The Instructed Eucharist, Sexagesima 2010

THE INSTRUCTED EUCHARIST

This morning, we are participants in what is known as an Instructed Eucharist. The Service itself will be as always, but with the addition of some explanations of the various parts and a brief explanation of the vestments of the celebrant. This is done to help us all better understand the “whys and wherefores” of the chief and central act of Christian worship.

First, the very word Eucharist: it comes from the Greek word meaning ‘Thanksgiving.’ This is perhaps the most ancient name for this Service, which was instituted by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself when He took bread and wine and said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ Our doing this then is in obedience to His command to the Apostles at the Last Supper, a command universally obeyed by all Catholic and Apostolic Christians every Sunday. The Holy Eucharist is also known by other names – the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Communion, the Divine Liturgy, and the Mass – ALL refer to the very same identical Service.

As we begin, let us contemplate the place where we celebrate this glorious Mystery. The Altar, on which we offer the bread and wine to be consecrated, is the center of our worship. This is why the Altar is always the most prominent piece of ecclesiastical furniture. In orthodox Anglican Churches, it is remains at the eastern wall of the church for two important reasons.  Firstly, to remind us that Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone of the Church, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.  Secondly, it orients us toward the direction from which we believe the Lord will return. Saint Augustine of Hippo calls facing East, ‘facing the Lord.’ In the Service, the priest and people face the same way: he leads them on their pilgrimage as they together offer the same Sacrifice to God through Jesus Christ. The Altar is treated with the greatest reverence, for it is an Image of Christ, representing the once-for-all Sacrifice that He made for us on Calvary.  On the Altar, that very same Sacrifice of Christ is re-presented to the Father. “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show forth the Lord’s death until he comes.”  This sacrifice is accomplished using the sacred vessels—the chalice and paten—which now see covered by the veil and burse.

The Tabernacle, which contains the consecrated Elements of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, is located on the Altar at its center.  In it is to be found the Blessed Sacrament, Our Lord’s Real and Objective Presence in the Holy Mysteries. Therefore, when entering or leaving the church building, or when passing before the Altar, we always genuflect in adoration of Our Lord’s Real Presence. The Sacrament is reserved in the Tabernacle both for the communion of the sick and those who cannot attend Mass and for adoration and prayer before the Lord Jesus.

The use of the Tabernacle for the reservation of the Sacrament in the Christian liturgy is the fulfillment of the many Scriptural passages which refer to the presence of God promised to His people. The Lord dwelt with His people in the wilderness tabernacle carried by the children of Israel for 40 years in the desert; God dwelt with His people in the Temple in Jerusalem. God’s presence abode in the Ark of the Covenant. In the fullness of time, God Himself, the Word, was made flesh and dwelt, that is, tabernacled, ‘pitched his tent,’ among us (St. John 1:14). Now the Incarnate Lord, forever one with humanity, dwells permanently with His people in the Sacrament, indicated by the Sanctuary Lamp with its red globe that recalls the fiery pillar which burned over the tabernacle as Israel journeyed through the wilderness to the Promised Land.

The Altar Cross—the great Sign of Salvation, which reminds us of our Savior’s Sacrifice offered for us once for all on the Cross and re-presented to God our Father in every Mass—is placed at the center above the Altar.  The Latin acronym “IHS” at the center of the Cross stands for Iesu Hominum Salvator, translated ‘Jesus, Savior of Men.”  Candles at either side of the Cross are lit from the Cross outward, beginning with those of the Epistle side to represent our Blessed Lord revealing Himself to the children of Israel; then the acolyte lights those on the Gospel side to represent that Jesus Christ is the Light to all nations of the World.  The candles are extinguished in reverse order, for the Gospel side candles never burn alone.

The other sacred furniture has practical use, as well as having symbolic meaning. The credence table holds items needed for the Celebration and is located to the right of the Altar on the Epistle side.  Among the items on it are the cruets containing wine and water, a bread or host box, and a lavabo bowl and towel (‘lavabo’ means ‘I shall wash’ in Latin).  The pulpit serves for preaching and symbolizes the authority of God’s Word, the Holy Scriptures. The chair, on the Gospel side of the sanctuary, is usually reserved for the Bishop to remind us that we belong to a true Church in Apostolic Succession. This chair is often called the Cathedra (as in Cathedral).

The special clothes worn by the celebrating priest are called Eucharistic Vestments. The vestments he wears are not for show, but to lend dignity to the worship of God and to exhibit the priesthood of Jesus Christ through the celebrant. The priest is not an entertainer at the Altar – rather he is the sacramental representative of Jesus Christ. He stands in Our Lord’s place and plays Our Lord’s role in the drama of the Mass. He does this to a great extent by wearing vestments which represent, not himself, but Christ, and the Priesthood of Christ which he shares.

Each of the priest’s vestments has powerful symbolic value.

The Amice is a rectangular piece of cloth worn as a head covering while vesting and then pushed back for the celebration of the Eucharist.  It is symbolic of the ‘helmet of salvation’ Saint Paul speaks of in his Epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 6 verse 17. Salvation means life – and it is only in Jesus Christ that we find life.

The Alb, coming from the Latin word ‘alba,’ meaning white, signifies the purity and holiness of the High Priesthood of Christ, which the priest received in the Sacrament of Holy Orders. It also symbolizes the need for innocence in our own lives if we are to be partakers of the promise of Our Lord that ‘the pure in heart shall see God.’

The Cincture, or girdle, is a rope belt which gives shape to the Alb and reminds us of the ropes used to bind our Blessed Lord to the pillar at His scourging. It signifies the virtue of chastity. It also symbolizes the warning of Christ that the world will hate us because the world seeks to save itself; the Christian must be willing to lose himself—for the Lord’s sake—to find himself.

The Stole is the ‘badge’ of the Priest. It symbolizes the yoke of Christ which the priest undertakes as God’s representative to us. The Stole, like the maniple and the chasuble, is always in the color of the day. It also symbolizes our union with Christ: as Our Lord says to us: ‘take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ As he dons the Stole, the priest kisses it at the cross sown into the top of it – honoring this blessed symbol of the Cross and Priesthood of the Savior, which he shares in Ordination. The priest arranges the Stole across his chest in the form of the Cross, demonstrating that he will function in the Person of Christ in the liturgy and will, in the celebration, re-present the Sacrifice of Calvary in the Mass.

The Maniple was originally a towel carried by the deacon for cleansing the sacred vessels and symbolizes the humility which befits a servant of God. It reminds the priest that he is forever a deacon, a servant. Like the girdle, the Maniple represents the ropes used to tie Our Lord. Again, the priest kisses this vestment at the cross sown into it, honoring this blessed object as he does so.

The last vestment is the Chasuble. It represents the seamless robe Our Lord wore as He was led away to be crucified. It is the supreme symbol of the Priesthood and of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. It is the sign of Christ’s great love and His role as Mediator that He performs for us in heaven.

Garbed in the Gospel vestments, the priest is stripped of his individual identity. He enters the Altar as the living Icon of Christ. The priest is the Sacrament of our great High Priest who offered to His Father His Body, through His Cross and Passion, a Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. The priestly vestments are simply to show forth Christ.  He is the true Celebrant of the Holy Eucharist, the One Priest of the New Testament who personally offers the Eucharist through his priestly minister.

In a sung Eucharist, a processional hymn is sung as the celebrant and his assistants process to their appropriate places in the nave and sanctuary. In honor of the Lord’s Sacrifice, we should always bow our heads to the processional Cross as it passes by.  The procession symbolizes the Church’s passing out of the world and into the presence of God and His gathered saints.  When the altar party led by the crucifer marches down the nave, they express the whole movement of God’s people through their earthly pilgrimage, led by the victory of Christ’s Cross toward the throne of God’s heavenly Kingdom.  The Holy Eucharist is composed of two interdependent parts: The “ante-communion” or liturgy of the Word and the “communion proper” or liturgy of the Sacrament.  This first part is from the ancient service of the Jewish Synagogue, consisting of the reading of Scripture and prayer.  The Mass begins with the celebrant’s invitation to pray with the verse “The Lord be with you,” to which the congregation responds “And with thy spirit.”  This represents that the Mass is not the private labor of the priest, but a corporate effort in dialogue with God; prayer is always a conversation that we share with Him.

Then follows the Collect for Purity which we pray in our hearts while the priest prays aloud, asking God to cleanse us of all thoughts which would bar the way to our worship. Following the Collect for Purity, the priest greets the Altar with a kiss, honoring the Holy Table of the Lord on which the Sacrifice of the Cross will be pleaded in the Holy Mysteries. Then follows the Introit, a passage of Scripture establishing the liturgical theme of the day which includes the ‘Glory be.’

Once a month, we recite the Ten Commandments to remember our moral and spiritual duty to God and neighbor.  Christians are not under the Law, but honor Christ for fulfilling the requirements of the Law.  According to the Summary, the Church follows the spirit of the Law by obeying His commandment to “love God and one another.” However, recognizing that we frequently fail to obey our heavenly Father as we should, we ask for His mercy as we say or sing the Kyrie Eleison, ‘Lord have mercy upon us.’

The Collect for the day changes with every new Sunday or feast day in the Christian Year.  The collect is a “summary prayer” that sets forth the theme of that particular Mass.  Collects generally have a three-fold structure: First, an opening address to God with a clause expressing some aspect of His nature by reason of which we address our petition to Him; Second, the petition we make to Him; Third, a concluding phrase usually asked through the mediation of Jesus Christ, reminding us that all of God’s blessings come through His promises and are based on His merits and advocacy on our behalf.

The reading of an Epistle comes from the ancient tradition of sitting to hear an apostolic letter during the Holy Eucharist.  Collectively, the epistles of the New Testament represent the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of the Apostles to teach with authority equal to the Old Testament Scriptures. They are the written record of their teaching that prepares the Church for living in this age with instructions, exhortations, biblical interpretations, and prophecies about these last days.  The Collect of the Day, the Epistle, and the Gospel form the major Propers of the day.

While we sit for the Epistle and for the sermon, we stand for the reading of the Holy Gospel which literally means ‘Good News.’  By standing, we give honor to our Blessed Lord who Himself is the Word of God Incarnate.  The Altar Missal is moved from the Epistle side to the Gospel side, symbolizing the carrying of the Good News to those who do not know Christ.  It is then carried into the nave at the Gospel Procession, symbolizing that God’s final revelation came through Jesus Christ from heaven to earth.  Some Christians continue the ancient tradition of making three little Signs of the Cross as the Holy Gospel is proclaimed. A small Cross is traced with the thumb of the right hand – first on the forehead, in the same place where it is traced at our Baptism; a second one is traced across the lips, and a third one is traced on our heart.  We pray in effect that the Gospel may be in our minds, on our lips, and in our hearts.  The responses said or sung before and after the Holy Gospel, show our respect and thanksgiving for receiving the Gospel.  At the conclusion of the Gospel, the priest kisses the book from which the text was read, venerating the Word of God.

The Nicene Creed is the essential corporate statement of our Faith in the Blessed Trinity and the Incarnation.  It is as it were, the Christian pledge of allegiance summarizing from Holy Scripture these basic beliefs that all Christians must confess.

This Creed is the product of the first two Ecumenical Councils of the ancient Undivided Church (the First Council of Nicea in AD 325 and the First Council of Constantinople in AD 381), and is still used at the celebration of the Eucharist in all Apostolic Churches, both East and West.  The only changes ever made to this Creed were, first, a mistaken omission in the 1549 Anglican Prayer Book of the word ‘holy’ from the description of the Church as One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, which has since been corrected; and second, the addition of the words ‘and the Son’ to the phrase ‘who proceedeth from the Father’ in the version of the Creed used in the Western Church.  It is unique to the Western Church and does not appear in the original version of the Creed or in that used today by the Eastern Churches.

As worshippers, we also use actions to express the Faith we confess.  At the mention of the Name of Jesus and at the phrase ‘worshipped and glorified’ in the Creed, we bow our heads in worship.  As we say the words ‘and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man,’ we bend our right knees all the way to the floor in honor of God’s Son assuming our human nature.  Finally, the Sign of the Cross is made at the last phrase ‘and the life of the world to come’ to express our hope in God’s promise of eternal life.

The Prayer Book directs that the sermon be preached here. But since our instructed Eucharist is the sermon, no sermon proper will be given. We now begin the second and most sacred portion of the Holy Communion Service.

The rite of this latter half corresponds to the four-fold action Jesus performed at the Last Supper:

First, He took the Bread, which corresponds to the Offertory.

Second, He gave thanks – the Consecration.

Third, He broke the Bread – the Fraction.

Fourth, He gave it to His disciples – the Communion.

With this four-fold shape, the liturgy of the Sacrament or the Holy Communion reproduces Our Lord’s original institution.  It makes present for us today Christ’s Sacrifice of 2000 years ago.

