All Saints Anglican Church - Prescott, AZ

Remain in Christ

A Homily for Quinquagesima

February 23, 2020

All Saints Anglican Church, Prescott, AZ

 

Text: John 15:1-17

 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our heart be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

 

            It’s late at night now and twelve men walk through the normally crowded streets of Jerusalem. They whisper together, and suddenly the teacher speaks “I am the true vine,” he says and their mumbling is hushed. Somehow they know that the night air is pregnant with suspense, this trip to Jerusalem had been weird, or at least weirder than some of their others. Their teacher had come into the city with songs of praise from the people, but he had spared no time in criticizing the elite, he had spared no time in upsetting those who lived as hypocrites or abused their of power.

            Then tonight, one of their numbers had run out of their Passover feast, and John was saying that their leader had said this one would betray him. They may have wondered why they weren’t hiding, they may have wondered what that even meant. Some thought, maybe Judas had stolen money from their small treasury.

But none the less, now they walked to the garden where the teacher liked to go to pray, spending late night hours there talking to the Father, talking to God.

            Little did they know in less than 24 hours He would be hung upon a cross, naked and full of shame, little did they know in just moments a crowd of religious leaders would meet them in that peaceful garden and arrest him. Little did they know that he would be lead away like a sheep to the slaughter, and they would scatter. Little did they know that their hearts would faint, while their world was turned upside down.

            They thought they were strong, they thought they were ready for everything, and looking back, surely they saw then, what they couldn’t have seen in that moment. He had warned us, he had prepared us for what was coming, how could our hearts have been so hard? They must have pondered.

 

            We need this backdrop to understand the staggering thing that is happening in our gospel lesson this morning – we find ourselves dab-smack in the middle of what is commonly called the Upper Room discourse, but I think that’s a misnomer. In Chapters 13 and 14, we get a description of the Last Supper, or the first, which we recall on Maundy Thursday, and then Jesus starts to teach.

            Then at the end of chapter 14 Jesus says “Rise, let us go from here.”

And we see a transition, it seems Jesus and his disciples then leave and make their way to the garden where he is betrayed in chapter 18. Ultimately, whether they are walking through the city streets of Jerusalem with purpose, or still in the upper room, talking, does not matter as much as understanding, that in less than 24 hours Jesus will be dead, and the disciples would be scared and scattered.

 

            And he proclaims “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

            This past week a politician was found out to have made a strange remark about farming. He claimed “I could teach anybody… to be a farmer. It’s a process: you dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, and up comes corn.” You may have heard about this and know what I’m talking about. It was simplistic and rather condescending and untrue statement, as anyone who has tried to keep even houseplants alive knows. It takes effort and intentionality.

            Last week we talked about the simple act of sowing seeds – and if we live our lives with congruency to the gospel of Jesus Christ which we claim to believe, we will naturally go about our lives sowing seeds – sowing seeds with friends, sowing seeds with neighbors, and co-workers and family members but even that takes work, even that is not so simple. But we must also remember that it is God who is doing the work of tilling the soil, assuring there is someone to water, someone to clear, someone to prune and tend to.

To farm, to care for plants is not so simple as this politician made it out to be and to grow in Christ – in one sense is tremendously simple, and in another – a challenge.

            This week, when we read this chapter we start to get a picture of what it means to be tended to, to be a part of Christ’s family. Here we start to get the picture of the need for community within the church, to abide in Christ is not merely to be me and my Bible, which of course is important, but we need each other. We need each other to be  Christ to one another, we need to abide in the vine.           

            The season of Lent which we are about to embark upon, is a season of self-reflection, a season of letting God reveal to us where our hearts have failed and faltered, and it would be tempting to not walk with others through that time in introspection. Yet, Christ remind us – that we are bound together – not by our hobbies or our interests, not by our demographics or educational levels – no we are bound together by Him. For he is the vine in which we abide, and in that vine we find life, we produce fruit.

            And what of those branches that he cares for – he tends to them so that they are healthy. The first clause can be read in two ways “every branch in me that does not bear fruit” can either be “he takes away” or “he lifts up.” It is a bit ambiguous, but both are possible. In vineyards, it is not uncommon to lift up the vines so that they are healthier, but it is equally common to discard of the unhealthy branches. So regardless, there is a care for the health of the vine, and God does the work of pruning us so that we would be spiritually healthy.

            Do all of you who were here last year remember when someone pruned the rosebushes out back?

I lived at the church I served at before I came here and it had a beautiful garden that was tended to by a master gardener. I loved to watch him work. He tended with care, and love for each plant, he made beauty in the form of the gardens, so that others would be able to enjoy it, and delight in that which he so tenderly cared for.

Had I not seen him cut back the roses bushes when I lived there, I would have panicked when these bushes were cut back, but I knew that roses like to be aggressively cut back, so that they will flourish in the season to come, and sure enough this past summer, our roses were big and beautiful yet again.

It is the same with our hearts – they need nearly constant pruning in order to continue to bear fruit. I’ve had this conversation with several friends – where we seem to find ourselves free from one overt sin, finally plucked away only to find deeper a more dreadful sickness in our hearts. We cut back the bramble and wash away the mire, to discover that which needs to be carefully tended to. We may no longer get visibly angry with someone – but we find our hearts rife with jealousy.

It is no surprise that as we draw closer to Christ that the nature of our heart is slowly revealed – that at each step we find there is more dross to be burned away, more dead branches to be pruned off, more brokenness to be healed. This is a part of the process of Lent, this is a part of why Lent is so hard, because we intentionally ask God to reveal to us how we need to grow.

To be pruned is a hard but good thing. To allow God to explore our heart and be receptive to that which he reveals may bring momentary pain – but it brings us into health.

This is ultimately what our Lenten disciplines are about – not about self-righteous proving that we can do some mighty spiritual act – not about proving ourselves to God – but about being brought low, so that God may rise us up, about allowing God to prune our hearts so that we may bear more fruit, that we may be remade all the more in His image.

Then Christ declares that his disciples have already been made clean because of the words spoken to them.

My friends – in this passage we find that tension between the reality that we are made clean when we meet Christ and are brought into his family, and the reality that we still sin, we still find the mire of sin all over us.

When we come to Christ we are made clean, made new – and then we are called to remain in Him, to abide in Him and in His Holy Word. That that word may do a transforming work in our heart. We like to complicate things – but these are the simplest instructions – abide in Christ through knowing His word, by being in fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ, by breaking His bread and drinking from His cup at His table.

To abide in Him means that we will bear fruit – what is this fruit? It is the fruit of the spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These fruits – if truly born, make all the difference, make all the difference in our lives and in the lives of those around us, they bring glory to God, and let his light shine before others.

I was talking with someone about one of my favorite verses – Matthew 5:16 – “let your light shine before others, so they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”  The person I was talking to pointed out – that perhaps good should really be read “beautiful works.” Our good works, or beautiful works are those works that come from us abiding in the vine, and in abiding in the Holy Spirit. They are the works that come from being in Christ, they are the works that are endued with the spiritual fruit of knowing God.

But now, comes a hard warning – “if anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”

First – we are called to abide in Christ – if we are not abiding in Him we will dry up, our hearts will become hard. As I read this, this past week, I couldn’t help but think of the branches you find while out in the woods, they’ve sat on the forest floor for a week, or a month, or a year. If you pick it up they snap without so much as an effort.

I know in times I’ve wandered from God – at times, when I grew discouraged, or sin seemed more tantalizing than walking with Christ – that I was fine at first. At first, I was happy and nothing really changed, but a week or a month went by and soon my heart felt dry, soon, it the fruit of the spirit started to dry up and die. Soon, I was brittle and dry, ripe for the fire.

If we do not abide in Christ – if we do not attend to being in the word daily, if we do not give up our lives in prayer, if we do not join in fellowship with the rest of the vine, soon our hearts will be hard, soon we will bear no fruit but jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, licentiousness, and things like these. Christ brings life in a dying world and outside of him is pain and angst.

But friends – there is a second warning here – as we gather together – we are not playing around, this is not a social club, but we are called to something incredibly holy, we are called to a mighty thing – in worship we are called into the presence of the glory of God and in fellowship we are called to share in His love for one another.  

An author once said when we gather together to worship God, we shouldn’t hand out bulletins and hymnals but crash helmets and life preservers. As a body we enter into the presence of the Holy, as a body, we enter into a Holy task and this should give us pause, this should humble us. So, let us renew our desire to abide in Him for Christ is our only security, Christ is our only hope in this world.

My friends – let us abide in Christ day in and day out, renewing our commitment to grow in Him, let us submit ourselves to His tender care.

But now we need to clarify verse 7 – “if you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” This is one of those verses that are so often abused by those in the health and wealth movement, but here’s the kicker. If we are abiding in Christ, the more spiritually healthy we get, the closer we come to the heart of Christ, the more our prayer shifts from “I want this, I want that,” to “not my will, but your will be done O Lord.” The more intimately we come to know Christ, the more we delight in His will being done in our hearts.

So, if we abide in Christ, what we will want more than anything is that the Father’s will would be done with our lives, the more we abide in Christ, the more the Lord’s prayer becomes our prayer, and the more we delight in knowing that the Father’s will would be done.

And now we come to this beautiful passage “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my Father’s commandment and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

Remember the point I made at the beginning of this sermon? That Christ is knowingly walking to his crucifixion? That soon the disciples’ world would be turned upside down?

We can easily reduce these three verses to empty sentimentality but Chris is preparing his disciples, his students, his friends for the horrible thing that is about to happen.

I want to suggest that we should not read “abide” here, for I’m not sure we really grasp what that means – but rather we should read it “remain in my love.” Christ is saying to them “you are about to see something awful, you are about to experience the darkest day in human history – you are about to watch me die

– remain in my love –

I promise you my friends! It is going to seem dark, it is going to seem terrible – but remain… remain… remain.

For – I am going to remain in the love of the Father.

The crucifixion is an act of love. I mentioned this a long time ago – but atheists often criticize the crucifixion and say “If Jesus really was God – then he could of ripped himself off of the cross.” To which we rightly respond “yes, of course he could have, but because he is God, His love for us kept him upon the cross.” The cross is an act of love – and Christ makes that perfectly clear.

And what is more amazing – Christ knows he is about to take the cup of the wrath of the father, he is about to drink the dregs of it, he is about to take every last ounce of what we so rightly deserve, and he is going to drink every drop for us, but even in this he does not doubt the love of the Father.

The crucifixion is an act of God’s love for humanity and there we see our invitation into the loving community of the Trinity, in Christ’s loving submission to the Father, we are called to abide in the love of Christ, we are called to remain in that love, we are assured – no matter where the path brings us – Christ remains with us. Just as Christ has experienced the worst – he can guide us through the worst we might experience and just as Christ has experienced the most intimate love – he is bringing us into that love – that our joy may be complete.

In a world that hurts, in a broken world, in a world where backbiting, nitpicking, and cruelty persists so clearly – Christ’s love brings us into complete joy – heals our broken hearts – and says “rejoice, again I say rejoice always.” For God’s love has redeemed our brokenness and in that our joy is complete.

 

And then – he flat out tells his disciples what is about to happen – he is about the give up His life for them, he is about to give up His life for us, that we might have true life and true joy.

Next, Christ says something amazing – “no longer do I call you servants,” or slaves, “but I have called you friends.”

Think for a moment about those sins that have dogged you for too long. (pause)

Think, if you can remember it, about the time before you came to Christ or a time you wandered from His love and how you lived. (pause)

Think for a moment about the effects of sin in your heart, and where you would be without Christ. (pause)

In sin, we are slaves – in sin we are like a leaf on the wind, blown about not by our own will but by the will of the flesh, chasing the next high – whether it be a literal high, whether it be fulfilling our desires of lust, whether it be chasing after power, whether it be gluttony, whether it be lust – do not be deceived – to be in sin – is to be a slave to your flesh and your passions.

And we are freed from that slavery – we are freed to become servants of the father – but Christ says something here – something incredibly beautiful – we are no longer called servants or slaves, we are no longer slaves to sin, nor are we merely servants in the house of God, though that would be enough, we are called friends of Christ, we are friends of God.

And this friendship, isn’t simply as one who we see on occasion and our spouse, or companion asks “who is this person you just said hi to?” and we flippantly say “oh, that’s my friend,” when we really mean that he is an acquaintance.

No – our friendship with Christ is a call to be on intimate terms with Him. It is to be known and to know Him. We are invited into intimacy with Christ. Can you imagine anything better? Can you imagine anything more beautiful to be known intimately by the one who created the heavens and the earth?

