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Passiontide Sermons, 1999
The Rt. Rev. John T. Cahoon, Jr. |
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Passiontide Sermons, 1999
The Rt. Rev. John T. Cahoon, Jr. |
Palm Sunday The last Sunday in Lent
Lent V The fifth Sunday in Lent (Passion Sunday)
Maundy Thursday, April 1, 1999
There is a wonderful tone of peaceful resignation in Jesus' words and actions at the Last Supper as St. John describes them to us. He sets the stage in the first line of this evening's Gospel, writing, "Now before the feast of the Passover,, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world', he loved them unto the end."
"Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." St. John is talking about us. Jesus loves us in the world, just as he loved his disciples. Jesus will love us unto the end, just as he loved his disciples. We are his own.
St. John does not give us the same sort of agony-in-the-Garden-of-Gethsemane scene other evangelists do. Instead, he tells us that earlier in Holy Week, when Jesus knew that his earthly life was almost over, he cried out, "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'?: but for this cause came I unto this hour."
"I am upset, I don't want to die, but it would be absurd for me to ask God to let me off the hook from going through with this, because going through with this is the whole reason I have come to this moment and to this place."
So by Thursday evening, Jesus is completely resigned to what is going to happen to him, and he has accepted it -- not because he likes it, necessarily, but because he knows it is what his Father wants him to do. He has said earlier, "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work."
The "Maundy" of Maundy Thursday refers to the new commandment Jesus gives his disciples at the Last Supper. The commandment is, "Love one another, as I have loved you." Take care of one another, as I have taken care of you. Do what is best for one another, as I have done what is best for you. Serve one another, as I have served you.
He illustrates what the new commandment means in two ways -- the foot-washing which St. John describes is first. Jesus explains why he washed the disciples' feet by saying, "If I then your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you."
Then Jesus illustrates the Maundy further by establishing the sacrament of Holy Communion. He says himself, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Holy Communion brings Jesus' death on the cross into our presence. His death is the way he shows us most clearly that he loves us.
And in this wonderful sacrament he has given us a way we can represent his love and remember his love and participate in his love any time we choose, for St. Paul tells us, "As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end."
The Collect. ALMIGHTY Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, did institute the Sacrament of his Body and Blood; Mercifully grant that we may thankfully receive the same in remembrance of him, who in these holy mysteries giveth us a pledge of life eternal; the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle. I Corinthians 11. 23
The Gospel. St. Luke 23.1
Palm Sunday
It seems to me that our Wednesday Bible classes this Lent have been particularly stimulating. They are sometimes maddening and depressing and infuriating too, but always stimulating. Until this past week, both classes were working their way through particular gospels. As we studied them, I found myself saying quite frequently, "We read the gospels through the eyes of St. Paul." We have to read them through St. Paul.
The first three gospels -- St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke -- are concerned primarily with telling a story. They give us a narrative of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. As is true of anyone telling any sort of story, the gospel writers interpret the story through how they present it and what they add and leave out and by the things they emphasize especially.
But those gospels give us very little of what I would call "direct interpretation." Giving direct interpretation would be, "Here is what happened, now here is what it means." We get very little of that from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, though somewhat more of it from St. John.
What is especially striking is that they don't bother to explain what the high points of the story mean. We know precisely what the high points are, because we enumerate them in the creeds. They include Jesus' birth, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension into heaven.
So we need answers to two crucial questions: first, "What does all this mean?" and, second, "What does all this have to do with me?" To get the answers, we have to turn to the letters of St. Paul. To say that is not to speak ill of the gospels. The letters of St. Paul without the gospels would not be enough either. The gospels and the epistles work together -- a tribute to the genius of God the Holy Ghost who moved the church to write and to choose the books of the New Testament.
In several short verses in today's epistle -- taken from his letter to the Philippians -- St. Paul explains what Jesus' birth means; he explains what Jesus' life was all about; he interprets today's gospel, which is St. Matthew's account of Jesus' final suffering and death; and he explains Jesus' subsequent resurrection and ascension. And if that weren't enough, he also tells us how his explanation should affect our own daily behavior.
St. Paul is trying to get the members of his church in Philippi to try to get along with one another and take care of one another. The only way that can happen is if nobody thinks he is better than everyone else is. St. Paul tells them, just before today's passage begins, "Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others."
That is incredibly difficult teaching to follow. None of us is terribly humble or much inclined to self-sacrifice. That innately selfish sinfulness is exacerbated by the acquisitive and competitive nature of our society. We resist humility and we don't like to put others ahead of ourselves -- that is because of both nature and nurture, as they say.
St. Paul says, "So you don't want to be humble or unselfish? -- then how about taking a look at Jesus?" Jesus was God -- the second person of the Holy Trinity -- in existence from before time began. Jesus has been the active agent in the whole creation -- from "Let there be light" until now. That position and that accomplishment compares favorably even with the greatness and wonderfulness that make us think we are better than everyone else is.