The first action is the bringing of the offerings to be set apart in the liturgy, bread and wine for use in the Holy Sacrament, and our alms.  These are the “firstfruits” of our labor that God has commanded His people to present before Him since Old Testament times.  Since they come from us, the gifts represent the offering of ourselves and of all creation to be a “living sacrifice” offered to God to be united with Jesus’ Sacrifice.  The celebrant prepares the gifts for the Consecration, offering private prayers at the Altar as each element is readied. The priest first offers the bread to God, and then mixes wine and water in the chalice.  The mixed chalice of water and wine symbolizes the union of the divine and human natures in Christ that restores dignity to fallen Man.  The mixed chalice also reminds us of the blood and water which flowed from Christ’s side on the Cross.

The priest next offers the contents of the chalice to God, and then blesses the gifts with the Sign of the Cross. After this, the priest washes his hands in the ‘lavabo,’ asking God to cleanse him from his sins.  At the presentation of the alms, they and the unconsecrated elements of bread and wine are offered with a hymn of thanksgiving, customarily the Doxology or ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow.’

Turning to the people, the priest announces the intentions for which this particular Mass is offered.  Then, the ancient and beautiful exchange, the ‘Pray Brethren’ is made between celebrant and people, emphasizing that the Sacrifice of the Mass is offered and accomplished by everyone.  Led by the priest, every faithful Christian shares in having his offering blessed and transformed by the new creation in Jesus Christ.

We now pray for the unity and well-being of Christ’s Body, remembering especially the clergy, all people involved in affairs of state, the living in every need, and the faithful departed that rest in Christ.  This is the Church’s way of presenting Her entire self before God for His love and watch-care.  Prayer brings us into God’s presence and acknowledges our dependence upon Him.  In this prayer, we acknowledge that we are One: one with each other and one with God, as Jesus asked His Father to make us.

In approaching God, we must recognize our sinfulness and confess our individual sins by joining together in the General Confession.  We cannot worthily receive our Lord’s Body and Blood or fellowship with one another unless we are in a state of repentance and amendment of life.  God commands that we must be “holy as I am holy” if we wish to share in His life.  Now we have this chance to examine our consciences, humbly acknowledging where we have fallen short of God’s glory.  Without this admission, we make the Holy Communion not a blessing, but a curse upon us for not taking seriously the call to inward purity and peace in the assembly.  The cry for mercy pleads for the pardon and reconciliation that we do not deserve, and begs for the chance to cast off the old nature and put on the new that is pleasing to God.

The priest then obeys Our Lord’s command to the Apostles and pronounces the forgiveness of sins to those who are truly penitent.  In this moment, the Absolution, the priest again functions as the Icon of Christ at the Altar—priests, as Ministers in Apostolic Succession, are given authority and power from Christ to forgive sins in His Name, as we read in St. John chapter 20.  We make the Sign of the Cross on ourselves as we receive the Lord’s Absolution, recognizing that our sins have been “loosened” or “unbound” from us.  Following this, the priest strengthens our confidence with the Comfortable Words that explain how God’s grace and mercy have reconciled us with God once more. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ on the Cross and—according to Hebrews chapter 8—now in heaven, we are no longer recipients of His judgment as enemies but His favor as adopted children.

The Canon of the Mass will now follow. Since it is the most sacred part of the liturgy, we do not wish to interrupt it with comments. Before it begins, here are a few remarks about it.

An exchange of versicles and responses, called the Sursum Corda (Latin for ‘lift up your hearts’) is the Church’s call to pass beyond time and space to the assembly of Christian saints and angelic choirs in the heavenly Mt. Zion.  More than at any other time, we must remember that our worship truly takes place in an unseen realm that we must enter in faith.  This leads to the Proper Preface, which commemorates the theme of the day, and to the Sanctus (the ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’) the hymn of the Seraphs recorded in Isaiah chapter 6 that the whole Church joins to adore the thrice-Holy Trinity.  Following that, we say the words “Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord, Hosanna in the Highest” that were used to welcome the Lord when He entered Jerusalem.  We repeat this acclamation now because we believe that at His Ascension, Christ entered into the heavenly Jerusalem to assume the rule of His Father’s Kingdom.  He will conclude His victory when He returns to consummate the Kingdom on earth.

The Canon proceeds to recall before God the Father the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross and then recites the Words of Institution, or the Institution Narrative, which is the heart of the Eucharistic Prayer. By the very Words of Christ and the power of the Holy Ghost, the bread and wine are consecrated into the living Body and Blood of Christ. In this action, the one perfect Sacrifice of Christ, which He once offered on the Cross and eternally exhibits in heaven, is made-present, pleaded, for us, and applied to us in the Eucharist. The priest, representing Our Lord, says: ‘This is my Body, This is my Blood.’ The bread and wine become what Our Lord says they are. After each element is consecrated, a bell is rung as the host or chalice is raised to be seen and adored.  The elevation gives us an opportunity to say with St. Thomas “My Lord and My God!” at the wonder of witnessing Jesus become truly present “in, with, and under” the forms of bread and wine.  Next, the Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ is re-presented to the Father in the paragraph entitled, ‘the Oblation.’  With ‘these thy holy gifts which we now offer unto thee,’ the sacramental Memorial of Christ is set forth before the Father on behalf of the whole Church in thanksgiving for the redemption wrought by Our Lord.  When we repeat, ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ the historical events of Christ’s Atonement are brought into our time and space.  Under the form of bread and wine, Our Lord allows us to join in and receive the benefits of His life, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension.

Another essential part of the Canon is the ‘Invocation’ in which we ask the Father to bless and sanctify His gifts with His Word and Holy Spirit, so that the Bread and Wine may become the blessed Body and Blood of His Son.  In this part of the consecration, we believe that the Holy Spirit comes similarly as He did to Blessed Mary at the Annunciation.  He descends to miraculously make present the full life of Jesus Christ in a holy temple, this time by transforming bread and wine into His Body and Blood for us to receive.  In the next section, the priest makes several petitions for us, especially asking that God might accept “our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,” in order that we might receive the sacrament and acquire its benefits.  Of special note here is that we not only memorialize Christ’s oblation, but we make one of our selves by offering our souls and bodies to be living sacrifices.  Many worshippers bow at the words, “here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves.”  Only by offering our whole being to be crucified with Jesus is it possible that “He might dwell in us and we in Him.”  A moment later we make the Sign of the Cross, indicating that we wish to ‘be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction.’  We acknowledge that we are not worthy, but trust God to accept our “bounden duty and service” through the merits of Christ. The Prayer of Consecration concludes with a doxology to the Holy Trinity.

Then joining in the prayer Our Lord taught us to pray, we prepare to make our own Holy Communion beginning with the Lord’s Prayer.  We particularly declare that we now kneel at the intersection of this world and the next when we say “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Likewise, we pray that our “daily bread” be the food from the altar to feed us with Christ’s own immortality.

Finally, before the administration of Communion, the priest breaks the Sacred Host into two pieces in a re-enactment of Our Lord’s breaking of the bread at the Last Supper. This is called the Fraction.  As he does so, he prays silently.  Then, having made the Sign of the Cross over the chalice with a small piece of the host, proclaims “The Peace of the Lord be always with you.”  The priest is offering to God’s people the promise of reconciliation in Christ, just as Our Lord gathered His Disciples around Him at the Last Supper—now as His friends.  The priest then places a fragment of the Host into the Chalice at this time, signifying the reunion of the Body and Blood of the Lord in His Resurrection. This is called the commingling or commixture.

We then offer the Prayer of Humble Access, confessing to God our unworthiness to approach the altar. Just as the Canaanite woman asked for Jesus to heal her daughter without presumption, to we confess that we lack any intrinsic goodness to even gather up crumbs under the Lord’s Table.  And yet, trusting in His mercy, we expect so much more.  Based on Jesus’ own words in St. John 6, we humbly ask to eat His flesh and to drink His blood that we might have eternal life.

A traditional hymn, the ‘Agnus Dei’ (O Lamb of God) follows.  Recalling St. John’s vision in Revelation chapter 5, the hymn reminds us of Jesus’ persona as a slain Lamb in the heavenly liturgy, offering to the Father His scars as a testimony of His Passion.  His character in the redemptive drama is only reinforced when the priest turns to present the Sacrament, repeating the ‘Ecce Agnus Dei’—the words from St. John chapter 1 wherein St. John the Baptist declares, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him that taketh away the sins of the world.”  Next, to make our Communion, we answer this invitation by thrice saying the Centurion’s Prayer, “Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, but speak the word only and my soul shall be healed.”  Like Moses falling before God in the burning bush, we can only fall and marvel before God whose glory cannot be contained by our modest habitation.

We all then go to the altar rail to make Our Communion, not just as individuals seeking personal salvation, but as the Bride of Christ yearning for Our Husband in this foretaste of the “Marriage Supper of the Lamb.”  We are many members, but one Body; and in the unity of this Mystical Feast we recommit ourselves to God and to one another as a family in one Covenant Communion.  The glory that we share now veiled from sight, we affirm in faith and hope to witness in unveiled heavenly bliss.  The words of administration remind us of the holy gifts that we are receiving: “The Body and “The Blood” of our Lord Jesus Christ, “which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.”

After the Holy Communion of the Faithful, the sacred vessels are cleansed during what is called the ‘ablutions,’ and the Prayer of Thanksgiving is said in gratitude for the heavenly food we have shared.  We thank the Father for the sacramental mysteries, for the grace of His Goodness, and for our mystical incorporation into the Body of Christ that strengthens to do the good works He has prepared for us.  This reminds us that the Mass does not really end with the Communion service, but continues through our perfection in godliness and evangelistic mission in the Gospel.

Then follow the traditional Post-Communion Collects and the Gloria in Excelsis. The Gloria is said or sung on all Feast Days and on all Sundays outside of Advent, Pre-Lent, and Lent.  During its recitation we stand to give praise to God in words based on the angelic antiphon that the heavenly host sang at Our Savior’s birth.  In effect, we proclaim that the Mass brings to the world the same peace and good will as Our Lord’s Nativity—God is with us!

After the Gloria (if said), a Blessing is pronounced by the priest, but not before we are bidden to go out into the world in peace: ‘Depart in peace.’ ‘Thanks be to God.’  We make the Sign of the Cross on ourselves as we receive the blessing, accepting our calling to carry God’s message of reconciliation as extensions of His Church wherever we go, in whatever we do, and with whomever we are acquainted.  The altar party then recesses down the nave symbolizing the Church’s descent from heaven back into Her earthly labors.  As the hymn ends, the candles will be extinguished in the opposite order which they were lighted.  The light that began at the altar now proceeds through us who have been illuminated by God.   END.



Ascension Day Homily 2009

THE ASCENSION DAY (May 21, 2009)

Acts 1:1-11; Luke 24:49-53

“…and He lifted up His hands, and blessed them.  And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.  And they worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy: and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God.”

When is a farewell ever welcome?  More specifically, when is the departure of a loved one (even if only temporary) ever a joyous event?  Now, I’m sure that we can all think of that overstayed guest that we were glad to see go, but what about that person so dear and central to your life that his or her absence—real or imagined—might seem like the end of all happiness.  I’m sure that many of us have had to actually endure this, or maybe just the fear of it happening leaves us anxious and mournful.  Either way, it can be a profoundly depressing state that renders our minds and hearts wistful.  So it is for the Church on this day.  It would be unusual, having come through the joy of Eastertide together, that we don’t experience a certain sadness of the heart when Ascension Day comes.  We know perfectly well that it’s one of the very great Christian feasts, and yet, when the Paschal candle is snuffed out, it seems we have to fight a feeling of separation that our Lord is not with us in quite the same way any longer—kind of like on Maundy Thursday when the sanctuary candle is extinguished and the tabernacle stands wide open.  Maybe today we feel scared to lose Jesus, or even worry that we’ve missed Him for the last two thousand years.  And yet, when we look at the Scripture’s account of the Ascension, the Disciples didn’t react like this.  Although during Jesus’ earthly ministry they either lost their courage (or their cool) whenever Jesus told them that He would have to go away, they didn’t leave the mountain that day overwhelmed with grief, but rather ‘returned to Jerusalem with great joy.’  So what brought about this unexpected change in them?  The answer, I think, can be found in their reaction to the final things that Jesus said and did to them: they adored, they praised, and they hoped.  Whereas too many Christians fret that Jesus left us with nothing, the Disciples realized that they were gaining everything!  With the Spirit’s help, after three years they were finally starting to put together the pieces of Christ’s time with them on earth.  On the night He was betrayed Jesus kept telling the Disciples that “it’s good for you that I go away” and “here’s what happens when I do” but it didn’t make sense then.  Now they realized that only by ascending to heaven could He finish the job begun at the Cross and the open tomb.  You see, by returning to heaven, Jesus didn’t leave after Easter because He wanted to go out on top.  Why?  Because His vindication (and origin) was in heaven, not on earth.  He had even told Pilate that at His trial!  So, by going back, the Father would affirm that He was truly the Messiah, that His sacrifice for salvation would be accepted, and that His divine glory would be restored at God’s right hand—on then would the mission be accomplished!  The truth of Ascension today is that Easter is only complete with it and Pentecost is impossible without it. That was the excitement that must have filled the Disciples that day.  Jesus wasn’t leaving to end their relationship, but to continue it in a new and better way.   This can also be our joy on this Ascension Day if we consider their reaction of adoration, praise and hope, and try to imitate it.  So let’s have a look.