This is what Christ has invited us to – intimate friendship. How good and beautiful that is.

And what does Christ ask of us?

That we obey his commandments.

And what are these commandments?

At the center of the commandment is this – that we will love one another.

At the center of the Christian community is that we live out the love that Christ displays on the cross,

we live out an active obedience to God the Father,

we live out an active obedience to the guiding of the Holy Spirit,

we live out a self-giving, tender affection to our brothers ands sister in Christ. It is that we bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit that in our beautiful work – we would glorify the Father.

 

Wednesday marks the start of Lent, again this week I have provided you with a sheet for reflection for this week.

Too often, I sort of stumble into Lent, and by the grace of God, I wanted to be more intentional this year. Lent is a great time of introspection, and renewed intimacy with Christ – but let us also remember Christ’s commandment – that we would love one another, let us remember too what St. Paul has said – that without love we are nothing but a clanging gong. As we enter this season of repentance, season of self-reflection – let all that we do be done in love for God and love for our neighbors.

As we wrap up our service this morning – I will read the second long exhortation starting on page 86 of the Book of Common Prayer. I would invite you to read along, and take some time to reflect on the words that are being said. This was more typically used in parishes that did not have regular communion. But it provides a good outline for reflection in the week preceding our entrance into the season of Lent.

Let us not miss this good opportunity to flee from the slavery of sin, and into the arms of Christ. Let us rather learn to abide and remain in the Love of Christ. Let us take the opportunity to dwell richly in Him, and He in us. That all that we do would glorify the Father.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

 

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works… your beautiful works and glorify your father which is in heaven.  

Seeds of the Kingdom

A Homily for Sexagesima

February 16, 2020

All Saints Anglican Church, Prescott, AZ

 

Text: Luke 8:4-15

 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our Strength and our redeemer. Amen.

 

            This morning I want to tell you the story of how I became a Christian, because once, almost twenty years ago, someone tossed some seeds, and one landed in my heart. This seed changed my heart, turned me away from a worldly life, and redirected me towards Christ. I want to tell you this story in part because I think we can live a faithful life, we can continually cast the seeds of the gospel, and we can feel as though nothing we have done makes a difference, but we may never know where a seed has landed and how the Holy Spirit has used it to foster in someone a new life.

            I also want to tell you it so you understand my heart as a pastor better, my heart as your pastor and priest. When I first became a deacon or perhaps shortly before that I spent the weekend with a friend and mentor of mine. We sat on his porch in Waldoboro, Maine chatting about life and hopes and dreams. During that weekend, he asked me “Ian, why do you want to be a priest?” there are few questions I have known the answer to more intuitively than I knew in that moment, and I what responded with is what I hope my life has been shaped around, I desire to be a priest in order “to make and grow Christians.” It is my desire because I know the difference Christ has made in my life – I hope I can point those who I’m called to serve towards him, towards knowing Him more intimately, towards a deeper relationship with the one who came and died for our sins, and set us free from the dreadful death of the world.

            But back to how I met Jesus – there are two things you should know about me – first I have struggled with depression my whole life – I remember one day when I was seven, wondering and thinking, perhaps 8 will be better. Like other things – this isn’t something I talk a lot about, but it has been something that has propelled me into the arms of Christ – over and over again.

            Secondly, I grew up nominally Roman Catholic. What this meant was when we were home my mom and I went to church, I remember being jealous of my cousins who were taught the Lord’s prayer. I remember my devout Roman Catholic grandfather being upset that I didn’t know the sign of the cross. Religion was something we did when it was convenient, but not something that was discussed freely at home.

But now to meeting Jesus: my freshman year of high school my family and I spent a year traveling – we visited Nova Scotia, the eastern seaboard of the United States, and the Bahamas. It was an incredible gift that my parents gave me, to see the world slowly, to experience cultures outside of Maine, and to experience a different life than the vast majority of Americans get to experience. It was good.

            But, as it turns out people change a lot freshman year of high school.

            My two closest friends from middle school changed while I was gone – one discovered doing drugs was fun, and the other discovered that being mean to the dorky kid was a cathartic experience for him, perhaps, if it’s not clear – I should mention here that I was the dorky kid in question.

            That year was a year of aloneness, wandering, sorrow, and of course deep, dark, depression. But something else happened – I applied for a leadership conference. All the sophomores had to apply, so it wasn’t anything special or to be honest, something I would have done on my own. I did my best to highlight all my qualities as a leader, and there weren’t many. I dutifully turned the assignment in and didn’t think of it again.

            Until one day – I was called to the principal’s office with a popular, overachieving, somewhat meanspirited girl.

            As I contemplated my story this past week, I couldn’t help but think of her, and wonder how she is, and realize – this is the reason we pray for those who have wounded us. Those wounding words she’d thrown at me – those are the same wounds Christ has tended to over the years – those are the same wounds that made Christ irresistible to me. For he stood in contrast to her and so many others. It was the wounds I bore that drove me to the arms of Christ.

            But – back to the leadership conference, by the providence of God I was selected to attend. Providence is the only reasonable explanation because I was certainly nothing that even vaguely resembled a leader in high school – I was cripplingly shy, nervous around people, and quite a loner.

            But I attended, and it was there that I met two people who loved Jesus.

            Until then, the idea of an imminent and loving God was completely foreign to me, the idea of having a relationship with Jesus made no sense, maybe I had seen stereotypes on TV. But, to know God, to walk with Him, that was not a reality I could imagine. But now I had met people who did.

            Then summer came, and depression and loneliness came with it. Darkness swept over me, as it so often did.

            And I started asking those nagging questions – what is the meaning of all this? Is there truth? Is there hope? Old familiar questions.

            But this time – I had seen a great light in two beautiful people. I explored and dove into these painful questions – and again and again and again Jesus made sense, I saw Jesus was the answer.

            My conversion to Christ has always felt like an intellectual ascent, that in Him is truth, and that he IS the truth – but as I look back nearly 20 years later – I think he was beaconing me, calling me to himself, something inside of me shifted, it felt intellectual at the time – but it was certainly spiritual as well.

            There wasn’t a moment as some people experience, I didn’t pray the sinners prayer – but I know I started August 2001 agnostic and worldly – and I ended it a Christian, still a sinner, but desperately thirsty for the love that only Christ can quench and how I drank!

            Seeds were cast, the sowers didn’t bother to ask “did it land on good soil or bad?” they simply cast, and kept going, kept sowing, kept shining, kept loving.

            I was telling some people this story recently and someone asked if meeting Christ cured my depression

– the answer is no.

But it is in Christ that I find solace, that I find peace, that those dark and tumultuous storms of my youth are less dark, less tumultuous, and in the end – when they come, and they do, they always push me back to my saviors arms.

            St. Paul writes about a thorn in his flesh that he asked God to take away and God said – my grace is sufficient – in this – I am reminded that God’s grace is sufficient. I share my imperfections with you – so you know that like you – I am imperfect, that I have walked where you are walking, and I hope that it encourages you and helps you to know that you are not alone in all of these, that you have a friend who has walked where you are, and has experienced Christ in dark times. My friends – you are not alone – Christ is with you and you have a Christian family who is with you.  

 

            But now what of our seeds and soil: Just as those who cast the seeds that landed in my heart – we have no idea where the seeds that we cast land – do they land on a hard heart or a soft heart? This is not ours to know. Do our seeds grow and blossom and produce beautiful flowers and more seeds? We may never know, we simply cast. Now, there is more to farming than simply casting seeds – but the immediate call of our lesson is to cast, and cast, and cast.

            Jesus gives us two formulas for how to make disciples – first is what we read today – we go along in our several callings, doing beautiful works, glorifying God, and casting the seeds of the gospel upon the land. The second is that of the great commission – we are likewise called to go out making disciples and baptizing. To make a disciple is an active and intentional process, and so is casting seeds. But as we cast, we worry not what kind of soil it lands upon, at least not immediately. 

Christ, again and again, criticizes his generation for being dull hearted, for being deaf, for never really understand what he is teaching. But Christ uses the underdogs, the outsiders, the unsuspected, the lowly fishermen, and the sinful tax collector, and the dirty prostitutes to reveal to them the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.

            This same criticism can be made for our generation – we are so hardhearted, sin is normalized, we prefer our own way to the Way of Christ, we do what is right in our own mind, and not only that but we celebrate it as a culture!

            But Christ uses the dorky, lonely kid from Maine, the druggies, the outsiders, the arrogant, and rude, and unkind sinners and he changes their hearts and in this he reveals to us who will be broken for Him – the kingdom of heaven.

            Cultural undertones haven’t changed much, and as such the truth of the kingdom of God remain unknown, unrecognized by the world.  

            But Christ unravels the parables mystery for his disciples, and they through Saints Luke and Matthew and Mark unravel it for us.

            On one side there is the call from the parable to let the light of Christ shine through our lives – to both an intentional and a passive scattering of seeds – to a sharing a gospel with your life – both in words and deed.

            In words – knowing how God has worked in your life and being ready, as I did this morning to give a testimony, to say – this is how God has worked, how God has healed me, how God has softened my heart. Being ready to share the light and joy of Christ.

            But in deeds is as important – if you tell someone God loves them, if you say I am a Christian but then you are rude to your waitress, get visible mad at the person in traffic, if you are unkind to those around you – this is incongruent with the Christian life. No – the Lord is softening our hearts and as such we grow in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The fruit of the spirit manifest in a way to testify to the world what God has done in our lives.

            And so knowing the right answers is good – but showing the love of Christ to the world around us is better – loving your neighbor, your friends, your family, your co-workers is as much a part of sowing the seeds that change hearts.

            But there’s a third part to the sowing – prayer. It is not our job to soften hearts – yes our witness can make a difference in someone’s life, but it was God who made my heart soft, and it was God who planted the seed, it was God who tended to the young seedling, and nurtured it into a healthy plant, it is God who reforms me and prunes me and calls me back to him, it is God who convicts me, and encourages me and again and again, and again.

St. Paul writes about this. Yes various people do various things in the grow of Christians, one plants, another waters – but ultimately – it is God who gives the growth. So we pray – pray for our witness, pray for those whom struggle, pray for our loved ones who don’t know Christ. We pray constantly.

            Now – there is a second side to this parable –it is a reminder of the necessity of tending to the soil of our own hearts. I want to be careful here – because we can easily become self-righteous or find our righteousness in our works. This is not what the Christian spiritual disciplines are, rather – they are a call to allow the spirit to reform our hearts.

            People have suggested numerous disciplines – but these are some that are consistently cited as being important and central to our growth – privately – prayer, reading the word of God, and fasting, and as a community – corporate worship, participating in the Lord’s supper, and fellowship.

            Privately – we are called to be constantly in prayer – we give God our joys, and sorrows, our hope and our disappointments. We are called to pray constantly.

            We are called to be reading the word of God daily – to read His word is to hear his voice. It is amazing how often I have had struggles or question and the word redirects me, encourages me, and draws me nearer to Him and it is in reading God’s work we learn of His heart – and that the Holy Spirit is given words to form us.

            We are called fast occasionally, but regularly. If you have fallen out of the tradition of fasting, I would encourage you to intentionally observe Anglicanism’s two days of fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. If you are over 72, you have a dispensation from fasting – but you can still moderate your food intake. Instead of eating big heavy meals, intentionally keep them simple that day. If you are under 72 and healthy, then abstain from all food for those two days – it might be hard – but it’ll be good. In your struggle, learn to depend all the more on Christ.

            In community – in the body of Christ we are called to gather together to worship. Our time of corporate worship should be a priority for us. It is here that we are bound together, here that we learn together, here that we lay the foundations of our faith. The act of worshiping our Lord as a community is critical to our growth in Christ.

            We are called to break the bread of the body of Christ, and to drink the wine of his blood, and we do so regularly. Partaking in the sacraments provide us with a mystical bond with Christ, allow us to experience Him in a tangible way that we cannot otherwise do.

            Finally, in fellowship – we meet each other, and walk with each other through our trials and hardship. I have a dear friend at the seminary, we’ve traveled together through Greek for nearly two years. On our breaks during class we take a 10 minute walk together, sometimes he shares his hardships, sometimes it is my turn. It is a good and intimate time of friendship. This past week as we walked he said something – I could have been offended or hurt by it, but I know he loves me – and he has earned the right to say harsher things than many – so instead it was as though his words untied a knot in my heart that had been tangled for a very long time, it was as though I was freed from something that had plagued. We need brothers and sisters in Christ who are willing to love us, to walk with us in our hurt, and to exhort us to a deeper relationship with Christ.