But Jesus did not think that his position was something he had to hang onto. When his Father asked him to do it, he poured out of himself all of his godly position and all of his divine power, and he became a human being. Not that there is anything wrong with being human, but it is a bit of a step down from the right hand of the throne of God.
Jesus not only humbled himself to become a human being, but he also became a servant sort of human being -- not a king, not a president, not a religious leader, not a prominent figure in the community, not even terribly middle class -- but a servant.
And not only did he become a human servant, he did everything else his Father asked him to do. And that turned out not only to include the humiliation and suffering St. Matthew told us about this morning, but also the ugly, ignominious, dirty, spiteful death he also described.
So you think you are too good to try to put other people's needs ahead of your own selfish concerns? -- you're above reaching out and helping? St. Paul says, "Take a look at the crucifix, and remind yourself that that is God himself hanging up there -- and he is hanging up there for you." So "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus."
The Collect: ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility; Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
[This Collect is to be said every day, after the Collect appointed for the day, until Good Friday.]
The Epistle. Philippians II: 5
The Gospel. St. Matthew 27: 1-54
Passion Sunday (Lent V),
Last Sunday we talked about the patriarch Abraham, a major character in Genesis, the
first book in the Bible. We looked at how St. Paul uses the story of Abraham and his
two sons and their two mothers to make a point about the difference between the Law
and the Gospel -- the difference between thinking you can earn salvation and knowing
to accept the salvation God offers you in Jesus Christ.
In this morning's gospel Jesus makes the claim that he and Abraham were acquainted
with one another. That claim appears on its face to be somewhere between merely
ludicrous and totally deranged.
According to our best estimates, Abraham lived sometime between 2000 and 1800 B.C.
Jesus lived in the first century A.D. That makes him about as far removed in time
from Abraham in one direction as he is from us in the other. So it is no wonder that
after Jesus said, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and
was glad;" his enemies replied, "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou
seen Abraham?"
Abraham had come into the conversation because of another of Jesus' outrageous
statements. His enemies had been insulting him, saying, "You're a dirty old
Samaritan, you have a devil," and he snapped back at them with, "Verily, verily, I
say unto you, if a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death -- whoever
obeys my teaching will never die."
His enemies responded, "Now we know you have a devil -- we're sure you're crazy.
Everybody knows that the greatest heroes of our religion -- including Abraham and
the prophets -- are all dead. Are you saying you are greater than they are? Who do
you think you are, anyway?"
Jesus had already had a discussion with his fellow Jews about the dead people in
Israel's past history. After he fed a crowd of five thousand with a small amount of
bread and fish, they came back the next day and asked him to perform a miracle for
them -- suggesting that the feeding had just not been quite enough.
They reminded him that God had given their forefathers manna -- miraculous food with
which he fed the Israelites during their wanderings. Jesus said, "Yes, they ate the
manna, but they died later on anyway. The real food from heaven is my flesh and
blood -- if you eat that, you will never die."
The clinching line of today's argument is what Jesus says in response to the charge
that he is too young to have known Abraham. He tells the crowd, "Verily, verily, I
say unto you, before Abraham was, I am." "I am"is the personal name of God the
Father. When Moses met God at the burning bush of Midian, God told him to go back
down to Egypt and lead his people out of their slavery. Moses asked, "When I go to
them, to whom shall I say I was talking?" God said, "I am that I am. Tell them 'I
am' sent you."
So Jesus is not only uttering God's name -- which was a taboo -- but also applying
it to himself "So you want to know how I can make all these outlandish claims and
say I knew Abraham and I can give you my flesh to eat and if you obey me you'll
never die? I can say all those things because I am God, that's why."
Later on the crowd picks up stones again and threatens to beat Jesus' head in with
them. He asks, rather airily, "I've done quite a few good works here -- for which of
them do you want to stone me?" The crowd replies, "We don't want to stone you
because of your good works. We want to stone you for your blasphemy, because you are
only a man, and you are trying to make yourself into God."
The Jews will demand on Good Friday that Pontius Pilate execute Jesus because,
according to their law, he has committed the capital crime of blasphemy. The
statement "Before Abraham was, I am," is the primary evidence that supports their
charge -- it is the smoking gun in the case against Jesus.
Having said all that, let us think a bit more about God's name. I am -- I am that I
am -- I shall have been what I shall have been -- are all possible ways of
translating the Hebrew word "Yahweh," often mistakenly rendered as "Jehovah."
The most significant thing about God is that he is. He was in the beginning, is now,
and ever shall be. In the sacraments of the church and in the teaching of the New
Testament, God offers to share his being -- his is-ness -- his everlasting life --
with us.