First, in St. Luke’s Gospel we find the Disciples adoring (or worshiping) Jesus.  And this happened as He raised His hands to bless them on the Mount of Olives.  Maybe it seems kind of anticlimactic that, after all they had been through together, their journey should end with this quiet moment of benediction, but would anything else have been appropriate?  For three years they had listened to Him as Teacher and obeyed Him as Master, but now they knelt before Him as God.  It’s not that Jesus had ever been any less, but in His final blessing at last they understood that everything He had done and said about Himself was summed up in this blessing.  He was still the Man they had come to know and love, and yet He was the God with an eternal family and realm to return to and a mission to complete.  You see, now that He was going back, life on earth was going to be different.  It’s not that Jesus had changed, but He had changed mankind forever.  Since the Creation, the nature of God and Man were completely separate, but no longer.  Because of the Incarnation that had happened in Blessed Mary’s womb thirty-three years before, it was not God alone that entered the Kingdom of Heaven on that Ascension Day, but the Word made flesh—true God and true Man in one Person.  When Jesus passed bodily beyond the clouds, humanity was not left behind in our transient world, but ushered into the realm of eternity because Jesus was human in the fullest sense!  At His Ascension, for the first time human eyes beheld the majesty of heaven and human ears heard the choirs of angels; His welcome must have been spectacular.  As the prophet Daniel recorded in his vision, “I saw…one like the Son of man [who] came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.  And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.”  It was as He said to Jewish priests on the night of His betrayal: “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”  All the glory and worship that He deserved became His once more as if He had never left; except, now, it was His gift to share with us.  Thus, as we imitate the adoration that the Disciples offered to Christ that day, we are actually celebrating that our human nature—now and always—is united with His divinity in heaven.  This is really the whole point of the liturgy today: through this Ascension Mass we are all made one with Christ, connecting ourselves with Him.  You see, when we see Christ exalted in this way, we get a peek at our future as well.  By going before us, Jesus set the destiny of every Christian united with Him, and now He waits for His whole Church to join Him.

So, that’s the first reaction.  Secondly, we see the Disciples praising.  Again, St. Luke records that they left the mountain with joy and took it all the way to the temple.  Yes, they were enlightened, but even more they had an even greater sense of Jesus’ presence than when He was standing before them.  After all, was this any ordinary blessing that Jesus gave them?  Hardly!  He blessed them as the True High Priest, who is a priest forever, like Melchizedek of the Old Testament.  Yes, Jesus had acted as a priest before, praying for them and offering His own Body as a sacrifice, but now He was preparing to be His people’s eternal Mediator.  And this is how Ascension answers the big question—“What’s Jesus doing right now?”  Here’s the answer on the mountain top: standing before His Father, making intercession for us and re-presenting His oblation of Calvary.  I pray that this sounds familiar, for the priestly work He is doing in heaven now is the very substance of the Mass that we do each week!  As the writer of Hebrews comments “But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.”  By ascending to heaven, Jesus took the rite of the Last Supper and the victory of the Cross, and glorified them by becoming the real celebrant and sacrifice of the celestial Mass.  What we see in church is truly a manifestation of what Jesus Himself is doing (all because of the Ascension!).  With this in view, it’s probably no accident that the Disciples immediately went back to the temple to praise God for what had happened?  Why not?  Because both parties went to a temple that day: the Disciples went back to Herod’s temple, but Christ went to the heavenly temple.  As Hebrews again records: “We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.”   Our praise continues today in this church (our temple) because, on account of Christ being our High Priest, in a mystical way we also ascend.  So, if we take anything from this Ascension Mass, it must at least be how this liturgy links our world with the Kingdom.  In fact, we’ve already prayed for this, haven’t we?  Our Collect this morning reads that “like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with Him continually dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.”  This means that as Christians, we must always live with “ascended” thoughts and desires, in other words, living with eternity’s mysteries in view, as if we were already there.  That doesn’t make us sky-gazers just waiting to be free; it just means that, as St. Paul writes to the Philippians, “our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Like Christ, who we are, what we seek, and what we ultimately value is not here, but beyond.

Finally and briefly—lest we wander into a Pentecost sermon—the third reaction we find in the Disciples is expectation.  The Disciples are given two strong reasons for hope.  First, Jesus promises to give them the Holy Spirit.  After the Last Supper, Jesus reassured them several times that He would not leave them alone.  He had to go, but His leaving meant that the Comforter would follow to console them and strengthen them for ministry.    Now, leaving the mountain, they knew that Jesus could and would keep that promise and prophecy of Psalm 68 would be fulfilled: “When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.”  (More on that next week!)

Now, we already know that Pentecost happened, but one more promise remains in which the Church still hopes.  After Jesus ascended, two angels appeared to the Disciples and explained to them: “this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”  It’s the final message of the Ascension: Christ will come again.  Of course, Advent Season also makes us mindful of the Second Coming, but here’s the difference:  Whereas our preparation for His coming at Christmas gets us ready for His return, our commemoration of His departure in the Ascension gives us like reason to expect His coming back.  Because Jesus lives in heaven, His return is certain.  He even tells us that His Ascension means, “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”  It’s the hope that makes everything else worth believing.

And so, Ascension does answer when a farewell is welcome.  It’s when there’s no real goodbye, but rather a greeting that lingers, taking different forms but never fading in either truth or intensity.  We can’t be sad today because, the truth is that Jesus hasn’t really left us.  True, we don’t see Him quite as the Disciples did or as heaven does now, but it’s the same Jesus who comes greeting us in this Eucharist.  When the priest consecrates the bread and wine into His body and blood for our communion, Jesus’ word is fulfilled: “There am I in the midst.”  In a sense, through this Eucharist today His First Coming continues because Christ remains so near us.   But also, it prepares us for His Second because it helps us rehearse the love, reverence and fear we should have when He returns, bringing heaven with Him.

So, in closing, remember this: Jesus ascended blessing His Church, and in this Communion we declare that He will descend to bless us once more.  So, while we wait through this Eucharist, let us be mindful to adore as Jesus as He blesses us through this Sacrament.  If we adore Him as He is again carried from our sight, we, too, will be filled with a new power and hope so that we, like the Apostles, may return “with great joy.”  AMEN.

Whitsunday (Pentecost) Homily 2009

WHITSUNDAY (May 31, 2009)

Acts 2:1-11; John 14:15-31a

“And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

A rushing mighty wind, cloven tongues of fire, and speaking in foreign languages: some who heard the disciples just listened dumbfounded, others mocked it as drunkenness, but was this in fact the sign of Jesus’ promise?  You’ll remember last week at Ascension that, just before He blessed them and departed, we heard Christ tell His Disciples not to scatter, but to remain in Jerusalem.  He vowed that the Holy Spirit, of whom He had spoken so much, would come down in power; now, only ten days later, Jesus made good on that promise.  While they waited and prayed, probably in that same upper room where Jesus had celebrated the Last Supper, the Spirit descended ushering in a new and final age of world history when the mysteries of God and His cosmic redemption plan would be illuminated by His indwelling presence.  This is why Whitsunday is sometimes referred to as “the birthday of the Church,” because on this day God’s people were quite literally “born again” by the Holy Spirit’s fire: they were refined, illumined, empowered—they were officially the Church.  It was as John the Baptist had foreseen when, seeing Jesus coming to him for baptism explained: “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance…[but] He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.”  As you can imagine, that’s why we are draped in red today, frontals and vestments alike:  the sacrifice at the altar and the preaching here from the pulpit cannot happen unless we are dressed in the fire of the Spirit’s energy and enlightenment.  Could there even be a Church without the Spirit?  No!  The Church is no human convention.  The Spirit alone gives us Christ’s authority, He binds all believers together, and He joins us in the life of the Trinity itself.  As St. Paul comments in Ephesians, He builds the Church into “an holy temple in the Lord…an habitation of God in the Spirit.”  You see, when Christ left His disciples on Ascension Day, it was because He didn’t want them to be just followers anymore; He wanted them to be His Body, growing by the Spirit into His fullness and manifesting His glory to the world.  In fact, we actually find this starting to happen in Old Testament times.  When God spoke to Moses on Mt. Sinai to give him the Law He appeared in a burning cloud, and for all those years in the wilderness He led Israel in a pillar of wind and fire.  At another point God descended in a cloud over the seventy elders of Israel and gave them some of Moses’ share in the Holy Spirit; they even briefly prophesied.  But these were just shadows of the future; the age when the Spirit’s presence was fleeting and His impact limited was over.  With Christ ascended—reigning and interceding—the time had come for the Spirit to apply the effects of the Cross and the Resurrection for man’s salvation.   On Whitsunday, God had a plan for His people: and it meant going in the Spirit of Christ to bring His Gospel and Kingdom to the world. It’s a plan that has unfolded to include even us today.

Remember we started by saying that on Whitsunday, the most obvious sign of the Spirit’s presence with the Apostles was their ability to speak in tongues (foreign languages).  St. Luke records that practically every nationality in the known world (Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judæa, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and Romans, Cretans and Arabians) all heard the Gospel in their native language.  But what was incredible is that the message was coming from the lips of uneducated and untraveled Galileans known for having the worst accents (and probably most limited vocabularies) in all of Israel.  And yet, God isn’t like God to use the most unlikely and least-regarded persons?  The Spirit hadn’t rapidly educated the Apostles: He had granted spiritual gifts that day to reversing a universal curse.  You might recall from the Bible that, just after the Flood in an attempt to keep itself together, mankind erected an edifice to its own pride; the people built a tower in an attempt to reach heaven through sky worship.  But God was quick to thwart their efforts and judge their unification attempts by scattering them.  As the book of Genesis records:

The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words.  While men were migrating in the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.  Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky.  The LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men had built.  Then the LORD said:

“If now, while they are one people, all speaking the same language, they have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do.  Let us then go down and there confuse their language, so that one will not understand what another says.”   Thus the LORD scattered them from there all over the earth, and they stopped building the city.  That is why it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the speech of all the world.”

Now, the presence of so many peoples on the first Whitsunday showed that the effects of Babel remained.  But with one Spirit speaking through the tongues of many peoples, God was transforming confusion into a single saving message audible to everyone.  Whereas knowledge of the true God was by the Jews kept mostly to themselves, the Old Testament prophet Joel foresaw that God would pour out His Spirit on all peoples.  Every nation on earth would now have a share in God’s blessings, making the old barriers of culture and language all but irrelevant.  You see, through the anointing of the Holy Spirit, God was making the Church His solution to restoring human unity, and eliminating the chaos that kept Man from being His perfect image.  Although men, in their pride, sought to climb up to heaven and failed because they no longer understood; on Whitsunday, heaven reached down to man and succeeded because God made Himself understood.  He gave the Apostles His voice in order that, as Christ foretold on His Ascension Day, they would become His witnesses.  A witness doesn’t hold his knowledge inside; he reveals it for the help of others.  By giving them the gift of tongues, Jesus was commissioning His Church to testify of Him beyond all borders: “both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”  No matter the language, God would gather every nation into His Church.  In His wisdom, He even made sure that the mission of Whitsunday even began on the old Jewish festival He had established to foreshadow this day.  Now, what’s the other name of today’s feast—Pentecost, right?  Pentecost is simply the Greek translation of the “Feast of Weeks” falling fifty days after the Passover.  In this original Feast of Weeks, the Israelites were commanded to celebrate the year’s first wheat harvest and offer sacrifices for sin and fellowship.  But with the Spirit’s arrival, Pentecost had a new meaning in Christ.  The harvest was no longer of the wheat field, but a harvest of nations still under Babel’s curse.  Nor was Pentecost to be regarded as fifty days after the Passover, but instead Christ’s Resurrection.  God’s people had a new mission, but now a new and better sacrifice was necessary to bring man near to God.

