Sermon for Trinity II – Proper 7B
June 21, 2009 - Preached at St. John’s – Moultrie

One of the most critical dialogues between Jesus and His disciples occurs when Jesus asks them two unbelievable questions. In all three Gospel accounts, it appears that Jesus is alone with the 12, and he asks them the first question, “Who do men say that I am?” Depending on which Gospel record we are following, the disciples either say John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the prophets risen from the dead. The answers that the disciples give at least conveys that the people are realizing that something strange, something different is taking place. They are beginning to put some of the pieces together – Jesus is starting to look like what we have been waiting for, longing for, yearning for.

Back in the time of Moses, the people were looking for someone extraordinary to come. As recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses declares, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers – it is to him you shall listen….And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.”

Jesus then follows up this first question with perhaps the most important question ever asked, “But who do you say that I am?”

Ultimately that is the question that each of us has to answer personally for ourselves. St. Peter gives the answer that summarizes all of Christology, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” The Kalendar of the ’79 BCP has a Principal Feast Day Church Year designated to commemorate what is known as the “Confession of St. Peter” in January. Jesus comments on the remarkable nature of Peter’s answer when he says that flesh and blood had not revealed this to him, but rather the Father had done this remarkable thing. All of the Bishop’s of Rome have followed in St. Peter’s footsteps with the intention that they would boldly proclaim that statement regarding Jesus’ identity as well.

The Rev. Don Armstrong who is an Anglican priest in Colorado wrote a book which is a compilation of several talks revolving around the topic, “Who do you say that I am?” He chose this as the title of his book because he wanted to play that question off of what many in society and in the church would rather the question to have been. He says that too often we lose track of the question, “Who do you say that I am?” and re-work the language a bit. He says that we have reached a point where the question has been changed to Jesus asking “Who do you want me to be?” There is a fundamental flaw with this wording because in this instance we are no longer starting with God, but with our selves. We become the “master of our own universe” so to speak, and everything begins to spiral out of control from that point forward.

In St. Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians, he stresses this exact same point. Fr. Armstrong’s book could have used our Epistle lesson this morning as his jump-off point because it works in a similar vein. Paul writes that in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself. As we observe many of the battles within the Church today, it sounds to me like we think that God was in Christ reconciling himself to the world. This is a completely backward notion because if that were the case, there would have ultimately been no need for the cross. If God’s intention was to simply make Himself compatible to the world, then the atonement makes absolutely no sense at all. H. Richard Niebuhr summarizes this scenario best when he speaks in the following light as a rebuttal to the liberal gospel which creates, “A God without wrath brought to men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” Former Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple once said that he has always wondered why there was any need to crucify the Jesus of liberal Christianity.

Far too often we hear stories that are complete reversals. Our desire for absolute autonomy and unabated individualism has led to a complete contradiction to Paul’s words when he says that One – Jesus Christ has died for all, and therefore all have died. We no longer live for ourselves, but rather we live for him who died and rose again from the dead.

As followers and disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to live for others. This is the true definition of Christian Charity – the agape love that concerns itself most with the needs of others. For those of you who are married, that is the type of love you promised to exhibit in the vows you made to your spouse. For those of you who are parents, that’s the kind of love we show to our children. For those of us who has a neighbor who is in need, or suffering, or despondent, that is the kind of love we are called to show to them.

Paul goes on to admonish the Corinthian Church to be Christ’s ambassadors to the outside world. Today, some are called to be ambassadors of Christ to those on the inside as well. We have an immense responsibility to communicate the love of Christ to everyone we come in contact with.

One of the greatest obstacles for many to believe the message of the Gospel is very nature of sin, and evil, and suffering in the world. How could an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful, all-merciful God permit the things we see on television every day to go on? What are we to make of the rampant sin that confronts us each day? Someone made the assertion that sin should be the one doctrine of the church that absolutely everyone must believe in because they need only open their eyes to the world in which we live. The last sentence from our Epistle this morning bears some incredible light on those very pertinent questions.

Paul says that, “for our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Right off the bat, we hear why the cross had to happen. It was for our sake. God was not going to let us, his creatures who had marred and completely stained his glorious and good creation wallow in the mess we had made for ourselves. Jesus didn’t just save us from our sin, He became sin. Do we really comprehend the magnitude of that statement? Jesus actually became sin. No he didn’t succumb to sin, or engage in sin, but rather, what he did for our sake and on our behalf was become the complete antithesis of God’s goodness, mercy, and righteousness. He bore the image of what God was not on the hard wood of the cross, and He did it for you and for me.

One of Jesus’ last words from the cross were the first few of Psalm 22. Jesus proclaims, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Dr. Ravi Zacharias once said that Jesus uttered those words from the cross so that we would never have to! I think he’s spot on in that regard. I believe at that moment, God was unable to bear to gaze upon and see what his creation looked like that had so completely turned in upon itself. The Son was bearing upon his shoulders the weight of a world which basically was saying, God, we have no need of you.

That’s the story of the Tower of Babel from Genesis. The people had a common language and had determined that they were going to make a name for themselves apart from God based upon their works and deeds. They were attempting to create a world for themselves devoid of a need for God. In many respects, with our common language of the interconnectedness and the Internet, we might just be doing the exact same thing all over again.

This passage from II Corinthians speaks about a concept that we are called to engage every day of our lives. We are to seek reconciliation with our fellow man. Our exhortation before the Confession of Sin is a statement of that desire. We are to be in love and charity with our neighbor in order that we might make a holy confession and present ourselves in an acceptable manner in order that we might worthily receive the Blessed Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood. This phrase is repeated every week so that our being reconciled to God and our admonition to be reconciled to one another might be constantly before us.