            It is ultimately the Holy Spirit who tends to the nature of our heart – but developing healthy Christian habits or disciplines draw us closer and closer to Christ. These are not ways to earn salvation, but rather ways that God uses to make our hearts tender for the sake of the kingdom. St. Paul, again, writes “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” We work, but it is God working.

            As Lent draws near, I would encourage you to reflect upon what ways have you fallen short? In what ways is your heart hard? Are there Christian disciplines that you need to grow in, of the sake of the kingdom?

            This week I provided another half sheet that you may find helpful in this time of reflection, one side has the Christian disciplines I mentioned on it, and the other asks these questions – that God may reveal to each of us where our heart needs tending to.

            It is my hope and prayer that this season of Lent would be one of deep intimacy with Christ for all of us, of knowing that He lives and He is with us. For just as he is saving a dorky, lonely kid from Maine and transforming him into His child, Christ is working in all who know Him.

            In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Being Remade

A Homily for Septuagesima

February 9, 2020

All Saints Anglican Church, Prescott, AZ

 

Text: Matthew 5:1-12

 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

 

            When you think of humanity what comes to mind? Perhaps the great love stories, or the noble war stories, or perhaps the terror of the cruelty of man as we’ve seen in the modern age? Or perhaps you think of flesh and blood and sinew, or the beauty of your first love, or the distinct smell of you care deeply for who has now gone to their rest.

But what about of statues? As westerners this could be a rather foreign concept to us, but if we lived in the ancient Near East this description might peek our interest.

            Let me explain, perhaps you might remember the fall of Sadam Hussain about twenty years ago. I still have this vivid image of liberated Iraqis pulling down the statues that Sadam has erected in towns throughout his country. This act of ripping down the statues wasn’t just an act of rebellion, it wasn’t just an act of anger at Sadam, though those were undoubtedly a part of the motive, the action of destruction said something very poignant. It said – this man no longer rules us, this country no longer belongs to this dictator, we are removing his image from our land.

            Statues in the ancient, and not so ancient Near East act as symbols of who is in charge, symbols of who the lands belong to.

            And so when I say, do you think of humanity as being statues? This is no mistake – for when we read the wording of the creation of mankind we hear that “male and female are created in the image and likeness of God.” The early readers of Genesis 1 would have known – humanity was placed on earth as a visual and outward reminder that the earth is the Lord’s. Humanity, male and female are visual reminders, statues in the center of town, if you will, that the earth belongs to God.

            This basic fact may help us to worship God better – and to love even our enemies better. How would your perspective change if when you saw a your best friend and recalled the creative power of our Lord?

            Or what about when you saw your spouse or your child?

            Or your annoying co-work or neighbor?

            Or someone who has hurt you deeply or someone who hates you?

            How does recognizing that God created the person sitting next to you change how you approach them?

(pause)

            But then returning to creation – something terrible happened. Perhaps it was an hour or ten years – we do not know, and it does not matter, but the first statues, the first people, did what they were forbidden to do. They ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and rebelled against God, they rejected their ruler, they rejected the one whom they were created in the image of and in this act the image was not lost, but became tarnished.

            Sin entered into the world and it’s horrible grime covered and marred that image.

            And immediately God, the creator enacted his plan for the restoration of those image bearers, He enacted His plan for our restoration his plan for the salvation of humanity.

First came the Law. Moses went up into the mountain – and he was given the law from God, there he communed with God and God spelled out what he expected from His chosen people, God spelled out a pathway to restoration for them.

            But even this pathway did not free them from sin, did not free them from the dreadful and deadly tarnishing that entered with the first image bearers’ rebellion.

            But then another took on the image – took on the image, became the perfect image of God and He too went into the mountain but He did not communion with God on that mountain, but rather He was God, and He taught as one with authority, He taught as one who had the right to say what He said. And this teaching is where we pick up this morning in the story of Christ and the story of our salvation.

            When Christ goes up the mountain and teaches what we know as “the sermon on the mount” – St. Matthew uses the exact same phrase at the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible uses for when Moses ascends Mt. Sinai, inextricably linking that moment of Moses’s life and Christ’s life, and marking the difference in that Christ does not receive, nor does he need to receive from God the new ethics of the new covenant, for Christ was God incarnate.

            And now the beatitudes, as they are commonly called are the gateway into Christ’s teaching, the disposition that we are called to have as Christians, the disposition of our hearts when Christ takes them and molds them and restores them. In this molding and restoration we see the beginning of the restoration of the images of God, we see God sanctifying us, and renewing that image that was all but lost by sin.

            And Christ declares – blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

            What does it mean to be blessed? In our Christianized world perhaps we have exhausted the word “blessed,” we speak of getting a fancy new car as being a blessing, we speak of friendships, possessions and other things as blessings. We say “father, your sermon was a real blessing to me” when we like the sermon, and sometimes more tech savvy folks uses the hashtag “blessed” when they’re pleased with how things have gone. This may not be a bad thing – for our lives are rich when we see the hand of God working in them.

            But I wonder if we know what it means here. Some translations prefer “happy,” but when we get to “blessed are those who mourn,” we might make it seem as though Christ is not declaring something good and beautiful – but rather being a bit insensitive, for how could he say “happy are those who mourn!” We might think – what cruel language.

            A modern paraphrase prefers “in-luck,” and this is an interesting take and not all that farfetched – when we understand the translator’s rationale – if Christ is who he says he is – if Christ is God – then the poor, the mourning, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteous, those who are merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted, then and only then are they indeed in luck, but if he is not – then, my, how unfortunate we are, how unlucky we are. For our hope for the future rests in Christ being who he says. (And he is who he says he is).

            But, still, as I contemplate these phrases I find myself coming back to the word Happy, there’s something about “happy” that is so simple and attractive – happy if we have a right definition of it. Happy as the fulfilment of our eternal hope, happy as finally, fully having communion with God, happy as I heard it defined this past week – as that emotion when we see a friend from afar and know you will soon be with him.

            We know that feeling – our hearts jump a little bit, we become joy-filled, we think at long last my friend is here! I see him over there, we will hug, we will laugh, we will talk of our joys and sorrows, and bear each other’s burdens and delight in each other’s joys, though it is weary, my soul can rest easy now.

            Happy are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

            Happy are we, for we know Christ is restoring His image in us.

            But now we take note – these nine saying take on a tension of already – but not yet – they take on a tone of an end of times promise that we are to rejoice in even though they are not yet fulfilled. Notice the tension throughout the entire beatitudes – tied together by the word “shall,” when we see this here – we should think: already – but not yet. Already – the poor are happy – but it is not yet fulfilled completely. Already are you restored in Christ – but not yet fully.

            Some have hypothesized that we should read this first saying as:

 “bless in the spirit are the poor, for theirs is the king of heaven.”

This would not change our understanding of the poor, but those who are proponents for it say that it clarifies that it is God who will do the blessings, it is because of God’s incarnation that we are in-luck, it is because of God working in Christ that we are called to let our hearts skip with joy. It is God who makes the weary heart happy.

            God makes his people happy – God is the one doing the work. I think, as long as we know where our blessing, our joy, our happiness, our fortune comes from – and it comes from God – reading it as blessed are the poor in spirit, is a fine way to read it.

            But what does it mean to be poor? There is a difference between not having much, and having nothing. Not having much, your car may be crummy, you may only be able to eat beans and rice, you may have cheap clothes with holes in them, but you get by. But this is not what it means to be poor here. To be poor in this context means to be destitute – to have nothing at all.

            Plutarch a secular author who lived half a century or so after Jesus walked on the earth wrote “for the life of a beggar that you describe means existence with nothing, but that of the poor means sparse living and sticking to the job.” This distinction should help us to grasp the difference between being poor and being destitute. Without Christ we are beggars with nothing.

            I suspect that most, if not all of us have experienced some form of being poor, wondering how we’ll pay our bills or get food to eat – but few of us have ever been destitute, have ever had nothing at all.

            And with this in mind – I think here we get a hint at he first reason why some people don’t come to Christ – to come to Christ means to give up your right to everything it means becoming destitute for the sake of Christ –  to come to Christ, God must become the sovereign of your life, God asks you give him all, all your sin, all your virtue, all your shame, and all your joy – everything that makes you – you he asks for – and then to make Him your king – make Him your all, but to come to God, to inherit the kingdom of heaven – first we must become destitute, must like Christ empty ourselves, to empty ourselves of all our earth bound glory – so what we can experience His heavenly glory.

            Happy are the destitute for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

            I spent a fair amount of time breaking down the first beatitude because each will follow a similar formula. We start with the already – not yet statement of blessed, happy, in luck are the people, and then the promise of what the fulfilment of this status will look like.

            The next fortunate group is those who mourn. I cannot imagine that anyone makes it through this life without a significant number of tears, a significant number of pains – we have all experienced loss of ones we love, we have all experienced heart ache, we have all experienced so much pain, and mourn so deeply.

Perhaps my favorite modern musician Andrew Peterson summarizes this guarantee of woundedness in a ballad to his son as he sings of lost hope:

Your first kiss, your first crush

The first time you know you’re not enough

The first time there’s no one there to hold you.

           

            I know few over the age of 20 who have not experienced these things and the hurt that comes with them. For sin entered into the world and tarnished the images we were created in, mutilated the goodness that we were meant to enjoy – and so we mourn – mourn for our brokenness, mourn for our wounds, mourn for what has been lost.

            But – in Christ we are fortunate, we are happy for He is our comforted.

            I have dealt with anxiety habitually throughout my life – I don’t shout this from the roof top – but it’s not a secret to those who know me well. It can be painful at times but one place I’ve found so much comfort is the 23 Psalm – “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want… (the Lord’s) rod and staff – they comfort me.” And what a good guide he is, exhorting me to repentance, guiding me away from pitfalls, holding me close in my fear and pain when I rest in him, the anxiety diminishes.

            My friends – in this sinful world – you will mourn, you will hurt – you will not get away from it – do not numb your pain with cheep entertainment, with shallow promises, with sinful pleasures – but lean all the more into Christ – because happy are you when you mourn because there is a savior who loves you, who wants to hold you – who will comfort you who will be a balm for you pain. Christ is restoring in you His image.

 

            Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

            The meek are the next to receive hope – we are called to not trust in ourselves. Yet we’ve seen this habitually throughout the history of salvation and of mankind. In Babble they tried to build a tower so they could get to God. Moses struck the rock and In modern times it’s the triumph of the human spirit that has lead to two world wars, to genocide, and to at least 50 million abortions since Row verses Wade. We slaughter each other because we must prove our strength.

            But happy are those who are meek – happy are the humble – happy are those who do not find their strength in themselves – for when the culmination of all things come – then the earth shall be theirs – and the image of God shall be restored in them to perfection.

 

            Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

            We live in a time and a country that places a high value on justice and here Justice and righteousness can be used interchangeable, I think but they mean different things. Yet if we are remotely astute we know that there are those who will be denied justice. This does not mean that we should be satisfied with meager justice, but cry out to God – “how long O Lord, how long until you supply us with perfect justice and righteousness.”

Like our longing for justice, until Christ returns – we will struggle with sin – we will pray St. Paul’s prayer “why do I do the thing that I know I ought not to do! While I do not do the things that I know I ought to do!” We will know this struggle – but in our desire to glorify Christ – our entire being will long – will hunger and thirst – that God’s righteousness be returned to us – and we will long for justice to be poured out when we feel to crippled.

            But we are happy – we count ourselves fortunate for we know the promise of the end – God will pour out mercy and justice – God will restore in us a heart of His righteousness – God is restoring us – and will restore his image in us and in that last day – we will be satisfied for eternity.

 

            Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

            As Christians we are called to be merciful, called to forgive, called to make our enemy list our prayer list. This can be hard – and yet God is merciful, and poured out upon us a deep mercy that we cannot but desire to pour out a mercy upon those who desire it.

            Happy are we when we are merciful – because we know the incredible mercy of God.

 

            Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

            The irony is rich here for as Christ preaches, God incarnate is opening his mouth – is asking his hearers – do you know who I am or are your hearts so corrupt, so tainted that you can’t even see that?

            For us – we pray that God would continue to restore in us His image – restore in us a purity of heart – we pray he would restore in us the desire to see him always and in everything. For me a part of this goes back to praying the 23^rd Psalm – to resting in His good guiding hand – to purify my heart – to help me see his hand in all things – so when I die – I may behold and enjoy that beatific vision – that I may see Him face to face and feel his warm embrace.