When we are baptized we become part of Jesus. We share his eternal life -- his
endless being -- from that point on. We are in eternal life now. It doesn't start
after we die. We renew his eternal life in us when we receive Holy Communion. Pay
attention to what I say when I give you the Body and Blood. We are living forever
already, because we are united to the eternal existence of God himself.
Of course, that doesn't mean we won't die physically. Unless Jesus comes back first,
we surely will. But our eternal life in God persists even through physical death.
Jesus says, "I am." He makes it possible for us to say, "I am too."
[The Lenten Collect first said on Ash Wednesday is to be said every day in Lent, after the Collect appointed for the day, until Palm Sunday.]
The Epistle: Hebrews 9: 2
The Gospel: St. John 8: 46
Lent IV,
The patriarch Abraham is the pivotal character both in today's epistle and in next Sunday's gospel. Next Sunday we shall hear Jesus make the outrageous claim that he saw Abraham face to face -- even though there were about as many years between Abraham and Jesus as there have been between Jesus and us.
Today, St. Paul uses the story of Abraham to tell us how we get saved -- how God puts us into a proper relationship with him -- how we can be sure we are going to go to heaven.
Abraham enters the picture very early in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. The eleven chapters before Abraham appears are taken up with universal, world-wide history: including such events as the creation, the fall of man, Noah's flood, and the construction of the Tower of Babel.
After all that happens, we can almost hear God saying to himself, "Trying to save everybody all at once doesn't seem to be working out too well. I think I'm going to lower my expectations and narrow the scope of my operations. Instead of attempting to rescue mankind as a whole, I will begin with one particular man and see if I can work things out through what happens to him and to his family."
Abraham -- for reasons, as they say, known only to God -- is the man God chooses, so his family becomes God's chosen people. God tells Abraham that if he will obey, God will make him the father of a great nation and give him land where he and his descendants can live.
So Abraham gets the promise that his family will continue to exist both in space and in time; and God gets the family he can use to work out the more subtle and complicated plan to save the rest of the world that he has in mind now.
The Hebrew people -- the Jews -- are Abraham's family. The Old Testament is a family saga--the story of how the original arrangement between God and Abraham was passed along and dealt with from generation to generation. As is the case in the story of any family,. the saga includes high points and low points, comedy and tragedy, high drama and farce, heroism and villainy.
The New Testament tells us what the point of the saga is. We discover that the story of Abraham and his family was all leading up to the birth of Jesus. It is through Jesus -- a fully-fledged Jew -- a bloodline descendant of Abraham -- that God offers the rest of mankind the opportunity to become chosen too.
The way that begins to happen for us is baptism. When we are baptized we become part of Jesus' body. Since Jesus is a descendant of Abraham, becoming part of Jesus' body makes us descendants of Abraham too. Baptism makes us heirs of the promises God made to Abraham -- descendants and land.
Our descendants in that sense include the future members of the church. Our promised land is heaven where all of God's chosen people will go together at the end to live with him forever.
In this morning's epistle, St. Paul is trying to convince his congregation in Galatia that they can't get saved by keeping the Old Testament law. Putting his point into words that may mean a bit more to us, we don't get saved by the way we act. Salvation is not something we can earn or deserve by piling up good deeds and spiritual accomplishments.
Getting saved is a matter of recognizing what God offers you through Jesus and then responding to it. In terms of we have been talking about so far, what God offers you is membership in his chosen people and the promises that come with it; what he asks of you is that you put your trust in his promises and be sorry for what you have done wrong.
Human beings have a very difficult time taking God at his word. When God told Abraham he would have many descendants, he and his wife Sarah did not believe they could have even one descendant. They had never had any children before, and she appeared to be much too old to conceive.
Abraham and Sarah did not trust God to keep his promise, so they decided to help God out. Abraham conceived Ishmael with Sarah's slave girl Hagar, and the project backfired. Sarah resented Hagar; when Sarah and Abraham had their own son Isaac, Ishmael persecuted him -- so Abraham wound up throwing Hagar and Ishmael out of the house.
The Galatians' situation -- and our own situation -- is similar to Abraham and Sarah's situation. We don't believe God can keep his promises to us either. We can't believe salvation is as simple as trusting God and being sorry. So we try to help God out by making salvation into something we can earn.
That project backfires too. God does not grade on a curve. You can only claim you have earned salvation if you have always been absolutely perfect. But only Jesus--and the truly delusional -- can make such a claim.
So what makes us happy on Mothering Sunday is that, "We, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise ... we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free."
The Collect: Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of thy grace may mercifully be relieved; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
[The Lenten Collect first said on Ash Wednesday is to be said every day in Lent, after the Collect appointed for the day, until Palm Sunday.]
