We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, who are still here, and we honor with gratitude the land itself and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.

Sermons

Sermon, Pentecost 4, Proper 9, July 3, 2022

Native American Prayers

We’re going to start off this time together with a little mind exercise. 

Here’s a statement from today’s gospel to think over. 

“The kingdom of God has come near to you.” 

(Time to think)

In your time of reflection, what came to mind? 

(Answers from congregation)

Now, turn to your neighbor and offer this greeting. 

“The kingdom of God has come near to you.” 

(People greet one another)

How did you feel as you offered that greeting? 

How did you feel as you received that greeting? 

I’m thinking that this greeting is revolutionary! 

In today’s gospel, Jesus sent seventy people out ahead of him in pairs to prepare the way for his coming.  And Jesus told them to greet the people with this greeting, “The Kingdom of God has drawn near you.” In the towns that received them, the disciples brought about miracles and the kingdom of God did indeed draw near.     

Now what if at the end of each day, I had to report in to Jesus about how my mission of bringing God’s kingdom near had gone that day?  Would I have anything to report? 

Some days, I’d have to confess a complete fail! 

Thank God that even when we do fail (think Peter and all his failures) Jesus will send us out yet again. 

So what CAN we do to bring the kingdom of God near to the places and to the people that Jesus sends us to each day? 

The first thing is to remember that we carry God’s peace out with us.  In fact, God’s peace is the most important thing that Jesus asks us to carry out into the world.   

And God’s peace is a treasure.    

Today’s first hymn, “Peace before us,” written by David Haas, is based on a Navaho prayer.   In Native American spirituality, as well as Celtic spirituality, God’s presence “permeates everything—blending and shading into all of life like the iridescent colours of the rainbow.”   (Hymn notes on WLP 791 in Wonder, Love and Praise.)

So to carry God’s peace into the world, we can pray that all around each one of us will be God’s peace, that all around  each one of us will be God’s love, that all around each one of  us will be that iridescence of God’s light, that all around each one of us will be the presence of Jesus.

Then we pray again  that all around us will be peace—for that peace that we long for and that peace that we want to carry out  is made up of God’s love, light, and the presence of Jesus himself with us, around us and dwelling in us constantly. 

This peace is a gift from God.

Jesus points out in today’s gospel that we must be willing to accept the gift of God’s peace.    

God’s peace is a living thing—if we decide to accept God’s peace and to share in it, then God’s peace will rest in us, take root in us, and grow in us.    

But if we decline it, and there are so many ways to decline God’s peace, that peace will simply return to God.    

God’s peace won’t be wasted, so when we don’t want it, God sends it elsewhere, until at last if finds a resting place in another’s heart, where it can take root and grow. 

So  let’s be people who accept God’s peace and let that peace grow up in us. 

Then, Jesus can send us out into the world bearing that peace to those who need it so desperately. 

And when we truly bear that peace out into the world, people will know that the kingdom of God has indeed drawn near. 

So –we have God’s peace to carry into the world but we need the energy to deliver it.   

One of the reasons we come to church each Sunday is to get rejuvenated for the week ahead, sort of like going to the gas station when our gas tanks are on  empty.  We get refueled so that we can go out and do God’s work. 

Each week we come to God’s table ready to receive the body and blood of Christ, literally taking God’s presence into us.  And when we come to the table, we receive comfort. 

Isaiah describes God as comforting us as a mother comforts her child, and so we are comforted at God’s table. 

Jesus directs the disciples to go out and to graciously receive hospitality from those who welcome them, to receive the comfort that others offer to them.  “Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide,” a lovely give and take, a back and forth reminiscent of the dance of shared love among the Trinity. 

That constant exchange of love produces its own holy energy in which we share when we come together to the Lord’s table with humble and open hearts,  ready to receive whatever it is that God intends to provide to each one of us this day. 

Our temptation though, is to prefer giving to receiving.  After all, Paul told the Ephesian elders in the Acts of the Apostles that Jesus himself said that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” 

And yet, being willing to receive has its own benefits that help us grow into the disciples who can give God’s gifts to others by carrying God’s peace and healing into the world. 

In her blog on leadership, Jesse Lee Stoner lists several reasons why receiving can be a good thing.  I think Jesus would agree with her reasons. 

Receiving reminds you that you’re not in charge, and helps you to develop a more realistic self-image.  

Receiving keeps you humble. 

When you receive, you allow others the opportunity to feel the pleasure of giving, and you create a space for others to shine. 

Receiving lets us experience gratitude. 

Receiving helps us to begin to understand what strength really is. 

Receiving makes us more well-rounded and helps  our relationships  with one another to become richer.  (https://leadershipfreak.blog/2011/12/19/its-better-to-give-than-receive-and-other-lies/ )

So now, let’s go back to where we started. 

Imagine yourself surrounded by and filled with God’s peace. 

Imagine yourself with an open heart, open hands,  humbly ready to receive the gifts that God wants you to receive.  For the moment, just lay aside what you have to offer. 

Now imagine going out now in peace, your hearts and hands open. 

Imagine this. 

And now, turn to your neighbor once more, and greet that person in peace, with your hands open, 

saying, “The kingdom of God has drawn near.” 

May God’s kingdom draw near to us this day, and may we receive God’s strength to  carry God’s  love and light and peace out into the world. 

Sermon, Trinity Sunday, June 12, 2022

Sermon, Trinity Sunday, Year C 2022

Today’s sermon is  almost completely taken from the first sermon I preached on Trinity Sunday here at St Peter’s.    

The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the ways that we Christians try to understand the nature of God.    In today’s reading from Proverbs, the woman called Wisdom gives us some insight into God’s nature.   

Ellen Davis, who teaches at Duke, and is one of our most important  Old Testament theologians  and Hebrew scholars, says that “the picture of Wisdom playing, even giddily, before God, must be allowed to stand as the important theological statement it is.” 

Davis offers this translation of Wisdom speaking about herself at the end of today’s reading from Proverbs. 

 “And I was delights daily, playing before him continually, playing in his inhabited world, and my delights were with human beings.”

Davis says that here the writer of Proverbs emphasizes the element of play in God’s nature.

After all, God didn’t have to create this world, or us, for that matter! 

Davis points out that God’s decision to create the world was a matter of absolutely free choice, and in fact, creation, and especially humanity, God created simply for “the sake of God’s own pleasure.” 

The freedom to create and delight in what is created belong together, in divine play just as in child’s play.  In  this “boisterous” image we see Divine Wisdom freely playing with, and delighting in human beings!

The fact that God plays in creation reminds us that God is here with us and is intimately involved with every aspect of our lives, just as God is intimately involved with all of creation. 

And the fact that God is intimately involved with us and with all of creation finds expression in the doctrine of the Trinity,

because as Davis goes on to point out,  we “Christians confess that God not only created the world but dwelt in it as a human being and God now continues to be present in our midst through the Holy Spirit, one of whose seven gifts is the wisdom of God.”

An understanding of the Trinity that was popular in the first few centuries of  the church captures this playful nature of God.  

This understanding  is known as perichoreisis.

