Christmastide-Epiphany Sermons, 2001 The Most Rev. John T. Cahoon, Jr. Metropolitan, Anglican Catholic Church Archbishop Ordinary, Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic States Rector, St. Andrew and St. Margaret of Scotland Anglican Catholic Church, Alexandria, Virginia

Epiphany V, February 4, 2001

As far as I can remember, there are two hymns in our hymnal which refer to today's gospel, Christ's parable of the wheat and the tares. One of the hymns is "Come, Ye Thankful People, Come," always our processional at Thanksgiving. The other is "Come, Labor On," a hymn I like to sing, most perversely on the eve of Labor Day.

The parable describes a man who sows good seed in his field, but, while he and the men who work for him are asleep someone else sows weeds there. When the seed begins to grow, and weeds appear along with the good fruit, the farmer tells his laborers, "An enemy hath done this."

When the workers offer to weed the field, the farmer tells them not to, but, instead, to let everything grow until harvest time. Then the weeds will be bundled up to be burned, while the wheat will be stored in the barn for the Winter.

The hymn, "Come, Labor On," is a call to do one's Christian duty at all times. It focuses our attention upon the workers who slept – seemingly in all innocence. The relevant verse reads, "Come, labor on/ The enemy is watching night and day,/ To sow the tares, to snatch the seed away;/ While we in sleep our duty have forgot,/He slumbered not."

So the hymn calls us to vigilance -- to watchfulness. The devil wants to take advantage of every opportunity which will help him get our minds off of God. He wants to distract us from what St. Paul tells us in today's epistle -- that we should do everything we do in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – concentrate always upon trying to do what Christ wants us to do.

When we sleep -- lose our concentration -- get distracted -- the devil moves into the vacuum. Neither the parable nor the hymn counsels literal sleeplessness or perpetual insomnia, but it does recall Jesus' words, "What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch."

"Come, Ye Thankful People, Come" is interested in the whole scope of the parable, rather than with just one detail. It begins by dealing with Jesus' saying that the story of the field tells us the way the kingdom of God is. The verse begins, "All the world is God's own field,/Fruit unto his praise to yield;/Wheat and tares together sown,/Unto joy or sorrow grown."

So the hymn tells us what the parable means overall. Life is a mixture of good things and bad things. The Articles of Religion say, "In the visible Church, the evil be ever mingled with the good." The mixed qualities we perceive in life are just part of how things are.

The verse continues, "First the blade, and then the ear,/Then the full corn shall appear." I need to digress here and tell you about a lovely older woman who was a member of my first parish. One thing that made her memorable was that she loved cats. She liked to reinterpret this verse to read, "First the whisker, then the ear/Then the full cat doth appear."

This last part of the stanza focuses on the ultimate point of the parable. It reads, "Grant, O harvest Lord, that we/Wholesome grain and pure may be." At the end there is going to be a separation between the bad and the good. The tares are going to be burned up, and the wheat is going to be gathered into the barn for safe keeping. We want to end up in the barn and not on the bonfire.

What neither hymn addresses is what seems to me to be the most arresting and curious aspect of the parable. That is that the farmer tells the workmen not to weed the field, but to let the wheat and the weeds grow together until the harvest. Commentaries tell us that the plants Jesus is describing look very much alike, so there is real danger, as the farmer suggests, of confusing the two, and pulling up things that ought to stay.

It seems to me that Jesus is telling us that we are not as good as we think we are when it comes to discerning what is really good and what is really bad. We tend to be very quick to judge – certain that we know what in life ought to be preserved and what deserves to be destroyed.

But the parable suggests that we should not be so certain -- and not be too hasty to act on our imagined certainties. God's overall plan and the working out of his purposes extend far beyond just what we can see in front of our noses.

Even the most rigid people among us will have to admit that life shows us vast areas of gray. We cannot be absolutely sure about the meaning of everything that happens, or the effect of every idea anyone holds, or the final destiny of everyone we butt heads with, and we can't even grasp the contents of our own hearts. The parable suggests, "When in doubt -- and we are more often in doubt than we might like to think – when in doubt, don't weed."

In today's epistle, St. Paul applies the parable to our relationship to other people. He tells us that instead of being quick to weed, we should forgive, put up with what other people do, and strive for peace. We are all members of the same body – we are in this together. If parts of the body are at war with one another, and not in harmony, then the whole body will be affected badly. It is far better to sing hymns together than to quarrel and hold grudges.