Reconciliation is not a compromise – especially in matters of the Truth of the Christian Faith.

Reconciliation is not simply a consensus of all options

Reconciliation is not a “why can’t we all just get along” mentality

Reconciliation only happens in Christ. Reconciliation only happens when we all believe that we share a common bond with all of mankind that we are sinners in need of redemption, change of heart, and amendment of life. Reconciliation only happens through a person – Jesus Christ. Through the person who bore all of the sins I have ever committed or ever will commit on the cross in order that I might become the righteousness of God.

He doesn’t say that we already are the righteousness of God, but rather that we might someday become that righteousness. In theological terms, that is what we refer to as sanctification. As God’s creatures that have a part of our Creator in us, we are to bear the image of our Holy Father to all the world. There is only one time where an adjective is used three times in succession to refer to its noun modifier, and it happens right here. We worship a God who is Holy, Holy, Holy. That threefold repetition is there as a hyper-descriptor. If that is the image of the God we worship and serve should we not strive to look more like that each and every day of our lives? We have seen the source of that holiness – we come to meet him again in the Blessed Sacrament. Our lives as Christ’s ambassadors is to live in that light, so that others might see it and come to live in it as well.

Sermon for Trinity I - Proper 6B
June 14, 2009
All Saints' - Thomasville

This morning’s Gospel lesson we heard two different parables of Jesus in which he describes the Kingdom of God. The first parable speaks of our inability to understand or comprehend the fact that so much of the Providence of God and the in breaking of His Kingdom is so far removed from us, that we merely see the manifestation of most of it in our lives, and that so much of it happens well beyond our control.

The second parable presents us with one of the two different instances where our Lord uses a mustard seed as a descriptor of something larger he wants his hearers to comprehend. In our passage today, the mustard seed is compared to the Kingdom of God and the other is a reference the mustard seed describes the size of our faith. It seems like the phrase we hear more often speaks of mustard seed size faith; I don’t recall hearing many references or stories about the Kingdom of God being compared to a mustard seed, but Jesus makes that very comparison in Mark’s gospel this morning.

The first parable about the seed growing secretly is particular only to Mark, and the parable of the mustard seed appears in all three synoptic gospels. This is significant because Jesus uses parables quite a bit in His ministry and in the almost 40 parables recorded in Scripture only 3 of those are found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Certainly when this occurs within the Gospel record, there is usually a peculiarity within one of the accounts that provides a particular insight or emphasis which bears further examination.

The Markan version of the mustard seed parable is no exception. For the most part, the three accounts are identical. Luke’s version is slightly different from both Matthew and Mark, but I will save that difference for next year when the Lukan version of this parable comes up in the Lectionary. However, the point of difference between Mark and both Matthew and Luke occurs at the very end of the passage. All three speak of the birds being able to make their nests, but Mark adds one detail that I find quite interesting. Matthew and Luke speak of the nests being made in the trees branches. Mark says that the birds are able to make their nests in its shade.

Some might think that that is a very minor detail and really quite insignificant. However, if you look at the parable as a whole and some of the other Biblical references to shade, I think that Mark is doing something very interesting here.

For example, in the book of Ezekiel we find the parable of the Eagles and the Vine. The political future of Judah is explained in fable-like form, and we hear the following words from the prophet:

"Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will also take of the highest branch of the high cedar, and will set it; I will crop off from the top of his young twigs a tender one, and will plant it upon an high mountain and eminent: In the mountain of the height of Israel will I plant it: and it shall bring forth boughs, and bear fruit, and be a goodly cedar: and under it shall dwell all fowl of every wing; in the shadow of the branches thereof shall they dwell" (Ez. 17:22-23).

Certainly some of Jesus’ hearers would have caught this comparison, and realized that the message from Ezekiel sounded remarkably allot like what they were now hearing. Even though there is almost 600 years between these two messages the main point of both is identical. In the Kingdom of God, true shade, true rest, true comfort comes when we dwell and make our home in God’s loving embrace. In Ezekiel’s day, he was speaking about a time to come, Jesus was telling his hearers that the time was now.

Think too about the story of Jonah. Jonah is sitting on the outskirts of Ninevah and is whining and moaning that the people of actually heeded his warnings, listened to his prophesies, repented of their sins, and turned to the Lord. God sends a great gourd which grows up in a night to give him shelter or shade from the scorching sun. Jonah is thankful for this gift from God, but if you remember the story, the next day God sends a worm which attacks the gourd and it withers and dies, and Jonah now mourns the loss of his shade. He is so distraught that he prays to God that he might die for he says that would be better than continuing to live. God’s response sounds strikingly similar to the first parable from this morning’s Gospel. God says to Jonah, “Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night” (Jonah 4:10). Jesus is stressing in his teaching what Jonah seemed to miss. We can control so little in life, yet we can take great comfort in placing our trust in the One Source that controls everything. The beginning of Psalm 91 anchors this theme with these words: “WHOSO dwelleth under the defence of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say unto the LORD, Thou art my hope, and my stronghold; my God, in him will I trust” (Ps. 91:1-2).

In each of these instances, every time that I mentioned the word shade or shadow, the same word that is peculiar to Mark’s rendering of the parable of the mustard seed is found in these Old Testament references as well. The service of Compline has as one of its responses, “Hide me under the shadow of thy wings.” In all these cases, we are seeking to find our home and abode in God.

