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Trinitytide Sermons, 1998
The Most Rev. John T. Cahoon, Jr. |
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Trinitytide Sermons, 1998
The Most Rev. John T. Cahoon, Jr. |
| Trinity Sunday | Trinity I |
| Trinity II | Trinity III |
| Trinity IV | Trinity VII |
| Bishop John was on vacation during Trinity V and VI (no sermons) | |
| Trinity VIII | Trinity IX |
| Trinity X | Trinity XI |
| Trinity XII | |
Trinity XII, August 30, 1998
The Wednesday evening Bible class began to read the Gospel according to St. Mark this past week. Please don't excuse yourself from coming on the grounds that we have started a new book and you missed the first session. Any time is a good time to start coming to either of the Wednesday Bible classes. You can ask any catch-up questions you want, and we always review, in case you are afraid you have missed something.
One of the things that is most evident from reading the gospels is that Jesus spent a lot of his time performing acts of physical healing. underscore the word "physical." It is clear -- especially in St. Mark -- that his ability to heal and to cast out demons was the main way he attracted people. They would come to him because they had heard about the miracles. That would make them more receptive to his preaching and teaching.
Miracles and teaching reinforce one another. Miracles attract people who then hear the teaching which explains the miracles, which in turn makes them more receptive to the possibility of miracles.
The church follows the same outline Jesus did. We offer preaching and teaching, and miracles come through the sacraments and in God's answers to our prayers. We see the major sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion performed so frequently that we become dulled to the fact that they are miracles. It is extraordinary that someone dies and rises again when he is baptized -- and that bread and wine become Christ's body and blood on the altar.
Today's miracle is taken conveniently from St. Mark. Jesus has passed through northern Palestine -- not far from the area where he grew up and where he recruited his first followers. He is far from the political and religious and intellectual capital at Jerusalem -- a good distance to the south.
Jesus arrives at the Sea of Galilee (where his first disciples had fished) by way of an area called Decapolis -- the Ten Towns. Knowing his reputation as a healer, some people bring him a man who is deaf and has an impediment in his speech. His two problems are quite obviously connected. They ask Jesus to lay his hand upon him to heal him.
Jesus takes him away from the crowd. In this case he does not merely lay his hand on the man's head, he specifically touches the affected parts of his body. First he puts his fingers into his ears. Then he spits on his hand and touches the man's tongue. Then he looks up into the sky and sighs and says "Ephphatha."
Jesus spoke a dialect of Hebrew called Aramaic. "Ephphatha" is the Aramaic word for "open up" -- "be opened." St. Mark wrote in Greek, but he leaves this actual word Jesus said untranslated to give it particular emphasis. "Ephphatha" is a command.
What happens shows that Jesus has authority over illness, and that he can remove it at his command. St. Mark reports, "And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain."
Jesus immediately tells the people who are watching not to talk about the miracle. He might have been afraid that the miracle would call so much attention to him that the government might decide he was a threat. They might put him in jail before he could even get to Jerusalem.
In any event, the astonished witnesses don't pay any attention to him. The more he tells them to keep quiet, the more they talk about it. They tell anyone who will listen, "He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak."
His ability to perform the healing and to show command over illness was remarkable enough. But through the Old Testament prophets, God had also promised his people that some day he would interfere in history to save them. One of the signs of his coming was that the deaf would hear.
So the miracle of restoring hearing and speech indicated that Jesus was more than just an ordinary wonderworking magic man. It was looking more and more likely that he was the Messiah for whom the Hebrew people had waited for centuries.
It is no wonder that the crowd could not keep themselves from talking. What Jesus did showed that God had not forgotten them and that his kingdom and his power had finally come down to them from heaven.
God never forgets us either. He makes himself known to us clearly and specifically in the Bible which is his word. He shows us his miraculous power through the sacraments of the church. He reveals that he is our father who loves us in the way he orders our lives and in the way he answers our prayers.
If we really believe all of that is so, we should be as unrestrained as the crowd was. We say we deplore the corruption and decaying moral values of our society. But we can't just condemn, because we know there is an answer, and the answer is Jesus. When was the last time you tried to bring somebody to church where they can get to know him too?
God wants us to tell everybody, "He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak." If we don't tell the ones we know, who is going to?
The Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more than ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve; Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: II Corinthians 3: 4 -9
The Gospel: St. Mark 7: 31 - 37
Trinity XI, August 23, 1998
We have been looking at Jesus' parables quite a bit this summer. One of the points I hope I have been able to make is that if you can figure out the context in which a parable appears, you have gone a long way toward understanding it. By context I mean such things as: the occasion on which Jesus taught the parable; what other sorts of teaching or important events come before and after the parable; and, especially, the audience to which he directs the parable.
St. Luke leads into the parable of the Pharisee and the publican this morning with these words: "Jesus spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others."
One of the most important things the New Testament teaches is how human beings become righteous. "Righteous" in this sense means "straight with God," "in a proper relationship to God." That sort of positive standing with God is presumably what we all want.
We don't have that good relationship naturally, because our nature is rebellious and selfish. We don't like to be told we are rebellious and selfish, because that is demeaning and embarrassing.
So we create in our minds the fantasy that we can get right with God by our own efforts -- that we can achieve such a degree of moral goodness and right thinking and social respectability that a good relationship with God will be automatic. God himself may even feel honored that he gets to be in a good relationship to us.
It is toward people who think that way that Jesus directs the parable of the Pharisee and the publican -- so it should be obvious that he is directing it at everybody -- even us.