He concludes, "Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him." Doing that is the best way to keep our minds off weeding.

The Collect: O LORD, we beseech thee to keep thy Church and household continually in thy true religion; that they who do lean only upon the hope of thy heavenly grace may evermore be defended by thy mighty power; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

The Epistle. Colossians 3: 12 - 17

The Gospel. St. Matthew 13: 24 - 30

Epiphany III, January 21, 2001

People have been setting aside places in which they can worship their gods for as long as we have any history to know about. Abraham set up an altar to God. The Hebrews worshipped God at various shrines before they went wandering around. God lived in a tent while they wandered and afterwards, and he moved into a permanent house around 1000 B.C.

God's house got torn down about four hundred years later. It was rebuilt about a hundred years after that. King Herod the Great fixed it up in the first century B.C., and then the Romans tore it down once and for all in 70 A.D.

It was a peculiarity of the Old Testament Law that it allowed the Jews to worship God fully in only one specific place -- the temple mount in Jerusalem. Once the mount got taken away from them in the first century A.D., the Jews had no access to the only place where they could make the animal sacrifices God's law requires of them. Places of worship matter.

Jesus gets into a weird debate in St. John's gospel with a woman who has been married many times and wants to get the focus of discussion off her sins and onto a less threatening topic. She says, "You Jews worship in Jerusalem, we Samaritans worship on Mt. Gerazim -- I wonder which one of us is right?" Jesus tells her, "We Jews are right, but that isn't going to matter much longer, because the time is coming when all of us are going to be able to worship God anywhere and everywhere -- not just in one specific place."

He was talking about the time after Pentecost -- a time which has extended from about 30 A.D. until now -- a time when God is everywhere and so we can get in contact with him and worship him everywhere -- at all times and in all places.

This is a day on which we can give thanks to God for giving us the inclination and the perseverance to find this place of worship and to make completely our own -- and God's. We can consecrate St. Andrew and St. Margaret of Scotland today because it is paid for.

The years leading up to 1996, during which the congregations were separate, and we had two sets of by-laws and two budgets and two building funds and two different sets of paranoia seem like a dream right now.

We combined the congregations, put the budgets together, moved in, worked to dispel the paranoia, started worshipping, agreed on a set of by-laws, redecorated, and now have paid off the mortgage. That all happened while we continued to pay for all of the things that go on in and flow out of this building -- and all this happened with only a very, very few people leaving. That is a remarkable accomplishment. People here were open to the Holy Ghost's leading. Who could ask for anything more?

Jesus cleanses the temple in this morning's gospel and tries to rid it of the moneychangers who are charging exorbitant exchange rates and the sacrificial animal salesmen who are charging far more than their merchandise is worth.

The cleansing of the temple is not a once and for all matter. Jesus wants to be cleansing our temples all the time -- and I am not talking about hiring a proper cleaning crew. God will continue to bless what we have accomplished for him here as long as we rededicate ourselves continually to do what God wants us to do here -- celebrate the sacraments, preach and teach the Word, help people grow in grace, take care of the poor.

The real and final temple of God is in our hearts. He comes to live inside us by his Spirit when we get baptized. The Christian life is the continual commitment to let Jesus cleanse that temple too -- to let him do his work of cleaning us up and turning us to his Father which makes us proper temples of his Holy Spirit.

Let us ask God to help us look at this great day not as the end of something, but as the glorious new beginning of something more.

The Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, mercifully look upon our infirmities, and in all our dangers and necessities stretch forth thy right hand to help and defend us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Epiphany I, January 7, 2001

Reading from the book of the prophet Malachi: "The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple." The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple. That prophecy was written several centuries before Christ, and it is fulfilled in the New Testament not just once, but several times.

When God first came to earth to stay, he lived in a tent -- the tabernacle the Hebrews carried in the wilderness on their forty-year wanderings. Later on King David asked for permission to build God a permanent house, but God gave that responsibility to David's son King Solomon. The Babylonians destroyed Solomon's temple in the sixth century B.C. It was rebuilt about a century later, refurbished by Herod the Great in the first century B.C., and then destroyed once and for all by the Romans in 70 A.D.

Prophecy indicates that the temple may be rebuilt before the world ends. My Advent reading included a new book by a Israeli journalist which tries to explain how attitudes toward the temple on the part of Christians, Jews, and Moslems affect the so-called "peace process" in the Middle East.