The Epistle: Galatians 4: 21
The Gospel: St. John 6: 1
Because of the overall subject of today's gospel, I always regard the Third Sunday in Lent as "Devil Sunday." Twenty-eight years ago today I was auditioning for my first full-time job in the Episcopal Church. I preached on the gospel, and from that time on the community regarded me as a true curiosity, "Oh, I know who you are -- you're the one who believes in the devil."
Another year I got ready for this Sunday by watching the two sequels to the movie "The Exorcist." Six years ago on the Third Sunday in Lent the devil was so active that a blizzard kept us from having church at all. This year I reread the book which is the single best introduction to the devil and all his works. That book is "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis. I cannot recommend it to you highly enough.
In "The Screwtape Letters," C.S. Lewis tells us that the devil's most effective weapon is the belief that he does not exist. But if you do believe the devil exists, his next most effective weapon is to make you excessively interested in him.
The biggest danger that comes with an excessive interest in the devil is that you can wind up blaming all the bad things you do on him. It is always more pleasing to shift the blame to others than to take responsibility for one's own actions. "The devil made me do it" works just as well as blaming spouse, parents, children, boss, the media, or the federal government.
In any event, the people of Jesus' time believed in the devil and believed he was quite active in human life. One of the ways Jesus attracts attention in the gospels is through his effectiveness as an exorcist -- someone who can cast out demons.
Exorcism was common in the first century -- which probably indicates both a clearer perception of reality and a higher level of faith than what characterizes our own foolish era. The people who watch Jesus cast out a demon at the beginning of today's gospel accuse him of using demonic power to do it.
He replies using logic. He asks, "Do you think Satan is stupid enough to work against his own interests? Even Satan knows that a divided house is bound to fall. (Abraham Lincoln was quoting Jesus, rather than the other way around). And if I am using demonic power to do exorcisms, what sort of power are your own exorcists using? The fact is that I am casting out demons with the finger of God (what a wonderful phrase!), and that proves that the kingdom of God is right here in front of you."
Jesus goes on to tell a parable about the devil. A strong man can keep his possessions safe, but if a stronger man comes along the first man will lose. His point is, first, that we may think we are strong, but we are fools if we think we are stronger than the devil is, and, second, that the devil is strong but Jesus is stronger. Either way you take it, it adds up to the fact that we can only resist the devil's activities with Jesus' help. The devil is always working to get our attention off Jesus, so Jesus reminds us, "He that is not with me is against me."
Jesus then warns us about the dangers of spiritual overconfidence. We are never more vulnerable than we are when we have just accomplished something important. No matter how wonderful the accomplishment may have been, our tendency is to think we did it all by ourselves, forget the help we got from God, and thus open ourselves up to the devil's machinations. So "The last state of that man is worse than the first."
Finally we meet one of my favorite characters in the Bible -- the woman who wants to change the subject. If, as C.S. Lewis suggests, the devil gets a great deal accomplished through simple distraction, this woman incarnates the everyday demonic.
How many times have you been about to get to an important point in a conversation when the other person changes the subject on you? It is the devil's favorite diversionary tactic. To "Your mother is going to die?" the reply is "How about that Monica Lewinsky?" To "I think you have a drinking problem," the response is, "How do you like your Taurus?"
What Jesus has said has obviously made the woman in the crowd nervous, so she yells out a complete irrelevancy, "Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and paps which thou hast sucked," that is to say, "Your mother must be so proud and happy to have a clever son like you."
Jesus replies, "Yeah, sure, but the really happy people are the ones who hear the word of God and keep it." God's Word to us today is that the devil is real, and he wants to get us into his clutches, and he wants to get us away from God and send us on our way to hell.
If we ignore this teaching we condemn ourselves to an existence in which we will never see what is really going on until it is too late. So St. Paul exhorts us, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light."
The Collect: We beseech thee, Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants, and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty, to be our defence against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
The Epistle: Ephesians 5: 1 The Gospel: St. Luke 11: 14
Jesus tells two very similar stories in St. Luke's gospel which shed light on today's gospel lesson. The first story comes right after he teaches the disciples the Lord's Prayer. He says, "Let's say it's midnight, and a friend who is on a trip drops in on you unexpectedly. Since you didn't know he was coming, you don't have any extra food, so you don't have anything to give him to eat.
"Then you go to your neighbor and pound on his door and say, 'How about giving me some bread?' He is most likely to yell back, 'Go away, it's too late, everybody here is in bed.' But if you keep on pounding, he will eventually get up and give you some bread--not out of friendship, but because of your persistence. The only way he can get rid of you is to give you what you want."
In the second story, Jesus describes a judge who doesn't care what God or any human being thinks of him. A widow keeps coming to his courtroom demanding that he settle her case her way. The judge finally says to himself, "I am going to give this woman what she wants before she drives me crazy with all of her nagging."