This brings us to our second about Pentecost: that the Spirit came to bring peace.  In our Gospel reading this morning, we heard Jesus console His Disciples saying, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”  The average Jew would have understood that peace with God came through a true heart expressed in a “fellowship offering.”  But because at the Cross Jesus nullified animal sacrifices, the only true sacrifice that could make peace with God was His own.  With the presence of the Spirit now in the Church, He could take the Cross, and brings the merits of Christ for the healing of the nations.  We are, of course, talking about the Holy Eucharist which (as we said last week) manifests Christ’s re-presentation of Calvary in heaven.  We may not necessarily think of the Eucharist as a peace-maker, but consider this: what is the one thing that can get Christians to put aside their differences and assemble to worship?  No matter what language the Mass is said, through the Holy Spirit endowing the priest and increasing the faith of the people, all nations are unified in the Eucharist to reveal the peace of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.  It’s a mystical reality that needs no explanation.  Because all eat of the same spiritual food that is sanctified by the same Holy Spirit, the nations are made one in a manner that, I’m sorry, but the U.N. cannot match.  St. John witnessed this in His vision when he wrote: “…there [was] the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.  And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him….”  At Babel, God may have driven mankind even further from Himself, but starting at Pentecost He made a way to bring Him back.  As Jesus promised His Disciples, “If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him.” The truth is that anyone who receives the Spirit will enjoy the fellowship of the Son and the Father also.  The Spirit brings us into the life of the entire Holy Trinity, putting man’s most awful curse—separation from his Creator—to a most welcome end.

Today, we can all be thankful that the Church took the mission of Pentecost and has been reversing the curse in all nations ever since, but the work isn’t over.  Pentecost was never meant to be a one-day affair; it continues sacramentally in the Church.  Every Christian that is baptized and confirmed into the Church renews and grows the power and influence of Pentecost, making him (or her) an agent for spiritual transformation in the world.  As the writer of Hebrews comments: “[those that] have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost…have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come….”    The heavenly gift of course is Communion and the powers of the world to come are the Spirit’s gifts.  In his vision of heaven, St. John witnessed it this way: “there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.”  According to the Apostle, these seven spirits (the gifts) are sent to the Church throughout the world in what we on earth call Confirmation.  According to the prophet Isaiah, they are as follows: “the spirit of wisdom, of understanding, of counsel, of might, of knowledge, of godliness, and of fear of the Lord.”

In conclusion, let’s remember on this Whitsunday that each one of us has been confirmed to reverse the curse.  True most of us will probably never be gifted to speak in tongues.  In fact, if you ever hear a fellow parishioner doing that, please alert me immediately! Nevertheless, Whitsunday, I hope reminds us of our Confirmation day when we ceased to be just ourselves, and became temples of the Holy Spirit.  In the ancient Church, the new Christians even had an outward symbol that signaled this change.  They wore their white baptismal robes from Easter to the Whitsunday Mass (this is where we get the name—it’s a contraction of White-Sunday).  Their new life and destiny in baptism was being confirmed with the Spirit’s gifts.  Here at Holy Trinity we may not leave today with quite the same fanfare as the first Pentecost, but I hope we will all feel motivated to “speak of the wonderful works of God” and continue the mission of evangelizing our community as the Apostles did.  The Lord that reigns from heaven still calls us to be His witnesses, sending us by His Spirit to overcome Babel with Jerusalem in every place.  AMEN.

Trinity Sunday Homily 2009

TRINITY SUNDAY (June 7, 2009)

Revelation 4:1-11; John 3:1-15

“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.”

“Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith; which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.  And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.

For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit.  But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit.

So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and yet they are not three Gods, but one God.  So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Spirit Lord; and yet they are not three Lords but one Lord.  For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord; so are we forbidden by the catholic religion to say; There are three Gods or three Lords.

The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten.  The Son is of the Father alone; not made nor created, but begotten.  The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.  So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits.

And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another.  But the whole three persons are coeternal, and coequal.  So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.   He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.”

This is but a selection, as you may recognize, of what we commonly call the “Athanasian Creed,” the most pivotal creed of the Church for its defense of the greatest mystery of the Christian Faith, that God is a Tri-Unity: a union of three co-equal Persons in one divine Substance.  Such, we believe, was the teaching of Christ and His Apostles; a teaching that the Church, as in this document from the sixth century, simply formalized as dogma and passed down for our cherished belief to the present day.  And yet, we are probably aware on this Trinity Sunday that not quite everyone who takes the name “Christian” maintains fidelity to our orthodox heritage with the same obedience or enthusiasm.  For example, on the internet I came across this rather illuminating passage:

“I firmly believe that we can no longer do our thinking about our faith as though Christianity were the only show in town. We live in a multi-faithed, multi-cultural, multi-philosophied, post modern world. We have to think through our faith in that context…

Theology and Doctrine are signposts on the way of Salvation, but there are many in the church today, who, in my understanding, wish to abuse theology and doctrine to enslave and confine the human mind….  I firmly believe that the gospel brings freedom, and I could never belong to a church which binds its members to particular doctrines and theological views, requiring them to sign statements of essentials or covenants of doctrine. If there is heresy in the church today, I believe it is that.”

That is an excerpt from the homily delivered by the dean of the cathedral of Montreal in the Anglican Church in Canada on Trinity Sunday just three years ago.  What a tragic reminder in these troubled times that even from within the nature of Christian doctrine has become so misunderstood by the Church.  What was once, like the Trinity, an heirloom of infallible certainty—something solid to hold on to in a changing world—now becomes dismissed as ideological slavery by those claiming postmodern enlightenment.  We must see what this means.  At this point heresy (maybe even apostasy!) is celebrated as freedom, while our core belief and the parishes that take its Name struggle to find relevancy.  Face it; we’re not in vogue around here.  And yet, by choosing to shun the spirit of the times, we have a unique opportunity, don’t we?  You see, we have a problem in our Western culture of applying timeless truths to practical life.  We theorize and categorize until we finally marginalize into subjective judgment what should be defining us and our view of reality.  The Trinity has sadly suffered this same fate, that is, until now when—not so much as “Traditional Anglicans, but as Anglicans of Holy Tradition—we can work to recover the ancient appreciation of God’s Tri-Unity as an all-encompassing Christian worldview.  This starts when (1) who we are, (2) how we know, and (3) how we worship stays rooted in our Trinitarian orthodoxy.  It makes you want to tell your friends how your church name describes the linchpin of our cosmic framework.  Right?

So, we have to start with perfect honesty and own our doctrinal history.  Yes, parsing the Trinity happened through the hard labor of theological geniuses in those ecumenical councils centuries ago, but let’s ask if there could have been any councils with the spiritual illumination of the God who is Trinity?  Even further, could there be any meaningful human relations period without a Trinitarian God?  Consider this.  From Genesis 1 onwards, Scripture teaches us that man is made in God’s Image.  In our character, personality—even vitality—we truly manifest who God is and what He is like.  Thus, if God was solitary deity of the Muslims, the Jews, and Unitarians, what would human beings be like?  Alone.  We would be as isolated from one another in the world as God is in eternity: forget a council; we would enjoy no meaningful interaction, perhaps not even having an awareness of something other than the self—including our own Maker.  What a terrifying prospect!  But how could God create a social being when He lacks that capacity in His own nature?  It’s a contradiction to suppose that such a God could love us, and that we could love Him, if He does not even love Himself.  But this is not what we find in the New Testament!  Instead, Christ teaches that He is a member of a family.  As He said to the Disciples: “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.”  God always exists as a community of three Persons united in heart, mind and will.  As Jesus explained to the Disciples: “Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me….”  Moreover there is the Holy Spirit whom Jesus said, “I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.”  All three Persons are in one another, know one another, and speak of one another.  The Spirit did this of Jesus, Jesus came bearing witness of the Father (a constant refrain in St John’s Gospel), and the Father witnessed to Jesus at His Baptism and His Transfiguration (“This is my beloved Son…!”).  So, because God knows love, He loves us and enables us to love one another.  As Jesus said, “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.”  This means that because God is community of loving Persons, we in the Church image this.  No Christian images God alone, instead, we image God socially as a community of believers united in love for God and one another.  Consider this, as Anglican Christians, we don’t identify our faith with ourselves, but rather with the parish (the community) to which we belong; we are many, and yet we are one.

So, secondly, can we logically even know God if He is not Trinity?  Think about it, how do you know a god that is all by himself?  As the deists of the 18^th century had to argue, a God of absolute unity would create the world, but remain apart from it and hidden from its inhabitants.  But because the Trinity is social, He takes an interest in His creation and reveals Himself to it because He wants to be known!  We believe in the Christian Faith that God takes the initiative.  He provides the way for us to know Him because God does not leave human knowledge of Himself to chance and feeling, nor even just to the testimony of the natural world.  He determines how He wants us to know Him.  It’s not quite what we find in other religions and contemporary religious attitudes.  The popular sentiment of the day is that people are left to find God on their own and experience Him in their own way.  But think about it: if you wanted others to know about you, wouldn’t you tell them yourself?  God does the same; He desires a personal knowledge of Him, so He reveals Himself personally.  As one God in three Persons, He sends Himself to tell the world who He is and what He wants.  As we learned from our Gospel reading this morning in John 3, the Father accomplishes this by sending the Son who is begotten of Him and the Spirit who proceeds from Him.  Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus is one of the best illustrations of the Trinity’s work in the New Testament.  In His conversation with Him, Jesus helps us understand that knowledge of God must involve all three Persons of the Trinity.  First, it means listening to the Son: “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.”  Jesus confirms this, but explains secondly that our minds must be regenerated by the Spirit in order to hear the message properly.  “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.”  God has to redeem our thoughts, and then we can start, “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”  We can begin to understand His plan of redemption, and how it brings us close to Him.  The Son reveals the Father through His Incarnation and work of Redemption; the Spirit in turn reveals the Father and the Son by opening a sacrament of the Triune family to humanity—the Church, which alone has supersensory eyes and ears to see and hear God in His Kingdom.  Do we realize what this means for the Mass?  When we gather on Sunday, it’s not our act of service, but rather our act of waiting for God that comes first.  Everything from the reading and preaching of the Word, to our sacred images, to the Blessed Sacrament itself, become openings through which God gradually unveils more and more about Himself.

Our response to God’s revelation, thirdly, is how we worship the Trinity as His Image.  We began this morning by noting in the Creed that “the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.”  What the Fathers mean is that the intention of our liturgy must be to glorify God in each Person’s unique role, united by the singular purpose of universal redemption.  The Dean of the Montreal Cathedral apparently forgot that the worship he leads is permeated with this Trinitarian character.  Right from the “Holy, holy, holy,” the Church directs Her adoration to each Divine Person.  What the Trinity shows us on earth in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, we return to Him by following His invitations to us in the Mass.  You see, contrary to modern revisionist appraisal, our liturgy isn’t an earthly convention (any more than was the Jewish!).  Our prime inspiration is of the Church Triumphant’s experience of the Holy Trinity that only the splendor of the heavenly liturgy can more fully reveal.  The moment we hear the sursum corda, (the “lift up your hearts”) like St. John (which we read in Revelation 4) we follow that beckoning voice of a trumpet that passes us from this world to the next.  Here we find the true reality of the Mass: the heavenly Church, represented by the twenty-four elders, guides our worship while each member of the Trinity manifests Himself in God’s salvation plan.  The Father sits on the throne glistening like a gem as the fountainhead of divinity, the Spirit burns like seven lamps as God’s presence in the world, while the Son stands in the center as a Lamb slain for man’s salvation; what Jesus taught us here about His family the Godhead unites into that which is perfectly beautiful and harmonious.  Like our church family here, it’s not something that we can rationalize, but by faith experience as St. John did by joining the assembly just thankful to be in heavenly company.  You see, in terms of faith and action, Christians aren’t soloists, figuring God out for themselves.  If we learn anything today from the God humble and holy enough to be Three and yet be but one God and Lord, our future is in the chorus, content to be part of the collage of white-robed saints.  Until that day comes for all of us, let’s remember today as the family of Holy Trinity in Sarasota to reflect with more perfect unity and love the Triune family of heaven that shows us the way.  AMEN.

Trinity 3 Homily 2009

THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY (June 28, 2009)

I Peter 5:5-11; Luke 15:1-10

“…I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.”

“I will incline my ear to a parable,” sang David in the forty-ninth psalm.  Some they frustrate with their surface obscurity, but parables have long been treasured—and Holy Scripture is no exception—for their wisdom and instruction, much like a proverb.  In accord with ancient custom, our Lord was rather fond of the parable, too; in fact, most of His teachings and sayings recorded in the Gospel are in parabolic form.  Now in our third week after Trinity, perhaps you have picked up the trend that many of our Gospel selections in this long stretch from June to November will feature the parables; there is a reason for this.  Our Christian forbearers have included our Lord’s parables, in the lectionary not because Jesus was clever, but precisely because our salvation depends on whether or not they are understood.  Parables, as we know, contain life’s hidden truths, but only the diligent find them.  Jesus, knowing His time and audience, was purposed to reveal His message to those willing to hear and conceal it from those who were not.   Paraphrasing the seventy-eighth Psalm, Jesus even once told His disciples that his use of parables was in fulfillment of prophecy:  “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.”  But why the parables—why not speak more plainly?  Because the parables conveyed the character of the message.  This morning in our Gospel reading, our Lord presents us with two more: the first regarding a lost sheep, the second regarding a lost coin.  What Jesus said in these and many other parables was the truth about Man’s fallen state and God’s imminent demonstration of mercy (specifically, in the Person of Christ) that would divide the hearers from the scoffers.  You see, our Lord was explaining to the disciples that they were prepared to hear Jesus because they desired that mercy, while others (like the Pharisees), hearing the same things, would not understand because they did not recognize their need of salvation.  These parables are freshly spoken for our ears today because God continues this same work in our midst: teaching the truth to either extract us from the punishment we deserve, or keep us hardened in our sin.  Once we are baptized into the Church, the choice and its consequences become ours.  As these parables this morning reveal, God desires to save each and every person, but the parable tests whether we ready or not to look into the truth about ourselves and the grace provided to save us.