In the New Testament God's first temple, or dwelling-place, is the body of Jesus. The King James Version has St. John saying, "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." The literal meaning of the Greek word translated "dwelt" is "pitched his tent." In Jesus' flesh God tabernacled with us, he pitched his tent among us.

Later on when the Holy Ghost comes down at Pentecost the whole world becomes God's temple. Now he can be worshipped everywhere. Through the sacrament of baptism he takes up residence in the human heart. Our own bodies become temples of the Holy Ghost. Church buildings, especially ones like ours where Christ is present on the altar, are other local manifestations of the fact that God lives among us.

Jesus comes first to the temple in Jerusalem when his parents present him to the Lord on the forty-first day of his life -- an event we commemorate on February 2. He preaches and teaches on the grounds of the temple when he visits Jerusalem during his earthly ministry. He cleanses the temple of its extortionist money-changers and dishonest animal salesmen. He will come to his earthly temple again at the end of the world when he comes again to raise the dead and bring about the final judgment.

Today's gospel lesson is the only information we have about Jesus' life between the flight into Egypt, when he could not have been older than two, and the start of his public ministry when he was about thirty. Jesus comes to the temple at Jerusalem at twelve, and he is manifested there as a precocious young man who seems to have a rather offhanded attitude toward his parents' feelings.

What must it have been like to be the earthly parents of God's son? What must it have been like to have a son who never committed a sin? We have only the sketchiest answers to those tantalizing questions. We know that St. Joseph and St. Mary did the normal Jewish things for Jesus. They had him circumcised, and they presented him in the temple as the law required.

Today's gospel tells us that they went to Jerusalem from their home in Galilee every year at Passover. That was an obligation on Jews who could possibly make the trip. They seemed to travel from Nazareth in a large group. As Joseph and Mary traveled home, they were sure Jesus was somewhere in the group. After a day, they realized he was not, and they went back to Jerusalem in a panic to look for him.

They found him in the temple, where he was astonishing the rabbis with his ability to debate the Hebrew Bible. When St. Mary asked him why he had treated them so badly and forced her and St. Joseph to search for him in desperation, he replied, "What's the big deal? Didn't you realize that I had to be doing my father's business in my father's house?'

St. Luke tells us that they were puzzled by what he said. He did go back home with them and obeyed them as he grew up. But the Virgin, who was one of St. Luke's main sources of information, never forgot what had happened in the temple when he was twelve.

This story marks the turning point in Jesus' understanding of himself and his mission. There is no doubt now that he knows that he is really the Son of God, and that he has come to earth to do what his Father wants him to do. But instead of going away to study, he prepares himself for his ministry by staying in Joseph's house, learning his foster father's trade and studying the Hebrew Bible.

Jesus comes to the temple not only to debate his elders. He comes to remind himself and us that his ultimate mission on earth is to sacrifice himself to forgive our sins, just as Hebrew priests sacrificed animals as sin-offerings in the temple.

In a moment we shall represent his sacrifice in bread and wine. And then we will do what St. Paul asks us to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God -- ask God to use us for his purposes just as he used Jesus. That is how we can join Jesus and be about our Father's business with him.

The Collect: O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people who call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Epiphany, January 6, 2001

About nine years ago the National Gallery of Art in Washington mounted an exhibition to mark the five-hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492. I had never realized that Columbus believed that one major purpose of his explorations was to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to places which had never heard it before. Preaching the gospel to new groups of people would, in turn, hasten the end of the world and the return of Christ to earth.

One of the paintings in the exhibition which caught my interest particularly was a traditional Christmas crèche scene painted around 1500. It featured a baby in a manger, St. Joseph, St. Mary, some shepherds, and three other visitors carrying gifts. One of the visitors was a black man dressed in an wild-looking costume who also had, as I recall, spiky hair and decorations on his face.

The exhibition's catalogue said that that man represented the natives of the Americas the first explorers -- like Columbus -- met. The native-born American was placed at the manger to convey the idea that Christ came to earth to save everybody. And everybody meant everybody -- especially the newly discovered exotic and strange people of the new world who didn't look like anybody in the world of the European Renaissance.

The idea that God wants to save everybody on earth is the theme of the season of Epiphany, which begins today as Christmas ends. From time to time things happen in our lives which catch our attention and tell us things we need to know and bring us up short about things we are thinking or doing. We call these moments of revelation epiphanies -- they are events where God is trying to get our attention.

