), full of thinking, or full of emotion.  Sometimes we can come to the altar full of expectations, expectations for which there is not god big enough to meet.

But Christ feeds us most when we approach his table empty-handed, in the humility of saying simply, “I need.”  How we fill in the blank almost doesn’t matter as much as our saying—our praying—our need.  While our culture frowns on neediness of any kind, here at church, in worship, at this Holy Table, we have a place to bring our need—all of it, whether petty or seemingly insignificant, or overwhelming and larger than life itself.

The Gospel today tells us about a meal, and the first two readings work almost as invitations to the meal.  They speak of wisdom, but it’s a homey, kitchen-table kind of wisdom.  In Proverbs, Lady Wisdom has dinner ready.  “Turn in here,” she says, “ lay aside all the baggage you’ve got.  Leave all that outside, and come in, sit down, eat and enjoy.”

The Reading from Ephesians continues with the added advice of how to arrive at the feast, what to bring, and how to act.  Don’t be foolish. Don’t drink too much.  “Make the most of the time.”  In other words, leave regrets and expectations behind.  Don’t try to run away from the moment, but live—live fully, live woken up, live NOW, here.

One of favorite newer hymns in our hymnal is one that sings of this message of Ephesians:

Now the silence, now the peace,
Now the empty hands uplifted;
Now the kneeling, now the plea,
Now the Father’s arms in welcome;
Now the hearing, now the power,
Now the vessel brimmed for pouring;
Now the body, now the blood,
Now the joyful celebration;
Now the wedding, now the songs,
Now the heart forgiven, leaping;
Now the Spirit’s visitation,
Now the Son’s epiphany;
Now the Father’s blessing,

Jesus says, “I am the living bread.”  The people of his day worried and wondered what it meant to eat his flesh and drink his blood.  The apostle Paul writes that some misunderstood this to the point that there were rumors about the Christians being cannibals.  The Church ever since has tried to place Holy Communion on the spectrum between completely symbolic or completely literal.

St. Augustine put it well when he wrote, “That which you see is bread and the cup, which even your eyes declare to you; but as to that in which your faith demands instruction, the bread is the body of Christ, the cup is the blood of Christ … these things are called sacraments for this reason, that in them one thing is seen, another thing is understood.”  At its most faithful, I think, the Church has lived somewhere in-between, in the middle, in place of faith, a place of “spiritual umami,” the place in which the Real Presence of Christ is Now—not yesterday, not this afternoon, but NOW.

I’ve invited you to think about times when food tasted especially good—after a long day of work or an exhausting project.  But just imagine, for a moment, the feast that awaits us after a life well-lived.  Imagine the table, the tastes, the company, the eternal goodness of it all when we meet God face to face with totality of tiredness, a life of hungering for the good, and a need only for God, who greets with a smile, saying, “Life forever begins now.  Bon appetit.”

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

A sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, August 12, 2018. The scripture readings are 1 Kings 19:4-8, Psalm 34:1-8, Ephesians 4:25-5:2, and John 6:35, 41-51.

Listen to the sermon HERE.

Today’s Gospel and the one for next week put a hymn in my head that I can’t get out very easily.   I bet you’ve heard it or sung it somewhere.  It’s often sung at youth conferences and is popular at funerals. The hymn, “I am the bread of life” is not the easiest to sing—the words don’t match the notes in the same way from stanza to stanza, and so, a lot of us tend to sort of mumble as we sing the verses.  But things clear up when we get to the refrain.  Everyone sings.  Whether they are on pitch or off, whether they sing well or not so well, almost everyone does their part with the words that sing, “And I will raise them up, and I will raise them up, and I will raise them up on the last day.”

Christians often have made a big deal over the raising up of Jesus.  In the history of the Church, belief in the resurrection has been used as a test for admission to Baptism, for ordination, for being considered a true follower of Jesus Christ.  But in today’s Gospel, Jesus makes it clear that the point of his rising is to raise up others, to raise up you and me, that we might walk tall and strong in this life, and that we might join one another in the next.

Throughout the Gospel stories, the Greek word that we translate as “rise up” [anistemi] occurs again and again.   The man who is healed of a withered hand, the daughter of Jairus, the prodigal son rises up and goes to see his father.

Jesus also uses the same word when he is talking with the disciples about the Son of Man, this special one of God foretold in scripture. Jesus says that the Son of Man will be delivered over to the people, mocked, spitefully treated and spit upon, and they will put him to death; but on the third day he will rise again.

In this life Jesus raises up.  He raises up the sick and the wounded.  He raises up those who are brought down low by others.  His mother Mary sings of this power before his birth, prophesying what will be as she affirms, “He has lifted up the lowly.”

And he lifts up still and he empowers us to be his hands in the word to help lift up others.

Christ lifts us up in this life, but he also lifts us up into the next.  We believe that through his death on the cross and his descent into hell, he has gone through the very worst of what evil and death can do.  No matter how lonely, no matter how painful, no matter how horrible—Jesus has endured it.  And he has overcome it.  With his resurrection, we are given the power through God to make it through anything death can deal us.  With the power of Christ, we too rise to new life, we rise to everlasting life.