            My friends – do not be dismayed if you feel as though your heart is too dark, too grim, too dismal to ever see God – for it is not you who purifies your heart – but the Holy Spirit and so let Him purify you – let him restore in you a new heart – a pure heart – a clean heart – so we can gaze upon Christ.

            Happy are the pure in heart – because they experience God now and will know God as their Father in eternity.

 

            Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.

            One of the attractions of Anglicanism is its peaceable co-existence with other Christians – we seek to be one with many, to break bread with our brothers and sisters, and this is good. And as Christians this is our call – to restore harmony between enemies. But this can be a difficult task, but we seek that road – seek to show those who are disturbed, angry, and lost that true peace is found in Christ.

            Happy are the peacemakers, for we have been adopted by God.

 

            The last two promise us not for a peaceful life if we seek these things, if we are poor, meek, mournful, longing for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, and longing for peace – but rather that we will face turmoil – that the world will mock us and scorn us.

            We long so much for a worldly reward – that we find ourselves lost. Christ promises that we will face adversity in the here and now if we follow after Him, but this adversity will sanctify us – usher us into the kingdom of heaven – and we will behold the face of God – and our eternal reward shall be great and good.

            The cost of restoration – the cost of being sanctified – the cost of Christ wiping away the mire and dirt of sin from His image in us – is turmoil now – but joy in eternity.

            Happy are we when we face persecution.

This is Septuagesima Sunday – which means that it is 70 days before Easter, and the season of preparing our hearts and minds for Lent has come upon us. Lent is a season of praying that God would open our hearts to recognize the places we need restoration, the places we need to repent, the places we need to depend upon Him all the more. As we draw near to Lent, I am going to be challenging you all to pray that the Holy Spirit would reveal in your heart your own brokenness, so you can delve deeper into the restoration that Christ promises us.

I have included the following questions in your bulletin, and this week I want to challenge you to ask God the following – you can pick one or two and pray about them or you can go through each question each day. I realize that this can be a scary task – but I think the fruit of it, will be great and worthwhile so as we draw near to Lent, and perhaps even throughout Lent ask yourselves:

            Are you destitute outside of Christ? Is he your all in all, your everything? Or are there things that you cling to for your salvation outside of him?

            When you mourn is your only comfort found in Christ? Or are there things that you use to numb the pain? Television? Gossip? Alcohol? Food? Pornography?

            Are you meek and humble? Or are you trusting in your own strength to save yourself?

            Do you long for God’s righteousness and justice? Or do you dismay and trust in your own righteousness?

            Are you willing to be merciful to all people? Or do you hold grudges, and let bitterness persist in your heart?

            Is your heart pure? Or do you chase after sin, after strife, after the false promises of the world?

            Do you long for peace and strive to bring peace to those around you? Or does turmoil and strife rule your heart, and do you stir up dissension in the world?

            Do you rejoice in persecution? Or do we see it as a chance to grumble?

            I hope you join with me in praying through these questions – and in this you find the deep and unending joy that Christ has promised us today – that in this you see how Christ – takes our spiritual poverty and makes us inextricably rich, that you may see Christ’s hand of mercy restoring in you the image of God.

            A writing from the first or second century of the church summarizes its teaching on the Sermon on the Mount in the following: “for if you can  bear all the yoke of the Lord you shall be perfect, but if you cannot, do that which you can.” My dear Friends – do what you can and let the Holy Spirit work richly in you.

            In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

He is No Fool

A Homily for The Presentation of Christ

February 2, 2019

All Saints Anglican Church, Prescott, AZ

 

Text: Luke 2:29-32

 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

 

            On January 3, 1957 four missionaries landed their plane upon a small sand strip in the Curary River in the jungle of Ecuador, some time be for this the young men had sensed a call from the Lord to reach the Huaorani people, who were known for being a particularly violent and relatively unreached people group. They had flown over the village and made initial contact and were hoping to soon make further contact, they knew this calling was dangerous, and perhaps deadly.

            After three days a small group from the Huaorani reticently made contact with the missionaries. They took one of the young man flying on the plane, and at first all seemed peaceable. However, the leaders of the tribe became suspicious, and rightly so, because other outsiders were equally eager to make contact, but this contact was in hopes of taking away their land.

            Soon jealousy over whelmed the leaders of the Huaorani and they planned an attack on the missionaries. At 3 pm on January 8^th, the Huaorani made contact again, but this time with the intent of attacking and killing the four men. Shortly after this the missionaries were dead, and fearing retribution the Huaorani torched their village and fled. 

            One of the missionaries names was Jim Elliot – he perhaps is the most well know of the four for a number of reasons but one thing he is remembered for is a short statement he wrote in his journal: “he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Elliot and his four friends gave their lives which they knew they could not keep – in order to glorify God, and to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.   

            Perhaps to some of us this sounds absurd, but this morning we meet another man who is waiting with eager expectations to meet Christ, eager to know Christ, and to see his captive people set free. This morning we meet Simeon the prophet.

            As I was studying and thinking about this passage – I was taken away by the thought of how in Christ’s early childhood narratives, he is barely seen, he is simply an infant given to the will of his earthly parents, and as such – shepherds, magi, angels, his parents, and two prophets become the focus of the narrative. Yet – even in this Christ is glorified, and we come to a deeper understand of who he is as our savior and incarnate Lord.

            We of course know Simeon’s song well as it is sung or recited during Evening Prayer, and we refer to it as the Nunc Dimittis. The song was traditionally used by monks during their last time of prayer of the day. The words from Latin mean “now you dismiss” referring to Simeon’s prayer of “Lord now let your servant depart in peace,” which of course is Simeon saying “now I am ready to die, ready to be with you.”

            The monks use this prayer as a closing song for the day as a part of their intentional reminder to habitually lay their lives down, to habitually die to themselves, which is our calling as well. For the monks of old the end of the day was another call to repent of the sins of that past day, to die to themselves, that come the next morning, if the Lord willed it they may rise to new life.

             He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

 

            The English translations of Simeon’s song begins with an address to God, using the word “Lord.” However, this is fascinating because the word that is used is not the word typically used when Scripture refers to God the father as Lord, nor as Christ the son. Instead it is a far less common word that is used a mere ten times in the New Testament.

            In almost all other cases the ESV translates it to “master,” one other time it is translated as “Lord,” and once, when used in conjunction with the typical word for “Lord” it is translated “sovereign.” These translational choices give us a glimpse as to what Simeon is trying to say – he isn’t saying “God, let me rest now,” no, he is saying “My master, my king, my ruler, my sovereign,

dear owner of my soul,

let me lay down my head, let me rest in your sweet mercy.”

            Simeon sees God not as some distant sky fairy, not as a benevolent grandfather, for Simeon God is not far off, but He is the ruler, and possessor of him as a human being and by extension we are called to rest in God in the same way.

And this begs the first question: Are we willing to give up our entire lives for God, are we willing to say to God “our lives are in your hands”? Are we willing to trust God with every detail of our lives from the grand to the minute? Do we believe that:

            He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose?

 

            Then Simeon prays for death – “now let your servant depart in peace.” Do you find your satisfaction in Christ in the same way that Simeon did? Do we see that his coming into the world and into our lives is the culmination of all Good things that God has planned for his people? If God took our lives today – would we smile and say “my life is complete, I have done all that God has called me to do?” or would know somewhere deep down inside we had failed to glorify God, to love God with our total being, and love our neighbors as we love ourselves? Are we willing to let Christ be our everything?

            My friends – the bar for being Christian is high and you will fail to meet it. I have failed to meet it time and again, I am the chief amongst sinners, I fall down, I fail to love well, I chase false gods, my eyes wander, I doubt, I grow weary, and grumbly like the Israelites in the desert and wonder “how long o Lord?”

            Recently, I have felt the need to abide more richly in Christ, to renew my trust that He is good, and sovereign, and ruler over my life. I know of God’s sovereignty intellectually, but sometimes I grow distressed that things are not working out the way I want them to. Yet, I have seen God provide. I have never been without, I have never wanted, I have never gone hungry, I’ve always had a roof over my head, a friend to talk to. I have rarely had a lot, but the little I have is enough to get by.

            God has always faithfully provided – I have seen this throughout my life with Christ – in the tears and joys, in the anxiety and peace, in the seasons of a little and in the seasons of a lot he has been there – if he can provide in this way – surely he will provide in every other way, surely he will guide me – surely, he has proven himself a faithful and good master

 – and now I must abide.

            Beloved – we will sin, we will fail, we will feel utterly unworthy of our calling into Christ – because we are– but Christ is the father who runs out to meet the prodigal son in the field, who puts upon us the best robe in the closet, who celebrates and kills the fatted calf for us. Christ rejoices and embraces us when we’ve wandered and return home, Christ will leave the 99 for the one lost sheep, Christ will come for us, guide us, heal us, forgive us, and love us, so let us not fret for one moment.  

 

            We have not and cannot earn our salvation – and that is the point of Christ’s death for in His death and resurrection we find grace and forgiveness and in that we are called to reside in Him, we are called to trust him with every aspect of our lives, we are called to know that He is our sovereign master, we are called to abide richly in him, we are called to die to ourselves, so that he may live abundantly in us, and we may live abundantly in him.

            He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

 

            I hope we can see vividly that God calls us to obedience, calls us to give up our lives, calls us to see Him as our sovereign Lord and master, but how do we know what it is that God calls us to do?

            Simeon says that these things are according to God’s word – and we know from verse 26 that God had revealed to Simeon through the Holy Spirit that “he would not see death before had seen the Lord’s Christ.” But how do we live such spirit filled lives? For aren’t we promised that if we are in Christ we are given the Holy Spirit?

            A wise man once told me “you give the Holy Spirit words by knowing God’s word.” Of course we know that the Holy Spirit is actively drawing us closer to God, is actively re-forming our heart, is actively giving us a deeper conscious, a deeper understanding of right and wrong, we know that when the church is uniformly drawn to some purpose, it is probably the spirit moving her to do so, but how do we habitually live in submission to the Holy Spirit?

            It begins with knowing the word of God, it begins with reading it voraciously, reading it as it is the bread of life, and where we will find the living water, letting the word renew our minds. It is here that we find the pure form of the word of God, it is here that we see how he has acted for the millenniums before the coming of Christ, and how he came to die to set his captive people free, it is in God’s word that we come to know his character, of his goodness, his love, his mercy, his justice.

            Let us be devoted in the task of knowing God – not to earn anything – but that we would know Him and he would know us, and in that we would learn to be conformed to His will, that we would be better servants and children, that we would be able to pray Simeon’s prayer more faithfully, and that we would know

– that he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

 

            Perhaps Simeon is endued with some great wisdom, perhaps we knows that Christ must die a death of shame to take away our own death, sin, and shame, perhaps Simeon knows that Christ will be scorned and rejected, perhaps Simeon is wiser and more faithful than Christ’s disciples will prove to be at the crucifixion, but nothing stands to tell us this is the case. No – Simeon simply prays “my eyes have seen your salvation,” for he is endued with the Holy Spirit and simply recognizes Jesus as the Christ, simply recognizes that Jesus will be the one to bring freedom to God’s people.

            Simeon knows who this little baby is, but does not know how God will act – and that is enough for him.

We too know of God’s deliverance, we too know that we are given peace in our abiding in Christ, we too know the end of the story – but we do not know how we will get there. So when the earth trembles and nations rage, when people are evil, when they plot or when they gossip, let us not waver, let us not faulter but say “mine eyes have seen your salvation,” and persevere with faithfulness, and remember:

            He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

 

            But now Simeon says something amazing – think for a moment about the disciples – they all seemed to believe that Christ came to be the temporal king of Jerusalem and Israel, to drive the Romans out of the nation, and to reestablish the state of Israel, to sit upon his ancestor, David’s earthly throne. But Simeon seems to recognize that maybe, just maybe Jesus is more than an earthly king.

            For it is before all people that Christ is prepared – it is before all people that Christ comes to and it is Christ who will judge all people at the end of time, it is to Christ that every knee shall bow. At the coming of Christ two thousand years ago, we find the beginning of this, but not the end, we find the beginning of the end.

            And then Simeon does a double unfolding – he recognizes that Chris is light for the gentiles and the glory of God’s people, Israel.

            This day in the Christian year is commonly called Candlemas, it was the day that the church traditionally blessed their candles for the year, and people would bring their candles for their homes to be blessed as well. Nothing in the church building is there by accident or happenstance, rather everything has meaning including candles.