The story the church tells to get across the idea that God is trying to get everyone's attention is St. Matthew's account of the visit of the wise men from the east to the newborn king Jesus. On Christmas Eve we hear about how angels told Jewish shepherds that the Messiah -- their savior -- had been born in Bethlehem. On Epiphany we hear how a star guided astrologers who were not Jews to the new king of Israel.

Those two stories taken together show us not only that God wants to save everybody, but also that he shows himself to all people in the language they can understand. It would have been pointless to send angels talking about a Messiah to the Gentile wise men. It would have been equally pointless to try to communicate to the Jewish shepherds through a star.

God reaches out to each one of us in the way we are most likely to notice and understand. Our job is to be on the lookout for him and to be expecting him to try to get our attention. God's great epiphany as the savior of everyone in the world is chopped up into the little bits of epiphany that are the ways he reaches out to each of us.

The visit of the wise men reveals that King Herod doesn't know much about the religion of the people he is supposed to be ruling. When the wise men tell him a new king has been born in Israel, he has to convene a convention of all of his religious advisors to get them to give an answer any average Hebrew would have known.

Herod asks, "When the Messiah king we are waiting for finally comes, where will he be born?" His advisors reply, "In Bethlehem, dummy." The prophet Micah says it will happen there, and it is only logical that it happen there because the Messiah is going to be a descendant of King David, and Bethlehem is royal David's city.

Herod is not at all pleased to hear that a more legitimate rival was now on the scene, so he tries to use the wise men in a campaign to eliminate the newborn king before he can gather a following. The wise men outwit him by going home by a route that does not take them back through Jerusalem.

Herod, nonetheless, has all of the boy babies in Bethlehem who are two years old and younger killed to eliminate the threat. The epiphany there is about the lengths to which people will go to maintain their own positions and the vicious cruelty in the hearts of human beings.

Later on, God called St. Paul to be the apostle to the Gentiles -- the non-Jews. It was his task to take a small Jewish cult which believed that Jesus was the long-expected Jewish Messiah, and turn it into an international religion whose membership was open to anyone and everyone.

In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul says that God revealed to him something that no one had known before. That was that the Jewish Messiah was going to be the way everyone else in the world could join the Jews and become part of God's chosen people.

God is not mad at the Jews, even though most of them do not believe in his son. They are still his chosen people. They are not pushed aside, but in Christ everyone else is invited in. Now everyone who wants to be chosen can be chosen -- all one needs to do is to choose to be chosen.

St. Paul explains that the visit of the wise men to the baby in Bethlehem means God loves everyone. God does not want anyone to be left out. God wants to save everyone everywhere and take us all to heaven. Our task at this great season is to ask "How is God reaching out to me?" and then "How do I want to respond to him?" He is, after all, "the light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel."

The Collect: O God, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles; Mercifully grant that we, who know thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of thy glorious Godhead; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Christmas I, December 31, 2000

The teaching of the Church that connects to Christmas is the doctrine of the Incarnation. The doctrine of the Incarnation teaches us that in Jesus Christ God became a man. The Latin root "c-a-r-n" means "meat" or "flesh." We encounter it in Mexican restaurants in carne asada, and chili con carne. We know what "carnivorous" and "carnival" mean, too.

In-carn-a-tion is coming into meat, the Word was made flesh, the Second Person of the eternal Trinity became a human being named Jesus who lived mostly in the first century of the Christian era and died at the hand of a Roman governor we know about from history other than the Bible.

In today's epistle, St. Paul spells out why the Incarnation is of direct importance to us. He does it by using the metaphor of an heir to a great fortune. He says that even though a young boy will inherit his father's property some day, he has to remain under the charge of teachers and other mentors until his father thinks he has grown up.

St. Paul says that in the same way we are heirs to God's promises in Jesus Christ, but for a long time we were not mature. We were under the control of what he calls "the elements of the world." Those elements are demonic, and they take the form of ignorance of God and blindness to truth.

But then just at the right moment, "in the fullness of time," God sent Jesus to earth. St. Paul says he was "made of a woman" -- fully human and born in the usual way, though not conceived in the usual way. Jesus was "made under the law," that is to say he entered the world as a Jew, living in a culture that was molded by the Hebrew law of Moses.

The purpose of Jesus' coming was, as St. Paul puts it, "to redeem them that were under the law." "Redeem" means "buy back" or "trade in for." Jesus redeemed us from the devil and the elements of the world. He also redeemed us from the power of the law.