The Pharisee in the parable -- the bad guy -- has several problems. First of all, he stands up to God man to man. He looks him straight in the eye and thanks God that he is not like some people he might name -- thieves and bullies and exploiters of interns.
Then he reminds God that not only is he not an obvious moral reprobate, but also he has a vast array of positive religious virtues -- he fasts twice a week and he gives ten percent of his money away. We have no reason to think he is lying, and there is no suggestion here that it is bad to be moral or to fast or to tithe.
The Pharisee's biggest problem is his arrogant attitude -- which contrasts badly with the humble attitude of the publican tax collector. The publican stands in the back of the temple, and he won't even look up toward heaven as he strikes his chest and says, "God be merciful to me a sinner."
The New Testament teaches, of course, that it is impossible to get yourself right with God -- you cannot achieve righteousness -- you cannot deserve a proper relationship to God. The Pharisee acts as if he deserves not only a good relationship to God but also congratulations on a job well done. That is why he goes home with neither -- he thinks he has done it all himself.
But if he is in fact good, he should thank God for giving him the grace to be good. If he is religious and devout, he should thank God for making him that way. If he is truly trying to take a moral inventory of himself, he should use God's law as the standard -- not compare himself to people to whom he ca n easily feel superior.
The tax collector recognizes that righteousness is a gift, not a reward. The way to receive a gift is to be open to it. The way to be open to the gift of righteousness is to show you know you need it. The way you show you know you need it is to be sorry for your sins and ask forgiveness.
God always forgives. God always wants to wipe out the past and not hold it against us. God always wants to put us back into a proper relationship to him. That is what the cross on which Jesus died guarantees.
In today's epistle St. Paul begins to lay out his arguments in favor of the resurrection. He argues completely rationally. We believe that Jesus rose from the dead in his body for two fundamental reasons. Reason number one is that the scriptures said the Messiah would die and then rise again. Reason number two is that well over five hundred people said they saw Jesus alive again after he had been dead and buried. So we have scripture -- the word of God -- and eyewitness testimony.
What ties the epistle to the parable is what St. Paul says about himself. He was an eyewitness to the resurrection, too -- he saw the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. He admits that he didn't deserve to have that experience, because he was persecuting Christian believers.
The only explanation is that God's gift -- his grace -- overwhelmed St. Paul's undeserving. He didn't earn the right to see the risen Jesus or to be an apostle. Instead, he concedes, "By the grace of God I am what I am."
And when he is tempted to compare his own hard Christian work with the somewhat lesser accomplishments of the slacker apostles, he backs off and admits, "It was really not I who did the work -- it was the grace of God that was with me."
We ask God for the same grace so we can be like the publican and like St. Paul, "For every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."
The Collect: O God, who declarest thy almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity; Mercifully grant unto us such a measure of thy grace, that we, running the way of thy commandments, may obtain thy gracious promises, and be made partakers of thy heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
The Epistle: I Corinthians 15: 1-11
The Gospel: St. Luke 18:9-14
Trinity X, August 16, 1998
To understand what is going on in today's Gospel, we need to realize that it takes place on the first Palm Sunday. Jesus is riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. Following the prophecy, that mode of transportation proclaimed that he was the King of Israel.
The crowd responded to him enthusiastically. People were shouting and singing psalms of praise and spreading out their clothing in front of him. In the midst of what looked like a high moment in Jesus' life, St. Luke tells us what he was thinking and saying about it.
Instead of grinning from ear to ear and exulting in the intoxicating praise of the crowd, Jesus looks out over the city, and he starts to weep. He is weeping because he is the only person in the mob scene who really understands what is going on.
We have a certain advantage here, of course, in that we know how the story plays itself out. The crowd which adores Jesus on Sunday has turned against him by Friday. The same people who scream, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord," on Sunday are yelling, "Let him be crucified," on Friday. Jesus is executed, he comes back out of his grave, and the rest, as they say, is history.
But Jesus' weeping on Palm Sunday is really not so much about what is going to happen to him within the next week. He is grieving over how these particular events fit into the entire scope of the history of Jerusalem and the way God uses Jerusalem in the unfolding of his plan for the salvation of the world.
When they reject him the next Friday, the people of Jerusalem will set in motion a process which will end in the destruction of their city. When Jesus talks about how their enemies will surround them and cast a trench around them and knock down all their buildings and kill all of them and their children, he is referring to what was going to happen about forty years later.
In about 70 A.D. there was an outbreak of nationalistic violence in Jerusalem. Some Jewish rebels took up arms against the Roman occupying government, but the Roman army crushed them and tore down the temple. That event had consequences which we still live with today.
The centerpiece of Old Testament religion was the system of animal sacrifices God commanded in the Law. The sacrifices could only be performed at the temple in Jerusalem. So it has been impossible for Jews to live out the fullness of their religion since 70 A.D.
Judaism has been forced to become exclusively a religion of reading, writing, and teaching. It would be as if the church were somehow forbidden to celebrate the sacraments.
That is one of the reasons that contemporary arguments about control of the temple mount in Jerusalem are so significant. There are ways of looking at Biblical prophecy from which one can conclude that Jesus will not come back until the temple is rebuilt. Some orthodox and more radical groups hope to rebuild the temple to bring the Messiah. Yasir Arafat is probably not terribly enthusiastic.