Now, truth be told, if we look at where our Gospel reading begins this morning, it’s on precisely this point that Jesus’ gets challenged by the Pharisees.  Indignant that Christ would tolerate the presence of society’s dregs, the scribes murmured, “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.”  It’s that old self-righteous human attitude that only those judged most worthy by man’s standards are fit to receive God’s attention.  The Pharisees flaunted their own merits because they were the uber law-keepers; a standard against which the cheating tax collectors and the immoral (perhaps even criminal) sinners couldn’t compare.  By human estimation, the Pharisees just seemed to make the better impression.  But these two parables serve to explain why Jesus mingles as He does, and finds the least welcome the most wanted in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Why?  Because as Jesus Himself once said, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”  By going even to the home of the worst, Jesus demonstrates that it is God who takes the initiative in showing mercy.  Mercy isn’t for people who think that they’re good enough; it’s for people who admit they have no other hope, as did the sinners of Jesus’ own day.  When man is so weak to expect nothing other than damnation, God shows Himself most mighty with an unexpected salvation.

In both the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin, Jesus teaches that every person born into the world finds himself in the same vulnerable place.  In the first, he is a like a sheep that has wandered from the fold, which is the Kingdom of God; he’s in a spiritual wilderness away from God’s love and protection, either willfully trying to find his own satisfaction independently or just foolishly seeking something better that remains elusive.  Like a sheep separated from the herd, many a sinner knows that he is lost, but doesn’t do anything about it because he can’t find his way back alone.  A sinner that insists on trying to fix things alone often ends up like King Saul, using one sin to resolve another until finally he is lost completely.  But the Shepherd of the sheep is not content to lose even one; it’s not just the ninety and nine He means to save, but every sinner that He wishes to call His own.  As most interpreters would agree, Jesus becomes incarnate to be the Good Shepherd going out and to rescue the race God made especially after Himself.  This was to fulfill Ezekiel’s prophecy when, foreseeing Christ, he wrote:

“Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.  And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and in all the inhabited places of the country.  I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel.  I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord GOD.  I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick.”

You see, by becoming Man, Christ lifts the sinner out of His transgressions and carries Him back through forgiveness into a right relationship with God in His Kingdom.  As St. Gregory the Great once commented, “He put the sheep on His shoulders because, on taking on human nature, He burdened Himself with ours sins.”

Now, in the parable of the lost coin, the situation might look even worse.  In this case, like a coin—being an inanimate object—some interpreters have observed that the sinner doesn’t even realize that he’s lost.  Although desperately missing, he is completely unaware of his condition.  Tragically, this scenario often still describes many Christians.  They believe that, like the coin lost in the house, because they are still technically in the Church by baptism, they are “safe”; while in reality they have vanished into the dirt floor away from God’s altar and any desire to grow spiritually.  It’s such heartbreak because this parable shows just how valuable the sinner is.  The silver coins Jesus describes comprise a dowry that Jewish wives received on their wedding day, often linked together by a chain and worn on festive occasions.  The value of these coins was not in their spending power, but rather in their completeness, which the woman was thrilled to celebrate when the lost coin was recovered.  This is what the Christian gone astray means to God when found.  He is an important member of the Church, and like the woman, Christ brings the light of truth to find him.  As St. John wrote of Jesus in his Gospel, “In him was light, and that light was the life of men…That was the true light, that lightest every man that comes into the world.”  Christ illuminates the darkened soul and sweeps away the dust of sin until he is found and reunited with the rest.  Why does the sinner mean so much?  Because like the dowry to the woman, so is the Church to Christ: an eternal inheritance given by the Father.  Only when all Christians chosen by God return to their calling can Jesus deck Himself with the beauty of our holiness that gives Him glory.  This is why we can never let any floundering Christian we know (or even ourselves) fall away.

If it was not enough for the Pharisees that Jesus would declare God’s mercy for every sinner’s salvation, I’m sure He confounded them further with heaven’s response to the sinner’s repentance.  As amazing as God’s mercy is, even more amazing is that Jesus tells us that God rejoices.  Whether it is a sinner like a sheep gone astray or one like a coin unwittingly lost in shadow, God calls the host of heaven to celebrate when one of His creatures turns and accepts His overture to join His Kingdom once again.  It’s like in the parable of the prodigal son when the father, having welcomed back his wayward boy, throws a feast with his whole household to celebrate his return.  I can’t help but think of Jews in Ezra’s day who, when they finally returned from exile in Persia, completed the foundation of the new temple, prompting the whole congregation to rejoice.  So it is when sinners leave the world behind to do God’s work for His Kingdom.  In all of this jubilation, Jesus’ note of the angelic response is particularly interesting.  Why did our Lord bother mentioning this detail?  Some of the ancient Fathers have posited that the answer lies in the symbolism of the ten silver coins.  The coins, they write, correspond to the ten rational creatures of God’s creation: nine choirs of angels plus the human race.

What makes the angels so euphoric is the restoration of the universe’s lost piece—us, their human kin; through God’s mercy every sinner (you and I) is redeemed to join the angels in God’s praise.  When has anyone ever been that excited over you?

In conclusion today, let’s be mindful that these parables of our salvation really don’t end with the rejoicing (at least, not yet); God’s mercy is not a favor we just passively accept, but purposefully act upon.  God doesn’t rescue us as an excuse to celebrate, but reinstates us to be better—better than our fallen parents in Eden and better saints than before we lapsed into sin.  God expects us to guard ourselves to avoid becoming lost again.  How?  It begins by examining ourselves—frankly admitting what kind of Christian we are.  Are we proud of whom we think we are or are we humble enough to want more of God’s will and less of our own?  In our epistle reading this morning, St. Peter writes that we must be, “clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.  Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand God, that He may exalt you in due time….”  The apostle stresses humility so much because only the humble Christian is honest enough to recognize his own deficiencies and amend his vulnerability.  The prideful Christian remains blind because he forgets God’s mercy for self-sufficiency.  St. Peter continues that this attitude will yield disaster because “your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking him whom he may devour.”  Satan is just waiting to pounce on the Christian more interested in what God can do for him, rather than what he can do for God; such a one is never prepared for adversity because his faith is shallow and self-centered.  So St. Peter tells us instead to “be sober, be vigilant…[and] resist [the devil] in the faith.”  In Ephesians 5, St. Paul describes this as “putting on the armor of God” that we might “withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”  Living out God’s mercy is hard work, but because His love for us never ceases, neither does His grace to help us.  In closing, St. Peter refreshes us with these words: “the God of all grace, who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus…make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.  To Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.  AMEN.

Trinity 4 Homily 2009

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY (July 5, 2009)

Romans 8:18-23; Luke 6:36-42

“The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master.”

What does a master expect of an apprentice?  Well, regardless of the school or trade, most require that they will listen to him, learn from him, and share the benefit of his experiences.  All masters mold and make their pupils to continue their work, whether it be a craft or a philosophy.  What Jesus expects of His disciples is no different.  As He did with the original Twelve, Jesus calls every Christian to be His disciple: the school is the Church and the trade is ambassadorship for universal redemption.  For most of us, it happened quite some years ago, but remember that in each of our baptisms, Jesus called us to follow Him.  It’s not easy request because, to that, Jesus attaches caveats like: “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.  And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.”  It might be OK if there was some possibility of advancement, but unlike most secular jobs, discipleship is a lifetime commitment to hard work that promotes others instead of ourselves.  In this life, Jesus never promises us that we will rise to the top; instead, He just asks us to be perfect—like Him in both His sufferings and His joys.  The word “perfect” can have a variety of meanings in the New Testament, but in this case the translation contains the idea of “repaired, restored, reformed,” or even “fully trained.”  In light of God’s redemption, of which discipleship forms the heart of every personal salvation, the kind of perfection Jesus is talking about is that which reflects the character of God.  It’s the spiritual result insisted upon by Jesus when He commands: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” or when St. Peter reminds us that God demands, “Be ye holy; for I am holy.”  This goal of perfection or holiness in discipleship is that which takes us from sin and brokenness to sanctity in the image of God.  Yes, we might have all been born sinners, but that was not God’s original intention for us.  When Christ came to be a sacrifice for sin and the example for godly living, He made Himself the way to return to our dignity.  Expanding on St. Cyprian’s thought in the 3^rd century, Blessed Columba Marmion once wrote, “‘That which Christ is we Christians shall become.’  In fact, the whole effect of the sacraments, beginning with baptism, is to assimilate us to the Savior.”  You see, Christ took on our flesh to make it good again by divine union, so now we have this life in the body to turns our contentment away from the old life into our new life prepared for us in heaven.  As we all know, it’s still a struggle.  We still have frustrations and heartbreaks to endure, an old nature that doesn’t die easily; even church doesn’t go very well sometimes and we’re tempted to give up on our leadership and even each other!  As long as we are in the body we will live in a corrupt world that lets us down.  This is why as Christ’s disciples we have to be tokens of a more perfect future.  St. Paul writes in his epistle this morning that the whole creation groans over our troubled state: things break down, dreams die, loved one’s leave; Man and Nature alike know that something better awaits.  As we confess in the Creed, “I look for the resurrection of the dead.  And the life of the world to come.”  When that day comes, we will all be free.  Everything that makes this world difficult will be past.  St. Paul writes that even the creation knows that when the Church receives Her adoption into the Kingdom, its time of suffering ends, too.  Eden will be here again to help us forget our troubles.  I think that’s why St. Paul can write with confidence: “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”  However bad things are now, however unworthy we might feel about ourselves, the beauty of God will then shine through us.  Somehow, Resurrection Day will make sense of everything; and the peace we first knew when we decided to follow Him will find its fulfillment.

But in between our initial salvation and spiritual destiny in heaven, we still have to live in this present world; we still battle temptations both demonic and worldly, and we still have to put down our own personal struggles and vices.  Some people ask why God couldn’t just skip to the end and spare us the drama by restoring the universe now.  The answer lies in the life of Jesus.  Did Christ simply descend as a grown man and go to the Cross?  No.  The writer of Hebrews maintains that Jesus had to be perfected by living before He could die.  You see, the remedy is found in the drama.  We desire to be adopted, but only when we choose to live as God’s sons and daughters by heeding Christ’s teachings and following His example can we truly know God as our Father.  It’s not that we somehow prove ourselves to God; but rather use the merits that Christ has won for us to follow His steps by grace.

This morning, according to St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us three behaviors required of us if we seek godly perfection.  Our Lord’s overall point is that our behavior is not without consequences.  God will treat each of us as we treat others.  The same standard that we use to measure others will be used to measure us.  If we are critical of others for their behavior, we risk God’s displeasure over our own behavior.

First, Jesus teaches us to practice mercy, not judgment.  Remember in the “Prayer of Humble Access” we always confess that “thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.”  Because God knows our weakness as frail human beings, He does not judge us by outward shortcomings, but rather overlooks our fragile exterior into the intentions of our heart.  Jesus Himself even said once, “Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man.”  If God is so clement towards us, so we must be patience with others.  St. Cyril of Alexandria once wrote, “If the teacher does not judge, neither must the disciple, for the disciple is guilty of worse sins than those for which he judges others.”  The danger when we judge others is that we become blind to our own faults.  Sometimes our own internal struggles make us jealous to expose others in order to hide our own.  This is why Jesus interrogates us on why we concentrate on someone else’s sin when a greater one plagues us.  First, Jesus, says, we must have the victory in our own lives before we can help another.  Otherwise, we’re all just “the blind leading the blind.”

Secondly, Jesus teaches us to practice forgiveness, not condemnation.  How familiar is this warning, and yet how Christians struggle with this one!  It’s one of the central petitions of the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  God’s forgiveness of our sins is conditional; He will only absolve us if we are humble and gracious enough to pardon what others do unto us.  As human beings all with the same sin nature, not one of us is any position to exalt himself to the level of condemning others.  Even though God is the rightful judge of all, not even He hurried to use this right.  When Adam and Eve sinned, He could have just immediately condemned us all to hell, but instead, writes St. Paul, “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  Because He loved us more than He hated our sin, God showed us His mercy to give us a chance in Christ to escape the judgment we deserved and enjoy God’s communion again.