Catherine LaCugna, a theologian who wrote about the Trinity, tells us that perichoresis expresses the idea  that the three divine persons mutually exist permanently in one another, draw life from one another, and are what they are by relation to one another.

If we take the Greek  prefix peri (around) and  link it with the root of the verb choreuein (to dance), we get a lively  metaphor that describes  the “one nature in three persons” of the Trinity. Literally God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit “dance around.”  The choreia or dance of God is “the choreography of the cosmos—it’s the interrelationship of Creator, creation, and life itself, the holy creativity of the All in All.” (from notes on Perichoresis from The Rev. Susan Sowers)

And LaCugna goes on to add that we, yes, all of us, all of humanity, have been made partners in this divine dance, not through our own merit, or because we’re good dancers,  but because God has chosen us to join in this cosmic dance of love.  We have been made partners in the divine dance, because everything comes from God, and everything returns to God, and this coming and returning happens through Jesus Christ in the Spirit—“the choreography of the divine dance which takes place from all eternity and is manifest at every moment of creation.”

LaCugna  points out that this “one mystery of communion includes God and humanity as beloved partners in the dance.”

Dancing is good for us.  A recent article in The Washington Post, “Anxious, lonely, or angry? Try Dancing,” quotes Lucia Horan, who teaches a specific kind of dance that helps people to deal with stress.  She says that the “beauty of dance is that it addresses these quadrants of healing—the physical, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual.”  She goes on to say that dance works for many people because if forces people to focus on the present moment, which can bring relief from worry, grief, and emotional pain.  

The early church fathers used the metaphor of dancing as a way of elevating the soul. 

St Augustine says this about dancing.

“I praise the dance, because it frees people from the heaviness of matter and binds the isolated to community.  I praise the dance, which demands everything:  health and a clear spirit and a buoyant soul.  Dance is a transformation of space, of time, of people, who are in constant danger of becoming  all brain, will, or feeling.  Dancing demands a whole person, one who is firmly anchored in the centre of his life…I praise the dance.  O Man, learn to dance, or else the angels in heaven will not know what to do with you.”   

Brendan O’Malley tells us that in the Christian Church for the first thousand years Christians danced in procession to and from the church.  This dance was known as the “Tripudium, which means three steps or transport of joy… The dancers linked arms and danced in row after row, three steps forward, one step back, moving through the streets and into the church and around it during the hymns of the service, and then out through the streets as a recessional.” 

Three steps forward, one step back, three steps forward and one step back—this is how we move toward God in this lifetime, stepping backward periodically, but then advancing again. 

So the early Christians danced into, and in, and out of their churches, and felt in their bodies the pull of the divine dance of the Trinity, a dance of mutual love, breathing in together the breath of life, and pouring out to one another in mutual giving. 

So what does this understanding of the Trinity, this divine dance  that we’re a part of, have to do with how we live our lives today?  

Brain McLaren, a current theologian, offers this simple thought experiment. 

Imagine God as “this loving trinity of perichoresis, a sacred choreography of self-giving, other receiving; honoring, being honored; fully seeing the other, fully revealing the self.”

Now imagine the universe that this God has freely and playfully chosen to create.  Imagine dancing to the music of this universe—“a wild and wonderful symphony, full of polyphony and surprise, expansive in themes, each movement inspiring the possibility of more movements as yet unimagined, all woven together with coherent motifs and morphing rhythms, where even dissonance has a place within higher more comprehensive patterns of harmony and wholeness.” 

And finally, McLaren asks us to “imagine how people in this universe would manifest trust in this triune God—with undying creative love toward creation, and all of humanity, and even love toward those people who hold differing beliefs.”

This doctrine of the Trinity as perichoresis is a gift to us, because it allows us to imagine God-in-God, dancing in community, God electing us, choosing you and choosing me, to join in God in this divine dance, stepping with joy into God’s dance with the rest of humanity and all of creation.    

And because God has no limits, we know that God has elected all of humanity, not just us, to dance divinely,  our arms outstretched and  linked in love  to one another, taking three steps forward, one step back, and three more steps forward,  in a transport of joy, as we learn to dance this divine dance with one another and with God  right here in God’s good creation.

And if we fully enter into this divine dance, then  surely, as Clement of Alexandria said, even now, “we raise our winged souls to the heavens.” 

References

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs,  by Ellen Davis.  Westminster John Knox Press, 2000. 

God for Us:  The Trinity and Christian Life, by Catherine Mowry LaCugna. HarperSanFrancisco, 1973.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/20/dance-therapy-anxiety-pandemic/

Lord of Creation:  A Resource for Creative Celtic Spirituality, by Brendan O’Malley.   Morehouse Publishing, 2008.

Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?  Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World, by Brian D. McLaren.  Jericho Books, 2012. 

Notes on perichoresis from The Rev. Susan Sowers

Sermon, April 16, 2023, Easter 2 – Repentance “in touch with the Reality that God Creates”

“Hope” – George Frederic Watts 1886

Repentance plays a major part in today’s gospel. 

So let’s start with what repentance means.   

I like Eugene Peterson’s explanation of repentance in his book, Long Obedience in the Same Direction. 

Peterson says that “the usual biblical word describing the no we say to the world’s lies and the yes we say to God’s truth is repentance.  It is always and everywhere the first word in the Christian life.” 

He goes on to say that “repentance is not an emotion.  It is not feeling sorry for your sins.  It is a decision.” 

And that “repentance is the most practical of all words and the most practical of all acts.  It is a feet -on- the- ground sort of word.  It puts a person in touch with the reality that God creates.” 

In today’s gospel, John gives us the closing event on the day of the resurrection.  Early that morning, Mary Magdalene had met Jesus in the garden. 

After this emotional meeting, Mary had gone to tell the disciples that she had seen Jesus and all that he had said to her. 

Later that day, the disciples met, which brings us today’s gospel. 

They had locked all the doors of the house where they were because they were afraid. 

And Jesus came to them and said, “Peace be with you.”  He showed them his wounds.  They could have no doubt that Jesus was the person standing there in their midst.  They could see for themselves that God had brought about a new reality, something that they could not have imagined, new life out of death, , that is, the resurrection of Jesus.   

And they rejoiced. 

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Sermon, Palm Sunday, April 2, 2023

The Dalai Lama has said that “once committed, actions will never lose their potentiality.”

Every action in today’s gospel has a ripple effect, an influence far beyond the original action.  The story of the death of Jesus stands as stark testimony to the fact that once an action is committed, it cannot be taken back.  The consequences of the action spark other actions, becoming part of the tapestry of events into which our own actions are eventually woven. 

In today’s gospel, actions of betrayal, denial, accusations, manipulations, actions based on greed, actions taken out of fear, actions designed to keep the balance of power in place, are all actions that lead to the death of an innocent man, Jesus. 

This weighty tapestry of events becomes literally so tragic that darkness falls over the whole land as Jesus hangs on the cross.  And then, as Jesus cries in a loud voice and breathes his last, BEHOLD, the curtain in the temple is torn in two. 