Both of these parables have very practical applications for us today. I’m sure many of us are concerned about the financial stability and well-being of our country; we are worried about the violent outbreaks both at home and abroad; we are concerned about our Church and the attacks on the Truth from within and without; we fear what it will be like to wake up the morning after losing a spouse, or sibling, or parent, or child. These emotions are real, they are not without grounds. One of the things that make them real is the power we can allow them to have, and how they can grip us almost to the point of paralysis. However, I believe what Jesus wants us to hear today is that much of what we fear is what we cannot control. Many of the things which concern us the most are things that God is begging us to turn over to Him so that we might face them with His guidance and judgment.

20th Century Protestant Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote one of the most famous prayers of the modern age, The Serenity Prayer. I’m sure that most of you know the abbreviated form of this beautiful prayer, but I want you to hear the full version of this prayer.

"God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen."


I wish to close with a portion of a homily delivered by Peter Chrysologus on the parable of the mustard seed. If that name is unfamiliar to you, I’ll have to admit it was unfamiliar to me as well until this past week. He was a man who lived in the 4th and 5th Centuries, and served as Bishop of Ravenna in Italy for roughly 17 years. He was known as the “Doctor of Homilies” because of his short but thought provoking talks. Pope Leo XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1729 and his Feast Day is celebrated in the Roman Church on July 30.

God desires that we sow the seeds of the Kingdom in our hearts so that we might find rest for ourselves, and then in turn, sow those same seeds with others. Jesus’ ultimate goal was to seek and to save that which was lost. We were once lost, and have now been found. Our calling is point others to Christ Jesus our Lord so that they might find rest in the shade that God provides.

"It is up to us to sow this mustard seed in our minds and let it grow within us into a great tree of understanding reaching up to heaven and elevating all our faculties; then it will spread out branches of knowledge, the pungent savor of its fruit will make our mouths burn, its fiery kernel will kindle a blaze within us inflaming our hearts, and the taste of it will dispel our unenlightened repugnance. Yes, it is true: a mustard seed is indeed an image of the kingdom of God. Christ is the kingdom of heaven. Sown like a mustard seed in the garden of the virgin’s womb, he grew up into the tree of the cross whose branches stretch across the world. Crushed in the mortar of the passion, its fruit has produced seasoning enough for the flavoring and preservation of every living creature with which it comes in contact. As long as a mustard seed remains intact, its properties lie dormant; but when it is crushed they are exceedingly evident. So it was with Christ; he chose to have his power concealed….Christ became all things in order to restore all of us in himself. The man Christ received the mustard seed which represents the kingdom of God; as man he received it, though as God he had always possessed it. He sowed it in his garden, that is in his bride, the Church. The Church is a garden extending over the whole world, tilled by the plough of the gospel, fenced in by stakes of doctrine and discipline, cleared of every harmful weed by the labor of the apostles, fragrant and lovely with perennial flowers: virgin’s lilies and martyr’s roses set amid the pleasant verdure of all who bear witness to Christ and the tender plants of all who have faith in him. Such then is the mustard seed which Christ sowed in his garden. When he promised a kingdom to the patriarchs, the seed took root in them, with the prophets it sprang up; with the apostles it grew tall; in the Church it became a great tree putting forth innumerable branches laden with gifts. And now you too must take the wings of the psalmist’s dove, gleaming gold in the rays of divine sunlight, and fly to rest for ever among those sturdy, fruitful branches. No snares are set to trap you there; fly off, then, with confidence and dwell secure in its shelter."

Citations available upon request

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Easter
All Saints' Church
5/17/09

I’m not sure how many of you caught the number of times the word “love” or one of its cognates appeared in our Collect, Epistle, and Gospel this morning, but the actual number was 41 times. When a word appears that many times over, one might begin to think that the author is trying to get across a particular point, and in fact, this is clearly the case. Also, one might think when something like this comes up for a preacher it would be natural to think that the sermon would revolve around this one word, and that is partially true this morning. Yes, I am going to speak about God’s love toward us, our love towards God and the completion of that trinity of ideas, our love toward mankind. However, one point that I want to weave into this sermon is something that might get lost when we examine passages such as these.

In addition to the 41 times that love appears in the Propers for the day, another theme, a bit more subtle comes through and that is the notion of perfection, completeness, or fullness. One of God’s promises to us is that we are inheritors of something larger, more grand, more glorious, more spectacular than we can ever imagine. The collect this morning solidifies that thought twice over when the opening petition declares that God has prepared good things that surpass all of our understanding for those who love Him. We also receive the assurance that what we are to obtain exceeds everything that we could ever want or desire. One of the joys of knowing what lies ahead is the freedom that it allows us here and now. Baptist minister John Piper once said, “…don't make the mistake of thinking that future-oriented, future-sustained joy limits present usefulness. It doesn't limit it. It liberates it. If your future is glorious and sure (which it is in Christ!), you don't live for money or power or fame. You don't have to grasp and snatch and chase pleasures that are slipping through your aging fingers. You are free to live for others now. You are free to be another kind of person than the kind that lives for this world. If your hope is glorious and sure, you will seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other basic things will be added to you (Matthew 6:33). Your love will be genuine. It will be radical, risk-taking, sacrificial because of the joy set before you.”

John makes an important link between love and perfection in our Epistle lesson. Twice he speaks of love being perfected, and I think the critical piece is the manner in which this happens. In both cases, the only way that the love of God within us is perfected is when it pertains to our love toward others. Certainly the first piece is that we love God, but John makes it clear that the only way that love is made perfect is if we share it. Personal piety is wonderful, but if it doesn’t manifest itself toward others, then it is incomplete and imperfect.