What Jesus was predicting for Jerusalem's immediate future was a replay of what had happened in her past. From the time King David made Jerusalem his capital in about 1050 B.C., the fortunes of the Jews were tied up with the fortunes of Jerusalem.
The prophets were continually telling the people that if they did not shape up and if their rulers did not pay attention to God, God would allow Jerusalem to be besieged and destroyed. The most significant destruction before 70 A.D. came in about 586 B.C. when Babylon conquered the city.
Again, that event had far-reaching consequences. The Babylonians destroyed Solomon's temple. They also carried many of the Jews back to Babylon. That was the real beginning of the Jewish diaspora -- the scattering of Jews away from the Holy Land which continues today -- a fact the existence of the state of Israel is trying to reverse.
As Christians we have more to learn from all this than just a deeper insight into the day's news. Jerusalem was destroyed both times because the people weren't paying attention to God. As Jesus puts it, "Thou knewest not the time of thy visitation."
It is God's nature to be visiting us in this sense all of the time. We are supposed to be learning how to see the hand of God in the things that happen in our lives. One of the most important aspects of prayer is to think about what is going on and what God is trying to tell you by causing it or letting it happen.
The people of Jerusalem were not especially horrible people who were richly deserving of being wiped out. But they were people to whom God had spoken and to whom he had shown himself and whom he loved and wanted to save. They just allowed themselves to drift into indifference which led to complacency and disobedience and so to ignorance and finally to destruction.
As St. Paul told us last week, "These things happened to them as examples, and they are written for our admonition -- to warn us." We don't want Jesus weeping over us.
The Collect: Let thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of thy humble servants; and, that they may obtain their petitions, make them to ask such things as shall please thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: I Corinthians 12: 1-12
The Gospel: St. Luke 19: 41-46
Trinity IX, August 9, 1998
Today we go back to thinking about Jesus' parables. This morning's Gospel is one of the most familiar ones. It is usually called "The Prodigal Son," but close inspection shows it could as easily be titled, "The Forgiving Father," or "The Uptight and Resentful Older Brother."
Several weeks ago the day's Gospel was composed of two parables. One was about a shepherd who left ninety-nine sheep to look for a hundredth one which was lost, and the other about a woman searching for a lost coin. In both cases Jesus makes the point that God and the angels in heaven are as happy when one sinner changes his ways as the shepherd is when he finds his sheep and the woman is when she finds her coin. He says, "Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance."
The Prodigal Son comes immediately after these two other parables, and it is easy to see that is has the same basic structure and makes the same fundamental point about how nice it is to be found after you have been lost.
The Prodigal Son has more color and detail than the other two. First of all, we don't know why the sheep wanders off and the coin, quite obviously, doesn't choose to be lost. We are given more of a sense of the character and the motivations of the prodigal son, who is the comparably lost element in his parable.
The prodigal's first words to his father are, "Let's pretend you're dead." That is the practical meaning of, "Father, give me that portion of goods that falleth to me." The prodigal goes off and throws his money away. He sinks so far that he winds up feeding pigs -- a position any Jew would hate.
What begins to redeem the prodigal son is that he is able to make a realistic assessment of where he is, face up to the truth, and then make a sane decision about what to do next. He may have been a wasteful and foolish fellow, but he does not compound the problem by indulging himself further and denying reality.
He faces the facts of his situation as they are, and he accepts his responsibility. The prodigal is at this point way ahead of many people who run away from the truth and look for someone to blame for their predicament other than themselves.
He decides the best he can do for himself is to go back to his father and ask him for a job -- not ask to be received back into his previous position of privilege, but just for a job as a hired man.
His father -- obviously the God figure in the story -- does not even wait for him to get to the house. When he sees the prodigal coming he rushes out and brushes off his request for a job and hugs him and kisses him and commands his servants to put together a feast.
That doesn't mean that the father endorsed his son's bad behavior-it means that he loved him and had compassion on him and his love and compassion outweighed other considerations. That is not a bad way to act toward people whom we supposedly love. There would be plenty of time to talk things over after the banquet.
This is the point at which the two previous parables end: what was lost has been found, and there is great rejoicing over it. Remember that what made Jesus tell all three parables was the fact that the Pharisees and scribes were attacking him for associating with the wrong sort of people.
What takes the Prodigal Son deeper is the character of the older brother. He was there in Jesus' original telling as a way of confronting the Pharisees and scribes with what their self-righteous, holier-than-thou attitude really looked like. He may well perform the same service for us.
Being sympathetic to the older brother seems fairly natural. He reminds us of ourselves -- well-behaved, dutiful, more sinned against than sinning, quite understandably resentful of what seems to be foolish generosity toward an irresponsible whoremonger.
On the crassest level, the older brother was being silly -- under the Old Testament Law he was entitled to double the amount any other child would inherit, and nothing could take that away. The truth is that his father's generosity to his brother reveals what a mean-spirited, resentful, self-pitying character he really is.
The outstanding characteristics of the father are his generosity and his compassion. The outstanding characteristics of the prodigal, after a slow start, are his pragmatic realism and his repentance. Jesus wants us to act as the father and the prodigal did. The clear lesson of the older brother is that thinking you are perfect and taking pride in it is going to make you so self-righteous that you cannot be happy when a sinner changes his ways -- not a good way to be.
As Jesus says, "There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth," and "It was meet that we should make merry and be glad, for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found."