The historian Josephus, writing in the time of Jesus, describes this curtain in the temple in Jerusalem, the massive structure which had been renovated by Herod the Great.  Josephus said that the curtain in that temple was made of Babylonian tapestry, “scarlet and purple, clearly depicting royalty.  It was woven with great skill and symbolically depicted the elements of the universe.  Embroidered into the veil was ‘a panorama of the heavens,’ meaning that it probably was designed to resemble the heavenly firmaments.” 

The purpose of the curtain was to separate the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple.  The Holy of Holies was the place in which the Jewish people believed God’s presence dwelt.  Only once a year could the high priest go behind the curtain and enter the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement to offer sacrificial blood of an animal to atone for his own sins and for the sins of the people. 

Matthew reports that, as Jesus dies, the curtain of the temple is torn in two, from top to bottom, so that it can never again separate God from the people.  Jesus’ death has torn away all barriers to God’s presence with us and for us, even in our deepest sins.

Once committed God’s actions will never lose their potentiality either, which is the good news in today’s sorrowful story.

Although all of the actions that led to Jesus’ death could not be taken back, God used those actions for good, to free us, once and for all from being held forever captive by our sinful ways. 

Now, nothing can separate us from the love of God except for our own active rejection of that love. 

Which brings me to Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. That betrayal set in motion the whole series of events that led to Jesus’ death.  Scripture tells us that when Judas saw that Jesus had been condemned, he repented.  But he could not change what he had done.  He couldn’t go back and fix what he had done.   This story would play out and Jesus would die. 

So Judas at least took his thirty pieces of silver back to the chief priests and the elders and said that he had sinned by betraying innocent blood.”  But they said, “What is that to us?  See to it yourself.”  They refused his money and his repentance. 

Judas threw down the money, left, and went and hanged himself.

After all the time he had spent with Jesus, he still didn’t understand that Jesus had brought to earth a new reality in which God’s grace is sufficient.  No longer an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, but only God’s justice and love.  If only Judas had thought to repent to God instead of to the chief priests. 

But the tapestry in the temple that kept the people from the immediate presence of God was all that Judas could understand.  Even after all that time with Jesus, all that Judas ultimately knew and all that he could see in his mind’s eye was that curtain of scarlet and purple through which he could never pass and through which the chief priests had refused to ever offer atonement for his sin.  And so, his pain and his repentance disregarded by the priests, he felt that he had no recourse to God and death was all that was left.   

Jesus died, and the curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom.  God removed that barrier, too late for Judas in this lifetime, for Judas had already taken justice into his own hands. 

How often we come before God in this life with the events of our lives, with all of our sins and weaknesses interwoven into a thick tapestry of our own creation, a barrier that we believe blocks our way to God forever.

But if we remember this story of all that happened the day Jesus died, we can recall that as Jesus breathed his last, God ripped the curtain of the temple in two, and destroyed every barrier that has ever blocked our way to God. 

We can live in hope,  because we know that our true place of repentance is not in the temple in front of a curtain, but kneeling in contrition at the foot of the cross. 

Sermon, March 19, 2023 – Lent 4

Are you stuck in your ways?  I know that the older I get, the more I would say that being stuck in my ways is true of me.   After all, it’s good to do things in a particular way, to be a certain way, and I like my comfortable beliefs.   Life is less complicated if we know how we want to do things,  and we have beliefs that support the way we tend to see the world. 

But today’s passages have made me think differently about being stuck in my ways.  The many people in today’s lectionary readings who are stuck have got some issues to face! 

In today’s Old Testament reading, God shakes his prophet Samuel up a bit because Samuel is stuck.    Samuel is balking over anointing a new king.  After all, Samuel had anointed Saul, the current king, and had been a big supporter of Saul.    But now, God is ready to move on, since Saul has been a disappointment to God as the leader of Israel.  So God tells Samuel—stop being stuck in the past.  It’s time to do something new.  So Samuel finally gets himself together and goes to Bethlehem to find Jesse, the father of many sons. 

Samuel expects that the Lord will choose the one of the oldest, kingliest-looking sons.  He has a preconceived idea of what a king should look like—and yet, seven sons pass by and God doesn’t choose one of them.  So Jesse sends for his youngest son, David, who is out in the fields keeping the sheep.  Certainly not king material—a shepherd, and too young to be given such responsibility. 

But surprise of surprises, when David shows up, the Lord says, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.”  And the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.  

The most unlikely person is the one that God chooses as the next King of Israel and not only that, the one from whose family the Messiah will someday be born. 

Samuel isn’t the only one who is stuck. 

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Sermon for March 5, 2023 – “Faith is foundational to our lives as Christians”

Faith is foundational to our lives as Christians.

In the Living Compass Lenten devotional that some of us are reading during Lent, the readings last week were about faith.  Robbin Brent wrote in her entry for Friday, March 3, that faith is believing in something and then acting on that belief. 

And she quotes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who says that “faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole stairway.” 

We are practical people—we like to see what’s ahead, and plan accordingly so that we can be thoroughly prepared.  Planning trips, planning vacations, planning for school, planning for retirement, planning for issues that we may face toward the end of our lives—all of this planning is good to do.  But we so often plan as if we are the only ones in charge of our lives and fully in control,  forgetting that life is notorious for handing us unexpected and often unwelcome challenges that we have not planned for. 

But when these unexpected things happen, we can act on our belief in God by stepping faithfully into whatever the situation is, knowing that God is with us, and will go with us, and will never, ever leave us alone—so we can proceed, yes, often with trepidation, or with caution, or even with great sorrow, but proceed we can and will.  We can lay aside our own plans and enter the unknown into which life is calling us.   

We can step into the unknown because we are people of faith.

In today’s Old Testament reading, God tells Abram, just a regular person like us, to go from his country and his kindred and his father’s house to the land God will show him.  God does not give Abram a map or tell him anything about how to get where God is leading him—that is the future that Abram cannot see.   

But Abram believes in God, and so he acts in faith.  The writer of Genesis states succinctly, “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.” 

Today’s psalmist is starting out on a difficult journey to Jerusalem, a trip that will be full of unknown challenges, since the traveler must pass through the barren wilderness, exposed to the heat of the day and the chill of the nights, possible attacks by thieves, getting lost, and no telling what else.  Wouldn’t it be easier just to stay home? 

But the psalmist is willing to set out because that person has faith in God’s steadfast love.  The traveler knows that especially in the difficulties of the journey, God, like a mother hen spreading her wings over her chicks to protect them from predators and to keep them warm and safe, will also protect the psalmist in the face of any challenge that may arise. 

And then we come to Nicodemus.  I really like the story of Nicodemus because he is a practical human being, a literal thinker with a bit of an imagination,  a law keeper and a planner, all admirable traits. 

It’s that bit of imagination and that need to plan that brings Nicodemus to Jesus at night.  After all, he and his fellow rabbis know that Jesus is a teacher who has come from God and that Jesus couldn’t do what he was doing apart from God. Nicodemus just might need to factor Jesus into his life and his plans.  So he decides to go have a talk with Jesus to find out.