The other time in this morning’s Epistle that John uses the word perfect is in relation to fear. We are living in fearful times. In worldly terms, there is more uncertainty, more apprehension, more hopelessness than seemingly ever before. Just this past Thursday and Friday, General Motors and Chrysler Corporation announced that they would not be renewing the franchise agreements with over 2,000 car dealerships. We’ve been hearing stories such as these for months now. Everyone in this church this morning who had saved for the future in the Stock Market has noticeably less than they did two years ago. We are sending forth from our parish three young people who have completed their High School education, and have a future that lies ahead of them. Are we sending them forth fearful, or hopeful? How should we be sending them forth?

St. John is not giving us some nice platitudes to rest our fears upon when he writes, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth our fear; because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” How do we flesh out these words? When things begin to collapse around us, how do we put these words into practice?

The message of the Bible is a constant reminder that we are called to be radically reoriented toward God, and all that He gives us. Far too often our hopes and sense of security rest in the things of this world, and as we know all too realistically those things are temporal, and can never provide us perfect security. Our true freedom comes when we can truly grasp that all that we have has been given to us on loan from God.

Job understood this completely when everything was taken from him. When the messengers reported to Job that his flocks, his servants, his home, and his children had all been destroyed, Scripture says that, “Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.” I can assure you with 100% confidence that when my IRA statements come in over the past year and a half, the last thing I’ve done is worship, or declare “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” I can think of other thoughts going through my head, but words of thanksgiving were not some of them.

That’s because in that instance I’ve gotten my priorities wrong. Rather than being thankful for what I still have I cursed what I had lost. And yet, I’ve still never lost what’s truly important, what’s perfect, and will ultimately last forever!

Again, this is all a part of reorientation, and changing our mindset toward that which is perfect.

Jesus’ words as recorded in John’s Gospel this morning continue to push us toward a type of love that seems so foreign and incredibly challenging – which of course, it is. One of the attributes that Jesus speaks about is completeness and being made whole and full. The text says, “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” Even at the end of his life, Jesus is establishing a foundation that we are intended to build our lives upon. He is making clear that his desire is that the joy that He already knows and embodies might remain with us forever, so that we might taste and see that joy as well. And He doesn’t just want it to be enough to get by, he wants it to be full and complete. The word that Jesus uses here when he speaks of our joy being full has the connotation of “bringing to completion that which was already begun.” There is a sense of that fullness being the end-result or consummation of something that lies outside of ourselves – which in fact it really is.

All this discussion of perfection and being made perfect and our joy being full and complete brings me ultimately, and as it rightfully should, back to the cross. If we think back to the readings for Holy Week when we hear again the words of our Lord from the cross, the last word that Jesus speaks tie all of this together. John is the only Gospel writer to record the one word in Greek which is normally translated, “It is finished.” The curious thing about that word in Greek is its remarkable similarity to the words John uses in our lesson this morning which speaks about love being perfected in us. It is no stretch at all to render the words of Jesus from the cross as “It is perfected” as easily as it would be to translate them “It is completed” or “It is accomplished.” All of those possibilities are available, and look what light that sheds on our texts this morning.

Jesus’ work on the cross is what makes all of this possible. The love that Jesus exhibited when he shed his blood, died in our stead, and bore our sins brings everything back to perfection. Our Lenten journey a few months ago began with the words, “Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made.” We pray those same words in the third collect for Good Friday as well. The fingerprints of perfection are still there underneath all of the dirt, grit, and grime that we’ve heaped on through our manifold sin and wickedness. Thanks be to God that at the last judgment, God will see us not by what we done and left imperfect, but rather through the perfection of the work of His Son.

I’m not sure where I heard this, but it certainly makes sense. A person was asked how he would define Heaven and Hell, and he answered with the following words, “My idea of Hell is spending eternity face-to-face with God. My idea of Heaven is spending eternity face-to-face with God with Jesus standing in between.” I hope you see the difference.

We are left with the charge and mandate to embody and live out what we have heard this morning. We are called to take that joy that we have received from Jesus Christ and not bottle it up, and hoard it for ourselves, but allow it to permeate all that we say or do. The only natural response to that type of love is to give thanks to God for that gift through our worship of Him, and then share it with others.

Then, and only then can we truly know what it means to have his love perfected in us, to comprehend the notion that perfect love casts out all fear, and that what God has given us is intended to fill us to overflowing. I leave you with a rhetorical question that I hope you will truly ponder – both as you approach this altar to receive the Blessed Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood, and as you depart from this service this morning:

What would the world begin to look like if we received this love to the fullest, and then shared it with our fellow man each and every day of our lives?

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday After Easter
All Saints' Church - Thomasville, GA
5/10/09

I’m sure that many of you are fans of C.S. Lewis, and his classic work, The Chronicles of Narnia. With the Hollywood release of both, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, Lewis’ fiction has become more accessible these days, and I imagine is attracting new readers to the other works in the 7 volume set. One of the lesser known volumes of the Chronicles is book four, The Silver Chair. I’ll have to admit this is one that I have not made it through completely, but I’ve started reading it many times over. In light of this morning’s collect and 2nd lesson from the 14th Chapter of St. John’s Gospel, the beginning of The Silver Chair serves as a wonderful tandem to what we have heard in our service this morning.

The book opens with a new character Jill Pole and one we met in the previous book named Eustace Clarence Scrubb. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lewis’ first sentence of the book begins with these lines, “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” Scrubb had been to Narnia before, but Jill had not, and the two enter Narnia as they are being chased by bullies, and seek solace behind a door in the high stone wall that led to an open moor on the other side. While normally locked, the two children discover to their amazement that the door is unlocked and upon going through the opening find themselves not in the moor, but in a strange new land.