The Collect: Grant to us, Lord, we beseech thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as are right; that we, who cannot do any thing that is good without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: I Corinthians 10:1-13 The Gospel: St. Luke 15: 11-32
Trinity VIII, August 2, 1998
Today's Gospel comes from the Sermon on the Mount, and in it Jesus answers two related questions. The first is, "How can you tell false prophets from true prophets?" and the second is the more personal question, "How does God evaluate me?" The basic answer to both questions is in the old cliche: "Actions speak louder than words."
In the sense Jesus uses the word here, a prophet is a person who claims to speak for God. I, quite obviously, claim to be a prophet -- I dare to tell you that I am speaking to you, "In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost."
A priest or a minister or any other sort of religious teacher lays claim to being a prophet when he tells you he has a direct insight into what God wants. In language reminiscent of the story of Little Red Riding Hood, Jesus warns that false prophets present themselves to us dressed up like sheep, when really they are ravenously hungry wolves.
He means that false prophets are deceptive -- they appear to be sweet and gentle and reasonable, but that is all just a pose. They are, in fact, out to destroy and to thwart God's purposes. Jesus says the best way to tell a false prophet from a true prophet is by their fruits -- by what results from what they teach and from how they act.
We all use this standard to one degree or another when we decide what religion to profess and which church to attend. When St. Paul warns the Corinthians against teachers who claim to be Christian but are not, he says, "Satan himself can be transformed into an angel of light -- so it is no surprise if Satan's ministers can present themselves as ministers of righteousness." Appearances can be deceiving.
One of the most memorable stories in the Old Testament comes when God tells the prophet Samuel that he needs to find a replacement for King Saul. God had picked Saul to be Israel's first king for a number of reasons, but prominent among them was that Saul was tall and handsome. He was what the Bible calls "a choice young man and a goodly."
After Saul disobeys God, God sends Samuel to the house of a man named Jesse, telling Samuel that the new king would come from among Jesse's several sons. When Samuel meets Jesse's first son, he figures he must be the one -- perhaps because he is tall and handsome.
God, somewhat intemperately, rebukes Samuel, saying, "Don't look at his face or think about how tall he is. I don't want him. I don't look at things the way you do. Men look at the outward appearance, but I look on the heart."
So again we are presented with the idea that appearances can be deceiving. We don't have quite the same ability that God has to look at another person's heart, but we do have the test of the fruits. Actions speak louder than words.
This week we shall mark the feast of the Transfiguration of Christ-which raises yet another question about outward appearance and inner reality. The Transfiguration comes during Jesus' preaching and healing ministry after he has first told the disciples that he is going to have to suffer and die.
They cannot accept any such idea. Things are going along too well for them to imagine that it could all end in tragic failure, and they loved Jesus and were loyal to him, and they didn't even want to think about his being taken from them.
The audience for the Transfiguration is the inner circle of the disciples -- Peter, James, and John. When they get to the top of the mountain with Jesus, his appearance changes -- his face and his clothing look different, and he is shining.
Two prominent characters from the Old Testament appear alongside Jesus: Moses, who represents the Law, and Elijah, who represents the Prophets. As St. Luke tells us, they "Spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." The three of them talked about Jesus' death. Then a cloud appeared, and a voice came out of the cloud saying, "This is my beloved son, listen to him."
So the Transfiguration of Christ is designed to give the disciples a deeper insight into just who they were dealing with. The fact that Jesus is the Son of God is underscored by the cloud which is the sign of God's presence; by the glory which is the visible light which shines from God's face; and by God's own testimony -- "This is my son."
The Transfiguration also tells the disciples that they had better try to get used to what Jesus had told them about his suffering and death. If the Law and the Prophets agreed to it, and God said, "Listen," that made things quite clear. Appearances had been to some degree deceiving -- this was something more than just a witty, wonderworking rabbi carpenter.
All of this helps us to remember that when God evaluates us, he doesn't look on our outward appearance, he looks at our hearts. He is not interested in the person we like to pretend to be, he is interested in who we really are. At the end of today's Gospel, Jesus says, "Not everyone that saith unto me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." Appearances can be deceiving. Actions speak louder than words.
The Collect: O God, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth; We humbly beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Romans 8: 12-17
The Gospel: St. Matthew 7:15-21
Trinity VII, July 26, 1998
This morning's Gospel is St. Mark's account of one of Jesus' two feeding miracles. One miracle involves feeding five thousand people, and it appears in all four gospels. This one involves feeding four thousand people, and it appears in St. Matthew's Gospel also. Both stories make the fundamental point that Jesus can perform miracles -- so we should never hesitate to ask him to perform miracles for us.
These particular miracles are tied up with the fact that Jesus controls nature. In nature two fish can produce many fish. Bread comes from the repeated process of planting and harvesting the seeds that produce the grain that makes the bread. In the feeding miracles Jesus speeds up those natural processes. A few fish produce many fish and some bread produces much bread right away.
Jews believed that their God was the creator and sustainer of nature. The feeding miracles help to establish the family relationship between Jesus and God. Jesus says, "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake."
The feeding miracles also point out the fact that one of the ways Jesus continues to feed us miraculously is in Holy Communion. He takes bread, he blesses it -- that is, he thanks God for it -- he breaks it up, and he passes it out. That pattern should have at least a faintly familiar ring.
Jesus rarely gets away with peforming a miracle without having to deal with critics. His miraculous powers attract some people to him, and they respond with deeper faith and understanding. But his miracles threaten other people who respond with attacks.
St. Mark says that after the miracle of feeding four thousand people, the Pharisees came to Jesus and asked him for a sign from heaven-presumably to establish what gave him the authority to do what he did and to say what he said. Jesus asks. "Why do these people ask me for a sign - I'm not going to give them a sign."