The first thing that Jesus does is to dismantle the tendency of Nicodemus to think  literally, to believe only what he can see and understand.  Jesus introduces Nicodemus to the world of imagination—to the life of the Spirit, a life that requires being willing to enter the unknown, because “the Spirit blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”  

Jesus goes on to tell Nicodemus(and here’s the GOOD NEWS)  that God is on the side of the world—all of those who don’t know God, or have any idea of the Spirit—Jesus has come to clue them in, to open them up, to challenge them to go beyond what they can see to what they cannot even imagine, that is, the beginning of life in God, here and now. 

Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world but to save the world.

We’ve probably all been where Nicodemus is—we are curious, we can see that God is at work in the world, and we want to know—what do you, God, have to do with my life?  We believe in God, but we aren’t sure that we want to act on that belief by letting the Spirit in and possibly wrecking our carefully thought out plans. 

We can’t predict or control the Spirit.  So how can we plan for the work of the Spirit in our lives? We have to have imagination, to be open to possibilities that may never have occurred to us, to be willing to jettison our carefully laid plans and be willing instead to enter the unknown. 

Ultimately we have to choose—we can take a chance and enter into the unknown life of the Spirit, and act on our beliefs, going where God calls us, or just continue on as we are, thank you very much. 

Remember, faith is believing in something and acting on that belief.  As Robbin Brent says in the essay that I mentioned earlier, “it is our faith in God, expressed through our willingness to act on what we believe, that prepares our minds and hearts to respond compassionately to suffering, our own, others’ and the world’s.” 

One person who chose to enter the life of the Spirit was Harriet Tubman. She was born a slave and escaped to freedom.  But Harriet could not forget all of the people who were still enslaved back home.  So she acted on  her belief that “God don’t  mean people to own people.”  She had compassion on those who were still suffering as slaves.  At great risk to her own life, Harriet Tubman kept going back into danger, over and over, even though she had a bounty on her head, to lead many more slaves to freedom. 

Quaker abolitionist Thomas Garrett said of Harriet Tubman in 1868 that “I never met a person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul…and her faith in a Supreme Power truly was great.”  His statement is on the wall of an exhibit at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park in Dorchester County, Maryland. 

 Many of us know about this intrepid woman because of our friend Cleo Coleman, who embodies Harriet Tubman and tells the story of Harriet’s faith and how she acted on her faith by becoming a liberator of her people.    As the History Channel says of Harriet Tubman, “she is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background.”   

Harriet Tubman has a new separate feast day on the Calendar of the Episcopal Church, and that day is March the 10th. The Episcopal Church encourages all parishes and dioceses, in conjunction with other communities of faith,  to honor Harriet Tubman in a worship service  on or near the 110th anniversary of her death, which will be this Friday, March 10, 2023. 

So we honor her today as a person who did not hesitate to enter the unknown life that the Spirit called her into, by acting on her faith and responding compassionately to the suffering of others by leading them to freedom.  And as Harriet Tubman herself said, “Every great dream begins with a dreamer.  You have within you the strength, the patience and the passion to reach for the stars, to change the world.” 

After Nicodemus left Jesus late that night and made his way back home, maybe he looked up at the stars and remembered God’s promise to Abraham,  that God would make of Abraham a nation as numerous as the stars in the heavens.  After all, Nicodemus was a member of that nation of Israel and a teacher.  But now, maybe Nicodemus wondered what else Jesus could teach him.    Would he ever understand what Jesus was trying to say about being born again, being born from above, being born anew?  Maybe Nicodemus wondered if he might dare to follow Jesus openly.  Or maybe he was just too tired and too puzzled to give the conversation he had just had with Jesus much more thought right then.  

We will never know.    

But what we do know is that several months before Jesus was crucified, the chief priests and the Pharisees, of whom Nicodemus was one, wanted to have Jesus arrested. Nicodemus spoke against this arrest.    He said, “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?”  He was taunted for his statement—the others said, “Surely you are not also from Galilee, are you?” So now we know that  Nicodemus must have given more thought to what Jesus had said to him, for Nicodemus is acting on his belief that Jesus has come from God by having compassion on Jesus and speaking against his arrest. 

After Jesus is crucified and dies,   Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple of Jesus, asks Pilate for the body so that he can give Jesus a proper burial.  Nicodemus goes with Joseph of Arimathea to bury Jesus, and brings with him a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds.  The weight of these spices would be appropriate for the burial of a king.  Clearly, Nicodemus revered Jesus and had compassion for him, or he would not have honored him so lavishly. 

We hear nothing more of Nicodemus and we can only imagine the rest of his story.   Did his compassion for Jesus become compassion for the world around him? 

We don’t know the rest of our stories either.  We can’t know the future.  But what we do know is that God loves us with a steadfast love.  And that steadfast  love never ceases.  God’s love will carry us through all our goings and comings in this life, through all the joys and all the heartaches, because we know that God’s mercies will never come to an end.  Even after our longest and darkest nights,  God’s mercies are new every morning. We can proceed through the unknowns ahead with confidence.   

And we can faithfully act on our belief in our steadfast, merciful and loving God by letting the Spirit blow where it will through our lives.   We can faithfully step into the unknown, and go where God would send us, full of steadfast love and compassion for all this hurting world. 

Sermon 4th Sunday after the Epiphany

At the beginning of creation, God put everything into perfect balance, each part of creation connected to the whole, and everything supporting and supported by everything else.  God made conditions ideal for all of creation to grow and to thrive.  We all live within a great web of life.

But depending on conditions within the web, growing and thriving may be compromised. 

I want to tell you about the African violet I got from a friend. 

Periodically, I find that one of its leaves has dropped. If I just left it where it fell, the leaf would die.  But if I place that African violet leaf in water, it will start to root.  And if I leave it in the water long enough, the one leaf will get more leaves. 

But for this leaf to thrive and to grow into a plant,  I need to plant the leaf with its new roots and leaves in some dirt, because water, by itself, doesn’t have everything this plant needs to grow and thrive. 

So here’s a plant that I grew from one leaf.  You can see that putting the roots in dirt meant that the plant could grow. 

But dirt is not all the plant needs.  At first, as the plant put out new leaves, the leaves grew long and scraggly and were more yellow than green. 

What do you think my plants lacked? 

They lacked light!

So then I got a grow light.

With enough light, the leaves became green, and then, to my surprise, my new African violets bloomed!

So with the right soil, enough water and enough light, these African violets are growing and thriving. 

God made each one of us with the hope that we will grow and thrive, for after all, we are part of God’s creation.  We are like the leaves that fall from my African violet.  Without the essential things we need to live and grow, we just wither away.  But when we have all we need, we too can grow and thrive and live in a thriving community with one another, in the human web of life. 

One thing I love about the Bible is that it has so many stories about so many interesting people.  A lot of these people make spectacular mistakes, because they get messed up in their relationships with God, with one another and with the world around them. Then they start to wither away because they no longer have what they need to grow.    The Bible tells us about what these people learned, and how many of them corrected their ways and started growing and thriving again. 

God sent prophets to help those who were out of balance, those people who were no longer in right relationship with God or with one another.  The prophets told the people what they needed to get back into balance, to take their places again in the web of life instead of dying from a lack of what they needed. 

The stories of these prophets and what they had to say are in the Bible as well. 