The law's power is the suggestion that the law is something we need to obey in order to make God love us. The birth of Jesus tells us that God starts out loving us, and nothing can take that way. We don't have to obey the law to get God to love us, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

The birth of Jesus redeems us from the devil by giving us what St. Paul calls "the adoption of sons." God wants us to be his adopted children. The Christmastide collect hints at this when it refers to our "being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace."

Jesus is God's natural son -- his only-begotten son, as we say in the creed. God gives us the same status Jesus has by adopting us as his children. The adoption ceremony is baptism, where God makes us his own forever.

So the point of the Incarnation is to make it possible for us to be God's adopted children. We are not children of God by nature -- we are children of Satan by our nature. We can become God's children only by getting baptized. When we are baptized we are born again as God's children living by the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus was born in Bethlehem as God's child, living by the Holy Spirit.

Like baptism, all of the other sacraments of the church are extensions of the Incarnation of God into time. In each of the sacraments God comes to us and shares his help and his power and his life with us through something from the material world -- hands, oil, bread, water, wine.

The incarnation of Jesus shows that Christianity is a religion which takes the material world very seriously. God created the material world through Jesus. Jesus came into the material world. Jesus took our human nature back with him when he ascended into heaven. He remains in the material world through the church and her sacraments.

That means that God is down here in the real world with us. Nothing that happens in the material world is beneath God's concern. Everything that matters to us matters to him. He can respond to our prayers and change things in the material world. We can understand everything that happens in the material world in terms of what he wants for us and of his overall plan to save as many people as he can.

Because God is in the material world, and because he has adopted us as his own children, he has made it possible for us to be familiar with him – familiar -- part of the family -- part of God's family.

Because we are his adopted children, we don't need to be afraid of God or afraid of alienating him forever by something we might think or say or do. Because we are God's children, he has put his Spirit in our hearts, and his Spirit lets us call him "Daddy" - "Abba, father."

Old Testament Jews were not allowed even to utter God's formal, personal name. Because Jesus has come to earth and because his father has adopted us, we are bold enough to join Jesus and call God "Our Father."

"Veiled in flesh the Godhead see/ Hail the Incarnate deity/ Pleased as man with man to dwell/ Jesus, our Emmanuel," which is, being interpreted, "God with us."

The Collect: Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Hebrews 1:1-12

The Gospel: St. John 1: 1 - 14

Christmas Eve, December 24, 2000

I have been preaching Christmas Eve sermons for many years now. The task of preparing sermons for Christmas and Easter is the most daunting one I face. The message of those two great feasts should be so obvious to everyone that all I can really expect to do is ruin the festivities either by preaching for too long, to try to punish people who only come to church twice a year; or by challenging what the church teaches about the great feasts, to show that I am an independent thinker; or by trying to be just too cute -- to prove once and for all that the Christian religion is not about Jesus but about me.

In all those years, I don't think I have ever preached on the epistle, which is taken from St. Paul's letter to St. Titus. It is brief, so I will try to be brief. But that reminds me, as most things do, of a joke. Calvin Coolidge was leaving a church one Sunday morning and the preacher asked if he had liked the sermon. Coolidge said, "You were brief" The preacher said, "I try not to be tedious." Coolidge replied, "You were also tedious."

The phrase that stands out in the epistle is this one: "a peculiar people." St. Paul is talking about the church. I spend all my time in the church. "Peculiar" sounds to me like a pretty appropriate word.

But St. Paul, of course, does not mean "peculiar" in the sense of "odd" or "weird," he means "peculiar" in the sense of "special," or "particular," "chosen." He describes what happened on the first Christmas this way. "The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men." The grace of God is his help, which he gives us freely. Salvation is a healthy relationship to God, which he offers us freely.

Jesus' birth brings the possibility that now everyone everywhere can have a healthy relationship to God. Jesus is the Messiah of Israel, God's original chosen people, to be sure, but he is also the light which lightens the Gentiles. In Jesus, the possibility of reconciliation to God becomes available to everybody. Jews are not pushed aside. Gentiles are invited in.

Membership in God's chosen people used to be limited to the descendants of Abraham who wait for the restoration of King David. Now the peculiar people includes everyone.

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David." "These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee."

The Collect: O God, who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the virth of thine only Son Jesus Christ; Grant that as we joyfully receive him for our Redeemer, so we may with sure confidence behold him when he shall come to ve our Judge, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Titus 2: 2

The Gospel: St. Luke 2: 1

Revised February 9, 2001.