The point of both stories is that if we decide to pray for something we need to keep at it. God wants to find out if we care enough about what we are asking for to keep after him--to persist in asking until we get an answer--to nag at him until we see how he responds.
The woman in today's lesson wants Jesus to cast a devil out of her daughter. His first response to her is silence. After she tries to get the disciples to help her, they ask Jesus to get rid of her because she is bothering them. He says, "She's a Gentile, I am here for my fellow Jews" -- just another way of putting
her off.
Then she throws herself on the ground in front of him and says, "Lord, help me." He not only rejects her again, but also insults her in the bargain, saying, "it wouldn't be right to take what belongs to God's children and give it to a dog like you." She comes right back and says, "Even dogs get to eat what falls on the floor from their master's table."
Jesus acknowledges her persistence and rewards it, saying, "You have a lot of faith--you can have what you want." So her daughter was healed at that very moment. The story also raises some issues about cleanliness and uncleanliness; the relationship between Jews and Gentiles; and the differences between Jesus' mission and the mission of the church, but let us stick just now to the issue of prayer.
Do you pray at all--except in church--if then? I believe it is true that there are no atheists in foxholes and that there will be prayer in the public schools as long as there are final exams. But Christians are supposed to pray on a regular basis--not just when we are in dire straits and everything else has failed. Daily recitation of the Lord's Prayer--actually thinking about the words and consciously directing them to God--is the barest minimum and the best way to start.
Jesus uses the story about pounding on your neighbor's door at midnight to make some points that go along with the need to persist in prayer. He says flatly that there is no such thing as an unanswered prayer. When people say, "My prayer didn't get answered," what they usually mean is, "I didn't get exactly what I wanted."
You may not get what you want, and God may make you wait around awhile before he gives you his answer, but he always answers your prayer one way or another. Jesus says, "Everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened."
Jesus goes on to reassure us that when we ask for anything for ourselves or for someone else, God answers by giving us what is best. He asks, "If your child comes to you and asks you for some bread, you wouldn't hand him a rock would you?" Of course not. So if even human parents know to give their children good things, how much more can we trust our heavenly father to give us what is best for us?
Jesus uses the story of the judge and the widow to underline the point that we should persist in praying and never give up until we get an answer. The story also teaches that some day God will avenge us and take us to heaven, just as the judge avenged the widow in court. We should not think that he is going to stall around forever and never come back.
One of the ways to examine your conscience when you prepare to receive Holy Communion is to take an inventory of your relationships with the most significant people in your life. How might the relationships be improved? What forgiving do I need to do? How might I act more charitably--that is to say, truly
helpfully--toward them?
But it is at least as important to take stock of your relationship to Jesus. Do you really know him? Is he an every-day companion, or someone you look at once a week at the most and then from a fairly safe distance?
Entering into a relationship with God is like starting a relationship with another human being. You've got to spend time together. You have to talk openly. Our side is prayer. His side is the Scriptures and the things that happen in our daily lives and his replies to our prayers.
Lent is the time to get serious about all this. Jesus asks, "When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?"
The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8
The Gospel: St. Matthew 15:21-28
LENT I, February 21, 1999
Today's collect refers directly to what St. Matthew is describing in today's gospel. The collect says that Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights "for our sake." He did it for our benefit--to do us some good. He fasted first of all to teach us a few things.
The church claims that Christianity is the continuation of Judaism. That claim is clearest in our teaching that Jesus is the Christ--the Messiah--the Saviour God promised Israel in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. The fasting and temptation in the wilderness is one way St. Matthew presents Jesus as the man who relives the whole history of Israel in his life of thirty-some years.
Just before the fasting, John the Baptist baptizes Jesus in the Jordan River. That event corresponds to the Exodus, when God led Israel out of her captivity in Egypt through the Red Sea. Afterward Israel spent forty years in the wilderness being tested, so Jesus spends a corresponding forty days in the wilderness being tested. All that helps us to believe that Jesus is the one who was supposed to come.
Another central point of the church's teaching is that Jesus is not only God, but also a human being. We would find it hard to believe that Jesus is really human if we could not see that he experienced life in pretty much the same way we do.
Today's gospel focusses upon a familiar aspect of human existence--what we call testing. When Moses explained to the people of Israel why it took them forty years to walk from Egypt to the Promised Land, he said it was because God wanted to test them. God sent Israel hardships so he could find out what Israel would do, and whether or not they would be faithful to his commandments.
Our life is also a series of tests. God sends us hardships too. He wants to find out what we are made of--how we will react--whether we will try to figure out what he wants us to do, or whether we will do it our own way--go off on our own and try to handle things without him.