Thirdly, Jesus teaches us to practice generosity, not dishonesty.  “Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over”—this is the description of how an honest merchant would measure bulk goods.  For example, flour pressed down would yield a more generous amount and than flour fluffed up in a container.  Christ’s point is that what we get back will largely depend on the spirit in which we give to others.  Selfishness and liberality will each receive its just reward.  You see, Jesus is trying to further turn us away from worldly treasures, and urging us to lay up treasures in heaven.  What kind of Christian we are now underscores the degree to which we will be rewarded in this next.  In just a few verses before Jesus exhorts us, “do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High.”  On the other hand, if a Christian is concerned with what he can see himself getting, then like the Pharisee, Jesus tells us “Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.”  Life is so short and what we accumulate now cannot go with us.  If we want to enjoy the fullness of the Kingdom in the next life, then we must follow this rule from St. Paul, no matter how we are treated by others: “Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.”  Not even Jesus when He came into this world held back with the intention of saving something extra for Himself.  Instead, He gave up everything in order that we might share in His glory.  Quoting St. Paul again: “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.”

In conclusion, let’s be perfectly clear that following our Lord’s teaching in discipleship is not a path to self-perfection.  If you’re looking for self-perfection, then maybe you should become a Buddhist (that’s what they’re all about); but that is not our goal as Christians.  I hope it’s evident from what we’ve heard this morning that it’s by seeking the perfection of others (being merciful to them, forgiving them, being generous to them) that we are made perfect, not by concentrating on ourselves.  Discipleship is not an independent effort, but a fellowship.  All Christians, including every member of this parish, are part of a united effort to make sure that we are all still standing together before Christ on the last day, with nobody lost.  This is why it is so important to pay attention to Jesus’ admonition to avoid hypocrisy among one another (“cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother’s eye”).  When we ignore our own struggles, we try to make ourselves feel superior in comparison to others.  But St. Paul writes, “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves.”  We must examine ourselves first and deal with our own sins, if we are going to be able to effectively help one another.  God allows us to humbly battle through our own struggles so we can more intelligently come to each other’s aid.  In the end, this is how Christ’s Church grows into maturity; and how even a small parish becomes a true microcosm of the Kingdom, “Till,” as St. Paul writes, “we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”  The Master still calls His disciples to be perfect; and the Body cannot perfect unless its members are perfect.  So I leave you again with St. Paul, “Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you.”  AMEN.

Trinity 8 Homily 2009

EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY (August 2, 2009)

Romans 8:12-17; Matthew 7:15-21

“Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”

We’ve all seen them on the TV before—screaming so loudly into the microphone that muting them is the only relief; other times they’re waving their hands to bowl over huge crowds of people, still others are praying and begging you for money to support their ministry, promising you a blessing or maybe even healing if you just touch the screen.  Then, there’s always the guy claiming to be Jesus Christ with a harem of teenage girls surrounding him.  Such obvious charlatans that even the world can identify.  But also out there is a much more subtle, sophisticated—even believable—bunch that I think our Lord was really warning us about in our Gospel reading today.  They thrive in this time when being “spiritual” makes you more sincere, especially if you’re running for public office, hosting a talk show or dating on the internet.  But you’ll notice in all of this talk that there’s very little mention of truth, doctrine, or (God forbid!) “the Church.”  Instead we just hear a lot of adjectives: “personal,” “practical,” “tolerant” and so on.  The focus is not outward to the transcendent God but inward to our own feelings, to what makes us fulfilled and happy.  If we all just find what works and respect each other it doesn’t really matter what we actually believe or what religion we practice or what sort of god we worship.  From Hollywood this attitude is no surprise, but what happens when it comes from someone wearing a clerical collar, maybe even wearing a purple shirt?  Then, we hear the words of Jesus, “Beware of false prophets….”  Now, what Christians have found so tricky is that these people seem so pleasant and their message so inviting, but Jesus didn’t tell us they’d come with an easy-to-read label.  You see, our Lord’s word of caution to us today is that evil comes with a plan.  Like the serpent in Eden and Judas among the Twelve, false prophets have a way of wrapping themselves up in good and appear as though they are honorable.  Even the devil comes dressed as an angel of light according to St. Paul in I Corinthians.  Remember that our Savior is the Good Shepherd, so Satan sends his false prophets to appear like one of the sheep.  That’s why Jesus warns, “[they will] come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.”  In fact, they’re so convincing that in St. Mark’s Gospel, Jesus describes them as coming with “signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”  Obviously, having charmed the sheep, these wolves are able to get much further into the flock then someone on the outside, especially when they are posing as under-shepherds.  Falsehood is so much more dangerous when it’s decorated with truth and, of course, an authorized source.

This, at their core is what makes false prophets so treacherous; they don’t just bring their own modest opinion.  If there’s a false prophet, then there’s always false teaching and false worship that come with it.  Whether it’s a formal system or not, a false prophet—without variation—invents religion contrary to Christianity orthodoxy.  The United States particularly has become a breeding ground for false prophets and their cults, enticing people all over the world by calling themselves “Resorationists.”  All of them alike exalt the status of single founder and all reject catholic faith and order that have been passed down.  Joseph Smith of the Mormons denied the sufficiency of the New Testament and the eternal deity of Christ, and taught both that the Trinity was comprised of three separate Gods and that all Mormons would eventually become Gods equal to the Father; Charles Taze Russell of the Jehovah’s Witnesses taught that Christ was but God’s first and highest creation; and the only thing that Ellen G. White of the Seventh-Day Adventists restored was the old Jewish legalism of Sabbath worship and dietary laws.

And yet, these fringe cults pale to what has happened over the last hundred years within the Church.  Names no longer matter.  Whether the sign says Episcopalian or Lutheran or Roman Catholic, there are parishes and even entire jurisdictions that have mutated into false churches, with maybe some vestiges of orthodoxy in their outward forms.  Some of us have seen it first hand.  By subtly introducing their own innovations they gradually eroded the fabric of worship, authority, and confessed beliefs until what remained is fundamentally different from catholic and apostolic Christianity.  Jesus established the Church to be a safe-haven for His people.  He wishes to raise the Church up to be with Himself; every Sunday we hear in the ‘Comfortable Words,’ “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.”  But these false teachers wish to pull unsuspecting Christians down to their level.  As St. Peter warns, they wish to twist the Church into opportunity to, “in greed exploit you with deceptive words.”

If it’s any comfort, our situation today is really much the same as it was in the first five hundred years of the Church.  Orthodox and heterodox ministers stand together in the same clerical rank and file, while utterly apostate churches still claiming to be Christian resemble the Arian and Gnostic churches of ancient times.  Sometimes it’s easy to pick out who’s who, but sometimes it’s not.  Fortunately, in the Gospel this morning, Jesus tells how to recognize these false prophets.  It’s not by their personality or appearance.  They may come looking like servants of the Lord speaking kind words and dressed in pretty vestments.  Many are nice people.  So Jesus says, “Ye shall know them by their fruits.”  What exactly does our Lord mean by “fruits?”  It’s who they are, what they teach, and what they do.  Outward appeal aside, the yield of their ministry will evidence an evil work and the nefarious mind behind it.  We can only expect that evil will come from evil.  Jesus goes on: “Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?  Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.  A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.”  Now, since the apostles had to deal with this, let’s look at some epistles for help.

First, the character of false prophets often betrays that charming exterior.  With enough exposure, a crooked integrity will come to define both their personal life and public interaction.  In his second epistle, St. Peter describes such people as being “presumptuous” and “self-willed,” meaning that they are arrogant, pushing their own personal agendas for egotistical ends.  St. Jude translates this into the rejection of authority.  False prophets refuse to submit themselves to the Church—not only the bishops but the Spirit-illuminated Tradition and Canon Law of the Church.  Bottom line, they don’t want to follow the rules; the apostles write that they will badmouth those above them and complain about things that seem outdated.  Last of all, both St. Peter and St. Jude write that they are sensual.  They are themselves sexually promiscuous and deviant (and end up on Fox News) or they at least sanction the behavior of those that are.  They gain popularity by appealing to people’s most base tendencies.  Sound familiar?

Next, in what they teach the apostles write that the false prophets are “clouds without water”: it may be eloquent, but their words will be doctrinally unsound or just without spiritual substance altogether, preaching only the spirit of the age.  They will try to present heresy as good teaching and try to make orthodox teachers appear to be erroneous or even repressive in their instruction.  But St. John writes that we must “test the spirits, whether they are of God.”  In other words, we must assess all teaching to determine if it is consistent with the catholic faith.  St. John especially emphasizes that anyone who rejects that Jesus is true God in the flesh, fully human and fully divine, is not of God. Those who deny Jesus’ Incarnation will consequently then deny His Crucifixion, His Resurrection in the body, His true presence in the Blessed Sacrament, and His literal return to consummate the Kingdom of God.  And what greater dogmatic challenges do we hear of today then of Jesus own claims about Himself in Scripture and what He accomplished for our salvation, whether it be from the hierarchs of the Episcopal Church or the History Channel; false prophets might accept a humble rabbi, but never the Word-made-Flesh capable of forgiving or judging sin.

Finally, what prophets do will show who they really are.  Sure, they will flatter to keep themselves safe, but beneath the surface they fuel dissension.  St. Jude writes that they cause division, undermining the Holy Spirit’s work to further their own ends rather than keeping the Church united and the people cared for.  St. Peter writes that they will even disrupt the Church in Her fellowship, be it causing a scandal or seducing people into immorality or error to promote themselves, especially politically and financially.

But, and I pray that this will give some consolation in this our day—false prophets will not ultimately succeed.  Jesus forewarns that “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.”  Either in this life or the next, God promises to restrain their damage and banish them to eternal punishment.  St. Peter writes, “For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them to chains of darkness…then [He] knows how to…reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment;” and St. Jude similarly writes that they will “suffer the vengeance of eternal fire.”  Jesus even indicates that some false prophets will not even be aware of what they are.  Many will even deceive themselves with their own deception, thinking they were doing God’s work.  So Jesus cautions us: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of heaven.”  In spite of what they seem to have accomplished in this life, who finally does Jesus say will be approved?  “…he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”

So, as we Anglicans go forth in building our churches, we can praise God that false prophets can’t finally win the day, but we still feel the effects of their schemes and witness almost on a weekly basis the lives they are ruining.  We’ve taken kind of a remnant persona, surviving as best we can in spite of our losses, and praying, I’m sure, for vindication that in this life we may never see.  But no matter what comes, St. Jude assures us that we have the power to resist all false prophets and to have the victory over them.  “…beloved, [build] up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”  The point is that growing in our faith and deepening our intimacy with God and one another is the surest way to discern false teaching.  Pray the Daily Office and read the Scriptures.  Hold fast to the Creeds we confess and immerse yourselves in the mystical power of the Liturgy and the Sacraments.  Such tools of grace the Spirit uses to make holy and resolute saints in unshakeable churches.  So let’s remember this day and for the rest of our lives that our dedication is worth it, no matter how appealing or prosperous the false prophets and their followers may be.  Following the crowd is easy, but it’s spiritual suicide.  The broad road of do-it-yourself religion so popular in our culture ultimately leads to the fire with all the other bad trees.  Jesus exhorts us instead: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”  If we do this, our Savior promises us that “[He] is able to keep [us] from falling, and to present [us] faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.”  AMEN.

Trinity 10 Homily 2009

TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY (August 16, 2009)

I Corinthians 12:1-11; Luke 19:41-47a

“Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.  And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.  And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.”

Most of us, I think, might be a little puzzled if we went to the Holy Eucharist in the first century Church.  Certainly, we would recognize some liturgical elements characteristic of our own Anglican service such as the dialogue of “the Lord be with you: And with thy spirit”; but we would likely be surprised when someone from the congregation suddenly stood to give a word of prophecy, or another supernaturally spoke in a tongue (a foreign language), the meaning thereof possibly being unknown until yet another stood with its interpretation.  As the foundation of our modern Church forms and structures were being laid, there did exist an undeniable liberty and dazzling display of spiritual gifts that seems rather foreign to us now.  Now, I’m not suggesting that the infant Church was Pentecostal, but it was the Church of Pentecost.  According to the New Testament, the early Christians were blessed with visible gifts to manifest the invisible presence of the Holy Spirit among them.  If you remember that in fulfillment of the prophet Joel, for the first time God’s Spirit had been poured out on all flesh, and with each Baptism and Confirmation the Holy Spirit renewed the power of Pentecost through these charisms that testified to the reality of His presence; the Gospel would go forward in heavenly might, as Jesus had promised.  In truth, the sign gifts were as much a proof to the Gentiles as they were an assurance to the Church.  Instead of the demonic work that usually occurred only in the pagan priests, a visitor would be astonished by the evidence that God was truly working in every believer.  And not only did the Christians produce prophecy, tongues, and interpretation, but also powers of wisdom, healing, and even miracles.