Today’s Old Testament reading is from the prophet Micah. Just think, Micah spoke these words almost three thousand years ago to the people of Israel. 

And these words are all about what the Israelites needed to get back in balance and to live in beloved community with one another and to be in right relationship with God. 

Here’s what Micah says.   

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? 

When we do these three things, not only can we grow into the people hopes we will become, but we can help others to do so as well. 

So let’s start with “love kindness.” 

The word for kindness in the Bible adds richer and deeper meaning to our usual understanding of kindness.  That word is “hesed.”  As the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary explains, hesed “has to do with love, loyalty, and faithfulness.  It can be used to describe the key element in relationships—the desire to love God and to love one another, faithfully and consistently.” 

If I were not consistent about keeping water in this rooting container, and then watering the plants once they are in soil, they would die.  We all need love to grow into the people God hopes we will become—and our kindness/love to others helps them to grow as well.  Without love, we can so easily wither away, just as a plant will wither away without water. 

Then there’s doing justice.   

Doing justice is providing the soil that will allow a whole community to grow in love. An example of doing justice in the natural world is that trees work together for the good of the whole.   I’ve mentioned before in sermons that trees share water, carbon,  nutrients, and even alarm signals through their underground mycorrhizal networks, each tree contributing to the life of the community of trees in which it lives. 

 In the Bible, when the prophets talk about justice, they are talking about fairness and equality for everyone, so that everyone can thrive. 

Martin Luther King, Jr., a modern day prophet, says that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

That “inescapable network of mutuality” is the great web of life in which we all live.  What affects one of us will sooner or later affect all of us.   When we “do justice” and work for fairness and equality for all, then we find that we too will benefit from the rich soil that we are cultivating for the good growth of those around us. 

And last, Micah tells us that God wants us to walk humbly with God. 

We are always tempted to walk in our own light—our self-importance, our desire for fame, pointing to ourselves by shining light on ourselves.   But God asks us to walk in God’s light.  When we walk in God’s light, with God as our companion, we point the way to God in what we do.  And walking in God’s light we bloom, and become beautiful. 

Water, soil and light—love kindness, do justice, and walk humbly with your God. 

These are the things that God requires of us. 

Jesus was also a prophet and a teacher.  He came to tell us and to show us how to love kindness, to do justice and to walk humbly. 

In today’s gospel, Jesus teaches the disciples about loving kindness—blessed are those who mourn, who are willing to let the sorrows of the world in and to feel the world’s pain, blessed are the ones who are merciful.

Jesus teaches the disciples about doing justice—blessed are the peacemakers, the ones who work for justice, for when there is justice for all,  God’s peace be realized on this earth.    Blessed are those who are persecuted for doing God’s work in this world.  Those who work for fairness and equality for all will inevitably be persecuted. 

And Jesus teaches the disciples about walking humbly with God—blessed are the poor in spirit, the ones who know that they are completely dependent on God; blessed are the meek, those who live under God’s control rather than their own wills; blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those people whose greatest desire is to be in completely right relationship with God and with one another.  And blessed are the pure in heart, those whose hearts are turned toward God, and whose motives are determined by God’s will rather than their own wills.  

Through his teaching and through all he did on this earth, Jesus showed us how to grow and to thrive as the children of God, living in beloved community with all God’s children.  Jesus showed us how to love, Jesus showed us how to work for justice, and Jesus showed us how to walk humbly with God. Jesus showed us how to live in perfect balance as we each do our part in the web of life in which God has planted us. 

When you leave here today, look for ways to  do justice, to  love kindness, and walk humbly with your God, at school, in your families, with your friends, and anywhere else you find yourself. 

For these are the things that God wants of us, and what Jesus will help us to do, so that we can all grow and thrive, through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

 

Sermon, Nov. 13, 2022 – Pentecost 23 – the Day of the Lord

Transformation

Sermon, Proper 28, Year C 2022

Luke 21:5-19, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Psalm 98; Malachi 4:1-2a

Scripture describes the Day of the Lord as a cosmic, universal event, a time of terror, destruction, wars, and natural disasters that will take place before God’s reign on earth is fully realized. 

This understanding of The Day of the Lord also informs our understanding of the second coming of Christ, when Jesus will return in glory, vanquishing evil and bringing the fullness of God’s love, peace and rule to this earth. 

In the weeks before Advent, and during Advent itself, the lectionary presents us with various Day of the Lord passages that serve as signs of Jesus’ second coming on this earth. 

For after all, in the season of Advent, we are waiting and preparing not only for the birth of Jesus, God coming into the world as one of us, to live and die as one of us, but we are also waiting and preparing for Jesus to return in glory and for God’s reign of peace on this earth to at last become a reality.      

The Day of the Lord is a big theological idea that is interesting, but we’ve been waiting now for over 2000 years and Jesus has still not returned.

So I’m left to wonder.  Why continue to give so much attention to this concept? 

At least this idea of The Day of the Lord and the return of Jesus gives us hope that at some point, God will carry out God’s ultimate plan for all of creation,  and despite the current evidence to the contrary, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well, as St Julian of Norwich says. 

But for me, here’s the real down to earth value of the Day of the Lord. 

The Day of the Lord helps us to make sense of difficult times in our own lives, those times when  when the world turns upside down, and life as we knew it is gone, our emotional landscapes  are transformed and unrecognizable, we are disoriented, and can’t imagine how we’ll manage.  

The Covid pandemic had this feel to it for many people, especially early on, when the whole world shut down and no one could really predict what would happen next. 

The death of a beloved person in our lives can have this sort of impact. 

Or an unexpected incurable illness, or a divorce, and the list goes on. 

These times in our lives can be horrible and hopeless.  The feeling of isolation, betrayal, grief, and disorientation can turn the present into a desert of depression.  These times in our lives can bring debilitating anger and bitterness.  These times can bring a vast emptiness in which not even God seems to be present. 

Jesus says right up front in today’s gospel that these things are bound to happen, when our lives get turned upside down, when the things we thought were indestructible in our lives get torn apart, like the temple in Jerusalem, and there’s no way to build back what is gone. 

How depressing. 

But when we think of all these unwelcome changes as The Day of the Lord, then we can have hope! 

And here’s why. 

The Day of the Lord is a necessary, intermediate step from things as they were to what will be, a time when God’s power and love will transform everything from “death to life, from falsehood to truth, from despair to hope, from fear to trust, from hate to love, from war to peace,” as the World Peace prayer in The New Zealand Prayer Book reads.

That’s what the Day of the Lord is all about—Transformation!  Not just change for change’s sake, but transformation with purpose, transformation that leads to new life. 

Do these times in our lives wound and scar us?  Of course they do!  Remember the story of Jacob wrestling with God way back in Genesis?  After a night of struggle, daylight comes , the “man” wrestling with Jacob sees that he cannot be defeated.  He touches Jacob hip socket, wounding Jacob, and then asks to be released.     Jacob asks for a blessing first.  When the two part ways, Jacob, who has received a new name, Israel, goes limping off into the sunrise toward his reckoning with his brother Esau.  He has been scarred,  changed and transformed by the time of wrestling and reckoning with God.   