In St. Matthew Jesus dismisses both the Pharisees and the Sadducees in a bit more detail. When they ask him for a sign from heaven, he says, "Oh I know you are all great experts when it comes to signs. You look at the sky in the evening, and if it is red you say, 'It's going to be a nice day tomorrow.' If the sky is red in the morning, you say, 'There's going to be foul weather today.'
"You hypocrites -- you can read the signs in the sky, but you can't read the signs of the times. Only wicked and adulterous people demand a sign -- so the only sign you are going to get is the sign of the prophet Jonah."
The appearance of Jesus on earth was the sign of the times. God had come in the flesh to save his people. The Pharisees and Sadducees did not want to hear that message, because they had a big stake in keeping things exactly as they were. So they would not and could not read the signs of the times.
The prophet Jonah is one of the twelve minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible -- minor only because they are shorter than the four longer ones: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. In his book God tells him to go to the wickedest city in the world and tell the citizens to repent and change their ways. The wicked city was Nineveh, the capital of Assyria.
Jonah did not want to do what God wanted him to do, so he got on a ship headed for Spain to try to get as far away from God as he could. God whipped up a Mediterranean storm, and when the other sailors found out where the storm had come from, Jonah was thrown overboard. He was swallowed up by a big fish who spit him out after three days.
Then Jonah went to Nineveh and told the people to repent and turn to God -- and, much to his surprise and consternation, they did repent. Jonah pouted because he was hoping God would wipe out the city in a violent and dramatic way, and he could watch the show.
So the sign of Jonah that Jesus gives to a wicked and adulterous generation has at least two parts. First of all, the sign of Jonah is the sign of the resurrection. Jesus says, "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the belly of the earth." Anybody who questions Jesus' authority can look at his resurrection.
Second, the sign of Jonah is the call to repentance -- God's demand that we judge our behavior continually, measure it by his law, and ask for forgiveness and the strength to do better in the places we have failed.
So even though we are not challenging Jesus as the Pharisees and Sadducees were, we will do well to keep our own eyes on the sign of Jonah. Jonah reminds us to be honest about our shortcomings and seek forgiveness, and Jonah reminds us that Jesus has won the victory over sin and death for us by rising from his grave. Those are the signs of every time.
We need to take the signs as God's gift, and not as something we can earn through good behavior. St. Paul reminds us that it's better to accept the gift than to demand what we deserve, "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Collect: Lord of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things; Graft in our hearts the love of thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of thy great mercy keep us in the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Romans 6: 19-23
The Gospel: St. Mark 8: 1-9
There are no sermons for Trinity V and VI, July 12 and 19, 1998 -- Bishop Cahoon was on vacation during this time.
Trinity IV, July 5, 1998
Quoting what we heard from St. Paul this morning, "The creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." From the bondage of corruption to glorious liberty.
St. Paul is talking about what is going happen at the end of the world. But I don't think it is completely unfair to suggest that the imagery he uses gives us a window into what drove the colonization of America and the founding of the United States. Many people who took part in that historical process believed they were on a pilgrimage from the bondage of corruption to glorious liberty.
The weekend of Independence Day seems an appropriate time to think about this subject. My interest was stimulated by an exhibition now on display at the Library of Congress. It is called "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic." I encourage you to go to look at it. I also attended a symposium of scholarly experts on the subject which helped me understand some of the issues more deeply.
My grade school and high school education in American history suggested the religious roots of the colonial experience. Especially at Thanksgiving time we learned about the brave Pilgrims and Puritans who came to North America to escape the horrible religious persecution that prevailed in England in the early seventeenth century.
It was only later on that I realized that much of what the Pilgrims and the Puritans were trying to escape consisted of my beloved Book of Common Prayer and (woops) Anglican bishops.
That irony points up several things that seem true to me about the consideration of religion in early America. The picture like most historical pictures is more muddy than it is crystal-clear; one is going to be particularly concerned about his own group -- in our case Anglicans and especially Virginia Anglicans; and anyone who studies this potentially volatile subject is likely to come up with information that confirms his prejudices about religion and church-state relations Especially in light of the rhetoric about religious liberty which tends to surround the colonization and Revolution, I think it is important to note that established churches were the rule rather than the exception in colonial America. Established churches are ones which all citizens, regardless of religious affiliation, pay taxes to support.
New England, following those freedom-seeking Pilgrims and Puritans, tended to establish their brand of Congregationalism. In Virginia and the Carolinas the established church was Anglican. Anglican clergy here were paid through a tax on, of all politically incorrect things, tobacco. Of course the members of the Church of England who came to America were not looking particularly for religious freedom -- they were at first looking for gold and other sorts of wealth.
No matter what we think about the niceties of church-state relations now, I don't know of anyone who advocates overt tax support for Christianity in general, let alone for a particular denomination. But that was the situation in most of the colonies on the eve of the Revolution.
After Yorktown the various states moved toward disestablishment at different rates of speed. In the long run, as we know, a pattern of complete disestablishment tended to prevail both in the states and in the Federal constitution. The key figures in that process were two Virginia Anglicans -- Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Now to the great questions: "Were the Founding Fathers Christians, and was the United States intended originally to be a Christian nation?" That is certainly an issue on which one's current prejudices are likely to shape one's answers about what was going on two hundred years ago.