But, as we’ve all noticed in our personal experience, the sign gifts are no longer prevalent today.  They didn’t completely disappear after the first century, for we have record of miracles and signs being done right through the Middle Ages; even today missionaries on the fringe of the civilized world still report instances of supernatural power, especially in places where a demonic hold is most severe.  But why did they largely vanish?  Partly because the Church misused them, and they were often used jealously among believers to promote personal status; and yet St. Paul indicates that the time would come when the gifts would just fade away.  As the Church matured and victoriously spread, She simply outgrew them.  Perhaps it was in light of their transience that St. Paul urged his parishioners to not become puffed up with their sensible gifts, but instead to desire the greater gifts like pastor, teacher, and deacon (or deaconess).

So here today in boring modern Sarasota, Florida, what do we have?  Where is the evidence of the Spirit among us now?  The truth is that it’s in us; the apostles tell us that all Christians are His temples, however unspectacular we may seem in our own eyes or in the eyes of others.  As His temples, the Holy Spirit still descends sacramentally on all Christians and still gives particular gifts to each person.  We even have “spiritual gift discernment seminars” to help us understand what our individual charisms are—something we may consider doing down the road.  The point is that the Church—and no parish for that matter—is devoid of the gifts She needs; we are not Pentecost-poor.  We have members to get the work of the Kingdom started now.  But the crux upon which our growth as Christians and our parish depends is this—stewardship.

Last week I’m sure you heard from Fr. Blyth how St. Paul doesn’t want us to be ignorant of the grace of our salvation: God restores us with honor like prodigal children into His house to enjoy the blessings of the covenant that the ancient Israelites tragically lost when they disobeyed.  Well now St. Paul again doesn’t want us to be ignorant because once we are covenanted into God’s house, we automatically become stewards of the Holy Spirit’s gifts.  Ignorance of this kills Christians and whole parishes.  Ignorance has been killing mainline Protestantism for over fifty years.  And sadly, so much ignorance and outright misuse of stewardship is due to faulty teaching!  How can a Christian be expected to make full use of endowments which he never realized he possessed?  With the Scriptures, our books and catechisms, and the examples of the Saints, there should be no excuse for such poor stewardship; it’s so clearly laid down in our baptismal responsibilities, and our three bounden duties that we vow to keep in the Second Office of Instruction.

All of this means that every one of us here at Holy Trinity has gifts with which God has made us stewards.  Just as in ancient times, they’re not all the same.  Some of us are stronger in gifts of the head—we pursue wisdom and knowledge.  Head people approach Christianity in books and lectures as the highest intellectual study or even as the final philosophy to explain ourselves and our world before the Creator.  Such Christians may seem less practical, but we must have Mary’s willing to just sit at Jesus’ feet and be students so that with wisdom they can probe the cognitive mysteries of God’s revelation and help us shape a complete Christian world-view of life and culture.

Some of us are stronger in gifts of the hands—we are given practical skills to handle the physical challenges of the parish to beautify, organize, and fix things that other people can’t.  Hands people are the hard workers that come to every church work day, happily assist with any project at the parish or in the community, and do the little things that the rest of us hardly notice.  Oftentimes hands people work behind the scenes and are satisfied to receive no thanks or recognition.  Their work is their prayer and their reward is in the contentment that God grants them.

Finally, some of us stronger in gifts of the heart—we are enthusiasts for all things sacred and are filled with the holiness and compassion of Christ.  The heart people I have seen have an intuitive understanding of human need and truly a supernatural faith in the Holy Spirit’s work.  Heart people are men and women whose courage is unassailable, and their love for God and man remains undaunted no matter what trial comes.  These people pray hard and often, and never tire of their Christian obligation.

Most of us here are probably a mix of all three, but all gifts are not given to everybody; one of us may be truly loyal to the Lord, and yet he lacks a gift that he sees in another, but he cannot make it his own.  You see, each gift of the Holy Spirit is to the Church, and to the individual only as a member of the Church.  We all have a special purpose but it’s to be used for the profit of everyone, because we are all members of one another as the Body of Christ.  So as we grow together in the coming months and years, welcoming new members into our parish, we are going to have to learn to reverence God’s gifts in others. There’s no place for envy because we will all be working as one for the same Lord; and He will bless our church, not for doing better than others, but for doing our best.

In fact, as we meditate on the unity of our gifts and the way we use them for the mission of this church, we remember that they are grounded in who God Himself is.  Perhaps you might recall on Trinity Sunday that I emphasized that you all must realize yourselves as the parish of the Holy Trinity.  As we develop our character as a community, it needs to reflect the harmony that arises from the Divine unity, the Three Persons in One God.  St. Paul tells us this morning that in the Church there are diversities of gifts, administrations, and operations, but they all come from the same Lord, God, and Spirit.  Whatever endowments God gives us to build the Kingdom in this city, though they differ in name or in the face of the bearer, all will be one in substance, even as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three in role and Personality, yet forever one in substance.

So today as we together begin anew an old work, I believe it’s appropriate for us to recognize that by picking a new vicar, we have taken the risk of being recommissioned by God.  After all, in this call to stewardship, when we are charged with a task, then there must be a Lord who will judge us.  The reality is that through the reception of Christ’s Body and Blood, we are in covenant with God, and He will either bless or punish us depending upon our perseverance in this charge.  It’s always been this way with God’s people, which gives us a clue as to why Jesus wept over Jerusalem in our Gospel reading.  Jerusalem had been built to be the City of Peace: to enlighten the nations with Her Law and give mankind hope of forgiveness and new life in Her sacrifices.  But Christ was not deceived by the façade of marble and gold; He saw only spiritual poverty and ignorance.  He saw the loss of stewardship among His people, and the curse of twenty centuries soon to be consummated in the national catastrophe only forty years away.  God’s patience with Israel was running out, and with their imminent rejection of Jesus as Messiah, their destruction was sure because as Jesus said, “thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”

As members of the Church of Christ, there is also a day in which God visits every parish and people, and every individual soul; it was for this reason that the warnings had been sent: “Now is the axe laid unto the root of the trees,” and “repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”  That was the Jew’s day of visitation, but ours is coming, too, and on that day Christ will take account of our stewardship.  As their visitation began, Jesus purged a madhouse of corruption in the temple, condemning it as a den of thieves.  What will our Lord find when He comes to us?  Will He find faithfulness?  Remember the words of St. Peter: “judgment must begin at the house of God.”  The lost will stand before Christ simply as the unrepentant, but we will stand before Him as stewards to be either praised for multiplying our talents or cursed for neglecting them.

My charge to you this day is that we work to make this temple, and these temples, holy ground to be houses of prayer and not a den of thieves.  Nothing should be admitted here or within ourselves to impair or take the place of constant communion with God, and everything should be done to beautify and sanctify this place and ourselves as icons of the Kingdom of Christ and His Saints.

So in conclusion today, consider again the Collect of the Day and meditate this week on how this simple prayer prepares us to have our gifts illuminated for us [read Collect].  We are taught here that if we seek gifts of stewardship and answered prayer, two criterions are necessary: First, we must be acceptable in our persons.  God will hear us if we pray in humility and obedience, but He will not listen if we ask in order to increase our pride.  He will give us what we need in order to serve Him better.  Secondly, we must be acceptable in our petitions.  If we ask in the right spirit, then we must also ask for the right things.  So let’s all pray in the coming weeks, asking for the things that please God, desiring the best gifts, even if they be given to someone else.  If we do this, then I promise you with the words of St. Paul: “Be confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”  AMEN.

Trinity 12 Homily 2009

TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY (August 30, 2009)

2 Corinthians 3:4-9; Mark 7:31-37

“And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.  And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.”

Imagine you or someone you love having to endure the tragedy of losing the ability to hear and the gift to speak.  Never mind the piteous stares or the whispering lips that your perfect eyes can still clearly see, what if you had to stand in this congregation today no longer capable of hearing the beauty of music and the praises of God sung by those around you?  And worst of all, what if your own ruined tongue prevented you from joining the chorus?  As Christians, can we fathom a loss more difficult to swallow?  After all, one of the most essential refrains of our prayer, taken from Psalm 51, is “O Lord, open thou our lips, And our mouth shall show forth thy praise.”  Most of our religion, in one way or another, involves either listening to God’s truth being taught or articulating a response to it through prayer and thanksgiving.  What faith would we have to endure a test like this with patience, or to even believe that God could heal us when science and medicine exhaust their knowledge and resources?

Now imagine yourself in a whole community of the deaf and mute.  Imagine such a society where faith and belief have been replaced by pride and even resentment.  I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the mainstream deaf/mute community in the United States, but for those men and women (and this isn’t everybody) that have embraced the ethos of deaf culture, deafness has become not a trial to overcome with God’s help, but access to a unique class outside of regular society.  It seems so backward to us, but in their minds deafness is normal, keeping them in a world of peace and quiet, whereas the abnormal hearers are trapped in a world of noise.  Once you are part of the deaf community, it is absolutely taboo to get a surgery or implant to fix your condition; anyone who does is ostracized as a traitor and an outsider.  I’m not sure if they developed this attitude to cope with their own condition or to return in kind the shunning that most have certainly felt from hearing people, but the sad truth is that many of the deaf have become bitter and insular.  It’s not so much the deafness of their ears, but the deafness of their hearts that has provoked so many to resist help and prevented them from explaining their struggles and needs to the Church who understands what it means to be a Body composed of many kinds of members, however imperfect we may all be.

Now, by analogy, this is precisely the situation in which we find Jesus in the Gospel this morning.  The crowd brought to Him a man deaf with a speech impediment, and they begged Christ to put His hand on him.  But Jesus didn’t handle this case as had done other situations.  No, this time He did something different.  Instead of healing him right away in front of the crowd, St. Mark records that Jesus took him aside from the multitude where He could deal with him alone.  Why?  Why not deal with this man’s infirmity as He had the others’?   The reason is because it was not the deaf man with speech impediment that had the real problem that day, but the crowd that had brought him.  You see, spiritually-speaking, the Jews of Jesus day had accepted deafness of soul as normal.  In fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, Jesus observed on several occasions that “their ears are dull of hearing… hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.”  Like our deaf culture, they had grown comfortable with the hearing-impairment of their hearts; they were unwilling to hear God’s voice speaking through Christ.  They praised Him as a miracle-worker, yes, but His words that could have healed their souls went right by them.  Although they were God’s people, their faith had grown too cold to listen to Him and communicate His message to the nations.  The Jews had been charged by God to be His prophets to the Gentiles (Daniel interpreted dreams and guided the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar and Darius and Jonah had preached repentance to the city of Nineveh), but the Jews now had a spiritual speech impediment; their words were no longer lucid and edifying for the Gentiles, making them a burden instead of a blessing.

So, this miracle is not presented to us today in the Gospel to verify again Christ’s power to heal; we already know that, and so did the Jews.  Rather, it’s here to illustrate the insufficiency of the Old Testament Church that Jesus came to address by tackling head-on the closed ears in Israel and opening a New Testament era of faith that we as Anglicans are now participants in today.

“Testament”: what does that mean?  It’s exactly what it sounds like—a testimony.  It’s a witness to something that has occurred, usually between two people or groups.  The Old Testament was the witness to the covenants that God had established with Israel to form a relationship with them and prepare the way for the Messiah.  This fits so nicely with our allusion to speech impediments, because it was necessary that this Testament be articulated to truthfully reflect the communion that God had established with Man.  The situation was that God was still speaking clearly, but Israel wasn’t reciprocating.  They weren’t upholding their end of the covenant, so they were being cursed to live under the authority of Rome.  Jesus entered the end of an era when the Old Testament had simply reached the end of its purpose.  It’s not that God’s covenant had been unsuccessful, but Israel’s sin had made it ineffective.  The essence of the Old Testament had been the Law of Moses, which contrary to popular opinion, wasn’t just a list of rules and regulations; it was a standard of righteousness that God was using to reform Israel back into the likeness of God that Adam and Eve had reflected before they fell.  But because Israel refused to accept this call to righteousness, the Law became what St. Paul describes this morning: “a letter that kills.”  Instead of being the commandment that was supposed to give life, the Law became nothing more than a schoolmaster to verify Israel’s sinfulness and sentence them in it.  The Jews reduced the Law to a code of externals written in stone with no power to write God’s will and His holiness in their hearts.  Can you imagine what it would have been like to come to your priest in those days?  Fr. Dan wouldn’t be your channel of grace and mercy; he would have been your neighborhood Law-enforcer.  You chuckle, but St. Paul calls this the ministry of death and condemnation.  As your intercessor before God, I would be there to offer endless sacrifices of atonement, but not a single sacrament to give back to you for life.  The Jews spent 1500 years seeking forgiveness from a source that could only be hoped for.  It’s not that none of the Jews were saved under the Old Testament, but nobody was saved by it.  The Law engraved on tablets and the blood of bulls and goats simply pointed forward to the Lamb of God who would fulfill the Law that man couldn’t and shed His blood for lasting reconciliation with God the Father.