And then there’s Jesus.  God resurrected Jesus after Jesus died that horrific death on the cross, and we celebrate the resurrection on Easter Day and every time we gather round God’s table.  But we must never forget that Jesus himself, resurrected from the dead, was marked forever by The Day of the Lord that he experienced on the cross.  To prove to the disciples that he was no ghost when he appeared to them, he showed them his hands and his side.  Even in his resurrected body, he bore the scars of his death on the cross. 

How helpful this is to us, when we can go through the hard times in our lives knowing that on the other side of the struggle,  the side in which life, truth, hope, trust, love and peace will reign, we will still carry our scars.  They mark us as Christ’s own forever.    

Our scars become the markers that remind us of God’s power at work, the healing, loving power that is healing us and bringing  us out of death into life, an ongoing process of love that God carries out in our lives.    

Grief, that deep sorrow over what we have lost and will never have back in the form we have known, can feel like the Day of the Lord   I will never forget how Eunice cried so much yesterday at Roger’s funeral.  But what an example Eunice sets for us—like Jacob wrestling, like Jesus dying, Eunice just let herself be torn apart by her grief.   But Eunice could release herself into that grief because Eunice knows that Roger’s loss, which will mark her forever, is part of the transformation in which God carried Roger and will carry  us all out of death into new life.

The Day of the Lord reminds us that we must go through death to get to the life God has for us on the other side of death.  

All around us in the natural world, we see God’s creation, when we allow it to exist as God intended from the beginning, we see The Day of the Lord coming and going, leaving scars, bringing transformation. 

Something as commonplace as seeing a fallen tree in a walk through the woods—a tree that has died, and yet is bringing forth new life, helps us to think about transformation in our own lives.    I have seen tiny new trees growing out of rotting tree stumps.  And have you ever looked closely at a fallen log?  That log is covered with new life.  As funguses transform the log back into earth, mosses grow, creatures feed and find homes, and someday, although the log itself will be gone, new life has come in its place.  Nature is in a constant cycle of life, then death, then transformation into new life. Knowing that this transformation out of death into life is real is why even at the grave we can make our song—“Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!” 

So today’s passages are realistic.  Jesus does not mince words.  Hard times are ahead.  Destruction is inevitable and unavoidable.  The temple will be gone, natural disasters will take place, and the followers of Jesus will face persecution, betrayal and death. 

And yet, God will bring new life even out of death—and by their endurance, Jesus tells his followers, they will gain their souls. 

“So do not be led astray, do not be terrified but endure,” Jesus reminds his followers.  And Paul reminds the Thessalonians that while they wait, they are not to be weary in doing what is right.

The Old Testament prophet Malachi gives us one of the most hopeful and beautiful passages in all of scripture—”But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” 

Like the sun rising over Jacob as he goes limping off to meet his brother, like the sunrise on Easter morning over an empty tomb, the sun of righteousness will also rise over us, burning away what has been and bringing to life what God intends to be. 

Hope!  New life!  God’s promise of what is ahead, even in the worst of times. 

That’s why Charles Wesley quotes Malachi in the magnificent hymn that we sing in church in what most of the world would consider as a weird Episcopalian custom, waiting to sing Christmas hymns until Christmas day, only after going through the season of Advent.  We wait in expectation and then we burst with celebration when the day of Jesus’ birth at last arrives. 

The third verse of “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing” goes like this—

“Hail the heav’n born Prince of Peace!

Hail the Son of Righteousness!

Light and life to all He brings,

Ris’n with healing in his wings (there’s Malachi!)

Mild he lays his glory by,

Born that man no more may die,

Born to raise the sons of earth,

Born to give them second birth,

Hark! The herald angels sing

“Glory to the newborn King!”  

So now, even as we endure The Day of the Lord, we can join with today’s psalmist as we sing to the Lord a new song, for we know that God has already won the victory, and that our healing and new births, and the healing and new birth of all creation will someday be complete.   “Love, the Lord, is on the way.”  

Resources:

 

The 1982 Hymnal, “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing”


Wonder, Love and Praise, “People, look East”

 

https://liturgy.co.nz/reflections/world-peace-prayer 


Sermon, Season of Creation 1, Sept. 4, 2022

Sermon, Proper 18, Year C Season of Creation I 2022

We are no strangers to counting the cost of things. 

In these days of high food prices, I see people going through the grocery store, calculators in hand, counting the cost of items on the shelves before placing those things in their grocery carts. 

A person who is buying a car counts the cost of driving the  car under consideration over time, considering gas mileage, the inevitable upkeep and repair charges, the cost of new tires, and insurance costs. 

Many people count the costs of having children  before deciding to have children. 

Buying or building or renting a house—what will the cost be? 

I don’t know about you, but I get put off by what Jesus has to say in today’s gospel, when he tells the crowds who are traveling with him that if they expect to be his disciples, they must count the cost.

Jesus says that the costs of discipleship include our possessions, our families, and even life itself. 

These costs don’t make sense to rational, sensible people who work hard for what they have, love their families, and treasure their life here on this earth and, in addition, as followers of Jesus use all of what they have for good purposes.

But for dreamers, who often seem to lack sense and to be irrational, these demands of Jesus make perfect sense, 

because dreamers can see beyond what is to what might be. 

Dreamers are willing to pay any cost, no matter how high,  to realize the dream.   

Jesus himself was a dreamer.  He dreamed of bringing God’s kingdom of love to earth.  Jesus lived as if his dream were already a reality. 

Instead of working as a carpenter, gathering the possessions he would need to live a respectable life as a craftsman, instead of marrying and settling down, having children, being a respected, faithful, dependable man in his community—all of which would have been good, and would have made a positive difference in his immediate world, Jesus left all those dreams behind for a far bigger and better dream, the best dream– the  kingdom of God’s love spreading over the earth, restoring universal joy and justice and peace to all of creation. 

Ultimately, this dream cost Jesus his physical life on this earth, a price that even Jesus hesitated to pay as we know from his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his death. 

Jesus knew that for those who followed him, this dream of God’s reign of love coming to earth must become their dream as well, and that they too, must be willing to pay any cost to live into the dream.   

So Jesus taught his disciples how to pray the prayer of dreamers, the Lord’s Prayer. 

Only dreamers, or at least people who are willing to try to dream, would pray the very first petition in this prayer, and I’m going to put it in the familiar language that we have up on the wall behind me,

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” 

The New Zealand Prayer Book’s translation of “thy kingdom come”  fleshes out the dream of God’s reign on earth a little more.   

“The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!  Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.”

Jesus calls dreamers, or at least people who are willing to dream, to follow him, regardless of the cost. 

He tells them to carry the cross, and to follow, knowing the cost. 

That cross that Jesus asks the disciples to carry is the cross of obedience, obedience to God, for following God’s commandments also requires that we be dreamers, to be able to see beyond the dreams of immediate gratification to the bigger dream of God’s reign as a dawning reality in the process of being fully realized.

No wonder, then, that Moses, way back in Deuteronomy, asks the Israelites who are waiting to cross over the Jordan into the Promised Land to be dreamers as well. 