            We have intentionally set this building aside for one purpose – to worship God, we have set it aside to be a sacred space. Like all thing in the church, the candles have meaning. We light them as a habitual reminder of Christ’s light coming into the world to save sinners. We light a fire at the Easter vigil and carry that light into the church, proclaiming the light of Christ coming into the world, the light of Christ being resurrected, proclaiming that all hope is never lost.

The priest or deacon sings the exultet at the vigil to remind us of the importance of that light in our lives and in the world, the candles are lit from the paschal candle, and act to remind us of the light of Christ in our lives and so when you see the candles on the altar, let them trigger your memory – that Christ came into the world to enlighten you and I, that Christ came into the world to set us free from the darkness of our sin, that Christ is our light and our hope.

            But he is also the glory of His people Israel – Israel is God’s people, Israel was set aside to be a blessing to all nations – and this blessing is the coming of Christ. By bringing Christ into the world Israel glorified God, and in such Israel is glorified.

            Yesterday as I was driving home around sunset and I was thinking about the beauty of the earth. My favorite time to come up from Phoenix to Sunset point is that hour before sunset. It sparks in me such an appreciation for God’s creative power. Yesterday my thoughts wandered to how one day God will re-create the earth and when God restores all things to how they were meant to be how much more beautiful it will be.

Then, I realized – what will be truly beautiful will be to experience God’s glory – for now we see through a glass dimly – but then we will see fully, experience fully, we will not be separated from the glory of God by our sin, but will bask in his love and glory perfectly.

            This is what God does for sinful humanity in Christ Jesus, he makes us free, and makes us to know Him, and though this is out of love – more importantly it glorifies God, because another has recognized that God is the good and sovereign master of their lives. Another has recognized that he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

            I started this sermon with the story of four missionaries who died on a sandbar in the Ecuadorian jungle and you may wonder how we know so much about them? Well, a few years later two of their widows went to live with the tribe, through this several of the Huaorani people came to know Christ, came to know his freedom, and came to be faithful followers of Christ. The four families became inextricably interlinked with the Huaorani people.

            One of their sons came to be friends with one of the men who killed his father – and a reporter said to him “I understand forgiving someone who had killed your father, but how can you love him?” The man thought for awhile and then came to that old saying that perhaps we all know “hurting people hurt people,” and realized perhaps – “forgiven people forgive people” and loved people love people. We are forgiven and we are loved – and as such – we are to be forgiving and loving.

            If we are residing in Christ, if Christ is our sovereign Lord, if we have given Christ the total of our being – then we know that the words Jim Elliot scribbled in his journal nearly seventy years ago are not folly but true -  He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose, for what incredible goodness we gain when we reside in Christ!

            In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Living Water

A Homily for Epiphany 3

January 26, 2019

All Saints Anglican Church, Prescott, AZ

 

Text: John 4:1-14

 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

 

            I remember when I first moved to Arizona, how my skin and my eyes felt incredibly dry, all the time, it felt as though I could feel every single cell in my skin drying out. I remember needing to adjust and be more diligent about drinking water. We probably all still need to be more diligent about this, but coming from the humidity of North Carolina, it was a sudden change for my body to adjust to, and now when I’m in a humid place I always feel damp.

            Living in an arid climate we quickly learn the importance of water to our daily lives, our city council regularly discusses water availability and the effects various policies have on how much water is available to us at citizens. One of the most striking things I noticed when I first moved here is how quickly showers warm up compared to every other place I’ve ever lived, this of course is a wise water saving measure.

            It was striking traveling around Israel how similar the climate is to Arizona. I remember one day driving in on the bus through the area where Jesus undoubtedly traveled, and thinking how I might as well be at home, I’d have the same views driving through the desert. Keeping in mind how dry our land is, we can start to have sympathy to the story we read today. We can understand what it would be like having walked all day and being wearied from our journey. How hot the sun is and how dry the air is. Water, for the weary traveler is therefore a necessity.

            Water plays and interesting role in scripture. As I was reading about it one source noted at least three different ways it is viewed in scripture – first water is the source of chaos, second it is a source of cleansing, and finally, there is of course living water, that is water that brings life.

            I have found this idea that water is the source of chaos as the most interesting. The Israelite have never been known as seafaring people, and so it is not at all surprising that as a culture they came to the conclusion that water, in particularly the sea is a chaotic force, but this was a general view of the ancient near east as well. The gods of water were often viewed as chaotic and even evil.

            We see this portrayed most vividly in the book of Daniel when the evil nations rise out of water. Daniel is saying – these that will come serve not the living God, serve not the God of order, not the God that we gather together this morning to worship, but they serve chaos, they serve evil gods, they will serve themselves, these nations that rise out of water will serve chaos.

            But likewise, this is why it is significant in the creation narrative when God separates the water from the land – separates the chaotic from the tamable. The seas have often captured the heart of man because out of that chaos comes a great sense of adventure, a great promise of riches, a great hope of something new – but also of great danger.

            Where I grew up, many went to sea to make their riches, but not everyone came back, more than one childhood acquaintance went to sea, and never returned. We live in hubris to think that we can tame the sea, but we can just as easily be swept away by it. The sea still conjures for us an idea of chaos – and as such – we are reminded how in scripture the sea of represents that which is untamable.

Just as water can give life, so it can rob men of their lives. For these reasons, when we see Christ walk on water and calm the storms – it is significant – for we are seeing that Christ has the same authority as the father – the authority to tame chaos, to tame power, Christ is more powerful than the forces of chaos.

            But water also plays a cleansing role in scripture. Last week we talked about St. John the Baptist’s roll as a baptizer, he lead people to water to cleanse them. He baptized people to turn people away from sin. In Jewish villages throughout Galilee you can find baptismal fonts called Mikvas. 

            Don’t think baptismal fonts like what we have in the back of the church – don’t think of the little bowl in which we pour water over the head of a child or a new convert as an outward sign of the cleansing Christ does in the faithful – no, these were large enough for a grown man to walk through, to fully submerge himself in, to become totally washed clean. And not only that but the water was always moving through it, it was not a stagnant pool of water – but running water to wash away the symbolic dirtiness of the man’s sin.

            Ritual cleansing was a big deal. Though it does seem that for John the Baptist, his baptism was more than just a ritual cleansing but a marking of a new life – a marking of a turning away from one’s sin in repentance, where the mikva’s ritual cleaning had more to do with simply washing away of sins before gathering for worship.

            But this morning, we see the third type water – the most important type of water for the life of the Christian. We learn of living water.

            It is no mistake that Jesus withdraws from Judea and makes his way back to Galilee when rumors that his ministry is mimicking that of John’s. For baptism, and repentance are important for the Christian life, but St. John the Evangelist wants to show something different – he wants the reader to see that in Christ is the light and life of humanity, that all that believe in Him should not parish, but have eternal life. St. John the Evangelist wants us to know that unless we have living water springing up in us, then we are spiritually dried up, we are spiritually dead for a human being cannot live without water, nor can we be made alive without the living water of Christ.

            And so it is no mistake that Jesus meets this woman at the well. Think for a moment if we lived here 2000 years ago – if you have a hard time imagining it, take a day trip to Montezuma’s Well, this is a literal well that has an ancient small town built around it. The water here springs up from the ground and so the native Americans built their village around it, in order that they could easily have water year round.

            Having a source for water would become a primary necessity for existence. Without electricity to pump water the well became a community gathering place of sorts and in the ancient near east – it became a place for women to gather, to catch up, and sometimes even for women to meet a husband.

            But Jesus meets this woman who is a thorough outcast – in a culture where ritual purity was important, the intermingling of men and women was deeply frowned upon, furthermore, she was a Samaritan, and deep seated distrust between Jews and Samaritans existed. It seems that the prejudice existed on both sides, though the Jews seemed to hold more open distain for the Samaritans while the Samaritans were more vicious in their expression of their hatred towards the Jews. Finally, if we read on it would seem that the woman was not a woman of virtue and principles, but had known many men, and that she was now cohabiting with a man who wasn’t even her husband, and she had been married to several men before him.

            And so we see a Jewish man approaches her and asks for a drink of water. She knows not who this man is, and it would seem that she is deeply confused by her initial interaction with hm at the well.

            Some commentators hypothesize that the woman sees this interaction as flirtatious – as another opportunity to meet a new man, maybe a better man than the one she is with now. Others are appalled by even this suggestion. Surely, they say Jesus wouldn’t be flirted with, surely she would have viewed this interaction as innocent.

            I think the second suggestion is naive, for we have an internal craving to be known, to be love, and to find security.

We live in a time when the act of truly loving is dying rapidly. We find to stand up for the other, to care about those who are outcasts, to invest in people may cause an incredible amount of confusion. We see marriages breaking down because we are too afraid to love well. We see friendships as disposable. We have culturally lost the art of loving well, we have lost the art of loving people, of being communities that truly care for the souls of others.

            Certainly, compassion can become a rallying cry for liberals and conservatives alike – but when it comes to caring for those who are on the outside – those who are not like us, we find it much easier paint caricatures. When it comes to sitting with those who are hurting, and lonely, to caring for those who have created for themselves a pit of misery – we are not very good.

            We have become Job’s friends, we are happy to sit for a little bit – to say “yes, yes, I get it you’re hurting.” But when it comes to long journeys of healing, to long roads of learning to love others well we find ourselves stumbling into legalism, we would prefer to cut ourselves off, we want to have little communities of perfection where we aren’t reminded of the frailty of humanity, but Christ models for us a radical love for others.

We realize that in order to love – requires a certain amount of vulnerability – and we have trained ourselves never to be vulnerable for vulnerability is a scary act, it requires being known and knowing other’s imperfections. It requires seeing ugliness, and not pretending it isn’t ugly, but loving the other despite their brokenness.

            C.S. Lewis penned the following in his book The Four Loves:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

To love is to be vulnerable and here Christ opens himself up to criticism, later in chapter four his disciples are scandalized by how he has interacted with a Samaritan woman, and if we were to read on we would see that even at first the woman doesn’t understand what is going on.

            So, it seems possible that the woman may be flirting with him. For she does not understand love, if we were to read on, we would see how baffled she is – she only sees men as a place of security, a place of assurance that the world will not crush her any more than it already has – but Christ has something better for her, Christ has something more fulfill, Christ offers her love – but not only love – love and life.

            When Christ offers her living water she is excited – for she thinks – ah-ha! If I have this water I won’t have to make this journey to well over and over again and even here we get a hint that perhaps she’d rather cut herself off from the natural place of community, would rather isolate herself and hide from the world around her. She imagines how much easier will my life be without thirst. How much easier it would be to not have to go to the place where she must be vulnerable, must be ridiculed by others. Not to mention that but the pure practicality of the time saving benefits of never thirsting again.

But – this is not the living water that she is offered by Christ and that we are offered.

            No, the water of life that Christ offers her is the source and sustenance of the Christian walk. The water that he offers her is eternal security, it is security in ever moment, in everything, it is life.

            Think for a moment about all that is troubling you: (Pause)

Are you worried about paying your bills? (Pause)

Are you worried about your friends? (Pause)

Are you worried about your spouse and their health? (Pause)

Are you worried about the state of the world? (Pause)

And then ask yourself: where are you finding your security in these worries? (Pause)

Are you looking for them in others or are you bringing these troubles to Christ? (Pause)

            My confession is this – too often, I find it easy to let the winds of the world push me around, to let fear grip my heart – but God calls me, God calls us to lean on Him in times of trouble and in good times. And here is the promise that Christ is offering the woman, and is offering us – If we drink of Christ, if we trust in His promise, if we pursue Him and Him alone, we will have security in the here and now, and in eternity.

            If we take time to trust completely in Christ, if we take time to trust that His words for us are good and true, if we take time to believe that Christ is our source of life, the water that keeps us alive and will cleanse and deliver us into an eternity in the heavenly kingdom – what can we possibly fear, what can we possibly be concerned about? What can possibly shake us?

            Can news of war separate us from the love of God? Can medical concerns separate us from the love of God? Can financial concerns? Can anger of the other possibly separate us from the love of God?

            Nothing can dry up the well spring of God’s love for his people! SO why do we fear?

            This is not a promise of ease, this is not a promise of getting every earthly thing we want – but this is a promise that God will be with us no matter what comes our way, a promise that God is sanctifying us, a promise that God is working all things for our good and His glory.

            Today – Christ offers a sinful woman a wellspring of life – Christ offers an outcast, a woman who has made some unfortunate choices the water of life – and likewise he does the same for us. No matter where you came from, no matter your brokenness, no matter the pain that wells in side your heart – Christ has offered you living water that you may thirst no more.