God tested Israel, God tests us, and the Epistle to the Hebrews says of Jesus, that he "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." So if what it means to be human is to be tested, then Jesus was clearly human.
The difference between Jesus on the one hand and Israel and ourselves on the other is that he passed the tests and resisted the temptations. He is the only one who knows how strong testing and temptation really are, because he is the only one who resists them completely.
Reading again from Hebrews, "Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of his people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted; he is able to succour them that are tempted."
The point is that Jesus did not resist temptation so he could rub our noses in how much better he is than we are. Instead, precisely because he knows how painful our temptations and testings are, he is the priest who can best understand us, and help us, and get us reconciled to God.
The three specific temptations and testings he goes through in the wilderness all come from the devil. When the devil gets after us, we can resist him with Jesus' help. If we forget Jesus, we cannot resist the devil at all. The devil's strategy is to get our attention off of Jesus. That is the only way he can win.
With Jesus the devil tries first to get his attention off of God and onto how hungry he is. Then he tries to get Jesus into an absurd situation to test whether or not the words of scripture are literally true. Finally he offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world. All three are temptations not to trust God.
Jesus' temptations are somewhat more dramatic than the ones we come up against, but it is only a matter of degree. His three temptations boil down to three tests we know about too: first, not to trust that God will take care of our material needs; second, not to trust in God's general good will toward us; and, third, not to trust that it is better to obey God than to have the power and the pleasure the world offers if we disobey.
Because Jesus went through what we go through he can understand us and comfort us and get us through all the testings and temptations life brings us. But we cannot do it without his help.
So we dare not forget these words of St. Peter: "God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: casting all your care upon him: for he careth for you."
The Collect: O Lord, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights; Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness, and true holiness, to thy honour and glory, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 6: 1-10
The Gospel: St. Matthew 4: 1-11
Ash Wednesday, February 17, 1999
If you are roughly my age, you probably heard these words on the radio before you realized they were from the Bible: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: ... a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away..."
Ecclesiastes is weary of the world. He sees that human existence follows a pattern which he has no power to change. We accept his insight, and we go ahead to give it structure and to impose it upon ourselves through the mechanism of the church calendar--the liturgical year.
The calendar gives us times to prepare, and times to rejoice. There are times to learn, and times to celebrate. There are times to fast, and times to feast. There are times to abstain, and times to indulge.
Lent is a time to fast, a time to restrain, a time to discipline, a time to look soberly at ourselves and our relationship to the living God--a time to face seriously these words from the Epistle to the Hebrews, "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment."
Are you ready to face God? Are you ready to hear his judgment upon your life? Are there not things you might do now to prepare yourselves--while you still have the chance?
God spoke to Adam and said, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou shalt return to the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
"A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted ... a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; ... a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing ... a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace ... a time to be born, and a time to die."
The Gospel: St. Matthew 6:16-21
Quinquagesima, February 14, 1999
A member of the congregation who takes a tremendous critical interest in my sermons called me this week and asked, "What are you going to say about the fact that Sunday is Valentine's Day and the epistle is First Corinthians 13?" My natural perversity and contrariness tempt me to preach only on today's gospel as a way of responding to the question.
But I must admit, grudgingly, that it is a good question. Thanks to greeting card and perfume salesmen, and bed and breakfast proprietors, and the natural guiltiness of the male of our species, Valentine's Day is the day we set aside to exalt romantic love.
One of the clearest signs of the degeneracy of our epoch of history is that almost all modern translations of the New Testament use "love" as the translation of the word in today's epistle which the King James Version renders as "charity." Charity and romantic love are not the same thing.
So that can lead us into some possible confusion concerning the different kinds of love. The Greek language solved the problem by having two completely different words which were not at all interchangeable.
Furthering the confusion is the fact that First Corinthians 13 has become a sort of all-purpose scriptural reading on all sorts of improbable occasions. I think it must be because people think it sounds so sentimental and non-judgmental--unlike other, more obviously threatening, Bible passages. There is, for example, no mention of the dreaded word J-E-S-U-S.
The fact is that First Corinthians 13 is one of the most damning passages in the entire Bible. It tells us that by his Holy Spirit God makes available to us the gift of charity. To show charity is to act for the good of another person no matter what it may cost us. Unlike romantic love--which is in no way a bad thing in itself--charity is not mainly a matter of feelings; charity is a matter of will and action. It is about what you actually do.
Charity is the gift which has least to do with my favorite topic--me. Charity is interested only in the welfare of other people and what I can do to promote it. To show charity is to act at all times just as Jesus did.
To paraphrase St. Paul: a person who has charity puts up with everything and everybody in a kind and generous spirit; he never wants what he doesn't have already; he doesn't put himself forward or brag; he doesn't keep a list of slights; he takes no salacious interest in the wrongdoings of others. If that is the standard by which God measures our behavior, we are all in big trouble.