It was the clear intention of the American Revolution to establish a republican form of government -- one where effective power rested not with kings and noblemen and bishops but with elected representatives.
In most places in the world, republican political ideals tended to go hand in hand with hostility to the church -- France and the French Revolution being the most glaring example. America was an exception to that pattern.
The fact that religion was a factor in people's coming here in the first place created a climate which tended to foster the fusion of republican and religious values. The clear victory over Catholic France in the French and Indian War also helped.
The Founding Fathers believed that liberty could be maintained and a republic could work only if the citizens were virtuous. The institution best suited to inculcating virtue was the church. So religion and churches had a necessary role to play in making the political experiment work. Most of the Fathers also thought that virtuous liberty was promoted best in a free-market, rather than an established, religious context.
I am far more certain that the Founding Fathers thought religion and church were a positive good than I am that Jefferson, for example, would have signed his name to the Nicene Creed. But no matter how we conceive the history of the colonial period, it led to a society in which we can freely sign our names to the Nicene Creed. So let us resolve to use wisely and to spread "the glorious liberty of the children of God."
The Collect: O God, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy; Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
The Epistle: Romans 8:18-23
The Gospel: St. Luke 6:36-42
Trinity III, June 28, 1998
For the third consecutive Sunday our gospel lesson is one of Jesus' parables -- today, strictly speaking, two almost identical parables. Two Sundays ago we talked about what Jesus says the most important purpose of the parables is. It is not, as one might easily think, that parables help us remember his points more easily than propositions or bare statements do. His primary reason for teaching in parables is that parables separate those who understand from those who do not -- the ones who get it from the ones who don't.
So when you read one of Jesus' parables or hear one, God is testing you to find out whether or not you understand. You don't fail the test if you don't get it. You fail the test only if you don't get it and then don't ask God to help you get it. Jesus promises the Holy Ghost will help you understand if you ask him to. That is one of the reasons you are baptized.
Today's parables come in St. Luke's Gospel only a few verses after the parable of the great supper which we heard last week. The result of the parable of the great supper is that Jesus begins to attract even bigger crowds than he had attracted before.
Because there are so many new people, he feels the need to tell them that being a follower of his is not a simple matter, and that making a serious commitment to him may turn out to be somewhat less convenient than it might have looked at first.
These are his strong words, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." Commitment to Jesus means putting him and what he demands of you ahead of every other consideration -- no matter how good or important those other considerations may be. So don't make the commitment before you count the cost.
He is not saying, "Reject your family." He is saying, "Put doing what I want first, and you will be doing the best thing for your family." He is not saying, "Seek suicide and martyrdom." He is saying, "If you are willing to die for me, then nothing else that can result from obeying me is anything to be afraid of. I love you, you're going to heaven. So what can you possibly be worried about?"
It seems that those rather tough words thin out the crowd somewhat. Today's lesson begins, "Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him." Knowing the context in which Jesus uses a particular parable and especially knowing the sort of audience that is listening is a big help in the process of getting it.
The publicans and sinners were disreputable people. They were the sort that no self-respecting religious person would want to associate himself with. The self-respecting religious people in the gospels are the Pharisees, and let us be very clear that Jesus does not approve of their holier-than-thou attitude.
When the Pharisees see the publicans and sinners with Jesus, St. Luke reports they, "murmured, saying, 'This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them."' In other words, "If Jesus were a law-abiding Jew like us, he would know that being around some of these people will make him religiously unclean. And if Jesus were a decent person like us he wouldn't associate with such low-rent characters, religion or no religion."
So the two parables Jesus tells are directed at the Pharisees and anyone else who shares their superior attitude -- we may even have known such people ourselves. The overall point is, "It is a good thing that God doesn't have your attitude. God wants to save everybody. He comes looking for people so he can save them.
"The people who are most likely to be saved are the ones who know they need to be. People who think they are on the right track with God already because of their generally respectable behavior and overall wonderfulness have missed the point entirely -- at the most important level, they just don't get it."
He makes the first parable a question for the Pharisees, asking, "if you owned a hundred sheep and one of them got lost, wouldn't you leave the other ninety-nine to go look for it? And when you found it wouldn't you be happy -- happy enough to invite your friends in to celebrate with you? I'm telling you that that is how God and the angels feel when one sinner changes his ways. There is no celebration in heaven over people who don't think they need to repent."
Jesus repeats the point with a story about a woman who owns ten coins, each of which is worth a day's wages. When she loses one of them, she searches for it, finds it, and celebrates with her friends just as the shepherd did.
Jesus spent time with publicans and sinners because they knew they needed what he had to offer. Jesus spends time with us to the degree that we realize we need him too. So if you want him to spend time with you-and why are you here if you don't? -- then admit your sin and say you're sorry about it, and remember what he says, "Joy shall be in heaven in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth."
The Collect: O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to hear us; and grant that we, to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray, may, by thy mighty aid, be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 Peter 5:5-11
The Gospel: St. Luke 15:1-10
Trinity II, June 21, 1998
Fathers' Day is not an official observance in the church calendar, but that doesn't mean that it has no relevance to Christians. Everybody has a father, one way or another, and Jesus describes the relationship between God and ourselves as that of father and child. He tells us, "When ye pray, say 'Our Father."'
The fifth commandment -- my own mother's favorite one -- reads, "Honour thy father and thy mother." I had a friend who used to say, "The fifth commandment is the one that reminds you that you have a navel." We honor our parents first of all by acknowledging their overwhelming importance.