Just as wheat rises to become bread, bread rises in us to make us become more like God.  Each time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist, we are nourished by Christ.  We are fed by his body and blood and made strong and made faithful.

At the beginning of the Prayer of Great Thanksgiving, the celebrant bids us, “Lift up your hearts.”  And we respond, “We lift them up unto the Lord.”  This is a statement of faith, in a way.  It is a statement of faith that even in our prayers, as we celebrate the sacrament in this life; we are made one with God.  We are united with Christ through his body and are lifted up into the presence of the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.

The Eastern theologian and catechist, [7th century Byzantine] Maximus the Confessor worked hard to help people understand and believe basic Christian beliefs.  Underlying all of his teaching is his belief that it is God’s intention to raise up all things and to bring them to a new and extraordinary place in the presence and the heart of God.  Maximus wrote, “…it is clear that He who became man without sin will divinize human nature without changing it into the divine nature, and will raise it up for His own sake to the same degree as He lowered Himself for man’s sake.”(page 178 PHILOKALIA Volume II) According to Maximus, God is working to bring all thing together and to raise them up.

In our Old Testament lesson, we read about the prophet Elijah, who was at the point of giving up.  He’s been doing his best, but it isn’t paying off.  Because of his prophecies, Jezebel, the wife of the king, if after his head.  No place is safe. People aren’t listening, and so Elijah feels sorry for himself.  He prays to God to take away his life.  And then he goes and sits under a tree and falls asleep.  An angel wakes him up and something awakens deep within Elijah.  Elijah is told, “Get up. Eat. God will provide.”  Elijah is raised up by God, or rather, by God’s messenger—whether that messenger was an angel with wings who hovered and flew or an angel that looked a lot like a thoughtful lady from down the street.

That’s the way it works so often.  We are raised up by one another—when we feel the prayers of other people, they sometimes feel like we’re being given a boost, and we are raised up.

When someone offers us a hand or a kind word, and we though nobody noticed how down we were, we are raised up.  When someone offers another way of seeing a quandary or tackling a problem, we are raised up.

God’s raising work can surprise us, sometimes, even when we’re praying for it. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, remembers an occasion when this happened for him. He and his wife were visiting the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Goma. They were at a refugee camp where there were some 25,000 people, sheltered on volcanic rock, with almost no food. Welby went into a hot tent with disabled children who’d been abandoned. They lay, basically dying, on filthy mattresses, while overstretched doctors tried to make them comfortable. In the midst of that, having sat with an elderly woman, who was blind, hungry, and had lost her entire family, the Bishop came over to Welby, and said, “Say something to encourage them.” Archbishop Welby recalls,

I did what I’m afraid I tend to do when I can’t think of anything to say I talk for a while to see if I’ve got any ideas . . . I started off by saying: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” And I was then going on to say something about bringing practical help or something […… but] the crowd started clapping and cheering. [They went on clapping and cheering.]

The Archbishop goes on to reflect, “The gospel is good news to the poor in and of itself. Yes, it changes society, yes, it transforms our existence, yes, it does all that. But it is in and of itself, by itself an end in itself, not a means to an end. It is good news for the poor.” (From “Prayer and Community as the First Priority,” Religious Life and Renewal: Exploring Roots and Shoots, The Archbishop’s Day Conference at Lambeth Palace, Friday 28th March 2014).

Like the Archbishop of Canterbury, we can sometimes take the Gospel a little bit for granted and forget its power to lift others up. Our bearing witness to the Gospel (whether with words or in action) can lift up others. Maybe it’s through conversation, through prayer, through political action, or charity; maybe it’s a stranger, a family member, a friend, or a fellow parishioner—the opportunities abound for us to participate in God’s work of raising up all of creation, and gathering us to himself. As hard as we might work at it, the Archbishop’s story reminds us that it is the liberating power of Christ to resurrect that saves us all.

Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.”

Let us give thanks to God that we have been raised up; we are being raised up, and that on the last day, we will be raised up into the full love of God.

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

 

 

A sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, August 5, 2018.  The scripture readings are Exodus 16:2-4,9-15, Psalm 78:23-29, Ephesians 4:1-16, and John 6:24-35. 

Listen to the sermon HERE. 

Last week, we heard about Jesus using limited resources to feed thousands.  This week, our scripture from the Gospel of John continues just after the feeding of the thousands.  Some of those who witnessed the feeding of the thousands have crossed the lake in their boat, and when they get to the other side they seem surprised to see Jesus.  They ask him how he got there and where he came from.  But Jesus reads their hearts and says, “You ask about me not because you really want to know but because you’re still thinking about the food for the thousands we just ate.”  “And yet,” Jesus says, “you still want more.”

We all probably know someone who can never be satisfied, but always wants more. Sometimes the appetites are external—the desire for more money, more clothes, more food, more drink, more stuff.  But often these mask internal appetites that are sometimes the very hardest to satisfy—the desire for acceptance (self-acceptance or the approval of others), the desire for a purpose, a vocation, or a cause. There’s the desire for excitement, or challenge, or change—or its opposite: the desire for peace, for calm, for silence.  There’s the desire for love.