            We come to Christ broken, lost, hurting, we come to Christ with pains and sorrows, with troubles and concerns, and Christ gives us life – life in the here and now and in eternity. Christ offers to us security – Christ offers to us the peace which we so long for.

            So, my friends let us drink richly of the promises of Christ – for it is there that we find the love that we so long for, it is there that we are given the strength to love our spouse, our friends, our children, it is there that we are given the strength to love those who are like us, and those who are different from us. It is in Christ that we are given security in the face of chaos, it is there, that we find calm amidst the storm, it is there that we find the assurance, that even if we can’t see the end, that God will work out even the most messy and wildest of situations to His glory. It is there, in Christ, in His living water, that we find life, and the peace that passes all understanding.

            So let us drink deeply in the well of living water that we may have life eternal and the joy of the security that Christ alone can give us.

            IN the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.  Amen.

The Beginning

A Homily for Epiphany II

January 19, 2020

All Saints Anglican Church, Prescott, AZ

 

Text: Mark 1:1-11

 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

 

            Beginnings are an interesting thing, we know this fact because we’ve all started new things, probably several, maybe hundreds, we’ve all set out on new jobs, looked for new homes, moved to new apartments, made new friendships, or even moved to new places in other parts of the world. The beginning can be frightening, and overwhelming, the beginning can be exciting, and hope-filled.

            I remember when I started college, I was just a kid from rural Maine. Now, I never considered where I grew up as being rural, not compared to inland Maine, it wasn’t until I was older and had lived elsewhere and became aware, much to my surprise, that there’s a world outside of Maine, that I became aware that even living 30 minutes outside of Portland, our largest city, at 60,000 people, would be considered rural by most Americans.

            Like all good Mainers, we’d be in bed by 9 pm, and waking up at the crack of dawn, or in the winter well before the sun rose. My life in that respect was simple.

College was different – for the first time I was around people who stayed up past nine, I had the freedom to explore, I had the ability to walk around campus whenever I pleased. It was new, it was exciting and frightening all at once. Beginnings, and change have the propensity to stir in us great emotion.

            I suspect you all know what I mean by that, for we have all started something new.

            And what of St. Mark’s words “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.” Is he simply saying “I’m starting to write about Jesus,” or is his word choice more significant than that?

            The saint is saying – this is the start of something new, gather around as I tell you to story of our God who became man, who emptied himself and dwelt among us, not simply for a neat experience but in order to set the captives free and to usher in a new way, a new covenant, to open the heavens so all who would believe would be able to have fellowship with the Father, so that all who believe would be freed from their sin.

            And so – at the center of the Gospel According to St. Mark, and at the center of our gospel reading today stands this very thesis – that Christ has come into the world to enact this new covenant.

            Now, this word gospel has become common place in our Christian vocabulary. On our table sits a gospel book, that is a book with the words of the four evangelists, we know the first four books of the New Testament as the gospels, we say I’m reading the Gospel According to St. Mark right now, or I’m telling my friend the gospel. And these are all very good things, but we’ve lost the meaning of the word. I have found from time to time it sort of becomes ill-defined.

            Gospel means good news – but more than good news, it means good news about victory in war, or rather that’s how it was used in the secular context and even in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, referred to as the Septuagint. And what is this good news of victory over? It is Christ’s victory for us over sin, for even in this moment that St. Mark is describing Christ is already on his path to victory.

            We read in the Revelation of St. John that in the last great battle as Jesus rides out to war he is dressed in victory clothing. Already as Christ commences his public ministry is victory confirmed, already, even as we read this morning, he is turning his face towards calvary, already, is he read to take upon himself the pain, and anxiety, the horribleness of our sins, to die for them that we might live. Already in the beginning – his victory is being declared.

            But it is not merely at Christ’s birth or at the beginning of his public ministry that his victory is proclaimed – even as we read of the horror of the fall in Genesis 3, we read of the betrayal of Adam and Eve against God, we read of the deception of the serpent against our first parents, we read of the shame, the heartache, and already, even then – God promises one who will crush the head of the serpent, a son of Eve who will overcome this sin – already at the fall God has a plan of redemption and then this promised redemption is promised again and again in the Old Testament, and foreshadowed through the men whom God has chosen.

            St. Mark knows this and pulls not just from Isaiah as the text says but several places to point out the fact that Jesus is the fulfilment of the Old Testament, that the prophecies and foreshadowing all point to Him, and that John the Baptist is his necessary forerunner, the one who is doing the groundwork, laying the foundation – preparing the way for the coming of Christ into His public ministry. St. Mark points – that this, what we read this morning – this is the beginning of the new thing, this is the beginning of the good news being finally, fully unveiled to humanity.

            St. Mark also shows this through his description of John – his description of John echoes 2 Kings when we meet Elijah the prophet – and Elijah and John are described as “wearing a garment of hair, with a belt of leather about his waist.” We are meant to understand that John was the second Elijah, who must come to prepare the way for the Christ.

            In all this John also foreshadows the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, for we cannot come to Christ on our own, we need the Holy Spirit to make straight the highway of our hearts, we need the Holy Spirit to make our hearts new, we need the Holy Spirit to draw us into Christ. So as John the Baptist preached the repentance for the forgiveness of sins, likewise the Holy Spirit prompts us to repentance both when we meet Christ for the first time, and over and over again, he calls us to die daily to ourselves that we may be forgiven of our sins, that we may rest with joy in Christ. This is the beginning of a new thing.

            But just as many went out to hear John and many were baptized we are warned in our knowledge of the life of Christ – that few stood by Christ in his death – perhaps only one disciple, his mother, and a handful of women. So, a full church does not guarantee a church full of converted hearts. Rather – each of us are called to give our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls over to the love of God, that in Christ we may be drawn nearer to him. This is a daily task – a good task – a task for life.

            To follow Christ is not a religion of work, it is not something we earn, it is our hearts being turned into new creations by the grace we find in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit in us. The success of the church, therefore, is not measured by bodies, but by changed hearts, it is measured by those being sanctified. And so we like metrics to tell us how we are doing – but in the church we do not have this privilege.

            Instead, we as Christians are called to do the hard thing – we are called to have the hard conversations, we are called to stay up all night with the grieving, to hold the hand of the dying, to love the different, to seek to make Christ known in all times and all places.

            We don’t like this, we want things to be black and white, we want simple answers. I remember one day in a class I was taking, a tough subject in contemporary moral issues came up and the question was how to we minister well to people struggling in this area. We started to wrestle with this difficult question when, someone raised their hand and asked “is it a sin?” I think we all would have agreed that there was sin in it, and it comes out of the fall – but that wasn’t the question at hand – the question was how do we love the person who is struggling with the darkness of their own soul? We want to side step that often messy answer and put them into simple boxes like “good” and “bad,” but this doesn’t teach us to love others well and it puts up walls for us to love and nurture those who are struggling.

            No, this morning we read about the beginning of the gospel of love – not that we affirm all things but we welcome all people. We don’t accept all actions, but we know all are capable of growth in Christ and because His grace is sufficient for my sins, it is sufficient for others’ darkest sins. It is easy to ban those whom aren’t like us, or to welcome all and never call them to a change – but it is much harder to walk with someone in the dark struggle of their hearts, to help them gain freedom from their sin, and to have abundant life in Christ.

            Legalism and license are easy – but sanctification is the better way.

            Today – we see the beginning of a new way – a new covenant and a new hope in Christ. A covenant of conversion, of changed lives, of messy times – that draw us to deeper life.

            As we read on, we see John promise that there is someone greater coming, someone who will baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit – in the Old Covenant the Holy Spirit was a rare gift, reserved for the prophets and the writers of scripture, but in the new, he is given freely to all who believe in Christ.

            Often, we hear a mischaracterization of corporate worship – that there has to be some sort of experience, but we know the verse from the hand of St. Matthew: “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there,” because we read it whenever we pray Morning or Evening Prayer – but it reminds us that even when we are struggling with depression, disappointment, or disillusionment that when we gather together to worship and pray in the name of Christ – that Christ is with us. We know that when we come to Christ, when we are baptized, when we are confirmed, when we partake in the sacraments, we have an outward reminder of the giving of the Holy Spirit.

            No, our emotions are important – and worthy of listening to – but ultimately – emotions do not always reflect the deep abounding love that God has for us, and in that they can betray and mislead us. We experience worship and sometimes it feels good, but even if we are tired in our formal times of worship – even if it feels like an off day, even if the priest stumbles through the liturgy, or the music is off, or your neighbor is smelly, or you just had a fight with your spouse – the Spirit is still with us when we do this great act. That is the blessing and joy of the New Covenant.

            The narrative then shifts its focus dramatically from John the Baptist to Jesus – no longer is John the subject but he becomes a passive actor in the drama that is about to unfold. The text marks this by describing Jesus’ baptism in passive voice. John does not baptize Jesus, but Jesus is baptized by John.

            Perhaps this seems insignificant, but John’s significant ministry becomes overshadowed by Jesus, as we read the rest of the Gospel according to St. Mark – we only see a couple of minor, almost parenthetical statements about John. This begins in Jesus’ baptism – John acts as a servant, as a tool and not as the primary person.

            But why was Jesus baptized?

            We are told John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance of sin, a turn away, a literally shifting of the mind in its perspective of the world around it, yet we confess that Jesus was without sin, was perfect, was spotless.

            Are we wrong? Are we delusional?

            Certainly not!

            Jesus was without sin, Jesus’ baptism marks something else – Jesus’ baptism marks the beginning of something new. It marks the beginning of his ministry, the beginning of the formal proclamation of Christ ushering in the new ethos, the new way, the new covenant, and opening the door for our participation in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus’ baptism marks the beginning of his formal ministry.

            The first thing that happens as he comes out of the water is that the heavens are torn open. Of the gospels, St. Mark’s words are the most aggressive in how he describes this, in fact he uses the same word that he uses for when the temple curtain is torn open at Christ’s crucifixion. He links together these two moments as being fundamentally important in Christ’s ushering in of the new ethos. He links these two moments in pointing us to the fact that in Christ we find intimacy with the Father, that now we can experience the glory of God in a way that we never could before.

            And the Holy Spirit descended upon him, and we hear the voice from heaven and here we see the Holy Trinity revealed to us – what an amazing thing this is! For God sends his incarnate Son to redeem those who would believe to Himself, he sends his spirit to direct, and guide, while he is enthroned in perfect and beautiful majesty.

            Like Jesus’ baptism we may wonder, why Christ could possibly need the Holy Spirit – but it shows us that Christ was perfectly obedient to the father – where we are rebellious Children, he is the prefect child, and in Him we may become children of the Father, in Him we may know the same fatherly love that says – you are my beloved son, in Him we become beloved children of the Father – what good news this is!  Finally – the Father tells Jesus that he is well pleased with Him – but other translations prefer – that the Father delights in Jesus – I favor this later translation as it captures something wonderful.

            I think we long so deeply to hear from others that they delight in us, that we have something wonderful and worthy of being excited about – that we can be swept away with awe that God the father Delights in God the son.

            But why does God the Father delight in Jesus Christ?

            These are some of the points that people have noted that are delightful about the son:

            His becoming a man,

            his perfect obedience,

            his fulfilment of the Law,

            his patience,

            his humility,

            his sinlessness,

            his love for the broken and the sinners,

            his defeat of the devil,

            his defeat of death, his willingness to die for his sheep, and to keep his sheep.

            This list is far from exhaustive – but perhaps no other thing – than his redemption of sinners like me delights the Father and this is ultimately what St. Mark is pointing to when he writes “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.”       

            In Jesus Christ we have redemption, in Jesus Christ we have freedom, in Jesus Christ the New Covenant is opened up to all who would believe in Him, and we find our incredible freedom.

            Beginnings can be exciting, and scary, can be overwhelming and joy-filled – but what we read this morning is  THE beginning – the beginning of something new – the beginning that stands as the most significant new beginning – the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ and the beginning of the end of the tyranny of sin.

            In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Preach the Gospel, Die, and Be Forgotten

A Homily for Epiphany I

January 12, 2019

All Saints Anglican Church, Prescott, AZ

 

Text: Matthew 2:1-12

 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

 

            Shortly after the rise of the puritan movement in England and America, a movement known as the German Pietists arose in mainland Europe. Out of this group came what are now known as the Moravians. Like their English counter parts, the German pietists were interested in personal holiness and a robust pursuit of knowing God.