Such was the situation that Jesus found when He became Incarnate.  His encounter that day with the deaf and dumb man was a microcosm of the people around Him that were deaf and dumb to God.  Let’s be in honest, Man content with his sin is too deaf to hear the need for repentance and too dumb to offer any sincere confession or prayer.  An interactive communion with God (both listening and speaking) is necessary if desire a faith that believes in God and His power.  Going back to how Christ healed this man, this is why Jesus separated him from the crowd—they lacked this faith.  People often wonder why Christ bothered to put His fingers in the man’s ears, spit, and touch his tongue: it wasn’t because this man’s case was harder than most, it was because of the people’s unbelief.  In other places in the Gospels, the writers even record that because of poor faith “Jesus could not do many might works there.”  Apparently this crowd didn’t even recognize Him as God, maybe as a prophet or miracle-worker at best.  So, He condescends to acting almost like a physician that has to use means achieve his ends.  Jesus accommodates Himself to their weakness, that they might understand that the Healer before them was also their Creator.  Then He looks up into heaven, sighing as if to plead to His Father to forgive them for their unbelief.  Then He says Ephaphtha meaning “be opened.”  And it says that “straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.”

But because the soul of the Church was His chief concern, this was just a sign of the universal Ephaphtha yet to come.  As Jesus gazes into heaven, we can almost imagine Him contemplating His own Resurrection and Ascension to perfect this work of spiritual healing.  With that done, what else can be the true Ephaphtha but Pentecost itself when the whole Church’s death ears were unstopped to receive heavenly inspiration, and their dumb tongues loosed to spread their words unto the ends of the world.  And that, my friends, is when the letter gave way to the Spirit.  As St. Paul observes, “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

So what do we learn here today from Jesus’ rather unusual encounter with the deaf and dumb man?  I’m certain that it’s that the New Testament of the Spirit that Christ prefigured here brings human poverty into correspondence with God’s grace in a way that the Old Testament of the Law could not.  Christ’s sympathy—to the infirmed man, to the crowd, and to us—is proportioned to our needs, and not merely to our prayers.  And that’s something for which we can be thankful.  His grace seeks us even where it isn’t sought; and He gives it even where it isn’t asked for.  God’s grace is always sufficient, even when our faith is not.  And therefore the ministry He gives His Church is to build His people in their faith, not convict them for the lack of it, as the ministers under the Law did.  St. Paul describes the Christian priest as “an able minister of the New Testament” or better yet, an enabled minister.  We’re not sufficient of ourselves (Fr. Dan can’t do this alone), but as St. Paul comments we are empowered by the Spirit to carry out God’s perfect will in your lives.  Your priests and bishops are entrusted not merely a book of the Law, but a Divine covenant of grace to bring forgiveness where there was only condemnation.  And the sacrifice Christ offered which we commemorate at the altar brings life when there was once only death.  The Christian priest is commissioned to declare a freer dispensation, which I also make known to you today.

After Jesus declared the Ephaphtha over the deaf and dumb man, the crowd pronounced that “He hath done all things well.”  They barely had enough faith to see a small miracle done, and in return they indeed saw a small miracle.  But what will our response be to the Ephaphtha that God has spoken over us to open our ears to hear and to loosen our tongues to ask?  We will get small from God if our faith and our love are small.  This is why we are encouraged in the Collect this morning to pray, not with fearful consciences but with strong trust.  God is always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and to give more than we desire or deserve.  He will grant us all the things we need here at our church, even the things that seem unspeakable.  So let us have ready ears and mouths to grow in our faith and desire His blessings with boldness, asking for His mercy when we feel most unworthy.  AMEN.

Trinity 13 Homily 2009

THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY (September 6, 2009)

Galatians 3:16-22; Luke 10:23-37

“Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?  And he said, He that showed mercy on him.  Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.”

We’ve all heard the parable of the Good Samaritan many times.  So many times, I’m afraid, that after a while Jesus’ true intention behind it gets diluted or forgotten altogether.  What seems to often remain is this: the empathetic story of an unlikely savior contrasted with two of society’s elite that just couldn’t be bothered with the plight of one of their own countrymen.  A priest and a Levite are the first to pass by the scene; but after each man disregards his moral duty, the Samaritan steps up: he’s a man with little reason to care or incentive to act, and yet he demonstrates a level of kindness for a man who ordinarily wouldn’t have given him the time of day.  As you probably know, for religious and ethnic reasons, the Jews and the Samaritans had little to do with one another, but that division is set aside in one man’s hour of need.  This is the popular interpretation, and is by no means a misreading of the text; (in fact, I would say if we don’t understand this aspect of the parable, we certainly neglect something) but from this emphasis, the Good Samaritan becomes something of a truism.  The term “Good Samaritan” turns into a well worn cliché for anyone that selflessly helps a stranger; our culture even slaps the name onto its hospitals, hospices, and even its nursing homes.  This is all well and good, but if we reduce Jesus’ parable to simply an ethical imperative, we’ve really missed His point.  Christ is not just giving us an example of benevolence; He’s answering a question about how the saints fulfill their duty to God and to neighbor.  How do I love and adore God, and deal justly with my fellows?  The smug young lawyer who asked questioned Jesus on this point because he wanted to know (as we all do) how to inherit eternal life.  Then he gave Our Lord verbatim the response that his rabbis certainly taught him (what we know in our liturgy as the “Summary of the Law”).  But then he gets cocky.  St. Luke records that he tries to “justify himself” by the law; he wants Jesus to clarify who his neighbor is so he can be validated in his law-keeping.  But as we learned last week, it’s not the letter of the law that really counts, but following its spirit.  By responding with the parable, Jesus is trying to elicit a conversion of legalists into Christians—men and women fit for the Kingdom, not the synagogue.  So as you can see, what Jesus is concerned with here is not philanthropy, as our culture often thinks, but charity.  Philanthropy seeks only men’s welfare/the common good, but charity—as Scripture defines it—is much more: charity is the extension of God’s mercy to unite all believers in the Church and to bring in the lost.  The parable of the Good Samaritan—above all—is about how we as Christians exhibit this gracious and compassionate love both for our salvation, and that of others.  As St. Paul comments in Romans: “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.”

But the Good Samaritan submits three tests, three checks to make sure that our Christian love is genuine.  As St. John stresses so many times in his epistles, God wants to see that we do love, not just talk it.  The apostle writes, “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.”  God wants us to love as He loves and be true Good Samaritans, not superficial legalists and not humanitarians.

Now the first characteristic is that love doesn’t ask any questions.  It doesn’t ask how much it should love and it doesn’t ask why.  The young lawyer asked how much because he was afraid of loving too widely.  He was still functioning within the old Jewish proverb of “love your friends and hate your enemies.”  Perhaps he had heard that Jesus once said “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you….”  The young lawyer didn’t want to have his love stretched; he didn’t want to have to love someone that he didn’t like.  On the other hand, the priest and the Levite in the parable don’t help the injured man because they ask why?—why should I go out of my way, and what if he dies and I become unclean by touching a dead body?  And then they move on when they can’t reasonably answer their own questions.  But then Jesus offers the Good Samaritan as a paradigm for a love that isn’t restrained by either comfort or convenience.  The Samaritan doesn’t ask whether or not the wounded traveler is his neighbor; he apparently never wonders if the man is worth it or if helping him will be too much of a hassle.  He simply shows the man charity without hampering himself with his desires or doubts.  This is the same manner in which Jesus demonstrated His love for mankind.  Before He entered Mary’s womb, He didn’t rethink if atoning for our sins really justified a poor carpenter’s life and a murderer’s death.  He didn’t ask His Father if we were really worth the infinite love of the Blessed Trinity; it’s a good thing He didn’t because I think the answer to that was already pretty obvious.  And yet what does St. Paul write to the Romans?  “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  We were sinners—enemies of God—but He still loved us when we seemed so unlovable.  St. Augustine even once wrote: “Our God wanted to be our neighbor, and Jesus Christ our Lord presented the Good Samaritan as a symbol of himself: he came to the aid of a man struck down by thieves at the side of the road and left only half alive.”  Jesus’ point in all of this is that if God has shown us so much love, we also must show each other, and the people out there, the same kind of love.  Now that Christ is in heaven, His Church must be the Good Samaritan in the world; we have to be inns, as St. Augustine observed, where people can be physically and spiritually healed.  As St. John admonishes us, “as he is, so are we in this world.”  And more than that, St. John continues that Jesus will judge us based on whether or not we lived up to this charge.  If we persevere in this kind of unquestioning love, then the apostle writes, “Herein is our love made perfect”—and we can have boldness before God when we He tests us on the Last Day for a love that simply was, without questions or excuses.

The second characteristic of our love is that it carries the burden. Art captures this so well.  Vincent van Gogh once painted a very powerful interpretation of the Good Samaritan which I cite it now because it depicts the precise moment the Samaritan hoists the wounded traveler onto his donkey.  His back bends, the muscles in his arms and his legs flex to the limit of their strength, and his face radiates both great strain and yet great tenderness as he struggles to lift the dead weight.  All the injured man can do is to feebly hang on to the Samaritan’s neck and shoulder, helpless and wincing in obvious pain.  It’s such an arresting visual, and I commend it for the way in which it depicts a love that willingly takes the load, like Christ carrying the Cross to Calvary or even Jacob toiling fourteen years in Laban’s fields for Rachel.  This love deals with the baggage (maybe even the sin) of other people (or you and me) when we or someone else is most needy or vulnerable.  I think this is what St. Paul was talking about when he wrote to the Corinthians that charity “Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”  This love accepts that we are all imperfect people with struggles that may or may not be seen on Sunday.  But “bear ye one another’s burdens,” commands St. Paul.  As the Church, the Father gives us to Christ, but Christ gives us to each other.  This doesn’t mean that we should allow ourselves to become needless drains on one another, but Scripture clearly teaches that in the Church we’re all in this together to be automatic caregivers when a member needs it.  And let’s face it, sometimes the only burden is putting up with another person; as God’s brings new persons and families into our parish, there maybe someone in the mix that you just find annoying.  Nevertheless, “with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbear one another in love.”  Christ loved the Jews when they demanded His crucifixion, and He still loved the disciples when most teachers would have become exasperated at their slow minds.  Likewise, our Christian love must still love whether the person is lying pathetically in the hospital or driving us nuts in the parish hall.  Love doesn’t get irritated and it doesn’t become resentful because like Christ, love doesn’t sour into bitterness, even when it’s being taken advantage of.  Instead, love, according to St. Paul suffereth long and is kind”—it remains patient.

Finally, the third characteristic of our love is that it pays the debt.  Oh, this may be the hardest one.  After the Good Samaritan pays the innkeeper to ensure that the injured man is taken care of, he even promises to repay him whatever he spends beyond that sum.  Now, this is not about the biblical solution to cheaper healthcare, this is about covering the cost to heal and save someone in their physical or spiritual infirmity.  Now, of course, in relation to Christ, this symbolizes the debt that He paid to cover our sins on the Cross.  St. Paul writes twice to the Corinthians that we are bought with a price—a price that Jesus paid with His own blood.  And He still pays it: every time we drink from the chalice at Holy Communion.  The point for us is that, in our love, we do not value what we have or even our selves as too above sacrificing for the salvation of others.  Demonstrating this may not start with anything big.  On the one hand, St. Titus writes, “show your love through hospitality.”  In other words, be willing to share what you have both with your church and with the lost, especially with those in need.  You can’t take any of that with you, but according to Christ you can gain or lose your soul.  And remember where we started this morning: what’s really at stake here is inheriting eternal life.  Jesus freely chose to give His life for us, but following His example, He teaches that only the Christian who loses his life in this world for His sake will find it.  In response to this St. John compels us with this phrase: “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”  For most of us, this condition will never be literal, but the thrust of the apostle’s words is that if we love Christ for the debt He paid on our behalf—and if that love for God is to mean anything—we must share this love with each other, pardoning the debt we believe others owe us.  We can’t pay for each others’ sins the way Our Savior did, but as members of His Body, we can erase the debts of disappointment, resentment, and even betrayal that cause divisions among us.  We must forgive the hurt, forget the wrong, and be reconciled to one another; anything if it helps another Christian get beyond the debt that isolates him from God and the Church, that leaves him prey on the side of road to Satan’s ambush.  I think St. Peter sums it up when he concludes, “charity shall cover the multitude of sins.”

Well, my final words to you today can only be to repeat the words of Christ: “Go and do likewise.”  This world considers altruism the highest benevolence, but I urge you instead to exhibit a love that prepares you for your eternal inheritance and for that of others.  Don’t be humanitarians; be Christians.  Jesus isn’t interested in do-gooders, but He is calling a special people willing to live out a prayer like this:

Teach me to serve thee as thou deservest; to give, and not to count the cost, to fight, and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to look for rest; to labor, and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that I am doing thy will.”  AMEN.