He asks them to choose life instead of death,  to dream of a life defined by loving God, obeying God and holding fast to God.  Obedience to God would lead to a dream realized –life in a land flowing with milk and honey, a place where the Israelites could at last put down their roots and grow into the people that God hoped that they would become—because you see, God is a dreamer too, to believe in people at all! 

Today’s letter to Philemon from the apostle Paul is about a dream that Paul has for a man named Onesimus.  Paul has met Onesimus in prison and Paul has a dream for the future of Onesimus, greater than just Onesimus getting out of prison and going back to his former life with Philemon, which is a pretty good dream. Paul dreams that Onesimus will go back to Philemon and that rather than continue on as slave and master, Onesimus and Philemon will be brothers as they would be in the reign of God come to earth.

So Paul writes to ask Philemon to be a dreamer too, to be obedient to who he is as a follower of Jesus, to forgive Onesimus and to take him back not as a slave, but as a brother, and in doing so, to bring into reality for Onesimus the dream of God’s reign of love and justice come to earth, and in doing so, to make that witness of love and justice visible to the world. 

How do we disciples of Jesus make God’s love and justice visible and active in the world today?  How is God calling us, here and now, to be obedient to God, regardless of the cost?

Here at St Peter’s, we have been dreaming the dreams of God’s reign of love and justice coming to this earth in our work on racial reconciliation.  The Sacred Ground scholarship which we established this year is the result of a dream of wanting to address the historic inequities in education for people of color in our nation dating back to slavery and continuing in decades of racist government policies that denied people of color the opportunities that white people had.  Our hope is that the people of color who receive the Sacred Ground scholarship in the years ahead will find justice, peace and freedom in having been able to pursue their educational goals a little more easily than they would have been able to otherwise.    

And here at St Peter’s, we also dream the dream of God’s reign of love and justice for all of creation, which is why we observe the Season of Creation each year, along with the wider church—our Catholic and Greek Orthodox brothers and sisters, and more and more, people throughout Christendom, taking the time to celebrate and consider what it means to care for creation intentionally as part of our obedient discipleship as followers of Jesus. 

As all of creation is suffering more and more greatly from the effects of climate change, this Season of Creation reminds us, as dreamers, to dream again the dream of God’s earth sustaining  the web of life and security for all living beings that God planned at the beginning of creation. 

Our temptation as rational, sensible people is to count the cost and to decide that we cannot wholeheartedly care for the earth as disciples because the cost is just too high—too inconvenient and too expensive.  Maybe the small, feel good stuff, but that’s enough.

For too long, we have settled for the small dreams of our own easy lives at the expense of dreaming God’s dream of ecological justice for the earth.  Our obedience gets compromised by putting our own wellbeing and ease ahead of obedience to God, who appointed human beings as the earth’s caretakers.

When we come to our choices regarding how we care for the earth,  we have literally reached the point  of choosing between life and prosperity or death and adversity as Moses said so long ago.  God sets before us life and death, blessings and curses in our relationships with creation. 

What we do, or choose not to do, for creation will literally mean life or death for our children and our children’s children. Consider plastic, which is such a ubiquitous part of our lives that we don’t think twice about buying and using it. Seemingly small decisions like choosing plastic containers over biodegradable containers because the plastic containers are cheaper and more convenient or choosing the convenience of a plastic water bottle over a refillable water bottle are ultimately death dealing decisions for the environment.

But wait, I recycle, you may tell yourself—I tell myself that all the time.    

But here’s the awful fact that we forget at our own peril—that plastic NEVER decomposes. 

Instead, over time plastic breaks into plastic fragments.  The plastic fragments eventually become micro fragments, and then the micro fragments become nanofragments, so small that they can barely be seen with the most advanced microscopes.  These nanofragments already swim throughout our water supply.  Even in the most remote regions on earth, the rain itself contains these nanofragments of plastic.  We are drinking in these nanofragments and because they are carried on the wind, breathing them in as well. 

In today’s world,  choosing material other than plastic for things we use  when possible is a choice for life rather than death.

So today, I challenge us all to dream again the dream of God’s earth sustaining the web of life and security for all living beings that God planned at the beginning of creation.   Let’s carry the cross of obedience and follow Jesus in the ways that we decide to care for creation, regardless of the cost. 

And I challenge us all to dream the dream that Jesus himself dreamed and lived and died for, the greatest dream we could ever dream, the dream that Jesus dreams that we, his disciples will dream—God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.    

Sermon, July 24, 2022 Pentecost 7

Sermon, Proper 12, Year C, 2022

Luke 11:1-13

“Ask and it shall be given you; search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you.  For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” 

These two familiar sentences make up one of the great promises of Jesus to us, that when we ask we will receive, when we seek, we will find, and when we knock, the door will open. 

But how many times in your life have you found that these promises don’t hold water, that what you asked for you didn’t receive, that what you sought you didn’t find, and that when you knocked, the door remained not only shut, but locked up tight?

That your prayers weren’t answered. 

So did God let you down?  Sometimes life feels that way—that God didn’t hear and  didn’t answer and that our prayers are in vain. 

But as Oswald Chambers says in his classic book of devotions, My Utmost for his Highest, “God answers prayer in the best way, not sometimes, but every time.” 

And somewhere deep down inside we believe that God does answer even our seemingly unanswered prayers, because we are here today, and I bet that you, like me, keep praying even when prayer seems hopeless. 

So let’s take a few minutes to knock on the door of today’s gospel and ask some questions of these words, and search for what God wants us to find today in these words of Jesus. 

The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray and so Jesus gives them the words that we know as the Lord’s prayer. 

This line, “Give us each day our daily bread,”  is an obvious and sensible request.    Every day, we ask God to give us what we need for the day, the necessities of life.  In Biblical times, bread was essential to life.  Even when there was nothing else, people had bread and eating only bread sustained them.    

In the Old Testament, then the Israelites were wandering around in the wilderness and complained that they had nothing to eat, God provided bread for them in the form of manna that they found fresh on the ground each morning, and they gathered what they needed for the day. 

And then there’s the story of the prophet Elijah, suffering like everyone else in a famine, and God sends Elijah to the brook called Cherith.  Elijah goes there,  and God sends the ravens to bring him crumbs of bread each day.   

But I think that Jesus is telling us to pray for something more than bread when he asks us to pray for daily bread. 

In John’s gospel, Jesus says that he is the bread of life, one of the great I AM sayings. 

So we can think of this petition, “God, give us this day our daily bread” as asking for Jesus to be with us today, to be all that we need, to sustain us as bread sustains a hungry person. 

When Jesus is with me, sustaining me, the other needs I have get put into the proper perspective.  When I receive Jesus every day, I can see that my needs have already been met, often in unexpected and unusual ways, just as the raven fed Elijah. 

Give us this day our daily bread.  Give us Jesus, the bread of life.  Asking for this daily bread, Jesus, every day, keeps Jesus with us each day. 

I think the person who wrote the words of the old spiritual that Larry sang got the meaning of “Give us this day our daily bread.” Before asking for anything else, the writer asked for Jesus.   

“In the morning when I rise, in the morning when I rise, in the morning when I rise, give me Jesus.” 