It is in this strange new land that Jill comes face-to-face with the great lion – Aslan. Of course, Jill has no idea what to make of this creature, but throughout her ordeal of entering Narnia, she becomes aware of her dire thirst, and begins to search diligently for the source of the one sound that permeated her new surroundings – the sound of running water. As she emerges from an opening in the woods, her eyes confirm the sounds in her ears. She spots a stream “bright as glass, running across the turf a stone’s throw away from her. But although the sight of the water made her feel ten times thirstier than before, she didn’t rush forward and drink. She stood as still as if she had been turned into stone, with her mouth wide open. And she had a very good reason; just on this side of the stream lay the lion.”

If coming up to the stream and finding the lion sitting there wasn’t enough, the lion begins to speak to her, and bids her to come and drink if she is thirsty.

“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.
“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the Lion.
“May I – could I – would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.
The lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at his motionless bulk, she realized she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.
The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
“Will you promise not to – do anything to me if I do come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.
“Do you eat girls?” she said.
“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

The passage we heard from John’s Gospel this morning is part of a section known as Jesus’ Farewell Discourse. These four chapters contain the sayings of Jesus that do not appear anywhere else in the Gospels. Our collect for today brings in a line from the 14th chapter that directly precedes our passage regarding the promise of the Holy Ghost. Jesus has just told his disciples that he is going to prepare a room for them in His Father’s house which contains many rooms. He tells them that they know the way where He is going, to which Thomas declares, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus then replies with the line we heard in our collect this morning, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.”

On this Mother’s Day, I think it is meet and right that we should celebrate and remember one of the great mothers of all time. It is a joy to examine the life of someone who wanted nothing more for her son than for him to embrace the joy and love of the source of light and life in the person of Jesus Christ; someone who lived and truly believed that Jesus was the Way, the Truth, and the Life. St. Monica was the mother of one of the greatest theologians of the Western Church, and clearly the foremost voice of Orthodox Christianity in the first millennium AD – I speak of course of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo.

However, Augustine’s life as a follower of Jesus Christ was later coming, and his early life was a source of great turmoil and distress for his dear mother. Monica spent countless hours in prayer and fasting for her son, and earnestly longed for his conversion to Christianity. She was grieved over the fact that he had fallen into the clutches of the cult-like heretical group known as the Manichees. Her grief was so profound that she would actually weep over his sins. One kind bishop assured her one day saying for her to depart in peace, and know that, “it is not possible that the son of so many tears should perish.” Certainly we all want the best for our children, and I’m sure that many of us have shed many tears on behalf of our beloved children. However, it is a most profound sort of love that Augustine’s mother would shed so many tears and with such frequency over her eldest son that he might come to know and embrace the joy of salvation through Jesus Christ alone.

Monica had a keen understanding of the love of Christ, and went about showing that love to her family. She was the wife of a pagan man, who shortly before his death converted to Christianity. Knowing that her husband died a believer, she spent the remainder of her life praying for the conversion of her son. She had experienced the power that comes from knowing that you are redeemed and cleansed through Christ’s shed blood. She wanted that same experience for Augustine. Thankfully for the Church, Monica and Augustine came under the pastoral care of St. Ambrose of Milan, and he was baptized in 387 AD, the same year his mother died.

This past Monday was the fixed date on the Church Kalendar when we commemorate Monica’s Feast date. Our tradition is steeped in the observance of the various feasts and fasts of the church year, and it is a wonderful occasion to remember a mother as grand as Monica on Mother’s Day. Her devotion to her Lord is a testimony to us all, and even in her dying days, she was never far from her Saviour.

Augustine and one of his brothers were planning a trip back to the northern shores of Africa from Milan when Monica fell ill. She had a vision in a state of semi-consciousness where she told her sons that they would have to bury her there. They were terribly grieved that they would not be able to give her a proper burial at home, but her response shows the depth of her love for God. She told the brothers, “It does not matter where you bury my body. Do not let that worry you. All I ask of you is that, wherever you may be, you should remember me at the altar of the Lord.” She was asked if she was fearful of leaving her body in an alien land, and she replied with these words, “Nothing is far from God, and I need have no fear that he will not know where to find me, when he comes to raise me to life at the end of the world.”

St. Monica was truly a mother whose concerns lay outside of her. She was always wishing for the salvation of her family, and she was able to die in peace knowing that both her husband and son Augustine died with their salvation secure. She knew at the deepest levels that salvation came through one source – Jesus Christ. She took to heart the passage from St. John’s Gospel that Jesus is the only way, the only truth, and the only source of life; she wanted others to experience that same reality as well.

After Jill drinks from the stream and receives the most refreshing water she had ever tasted, the great lion explains to her some of the great mysteries of Narnia, and why she was brought there. She thought that there had been some big mistake, and that she had been confused with someone else. Aslan bids her to speak her thoughts, and she says the following words, “I was wondering – I mean – could there be some mistake? Because nobody called me and Scrubb, you know. It was we who asked to come here. Scrubb said we were to call to – to Somebody – it was a name I wouldn’t know – and perhaps the Somebody would let us in. And we did, and then we found the door open.”
“You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,” said the Lion.