They not only give us life, but they also provide the raw materials, both genetic and environmental, that shape that life, for better or worse. We may sometimes wish it were otherwise, but the fact is we did not come from nothing, and we did not create ourselves.
In this morning's Gospel, one of the excuses for not coming to the wedding banquet is, "I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come." The parable is about accepting salvation -- hearing the good news -- getting ready to go to heaven -- and it is clear that God does not think that family obligations are a good reason to reject what he has to offer.
The husband in the parable makes a great mistake when he suggests that his obligations to his wife are in conflict with his obligations to the man who has invited him to dinner. The other two excuse-makers err in a similar way when they say that their economic responsibilities make it also impossible for them to come.
The conjunction of Fathers' Day and this parable make this seem a reasonable time to comment on some front-page news of the recent past. I am talking about the resolution of the Southern Baptist Convention about wives submitting themselves graciously to their husbands.
The crucial Biblical passage which addresses this issue is the fifth chapter of St. Paul's epistle to the Ephesians. Our Prayer Book is absolutely unashamed of this apparently politically incorrect passage. It is appointed as the Epistle when a celebration of Holy Communion accompanies a wedding, and it is cited in the list of reasons we hold services of matrimony in the church in the first place.
St. Paul is describing the way the body of Christ -- the church -- can function the most smoothly. His basic prescription is that all Christians "submit yourselves one to another in the fear of God." That is another way of saying "love your neighbor." To love is to act for the benefit of the other person. To submit is to put the interests of the other person ahead of one's own interests.
St. Paul goes on to describe three human relationships. Everyone is involved in at least one of them. The relationships are: husband and wife; parent and child; and master and slave (we can translate that one to employer and employee). In each of the three relationships one party has a natural power advantage over the other.
When Christians are in these relationships, the more obviously powerful one is supposed to set aside his natural advantage and serve the other. The weaker one then can set aside his fear of the stronger one's power and be able to serve him.
Mutual submission in these relationships is the only way they can work for everyone's benefit. It is also through submitting in these human situations that we begin to learn what cooperating with the will of God is all about.
Referring to the marital relationship St. Paul does indeed say, "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands." But he goes on to say something that is quoted much less often, "Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it."
So his prescription is -- wives, submit to your husbands; husbands, die for your wives. That is a description of mutuality and cooperation; not a prescription for tyranny or a license for abuse from either side.
Father and child is the image of the relationship between ourselves and the first person of the Holy Trinity, but husband and wife describes our relationship to the second person. So the Christian view of marriage has a far deeper importance than as just another club to use in wrangling over cultural values.
St. John Baptist describes his relationship to Jesus as that of a best man to a groom. The best man comes out first and gets things ready, then the groom comes out and takes his place. At the end Jesus will be revealed as the bridegroom of the church, and we shall be presented to him as his virgin bride -- as St. Paul says, "not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing." Our virgin perfection will be his gift, not, quite obviously, something we have earned through spotless behavior.
The physical intimacy of marriage is, in St. Paul's understanding, the best way to grasp the intimacy between Jesus and the individual believer. He concludes, "A man shall leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. Now this is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let everyone of you in particular so love his wife even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband."
The Collect: O LORD, who never failest to help and govern those whom thou dost bring up in thy stedfast fear and love; Keep us, we beseech thee, under the protection of thy good providence, and make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle. I St. John 3: 13-24
The Gospel. St. Luke 14:16-24.
Trinity I, June 14, 1998
The Trinity season brings us into the second major phase of the church's calendar. The period from Advent through Whitsuntide presents the main events in Christ's life so we can think about them and how they apply to us: Advent, his coming again; Christmas, his birth; Epiphany, his showing to the world; Lent, his testing; Passiontide, his suffering and death; then finally in the fifty days following Easter, his resurrection, his ascension, and the coming of the Holy Ghost.
Trinity season focuses more on the teachings of Jesus than on the teachings about Jesus which occupy the first part of the year. That is not a hard and fast division, but it is roughly the way it is.
One of the things which is most characteristic of Jesus' teaching is his use of parables -- stories either factual or fictional which tell something about God. We shall be looking at several of Jesus' parables in Trinitytide. The first one is the story of the rich man and Lazarus which is this morning's Gospel.
It seems obvious that the best reason for teaching in parables is that stories are easier to remember than propositions are. The whole Old Testament, for example, is one long parable. Instead of giving us a list of facts about himself, God tells the story of Israel to show what he is like and how he deals with human beings. The story of Jesus' life is also a parable about the nature of God.
While never denying that stories are a good way to teach, Jesus says that an even more important purpose of parables is to separate people who get it from people who don't get it. He tells the disciples, "Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand."
So parables are a test for us -- not so much a test of intelligence, but of our capacity for spiritual insight. If you always draw a blank when you hear one of the parables, then you need to ask the Holy Ghost to help you understand them. One of the reasons God puts his Spirit in us is to help us understand Jesus. Coming to Bible study can't hurt either.
Today's parable is a fairly complicated one. It makes a couple of points which are fairly obvious, but it has some other depths that may take awhile to puzzle out. Its most direct teaching is that if you refuse to help poor people, you're going to end up in hell.
Jesus describes a rich man lavishly and a beggar named Lazarus luridly. The rich man doesn't help the beggar, and when he gets to the next world he is extremely thirsty, because hell is hot. Jesus takes a Jewish idea about the afterlife -- that good people go to the bosom of Abraham when they die, and bad people fry -- to make some other points.