Those who experience any healing from addiction know that at some level, external cravings are related to internal instincts, and until the internal, spiritual aspect of hunger or thirst is dealt with, there will be no success with the externals.  And that sort of spiritual work is something each person can only do for herself or himself, as hard as we may try to help another.

So much of our “wanting more” relates to the future.  We need to save and prepare—of course.  But Jesus (again and again) cautions us about worrying too much about the short run. Jesus senses this in the disciples and tells them, “Don’t focus so much on the food that perishes but focus on the food that endures for eternal life.”

To this, the disciples remind Jesus that God provided for the people of Israel when they were hungry.  And we hear about that in today’s first scripture reading.  The reading from Exodus recalls the when the people of Israel were wandering in the wilderness. They became tired and irritable. They got hungry. And then, God fed them with manna– this mysterious, odd, flaky-like substance. In the words of the psalmist, “Mortals ate the bread of angels; he provided for them food enough.” (Psalm 78:24-25).

But the manna was only for the day. It was daily manna and needed to be consumed or it would spoil. If they left it out it became wormy. If it remained in the sun, it melted. This is because the manna was food, but it was more than food. Manna was meant to be consumed with faith. It took faith to rely upon the Lord to lead through the wilderness. It took faith to go to sleep each night trusting that there would be manna for the morrow.

Perhaps it’s from that old, ancient story about manna that the prayer began to be formed that would pray for daily manna, or daily bread. When we pray, “Give us this day, our daily bread,” this is a part of what we’re praying for. Not just bread for right now, but bread for tomorrow, bread of promise, bread of hope.

Biblical scholars like to point out that the grammar of the Lord’s Prayer actually conveys this sense of praying for tomorrow, for bread of the future. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, reflects on this in a meditation where he writes about this phrase

…At least some people in the early church understood [this phrase from the Lord’s Prayer] it to mean the bread we want for tomorrow or even the bread of tomorrow; “give us today tomorrow’s bread”. And they’ve thought that might mean give us now a taste of the bread we shall eat in the Kingdom of God. Give us a foretaste of that great banquet and celebration where the universe is drawn together by Christ in the presence of God the Father. And so … Holy Communion is, at one level, bread for today, it’s very much our daily bread, it’s the food we need to keep going; but it’s also a foretaste of the bread of heaven, a foretaste of enjoying the presence of Jesus in heaven, at his table, at his banquet… Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer

Jesus says, “Look to God for the true bread from heaven. Look to God for the bread that comes down and gives life to the world.” And then Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

For Christians, Christ is our bread.  If we stay in relationship with Christ, we are fed—spiritually and in every other way.

Of course, we forget. We sometimes forget to eat or drink of the Spirit.  I was reminded of this when I heard a commentator talking about marathon runners.  The commentator pointed out how important it is for the runner to drink water BEFORE she’s thirsty. The person explained, “If you’re running a marathon and you wait until you’re thirsty to drink water, it’s too late, and the water you get will not do what it needs to do to replenish and refresh.” The spiritual life is a little like that, as well. If we wait until we notice the absence of Christ, if we wait until we feel God’s distance, then it can be much harder and slower to feel the strength, the consolation, the encouragement, the faith, we may need. And so, we eat and drink regularly, at this table, in this kind of worship.

By taking into ourselves the Body of Christ, we become one with Jesus and the Father through the Holy Spirit. Communion happens to us. Communion overtakes us. Communion is God moving toward us and inviting us closer. Communion is our reaching out toward one another and even reaching beyond the church into the world.

Sometimes we forget to eat. At other times, we prefer junk food—the stuff that seems like it quenches the spirit, but only serves to fill us for a moment.  We can fall victim to addictions or temptations that move us away from our true self and true sustenance.  But we can always come back.

We can come back to the Table (to the Sacrament of Holy Communion).
We can come back to the food of Christ’s Spirit (through prayer).
We can come back or reach out for the experience of Christ’s Body (as he is made flesh in other people.)

Bread for today is a gift. Bread for tomorrow is our prayer. We are called to live with hope and with faith for whatever is ahead. We have challenges in our personal lives and we may have worries. God invites us to have faith that when tomorrow comes, God will give us the resources we need. We have problems that seem unsolvable, but with tomorrow’s bread, perhaps God will also give us new answers, creative solutions, and deeper insight.

Late summer is a good time for us to think about what it means to live by faith. There is still time for vacation, but plans are already being made for a new year at school, a new program year at church, a new season for business or work of any kind.

The scriptures leave us with a few questions:  In what ways, might God invite us to look for “bread for tomorrow?” In what ways are we invited to clear out the cupboards, the hiding places, the storage areas that build up our confidence, and rely on God for strength, for nourishment, for sustenance? Might God be calling us to a new place of faith? Might God be calling us to live a little more closely in touch with him, listening more closely for the new word, looking for intently for that which will feed and sustain and grow the Body of Christ into the future?

May we come to know in our hearts, minds, and bodies Him who is the bread of life, in whom all hunger, thirst, and desire are surpassed beyond our wildest dreams.

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