Jesus told his disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”

Jesus chose each one of us for His special purpose, to bear witness to Him, to be bearers of the Fruit of the Spirit. As we heard in John’s Gospel, we were promised, and have received the Holy Spirit as our Counselor, Advocate, Guide, and Comforter. He dwells within us, empowering us for the work that we have been given to do. He dwells within us so that we might be faithful mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, children, employees, students, and friends. He dwells within us so that we might know with all assurance and certainty that when we sin and fall short of God’s glory, that our forgiveness is guaranteed when we seek God’s mercy and pardon. He dwells within us so that He might guide and direct us as we seek to conform our lives and wills into the image of our Heavenly Father. He dwells within us so that the love that abides within the Three Persons of the Holy and Blessed Trinity might abide in us as well; that we might let that love shine forth in our lives, so that others might see it and be drawn into that love as well – that they might know Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and proclaim Him as their Lord and Saviour.

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

Sermon for Lent IV
All Saints' - Thomasville, GA
March 22, 2009

*****Note, this sermon is much shorter than normal since it was preached within the context of an instructed Eucharist.


There are a number of instances when reading the Scriptures that a particular sentence, phrase, detail leaves you puzzled, and almost begging the question, “Why did the author include that?” In this morning’s Gospel lesson, I wondered about the phrase, “Now there was much grass in the place.” Most of the time I would probably glance right over something as seemingly insignificant as John’s detail about the terrain. A phrase that appears out of place like noting that it was sunny outside, the flowers smelled nice, or the birds were singing a lovely tune. However, I believe there is more here than meets the eye.

Certainly, I believe that the comment is a description of the area where the miraculous feeding of the 5,000 would take place. John is trying to paint a mental picture that there is in fact enough room for a mass of people to assemble and sit down as the story explains.

However, if we dig a little deeper I believe there is something else behind those brief words. One of the great I AM statements in John’s gospel speaks about Jesus being the Good Shepherd. One of the attributes of Jesus the Good Shepherd is that he leads his sheep out and goes before them leading them as the 23rd Psalm says, “beside the waters of comfort…[to] feed in green pasture[s].” The people who were following Jesus that day were being fed by the words that he spoke to them, and would then be filled physically as well. Of course the physical need for food was merely temporal, but the words that Jesus spoke were true bread and met their spiritual needs, which of course are the things eternal. They were in just the right place to receive this nourishment because the Good Shepherd had led them to a field with much grass. The environment was perfect, and I believe that John is conveying that detail when he mentions that there is much grass in the place.

As we sit here this morning, we too are in a place with much grass. A place where we were led by the Good Shepherd to receive nourishment in the form of Christ’s Body and Blood. Like the feeding of the 5,000, what seems like a woefully insignificant thing, the receiving of a small wafer of bread and a sip of wine is transformed into the most significant thing we can ever do. As St. Paul told the Corinthian church, “For as often as we eat this bread, and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

With the most remarkable of twists, and through God’s divine Providence, the Good Shepherd who leads us into green pastures where there is much grass, becomes the true Lamb, which was slain so that we might taste death no more. It is not grass that we are to feed upon, but Christ Himself.

When we gather together to celebrate the Holy Communion, we come to another miraculous feeding. No, we are not seeking to multiply loaves and fishes on the altar. Rather, we pray that God, through the Holy Spirit, might transform the gifts of bread and wine into the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. That He might so change that which seems so small, into something that surpasses everything we could ever imagine. That we through faith might worthily receive the greatest gift that has ever been given. And, that as we offer our selves, our souls, and bodies as a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice we seek God’s nourishment that we might be forever changed, and transformed.

Part of our life-long journey is the process of sanctification or being made holy. We bear God’s image and we were created in His likeness. Receiving Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is a critical component of our sanctification as we strive to live out the last line of the Prayer of Humble Access in which we pray that we may evermore dwell in Christ as He does in us.

Jesus told his disciples as He ascended to the Father that He would be with them always. He made that promise to us as well. Behold there is much grass in this place and the Good Shepherd has led to a pasture where he has promised to be truly present.

Sermon for Quinquagesima Sunday
All Saints’ – Thomasville
February 22, 2009

One of the rhythms of the Christian life is the marking of time. The monastics and early Christians lived a very simple and yet structured life using set cycles of prayer mapping out the hours of the day and months of the year in a quite orderly fashion. Many communities strictly adhered to the seven liturgies of the Divine Office each and every day. Our service of Morning Prayer stems from the ancient service of Matins and Evening Prayer is an adaptation of the service of Vespers.

We have now arrived at one of those junction points in our Church Kalendar as we move from Epiphany into the season of Lent. As Fr. Buechner explained two weeks ago, we’ve made the soft transition from Epiphany to the “gesima” Sundays known as Pre-Lent in preparation of the forty intentional days of Lenten Season. This is the time when we are especially called upon to take time to inventory our Spiritual health and seek God’s wisdom to open our eyes to those places where we need to make a change or strive to amend our lives.

The two stories from this morning’s Gospel speak to that very issue of blindness. The first is in a figurative sense and the other in a quite literal. It seems most fitting that we would hear these two stories from Luke together with the passage on love from I Cor. 13 as we begin the Lenten Season.

One of the things that I find most comforting when I read a passage like this one is that I am allowed to see the disciples as they truly were – confused, blinded by their own belief regarding who the Messiah was supposed to be, and generally speaking – clueless. The reason I say that is because the words of Scripture do not paint them as supermen, and yet, they were the ones who “have turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). This was the third time that Jesus explained to his disciples that he was heading toward Jerusalem in order to face death at the hands of the Gentiles where he will be mocked, scourged, treated spitefully, eventually crucified. This was the third time that they really had no idea what he was talking about. If you remember, it was after the first Passion prediction that Jesus had to rebuke Peter and cry out for Satan to get behind him. I should say that the disciples were blind yet again.