When the rich man asks for a drink of water, Abraham tells him that the tables are turned now. The rich man had all the advantages on earth, but now his situation and the beggar's situation are reversed -- and anyway the gulf between the good place and the bad place is so wide nobody can get across no matter why they want to.
For the first time the rich man thinks of someone other than himself. He asks Abraham to send Lazarus to the house where his five brothers live. His idea is that if they find out that the consequence of selfishness in this world is hell in the next, maybe they will shape up and break the family pattern.
Abraham says, "Your brothers are Jews. Their Bible says you should share with poor people. They don't need to hear it from Lazarus, they can read about it there."
The rich man replies more or less, "Nobody in my family takes religion that seriously, so you can forget about that. But if my brothers see a dead beggar come back to life and start talking, that will get their attention, and they will change their ways."
Abraham responds, "If they won't listen to what is in the scriptures, they're not going to pay attention, even if somebody comes back from the dead." So the parable ends with a twist. The twist shows that the parable is not just about how one ought to treat the poor. It is also about the importance of knowing and obeying the Bible, and about the reaction of many Jews to the resurrection of Jesus. They couldn't believe that Jesus had risen, because they didn't really understand their own scriptures.
It is certainly more effective and memorable to tell this colorful story than merely to say: "Help the poor or you'll end up in hell; read your Bible and take what it says seriously; and if you don't know God in his word, his miracles won't reach you either."
But the parable is not finally just a riddle to figure out. It is a challenge to us to change our ways. Our vestry gave money to the poor on the parish's behalf this week, as we always do. Our monthly food collection is coming up. Those things are a beginning. We have four Bible classes a week to help you hear Moses and the prophets more clearly.
All of this comes together in worship -- and today's worship poses the question, "If a man say, 'I love God,' and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"
The Collect: O GOD, the strength of all those who put their trust in thee; Mercifully accept our prayers; and because, through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 St. John 4: 7-21
The Gospel: St. Luke 16: 19-31.
Trinity Sunday, June 7, 1998
"Unity" means oneness; "duality" means twoness; "trinity" means threeness. When we say that the God we worship is a Trinity, we mean that he is threeness. Many people are fond of saying that the doctrine of the Trinity is not in the New Testament, but they can only say that if they overlook the very end of St. Matthew's Gospel.
Jesus begins his last speech to the disciples by saying, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth, go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." In this morning's gospel he tells Nicodemus, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."
The essentials of baptism come from those two statements -- it has to be done with water, and it has to be in the name of the Trinity. Since Jesus himself associates the idea of the Trinity with baptism, baptism is the best way for us to address the question, "What is the Trinity all about, anyway?"
The first thing to realize about the Trinity is that it is not a theological riddle which has no reasonable solution. The Trinity is, instead, a description of the way God is in himself -- what his own nature is like.
I am partial to the sort of argument St. Augustine uses to explain the Trinity. He begins with the idea he takes from St. John that God is love. For love to exist, there has to be both someone who loves and someone or something which is loved.
In the case of God, the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father back. When two human beings love each other, a third thing comes into existence called their relationship or the love that they share. Again in the case of God, this third factor is the Holy Ghost.
So the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, and the love that flows between them is the Holy Ghost. A neat and tidy explanation -- but we cannot leave it there. We need to answer the question, "Why does Jesus say the Trinity has to be invoked when someone is born again by water and the Spirit -- at baptism?"
We don't use the Trinity in baptism as an incantation. "The name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" are not the mumbojumbo hocus-pocus presto-changeo words which make the desired result appear. Jesus tells us to invoke the Trinity at baptism, because baptism is the way we become part of the Trinity.
Baptism shows us that the Trinity is not a description of a God who is out there and over there, but so far away from us and beyond us as to be irrelevant to us. The Trinity tells us how our lives and God's life become one life -- and there is nothing more practical or important than that.
In baptism we become part of the Son of God -- we are grafted onto the body of Christ. God the Father loves us because we are in the Son, we are able to love the Father back because we are in the Son. The Holy Ghost, which is the love and the power which flows between the Father and the Son, flows through us.
So from the time we are baptized we are part of the Trinity. The life of God himself flows in us and through us. We keep that life going-and the love and power flowing -- by paying attention to what Jesus tells us through the Bible.
As he said last week, "If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." Baptism unites us to God the Holy Trinity. God is not just out there -- he is right here and in my heart.
Today's Epistle suggests that any kind of clever formula which tries to explain the Trinity will always be overshadowed by actually worshipping him. In the Book of Revelation, St. John is taken up into heaven where he sees the throne room of God.
The Father is on the throne in the center, but we cannot see him directly -- only the light that shines from his face. In front of his throne are seven candlesticks which represent the Spirit of God and correspond to the seven-fold gifts of the Holy Spirit which rest upon Jesus and which he gives us at Confirmation.
The Son does not make a direct appearance in this passage -- he will appear just afterward in his guise as the Lamb of God. St. John says, "And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth."
In one of the most dramatic passages in the Old Testament, Isaiah sees God in the temple at Jerusalem. The seraphic angels are singing him a song of praise, "Holy, holy, holy." St. John tells us the same song is going on in heaven, "Holy , holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come."
Soon we will sing the same song with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, as we praise our three-person God -- the one who has made us what St. Peter calls "partakers of the divine nature."
The Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity; We beseech thee that thou wouldest keep us stedfast in this faith, and evermore defend us from all adversities, who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: Revelation 4:1-11.
The Gospel: St. John 3:1-15
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