One of the leaders of the Pietists was a man named Count Nikolaus Von Zinzendorf. His adherence to holiness and the pursuit of the intimate relationship with Jesus helped the Wesley’s develop Wesleyan theology, which lead to the formation of the Methodist church. However the thing many remember him for more than anything else is the following phrase:

            Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.

            This little sentence is perhaps the most beautiful prescription for the Christian. We are not called to be concerned about our brand, to be concerned about the number of bodies we have in church, to be concerned about what kind of car we drive, how cool we are, or whether we have the right friends, no we are called to preach the gospel at all times and in all places. We are called to go out, to make disciples, and to bring them into the covenant of Christ through baptism.

            We are called to share with our friends, neighbors, and loved ones what Christ is doing in our lives and what he has done in our lives, we are called to share how is redeeming us from sin, drawing us away from those things that destroy our souls, how Christ has washed us clean from the sin which we were born with, how Christ has healed us from our deepest pain and giving us our deepest joy.

            We are called to unashamedly share our lives, to show the ways in which Christ has healed us and is healing us, to show the love of Christ to those in our community that so need love.

            Unless Christ returns we will all face death – now Count Zinzendorf is not saying – forget about your loved ones who have died, he is not saying you need to not remember them. Please don’t hear that. Rather – his sentiment is so wonderfully summarized by Rich Mullins, the faithful and thoroughly sincere early nineties Christian singer when he wrote:

 

If my life is motivated by my ambition to leave a legacy, what I’ll probably leave as a legacy is ambition. But if my life is motivated by the power of the Spirt in me, if I live with the awareness of the indwelling Christ, if I allow His presence to guide my actions, to guide my motives, those sort of things, That is the only time I think we really leave a great legacy.

 

            In other words: preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.

 

Our calling is that when we go to our eternal rest – that we are forgotten, not because we are so forgettable, but because Christ became so important to us – that all else fades in our lives. Instead of being motivated the self – we are motivated by a deep desire to glorify God in all we do. Instead of being motivated by getting as much treasure in the here and now – we store our treasure in eternity – we make our concern for eternal things.

            I remember for some time “developing one’s brand” was a rather popular sentiment, most peculiarly with pastors – people wanted to show off who they were as individuals, and make sure everything was presented perfectly and painted a unique picture.

            This was troubling to say the least.

            Yesterday, as the class I was attending this past week wrapped up, I was chatting with the professor. I think it will be the last class I’ll have with him, and as we lamented this, I asked him if he would survive without me to blurt out random thoughts in the middle of his lecture. He said that he suspected someone else would fill that hole for me. It was then I remembered this great comfort – the church doesn’t need me. (but how deeply I need the church!)

            That is to say: your salvation, your spiritual growth, your sanctification does not depend upon me – but depends upon Christ and Christ alone. Yes – I am called to point you to Christ over and over again. I am called to remind you of who he is, I am called to exhort you to repentance when you have sinned, and comfort you when you’re wounded. I am called to encourage, strengthen, admonish, and direct, but the reality is Christ can use whoever he pleases to accomplish this, but I am so grateful that I get to do this for you all, but still I must remember that ultimately it is Christ who is working in you.

 

vestments

            Traditional, liturgical churches are thoughtfully designed to reorient us, and remind us of this fact. For the priest – my vestments should keep me humble. Our first layer is the cassock, as you can see it is dark black and reminds me that I am spiritual dead – that without Christ, apart from God’s grace and mercy, I have no life in me. Then I put on the surplice, which reminds me of how we are washed white in the blood of Christ,

and finally the scarf, or tippet for the daily offices, that is Morning and Evening Prayer or for communion I wear the stole. This reminds us that we are yoked to Christ, that we have authority to preach, teach, exhort, to administer the sacraments but that authority only comes from Christ.

 

            My friends – while I have authority – it is not my own, but only Christ’s, it is borrowed, and I am to use it as a servant.

            But, we are all called to live this life of self-giving, of death to self.

            We have put such an emphasis on making a mark and a difference and finding our true calling that we sometimes forget that our calling – is to let our light shine wherever God has placed us.

If you are here this morning – you are here by the grace of God, you are here because God brought you here. God does move us in and out of things, but I have spent an incredible amount of time comforting young Christians who feel lost because they can’t articulate their calling.

            Our calling, if we are followers of Christ – is to glorify him,

our calling – if we are not yet His follower is to become followers of Christ, to let Him minister to you, to let his mercy envelop you so that we may all glorify Him and love others as He loves us. Yes – he may call you to some great task that will shape the world, or he might call you to simply be a good husband, a good wife, a good brother, a good sister, a good friend, a good parent, or a good child. But let us be first concerned with loving Him and loving others as He first loved us.

            The Magi present for us such a calling. The lore and thoughts around them is seemingly unending. For example – we do not know how many of them there were. The western tradition tells us that there were three, and this is a fine number, for there were three gifts – but there could have only been two or their could have been 102, though the fact that they seemingly all went into a middle eastern house, makes an extremely large number rather unlikely. All we know is that the word Magi is plural in the text, and so there could have been many. In fact, the eastern church disagrees with the west and has settled on 12 magi to be parallel with the twelve tribes of Israel, this is as fine a number as three, but still unprovable.

            Next we know very little of who they were. Some traditions tell us that they were kings – in fact this is where those names we hear from time to time – Gaspar, Melchoir, and Balthasar come from. Each of these men were legendary kings from India, Persia, and Arabia and while they were certainly from the east, there is no evidence to suggest that these were actually the men who visited the infant Jesus or even that they were kings.   

            The term Magi is particularly interesting – and it does give us a hint into who these men were. They were probably a special class of people in the ancient near east who were interested in religion and lore and the pursuit of wisdom, who were something like the combination of a pagan priest and the local wise man, having given their life to study of the ways of the world and also given to leading local religious ceremonies. This does seem to be the most likely explanation as this would mean they would therefore be aware of the world around them, and then having seen Jesus’ star and because they knew where to look they would have known something amazing had happened.

            Ultimately, we got lost when we get anxious about who these men were. The point of the story is not that Gaspar, Melchoir, and Balthasar or for that matter Joe, Frank, and Bob took a long journey together – the point is that these men who were not Jewish recognized that God had been born among us and came to worship Him.

            Here we get a hint that the magi knew that Christ was more than a man – for they came to worship Jesus, king of the Jews.

When we confront those who deny the divinity of Christ, here is one place that they get stuck. We might say to them, “but look! The wisemen came to worship Jesus,” to which they will respond, “but they shouldn’t have.” In fact, in their mind, the wisemen are not heroes of faith, but anti-heroes. They do not believe the wisemen show us the way to life as we believe, but rather a way towards death.

            There is an error in their thought here – first scripture makes it perfectly clear that these men worshipped Christ, there is no other way to read the text. Secondly, when worship is wrongly prescribed in the Word of God, we see this in particularly with angels – the text tells us that this is a wrong thing to do, tells us do not worship Angels!

No, we worship no one but the one true God who is revealed to us in triune form – and whose second person became incarnate in Jesus Christ our Lord. No, if it was wrong for the magi  to worship Jesus, we would know. Rather – they are wise and anonymous forerunners. They tell us – it is good and right to worship Jesus as our God, and we know from later revelations in scripture to worship him as our savior.

            Now, let us compare Herod and the religious leaders of Jerusalem’s reaction to the news of the birth of Jesus with that of the Magi. Herod and all of Jerusalem with him was troubled – but the Magi “rejoiced exceedingly with great joy” when God revealed the place of the house where Jesus was to them.

            What is our reaction to new people visiting our church, what is our reaction to the to the opportunity to love upon someone destitute, to the migrant, to the one who is not like us but so desperately needs to know the love of Christ? Has it occurred to us that perhaps these people are angels, sent to give us an opportunity to ministry as the author of Hebrews tells us? That these people are images of the Christ, whom we have  the opportunity to love upon?

 

            My friends – you so often do a beautiful job of welcoming those who are unknown, but sometimes I grow distressed when I look out and I see someone new sitting alone. One day, I looked out and a man was visiting for the first time and it was as though he had the plague, he sat alone in a pew and no one was even in the pew in front of him!

            I know at other times we are amazing at welcoming strangers in amongst us, and I know you all to be profoundly loving – but let us become even better at loving the stranger, let us not be afraid of him or her – for yes, we live in scary times, yes we live in times of deep hate and distrust, but we cannot combat hate with more hate, but only with the divine love of Christ, the sacrificial love of Christ. Let us great each person who enters this building, enters into our life with this love.

            Someone posted this past year the three rules of engagement her and her husband have for when they are at church:

            First: An alone person in our gathering (that is their worship service) is an emergency.

            Second: Friends can wait.

            Third: Introduce a new comer to someone else.

            My beloved – please – if you see someone alone – even if church has started, even if it is half way through the service, and I know it is awkward, but get up, leave your friends, and quietly introduce yourself and ask if you can sit with them. I have chosen to attend churches because someone has done just that for me. I pray that the love of Christ abounds within our community, may we rejoice greatly when we see someone new.

            But here is the second question – to follow Christ is a calling to a continual dying to ourselves. Here is a place I struggle too – when Christ calls us into deeper intimacy, calls us to the death to ourselves, calls us to leave behind some idol of the heart and beckons us into something deeper and more profound with him – are we troubled like Herod, or do we explode forth with joy like the magi?

 

            When Christ calls us to live in a place of deeper faith with him may we rejoice – not be dismayed. May our hearts cry out with joy and not trouble, for how good it is to know Christ!

            For in meeting Christ, in being drawn into a relationship with him, we are called to be ill at ease with the status quo, to be ill at ease with the way the world is and anxious for the way the world will be after the great re-creation. T.S. Elliot summarizes the Christian tension we feel in a poem he wrote for Epiphany, it is written from the view of the wisemen sometime after their great journey to worship the Christ:

            All this was a long time ago, I remember,

            And I would do it again, but set down

            This set down

            This: were we led all that way for

            Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly

            We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

            But had thought they were different; this Birth was

            Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

            We returned to our palaces, these Kingdoms,

            But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation

            With alien people clutching their gods.

            I should be glad of another death.

Christ’s birth in our hearts calls us to shake up our lives, to shake out the old dead gods of our paganism and worldliness – calls us to live deeply profound and intimate lives with Christ and with the people of God. Our lives should not reflect the culture around us, but we should be transformed people, we should be a community that God’s love abounds in.

            The wise men, though undoubtedly deeply educated, lacked the formal training of the religious leaders of Jerusalem. In this we are reminded that we are not called to trust in our upbringing or heritage. We are called to trust in Christ alone.

            Too often as Anglicans we say “well, I was a cradle Episcopalian,” as though this brings us some status. It is so good to run the race faithfully, to have never turned our back on Christ, but we are not saved because we have attended church for our whole lives – no we are saved because we are in Christ’s covenant with us, because we have a deep and intimate relationship with Him, because every day we die to ourselves, and are born again in Him.  

            My friends – I am so thankful for the witness of those of you who have not veered from the path that Christ has laid before them, that have walked a life that glorifies God from Birth until this moment. Your witness is beautiful, but trust not in your witness but in Christ and Christ alone.

            We see in this text – that the ones who showed true faith in Christ were foreigners, were the outsiders, while the insiders schemed and were troubled by the news. So too, I am thankful for those who lived rough lives, who stumbled and fell hard, and Christ came in and radically changed their hearts.

            I remember talking to a friend who had lived a hard, rough and tumble life – and met Christ in jail. He confessed that he often felt intimidated in clergy gatherings because of his past.

Yet – he knew Christ, and His power in such a profound way, a way that many of us can barely imagine – because he knew how damaging sin was, he knew both Christ and sin so intimately. Let us rejoice when the prostitute, the criminal, and the drug-addict come to know Christ, not judging them for who they were but rejoicing exceedingly with great joy for what Christ has done. And let us not take for granted our lives because we were born into a Christian home – but take Christ’s saving grace as our own, and abide richly in that.

            The wisemen finally arrive at the house where Mary and the child are, and they worship the child and lay before him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Here again the wisemen point us to the fact that this child was more than a baby lying in the arms of his mother, an interesting child, no, my friends - he is king and God.

            Both the fact that they worshipped Him and brought these gifts – point us to this incredible truth. For gold, frankincense, and myrrh are gifts are only fit for the incarnate God. They are gifts fit for the one true God born to be amongst us.