However, this was not at all the type of Messiah they were expecting. They knew the Psalms, and they knew the Prophets. The Messiah was supposed to set captives free. This meant kicking the Romans out of Jerusalem and living in the Promised Land not as slaves, but as a free Hebrew nation. Isaiah proclaimed that the Promised One was going to sit on David’s throne and there would be peace which had no end, and he would rule with justice and righteousness. Of course they lived a few centuries before Handel, but basically, they had the lyrics of Messiah in their heads, and what Jesus was saying did not square with what they were thinking. They had their idea of how things should play out, and unfortunately, it did not exactly square with God’s.

I’ve heard it said before that if you ever want to give God a chuckle, just tell him the plans that you have set for your life. C. S. Lewis once said that there are two types of people in the world, those who say to God, Thy will be done, and another group that God will say to them, thy will be done, and if Hell has a theme song that will be played over the loudspeaker it will be “I did it my way!”

The disciples have heard the same story now three times over and they still do not understand. The eyes of their heart were blind to the revelation of Jesus and the road He had to travel. The only way that the crown of glory could be won was through the cross. Every day of Jesus’ ministry took him one step closer to Golgotha, and Lent is a time to bring that point into focus, and meditate more deeply upon the Cross of Christ.

The story of the disciple’s blindness is now set in contrast with a blind beggar near Jericho. Jesus is making his final trip toward Jerusalem and his route took him through this city. As was the custom of those who suffered from diseases or other afflictions, they would sit along the main road into town and beg for alms from those who passed by. Most likely, the man we encounter in this morning’s story would have been one of the many people whose entire livelihood depended upon the charity of others. As we hear from our lesson, the traffic along the road where he sat had increased greatly, and the man enquires of someone as to what the commotion is all about. The person replies that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.

I mentioned earlier that the disciples had it in their minds that the Messiah was going to sit on David’s throne and one day rule as King. If you look again at the text from this morning’s lesson from Luke, notice the title the blind man uses to refer to Jesus. He does not call him Jesus of Nazareth, or use a formal title such as Lord or Teacher or Rabbi, but rather, he calls him Son of David. By using this title, the blind man truly sees Jesus for who he is, and the disciples are blind to this fact.

There is no way to know how the blind man knew who Jesus was, but we simply know that he cried out to the Messiah for mercy, and that is exactly what he received. Twice the man calls out to Jesus not for alms, but for the Lord’s mercy. He cries out the first time to try and get Jesus’ attention, but the second cry is quite distinct and significantly more emphatic. The words used are different and the second cry for mercy as William Barclay states, is one of “ungovernable emotion, a scream, an almost animal cry. The word well shows the utter desperation of the man.”

This man wasn’t crying out just because of his physical blindness, he recognized his total blindness. He recognized that his physical condition was truly the epitome of the human condition. We are in need of mercy, and Jesus is the one and only source of that mercy. When Jesus stops and asks the man what he would have him do for him, the blind man asks to receive his sight. With only a few words spoken, the man received his sight and Jesus tells him that his faith saved him.

His faith saved him. Why that phrase? I believe that Jesus is intentionally giving the double meaning of the word which means save. Certainly in this context of physical blindness, the man is saved from a life of darkness in which he had lived prior to Jesus’ arrival. More than that his soul is saved from eternal darkness, and it is the man’s faith in believing that Jesus truly was the only source of mercy and healing that made the difference. The blind man made the leap that the disciples were unable to make until Easter and ultimately Pentecost.

Jesus knew where the road he was on ultimately led – the cross, and all of the darkness that it entailed. However, the only way in which we might live as a redeemed people, ones who could again live in harmony with God, is if Jesus paid the atoning sacrifice for our sins once and for all. The only way that we could strive to be holy as Christ is holy is for this to happen. Anglican preacher and theologian John Stott speaks of about this quite clearly in his Message on Romans:

“Crucifixion and holiness. There are, in fact, two quite distinct ways in which the New Testament speaks of crucifixion in relation to holiness. The first is our death to sin through identification with Christ; the second is our death to self through imitation of Christ. On the one hand, we have been crucified with Christ. But on the other we have crucified (decisively repudiated) our sinful nature with all its desires, so that every day we renew this attitude by taking up our cross and following Christ to crucifixion (Lk. 9:23). The first is a legal death, a death to the penalty of sin; the second is a moral death, a death to the power of sin. The first belongs to the past, and is unique and unrepeatable; the second belongs to the present, and is repeatable, even continuous. I died to sin (in Christ) once; I die to self (like Christ) daily.”

It is this second aspect of crucifixion and holiness that is ours to focus on this Lent. Let not our blindness hinder our ability to see that this is the road that leads to holiness and ultimately leads to life. Let our cry to Jesus be one in which we say with every fiber of our being and in a spirit of true humility, son of David, have mercy on me. Let his reply echo the words spoken to the blind man outside of Jericho, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee.

Sermon Preached for Epiphany VI
St. Andrew's - Douglas, GA
February 15, 2009

John, you aren’t going to believe what I just heard. There is a rumor going all around Galilee that this miraculous healer is traveling about, and he might just be coming to town. I’m not really sure what to think about this man because the rumors are flying. Supposedly he cast a demon out of this one fellow, and before he did, the demon called him the Holy One of God. Very strange to say the least.