After Jesus teaches the disciples the Lord’s prayer, he tells the them a  story about someone going to a friend at midnight and asking for bread, and that due to the person’s persistence the person finally gets up and gives the person the bread he needs. 

Sometimes, no matter how hard we pray, it’s hard to feel that Jesus is there with us, so Jesus reminds us to be persistent in praying for daily bread—to be persistent in praying to know the deeper presence of Jesus with us  in our lives. 

Prayer is not about magically making things happen if you pray hard enough, or pray the right way, but prayer is about helping us to learn ever more deeply what is already true, that is, as Oswald Chambers says, that we pray “to get perfect understanding of God.” 

Prayer isn’t some mystical act to make  Jesus appear, but we pray to realize ever more and more deeply what is already true, that Jesus is already with us, our daily bread. 

Another way to think of this is to remember the teaching of Jesus in John’s gospel.  “Abide in me, as I abide in you.”  That abiding in Jesus grows our understanding of God over time.  And when we abide in Jesus, we have all that we need—our daily bread. 

The more we pray, the more we realize that God is with us, providing for us and sustaining us.  So Jesus reminds us to be persistent in prayer. 

Now we come to the “ask and it will be given you” part of the gospel. 

When we talked about this passage in Bible study this past week, we wondered, what is “it?” “It” could be the specific thing I’m praying for—for instance, healing John Whitfield or Roger Key or any number of the people we pray for each day. But now, I’m thinking that “it” is something more. 

What if “it” is Jesus himself? 

“Ask, and Jesus will be given you.”  We already know that having Jesus in our lives is the foundation for everything else we need in our lives. 

Imagine what would happen if we ask for Jesus every time we pray, asking for Jesus first, before any of the other things that we need to ask God for—and those prayers are important as well.  Asking for Jesus first, before the rest of what we need, is the idea.   

Ask, and Jesus will come to you.  And then everything else we think we need will work out because we have come to know that Jesus is with us. 

Search, and you will find.   What if we searched for Jesus before anything else?  Jesus is the deepest and most wonderful mystery that we could ever search, and the more deeply we enter into the mystery of Jesus the more we will find the truth of our own lives, and the gracious presence of God with us.

Remember, the Bible is full of references for searching for God.  Not too long ago we had this passage from Psalm 63, written by David, “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you.”  I love that—David knows that God is with him, but he is still seeking out God.  He says that his soul thirsts for God, and that his flesh faints for God.  Would that we would all be so diligent in our searching and finding God with us in our lives. 

And then “Knock, and the door will be opened to you.” 

In John’s gospel, in another of Jesus’ I AM sayings, Jesus says that he himself is the door or the gate through which the sheep enter into his fold, where they will be safe. 

In our lifetimes, we knock on so many doors.  Some open and some don’t.  But when we knock on his door, Jesus will always open and let us in, and then we  become content with both the open and shut doors that we’ve knocked on, for the most important door, the door into the fold of God, has opened and we are abiding in Jesus.   

At the end of today’s reading, Jesus says “How much more will the heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” 

That’s Jesus’ big, big hint for the disciples to understand the deeper meaning of what Jesus has been getting at in his teaching about prayer.  Oswald Chambers says that “the Holy Spirit is the one who makes real in you all that Jesus did for you.”  The Holy Spirit is the one who reminds us that we need to ask for Jesus as starving people would ask for bread. 

So here’s what I’d like to remember from this sermon, and what I hope you’ll remember too, when we pray. 

Give us this day our daily bread—give us Jesus. 

When we ask for Jesus, we will receive Jesus.

When we search for Jesus, we will find Jesus. 

And when we knock, we will see that Jesus is the open door through which Jesus invites us to enter,  so that we can abide in him and he can abide in us.

And then, the first thing we pray for in the Lord’s prayer will be granted in our lives.  

The Kingdom of God will become more and more a reality on this earth in our lives together as it is in heaven, for Jesus is with us, living in us,  and all of the rest will be well.    

Sermon, Pentecost Year A May 28, 2023

Come, Holy Spirit! 

From the beginning, the breath of the Holy Spirit pours out, bringing life.   The Holy Spirit gives life to smallest microscopic organisms that can be seen only with the help of a microscope, and yet are essential to the world’s food chain.  And the Holy Spirit works in and through the sweeping grandeur of this earth’s magnificent and ever changing landscapes, covered in life, that the earth sustains.

All of this life exists and thrives through the power of the Holy Spirit, uncontrollable, wild, and free.  As Jesus told Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 

We Christians have been given the knowledge that the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives.  I guarantee you that even  when we don’t acknowledge or recognize the Spirit, the Holy Spirit is always at work in those born of the Spirit, and that’s us. 

So today, I’d like to talk about how the Holy Spirit works in our lives so that we can more easily recognize the Spirit’s presence in each of us and among us. 

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Sermon, Easter 6, May 14, 2023 – Praying for God to fill our imaginations

Have you ever wondered about what is going to happen to church as we know it?  What is going to happen to St Peter’s after we are gone? 

Like many churches, we now have fewer people here at St Peter’s.   Even the huge denomination of Southern Baptists has declined by over three million members since 2006, losing almost half a million members in just this past year. 

The signs of the decline of what we can broadly term Christendom are everywhere. 

We ask ourselves how many people we can lose and keep going.    Maybe we ought to spend our money differently.    Do we need to change our worship services?  We are puzzled, clueless and troubled when we think about these things.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want St Peter’s, after a long slow decline, to someday be deconsecrated so that it can be sold and turned into yet another Port Royal antique shop! 

The disciples had some of the same questions we do.  They wondered what would happen to them when Jesus was gone.  They were worried about how they’d continue without him.   

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Sermon, 4th Sunday of Easter, April 30, 2023 – “Abundant Life”

John 10:1-10

Today’s gospel about abundant life offers so many things to think about—Jesus as the Good Shepherd; we sheep who follow the voice of our shepherd; the strangers, thieves and bandits who try to call us away from Jesus; and then, finding that Jesus himself is the gate through which we pass to enter into God’s everlasting security and abundant life.    

Jesus used these images because shepherds and the sheep pens that dotted the landscape were a familiar sight to those who were listening to him.    According to a meditation on The Our Daily Bread website,  the sheep pens were probably made of stone, or possibly wood, about three feet high.  Toward evening, the shepherd would lead the sheep into the sheep pen to protect them from predators.  Some of these enclosures were large enough for several flocks, so a watchman stood guard and allowed only certain shepherds and sheep to enter through the one gate into the sheep pen.  In smaller pens that held only one flock, the shepherd himself would serve as the gate.  Once the sheep were inside the pen, the shepherd would lie down at the entrance to the pen to serve as protection to the sheep through the night, and to keep out anyone or anything who might try to harm the flock. 

For us Christians, Jesus is gate through which we find God. Jesus is also the shepherd, the one who leads and guides us once we hear his voice, the one who leads us in and out and helps us to find the pasture in which we have all we need. 

This gospel reminds us, though, that often we hear the voices of the “thieves and bandits” of this world instead of the voice of Jesus, and so we choose not to enter the sheep pen, even when Jesus calls us, because other things seem more inviting, or more necessary.     

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