Ash Wednesday is upon us and with it the need to consider -how we are going to discipline ourselves in Lent. The Prayer Book.tells us that Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are fasts--days on which we are to eat nothing. It also tells us that the forty days of Lent are days of abstinence--days on which we should cut back on our normal intake of food and drink. Sundays are never days of fasting or abstinence, because Sunday is always first and foremost a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.
Along with the fasting and abstinence disciplines, we should consider taking something else on--more physical exercise, perhaps, since the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost; or maybe you need to get serious about your prayer life and Bible study--you are missing out on so much if you don't pray every day and read at least something from the Bible every day.
You certainly need to make a thorough examination of your conscience--asking "What is there in my life that is keeping me from a full commitment to Christ and the church?" "What can I do to get those distractions out of the way?" "Whom do I need to forgive and with whom do I need to get myself reconciled before it is too late?" I am always available to talk with you about any of these things.
Our Bible study classes on Sundays and Wednesdays continue. Next Saturday is the Parish Lenten Quiet Day. I will be giving some instruction, but the main idea is to be quiet for awhile. There is too little opportunity for silence in the lives most of us have laid out for ourselves. We need time to shut up, turn off the TV and the radio, park the RV, be quiet, and let God talk to us. If you say, "I'd love to come, but I have too much to do," you are only proving my point. Is five hours really too much time to devote to God?
In the charity epistle, St. Paul puts all spiritual discipline into perspective. He says that no matter how much we do--run ten miles a day, avoid red meat, give up smoking, stay away from alcohol, never think once about the President, and read only religious tracts--no matter how good any of those disciplines may be in themselves, they are worthless if they don't make us more charitable.
The ultimate point of spiritual discipline is not Bible information, or greater self-awareness, or lower cholesterol, or the better opinion of your children. Good as all of those things are in themselves, the only worthwhile point of any of them is to help us want to serve other people, and then actually go ahead and do it.
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." Lent gives us the chance to prove it.
The Collect: O Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth; Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee. Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 18:31-43
I have an ancestor named Samuel Provoost who was the first Episcopal Bishop of New York. I feel that I can talk about him without appearing to brag, because by all accounts I have read he was not a particularly appetizing fellow. History records, for example, that he hated Samuel Seabury, who was the Episcopal Church's first bishop.
Provoost was plotting to run Seabury out of the church at an early General Convention, but God smote Provoost with the gout and thus foiled his nefarious plans. One of the most distinguished histories of the Episcopal Church describes my venerable ancestor by saying, "As a bishop he made a good horticulturist."
That does put Bishop Provoost ahead of me, for as a bishop -- or as anything else for that matter -- I am no horticulturist at all. Anything I know about growing things is something I have picked up from my study of the Bible.
And, of course, most of that information is metaphorical and poetic, rather than practical in any direct sense. When Israel moved into the promised land after Moses died -- around 1300 or 1400 B.C. -- they began a gradual shift away from their wandering, animal-based economy to a more settled agricultural model.
It is for that reason that we hear the prophets in the Hebrew Bible as well as Jesus and St. Paul in the New Testament using agricultural and planting imagery to talk about the things of God. For example, St. Paul's most sustained and direct teaching about the resurrection of the body uses a horticultural image.
He says that the resurrection of the flesh is comparable to the planting of a seed. A seed has to go into the ground and die before it can sprout up as a plant and bear fruit. In the same way, we place dead physical bodies in the ground so that later on at the last day they can blossom forth as resurrected spiritual bodies.
Our gospel today uses an image taken from planting to describe the different sorts of responses people make to God's word. It is not the most difficult story in the world to figure out in the first place, and, as he does only rarely, Jesus goes on to give an explanation of what the parable means.
The fundamental idea is that the word of God is like seed. A sower would go out with a bag of seed and toss the seed on the ground as he walked along. He did not place the seed carefully, he broadcast it instead.
That meant that the seed would fall onto different types of ground -- different in their likelihood of being a place where the seed might take root and grow. Seed that fell by the wayside, or fell on dry rock, or fell among thorns and weeds would be lost. Seed that fell on good ground would spring up as fruitful plants.
Jesus is telling us that that is exactly the way God's showing himself in the world plays out. God sows the seed of his word in various different ways. He shows himself to us through the things that happen in our everyday experiences -- both in the dramatic and in the not-so-dramatic. He sows his seed quite specifically through the church -- in sermons and in the sacraments and in prayer and in Bible study and in our relationships with our fellow Christians.
And the reality is that some people respond to God and other people don't. Some people try to lead lives which are focussed upon God and the church; other people are lukewarm and half-baked in their commitment; other people get going with God, but then difficulties arise, and they cannot sustain their faith; others just drift away, because they allow other things to get in the way.