I also heard that he went to the house of a couple of his followers, and one of the fellow’s mother-in-law was in bed with a terrible fever. He simply lifted her up by the hand and the fever left her and she began to go about doing her normal chores as if nothing was wrong. After that, everyone in town who had a disease, and those who suffered from demons came to him and they were all healed. Do you think that he might help you?

I could only imagine what was going through John’s mind upon hearing this news. For as long as he could remember, he had lived as an outcast. He was forced to wear torn clothing, had to shave his hair, live alone outside the camp, and constantly walked around shouting the same words over and over and over, “Unclean, Unclean.” I can’t comprehend the mental trauma associated with having to call out to each and every person you come in contact with to stay away from me lest you come too close. It wasn’t just a skin disease because you completely embodied the disease. Not only was the skin unclean, I’m sure that psychologically John felt that every fiber of his being was unclean. In a literal sense, John was a dead man walking. The most dreaded of these diseases caused the body to decay and die while the person was still living – if you consider that person’s existence living. Yet, John’s friend has just given him the first glimmer of hope he has ever experienced in his life.

Could things be about to change? Is it possible that this faith healer, this miracle worker might actually come close enough to my town to where I might actually get a chance to see him? But how is that going to be possible – I can’t get too close because he’s clean, and I’m not. Are there going to be crowds following him? I can’t worry about those things, all I can do is believe that this is my chance – this is only way that I might be rid of this dreadful disease.

And so, just as he heard, John sees a crowd coming into town. Tons of people he’d never seen in his life, and this one unassuming figure in the middle. It had to be him. This has to be the man that I heard was coming to town.

Should I run up to him? I certainly don’t want to accidentally defile someone as I try to get his attention. What should I do? What is he going to say? Can I really do this?

I have no idea if any or all of these thoughts ran through the mind of John. No, we don’t actually know the leper’s name, nor are we privy to any of the thoughts running through his mind as he prepared to meet up with this person he had heard about, and saw coming toward him. All we know are the brief words that are before us this morning. This story appears in almost the exact same form in both Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels, and in all three instances, this miracle occurs at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

There are two points that I want to leave you with this morning concerning the Gospel, and its implications for us in our lives as Christians.

First, it might seem odd for me to say that we are just like the leper. How so? It’s not like anyone here is forced to shave their heads, walk around with torn clothing, having to shout “unclean, unclean” wherever we go. How can we be just like the leper? Because at a much deeper level we share his same condition. His disease affected every part of his body. He was literally dying from the inside out. Because of the disease of sin, we too are dying from the inside out except ours isn’t a skin disease, it’s a soul disease. It permeates every fiber of our being and we are in no way capable of ridding ourselves of it. We are powerless in and of ourselves to help change our condition. In the old Prayer Books in both the services of Morning and Evening Prayer, the General Confession states that “there is no health in us.” It is most unfortunate that that line was dropped from the ’79 Book because it clearly and honestly summarizes the human condition. What we inherited from Adam is something we will take to the grave. On this side of life we will constantly be waging war against the forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

We must emulate and follow the leper’s wise example. We must acknowledge that we are sick, diseased persons in the greatest need of a physician. We must confess that there truly is no health in us, and that sin robs us of life the way it was intended to be lived. When Adam and Eve sinned they were no longer able to live in union and harmony with God because they were now unclean, and forced to live as an outsider. They were forced to live beyond the walls of Eden, forced to wear clothes for the first time, and not literally, but figuratively forced to cry out “unclean, unclean” because their cleanliness was removed from them forever.

This brings me to my second and final point about this lesson. What Jesus did was so remarkable – not because of the healing (which was quite remarkable), but rather his gesture and words to the leper. First, when the leper assumed a posture of humility and knelt down and asked to be healed, Jesus did the unthinkable – he reached out his hand and touched him. There’s no way to know from the story how long the man had leprosy, but we can probably infer that it had been a very long time since he had been touched by ANYONE! He had lived in isolation ever since he was declared to be unclean, and was a prisoner of his own body. With one move, Jesus changed all of that. He reached out and touched him.

What this ultimately means for him, and for us as well, is that Jesus was willing to trade his cleanness for this man’s uncleanness. He was willing to trade places with this man so that he might go free. Jesus at the outset of his ministry is embodying the full substitutionary atonement – that he would give up his life so that we might ultimately live. He made it possible for us to return to the community and experience life lived to its fullest. He made it possible for the man to experience worship again. He made it possible for the man to know what it was like to be touched by another human being again. Jesus did it for this leper and he does it for us as well.

St. Athanasius in his treatise On The Incarnation makes a most profound statement that at first glance almost sounds heretical until you contemplate what he’s getting at, and what he’s ultimately saying. Regarding Jesus and his life Athanasius said that “God became Man so that man might become God.” St. Irenaeus said in his writings Against Heresies makes a similar point when he writes, “the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through his transcendent love, became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.” Neither of these Church Fathers claims that we are assuming divine essence, but rather, through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross we begin truly to live out what it means to be “created in the image and likeness of God.”

Jesus was bearing everything that haunted this leper onto himself in order that he might live the rest of his life free from this dreadful disease. Jesus has born everything onto himself on the hard wood of the cross in order that we might live our lives free curse of the law, and might begin to live our lives as the created beings he intended from the very beginning.

As we draw close to Lent, may we contemplate the story of this leper, who drew near with faith, and asked the Great Physician to heal and cleanse him of his dreadful disease. May we also draw near to the Great Physician and ask him to heal and cleanse us from the dreadful diseases which haunt and curse us as well. For if we cry out to Him with a humble voice, and a contrite heart, we will hear him say to us in reply, “I am willing; be clean!”