            It is easy for us to grow popular lore around these wisemen, but in reality they call us to live a life of faith, they set for us an example of Count Zinzendorf call that we may preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten, for they saw an amazing thing happening and set out in faith, were amongst the first to worship the incarnate God, were obedient to God, and went home, and were in the sight of history forgotten.

            The great evangelical Anglican bishop J.C. Ryle summarized it perfectly when he wrote:

The conduct of the wise men described in this chapter is a splendid example of spiritual diligence. What trouble it must have cost them to travel from their homes to the house where Jesus was born! How many weary miles they must have journeyed! The fatigues of an Eastern traveler are far greater than we in England can at all understand. The time that such a journey would occupy must necessarily have been very great. The dangers to be encountered were neither few nor small. But none of these things moved them. They had set their hearts on seeing Him “that was born King of the Jews;” and they never rested till they saw Him. They proved to us the truth of the old saying, “where there is a will there is a way.

            It would be well for all professing Christians if they were more ready to follow the wise men’s example. Where is our self-denial? What pains we take about our souls? What diligence do we show about following Christ/ What does our religion cost us? These are serious questions. They deserve serious questions.

 

My beloved friends – I know that most of us are likely to be concerned with our legacy, to be concerned with the mark that we leave on the world, and I would be lying if I told you that I was not. I too care and can find myself lost in the wrong questions – am I liked? Do they want me around? Am I good enough? Am I capable of building this church? And what of my reputation?

            If we grow too consumed with worldly questions we lose this call to diligence, this call to a death to ourselves, and life in Christ.

            May instead we live as the magi, as Count Zinzendorf, as Rich Mullins, and as J.C. Ryle both lived and in doing so call us to live – may we preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten, that we leave not a legacy of self but that all might be drawn unto Christ.

            In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

 

 

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

The Obedience of Joseph

A Homily for Christmas II

January 5, 2020

All Saints Anglican Church, Prescott, AZ

 

Text: Matthew 2:19-23

 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen

 

            Some of you know about my little adventure this past week. My hope and plan had been to go for a long drive and visit a couple of places around Arizona that I am yet to see, to have some time to think, and relax a little after the busy-ness of the holiday season. I often find these drives peaceful, life giving, relaxing, and joy-filled. They give me time to listen to music and think about life. I had all these lofty and romanticized visions of my time away, to draw nearer to God, and find some quietness.

            The Lord and my car conspired to make different plans for me – and if I am honest, what I really needed to be reminded to rest in the Lord always.

            As I got close to my first stop my battery light came on, as a good millennial the first thing I did was google what this could mean and google faithfully told me that it was most likely my alternator dying. Having had more than one alternator die on me, once in inner city Chicago, I knew that this would not be the fun day I had envisioned. Being the resolutely independent person that I am, I turned around and started to drive home. As time passed more and more lights on my dashboard came on, telling me that, in all likelihood my battery was draining.

            As I got close to the 17, I decided it would be unwise for me to see what would happen if I pressed on, so I stopped and called AAA and waited. I sat in my car reading, trying to relax.

            As the time passed I started to get more panicky. “How am I going to do these things I had planned?” “Wait, alternators are expensive, yikes!” “I had such a perfect budget for this month, there goes that!”

            Somewhere in that wild train of thought, I also realized the Lord was calling me to simply trust him, trust that everything will be okay, and be vulnerable and ask my friends for help. I’d like to say that after all the ways I’ve seen God’s faithfulness in scripture and in life, I am amazing at trusting Him, and after experiencing the incredible love of this community and the friends I’ve made around town I’m better at asking for help, but I am more often than not bad at both of these things.

            Yet God calls us to depend fully upon him. So this question confronts us, we are asked, time and again – will we trust God with he little things? Will we trust God with the big things? Will we trust God with our finances? Our health? Our friendships and relationships? Will we respond if God calls us to move across the county, across the state, across the country? Across the world?

            As the new year begins – these are the good questions to ask ourselves. Sure, it is good to resolve to lose some weight, to be better with our money in 2020 than in 2019, to spend more time with family or friends, or to delight more deeply in God’s great creation, or whatever resolutions of betterment we have made – but as Christians one of the chief things we need to ask ourselves is are we faithfully trusting the Lord in all of our lives? With every aspect or are these just fanciful ideas in our mind?

            In some ways, I think it is easier to trust God to do big amazing things like moving us into other cultures or across the country or the world, but harder to trust God when we hit a little bump in the road, like a dead alternator.

            I would like to be able to tell you that I handled my little adventure with all the grace in the world, I’d like to say that as the panic swelled in me, I took a deep breath, smiled and said “yes, Lord, I know you’ve got this,” sat back and read my book while I waited for the tow truck. But instead I very much felt the sentiment of St. Theresa of Avail when she penned “Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few!”

            Theresa, wrote this pithy little statement after falling into a stream and nearly getting swept away. She complained to God and God’s response to her was “Do not complain, daughter, for it is ever thus that I treat My friends.”

            We want life to be easy, and we want sanctification, that is when our sin, our brokenness, and our struggles are removed to be without a struggle, but it rarely is, in more likelihood, as we grow, we are called all the more to step out in faith, and trust that the Lord is good in the storms, and trials we are faced with, and though he seems to be calling us into something hard, and something mysterious, he is calling us into something good, into deeper intimacy with him, into a life of joy-filled Faith. Such is the case with Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of God who was incarnate in Jesus Christ our Lord.

            In our gospel passage – Joseph the carpenter takes centerstage. We know very little about this man, and if it were not for his position, he would be an unimportant blip in scripture, but we do know that he faithfully set to raising Jesus as his own, in fact later when Christ starts his formal ministry and returns to Nazareth, everyone wonders how this son of a carpenter could presume to teach with such force, and such knowledge.

            We know from when he finds out that his fiancé is with child that he was a righteous man and most likely a kind man. We can only guess what his reaction might have been in finding out that Mary was pregnant. I do not think that it would be farfetched to assume that if he was not righteous and kind, and if the angel had not intervened he would have not only put Mary away he would have put her to public shame, but even here we are forced to hypothesize based on scant evidence from the text and what we know of the culture of the time. But scripture tells us he was righteous, and implies that he was kind.

            It has also been hypothesized that Joseph died sometime between Jesus’ birth and the commencement of Christ’s public ministry. This is because once Christ’s ministry starts we hear nothing of Joseph, though we occasionally hear of Mary, and of Jesus’ siblings.

            The final thing we know about Joseph was that he was obedient to the Lord – obedient to the Lord’s calling in his life. We see this first, when he learns of Mary’s pregnancy, and the angel of the Lord tells him to take Mary as his wife because she had conceived from the Holy Spirit.

            As we consider Joseph, we first must take care not to read the skepticism of our age into the text, but recognize that heaven and earth seemed much closer to the people of Christ’s time than to us. That is to say – miracles happened, it was natural to see God interacting with the world, and prayer worked. Skepticism is such a strong force in our current culture, that we even see it infiltrate the church, and in how we approach scripture, and all of life. We do not imagine that an angel might come to us with instructions, and just as we do not imagine that the flutter on the water is an angel flying over.

I once heard a story of when two of my undergrad professors were out golfing. One was the head of the biology department, and the other a theologian. As they walked along – they saw a ripple across pond, the scientist said, “oh, look a minnow!” I suspect with a bit of excitement. The theologian responded, “yes, perhaps, but it could have been an angel.” In our modern times, we tend to forget how deeply interlaced the world of angels and demons, of the Holy Spirit and our soul, of God and man are and so, though the world may scoff, miracles still happen, and prayers still work, just as powerfully as they did in the time of Christ.

None-the-less, in the world of Christ, the immanence of all this was much more prominent, much more real in the minds of men and women, and so to hear of Joseph’s obedience to the angel is not all that surprising. Yet, it is hard to believe that Joseph was totally calm about the situation he found himself in, for it was  not as though the Lord was calling him to something simple. Still, having experienced the angel of the Lord he faithfully stepped out and cared for Mary well, cared for her as a good husband and soon to be father would.

            Then sometime after the famous registration of the first Christmas Joseph is told to flee to Egypt, by another Angel, for the sake of the new born baby, for Herod sought to kill the child. Again, Joseph forsook his home, and presumably left behind all that he knew and fled to the foreign land as the Lord has commanded him. Again, we can only imagine the fear that he had. It is scary enough to move across country – I can’t imagine running to land with a vicious tyrant at your back who wants to murder the baby in your care.

            And now we meet him yet again. The vignette that we read today is the last time he is mentioned by name as being actively involved  in the life of Christ. Yet – Joseph sets for us a model of faithfulness, a model of trusting the Lord’s calling in our lives.

            He had taken for himself as a wife a woman who was pregnant with child, he lived by faith that as the Lord had said to him the child was conceived of the Holy Spirit and not out of immorality, he had fled to Egypt on the command of the Lord, and now he is returning. Do we have this faithfulness? Are we willing to step out and believe what the Lord has called us to?

            As we think carefully about the passage we read this morning we see that Joseph perfectly blends two amazing things – he was faithful to God’s call and was faithful to the duties that scripture set out for him. We can easily do one of two things – we can know what it means to be a good father, a good mother, a good husband, or a good wife, a good presbyter, a good man, a good woman, or a good Christian – and the spirit will never bend what this is – but we can become so ridged in this calling that we don’t do it out of love, but out of some harsh sense of duty. Or we can become so obsessed with being spirit driven that we lose site of the simple call to obedience to the word of God.

            Joseph does not lose sight of this – No, the Lord tells him to return to the land of Israel and Joseph obediently follows this command. Yet he hears that the child may still be in danger in Judea, and so he goes to where he knows it will be safe.

            We often find ourselves wanting to hear from the Lord all the time on all things, and we can over correct. We can either – become obsessed with this, needing spirit driven answers to every little question – or we can give up, never pray and never ask for the Lord’s guidance.

            A better way is the way of Joseph – know what it means to glorify God in our calling – are we good at math and numbers, then use that to the glory of God! Are we a good writer? A good thinker? Do we play music well? Do we serve our community? Then do those things to the glory of God!

            Scripture outlines perfectly clearly what a good and sound Christian life looks like, so we are called to become saturated with scripture so that we have guidance at all times. One of my favorite prayers is the prayer for Advent 2:

“blessed Lord, who has caused all holy Scripture to be written for our learning; grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”

            In other words – dear Lord – may your word so saturate our life such that it is our life and love and total strength for us in all things, such that it is our very sustenance and food for living.

            But what of the big choices and crisis that we face in our life? We are called to start with prayer! Back to my thoughts on skepticism of our age – a simpler example of starting with prayer: if we have an ache, a pain, if we don’t feel well, so often the first thing we do is call the doctor. Friends, as Christians the first thing we should do is pray! Yes, call the doctor! Please don’t be one of those folks that forsakes modern medicine, do both! And then the doctor gives you antibiotics and you feel better, give thanks for the skill of the doctor and to the Lord for his faithfulness in healing you! It is not an either or.

            And here is the key: pray always about all things. Pray for the Lord’s guidance through the day, that the Lord would introduce you to the people you need to meet that day, that the Lord would guide you, that the Lord would show you what the day holds.

            Joseph models for us the perfect balance between being completely faithful to the prompting of the spirit and knowing what scripture says our duty is. This is what we are called to in our day in and day out.

            As the new year starts, perhaps a better place to start than the resolution to eat more vegetables, or floss more is to simply ask God to help us all become more faithful, to be more aware of when and how we fail to live in a way that glorifies him, to learn from these times to trust him all the more with every aspect of our lives.

            My friends, we live in a scary and tumultuous world, but we serve a good, and faithful God. When we hear of rumors of war, and of war, of natural disasters, and famine, and when life throws us a curve ball, when we have hardship and heartache, let us not grow despondent but trust that the Lord has all things under control.

            To end my story – I safely made it back to town, because I drive a lot, I have a fairly robust towing plan from AAA, several friends, including several of you offered to help me, and did help me, and all has worked out and on Saturday I drove my little car to Kingman without incident to visit old friends from college who were in Vegas for the weekend. In the end, despite myself, God revealed to me and reminded me of His faithfulness in all things.

            God reveals to us in scripture and throughout our lives, time and again that he is faithful, he is good, he has given us guidance on how to live, and will faithfully provide for us, even when we behave as rambunctious and faithless children. So in this coming year, may we grow to trust in His provision all the more, may we give all things to Him in prayer, may we become all the more saturated in His word, and may we walk with the faith of Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of God, Jesus Christ our Lord – in obedience to the word of God, in love for those who are in our lives, and in faithfulness to the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

            In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Incarnation is the Reason for the Season

That Low Estate