It is certain that Jesus wants us to try to be as good ground as we can possibly make ourselves be. That fits the Pre-Lenten theme of spiritual discipline -- last week we heard about the discipline of the athlete, this week we look at the cultivation of our hearts.
Being good, cultivated ground means being receptive -- looking for God's activity in our lives, trying to understand everything that happens to us in terms of his unfolding plans and purposes, wanting the life-giving seed of his word to take root in us and grow.
What lies behind the parable of the sower is a passage from Isaiah. God is talking about the snow and the rain: they come down from heaven, but they don't go back. They have work to do on earth, which is to help produce food. In the same way the word of God comes down from heaven, but it doesn't go back either -- it too has work to do on earth.
"For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
The seed which is God's word has a purpose. And the purpose is to help us grow up into fully mature human beings -- to grow up into Jesus -- what St. Paul calls "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." Wayside, rock, thorns, or good ground? It is all up to you.
The Collect: O Lord God, who seest that we put not our trust in any thing that we do; Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 11:19-31
The Gospel: St. Luke 8:4-15
This Collect is to be said every day in Lent, after the Collect appointed for the day, until Palm Sunday.
The Epistle: Joel 2:12-17
Septuagesima, January 31, 1999
That might involve saying things such as, "The Christian life is just like football -- you try to carry the ball toward the goal, but you can run into some tackles and penalties along the way." Or "Praying is like throwing a forward pass -- you need to have absolute confidence in your receiver." You see what I mean -- tacky.
The Book of Acts tells us that St. Paul spent an extended period of time in the Greek port city of Corinth. Every other year Corinth played host to an athletic competition called the Isthmian games -- the games on the isthmus. The Isthmian games were like the Olympics, and they certainly included footraces -- the most basic athletic competition of all.
As this morning's epistle/New Testament lesson reveals, St. Paul was not above exploiting the imagery of the footrace to make points about Christianity -- tacky as that might have seemed to some of his more sophisticated readers and listeners.
The footrace image was designed to attract Gentile sports fans, and it also had echoes of the Hebrew Bible to entice the Jews in his audience. That grumpy realist Ecclesiastes reminds us, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." And in writing in Psalm 19 about the sun's passage across the sky, King David says, "It comes out in the morning like a happy bridegroom, like an athlete eager to run a race." Or in the far more beautiful, if somewhat obscure Prayer Book version, "(The sun) cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course."
We read this passage at the beginning of Pre-Lent for a fairly obvious reason. Pre-Lent is designed to help us shift gears away from the happy, celebratory seasons of Christmas and Epiphany, and point us toward the penitential and disciplinary season of Lent.
St. Paul is saying that athletes who want to win a footrace place themselves under a regime of discipline, writing, "Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things," or "Every athlete in training submits to strict discipline."
Then St. Paul makes the point that all an athlete gets even if he does win his race is a crown of celery or laurel leaves. So he calls the athletic prize a "corruptible crown" -- one that will rot away. In contrast, the prize in the Christian race is an incorruptible crown -- one that cannot rot away -- the enduring prize of everlasting life in union with God.
His point should be obvious. If athletes are willing to discipline themselves physically in hopes of winning a crown that will only rot, should we not be willing to discipline ourselves spiritually so we can win a crown that will never rot?
St. Paul amplifies the point other places in his writings. In the Epistle to the Philippians, he says that what gives his life meaning is the realization that life is like a footrace. He is always pressing ahead to win the prize that Jesus has already won for him. The only way he can do it is to forget what is behind him and concentrate on what is ahead of him, concluding, "I run straight toward the goal in order to win the prize, which is God's call through Christ Jesus to the life above."
Nobody can be certain if St. Paul wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews, but Hebrews also makes a very similar point. We all run a race course which God sets before us. The people who have already finished their races (the dead, the saints) are watching us and cheering us on. To try to run the Christian race without confessing and being absolved of our sins would be like trying to run a sprint in an overcoat and boots. We press ahead by keeping our eyes on Jesus who has finished his own race already. He ran right through the humiliation of the cross, and now he is sitting down with God waiting for us to join him.
Now the obvious place the footrace analogy falls down is in the matter of winners. In a footrace only one person can win. In the Christian race, everybody who makes it to the finish line is a winner. That makes perseverance -- keeping at it -- hanging in there -- a Christian virtue on the same level as penitence -- sorrow for your sins.
For the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. They do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. And Jesus tells us, "Be faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."
The Collect: O Lord, we beseech thee favourably to hear the prayers of thy people; that we, who are justly punished for our offences, may be mercifully delivered by thy goodness, for the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: I Corinthians 9: 24- 27
The Gospel: St. Matthew 20: 1- 16
Revised March 24, 1999