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Trinity Sermons, 1997 Part I
The Rt. Rev. John T. Cahoon, Jr. |
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Trinity Sermons, 1997 Part I
The Rt. Rev. John T. Cahoon, Jr. |
Sunday Next Before Advent, November 23, 1997
Because he is the only president from Pennsylvania, I have a certain interest in the life of James Buchanan. Buchanan was president from 1857 to 1861, the run-up to the War between the States. The only memorable one-liner attributed to him is what he said when Abraham Lincoln was elected to be his successor. Buchanan remarked, "I am the last President of the United States."
I bring Buchanan up because what lies behind this morning's Old Testament lesson/epistle is the specter of the division of a once united nation into two. Israel divided when King Solomon died, about 1000 years before Christ. Solomon achieved a great deal during his own lifetime, but he did not have an obvious and competent successor who could hold his work together and carry it forward.
Solomon's son and heir Rehoboam enraged the northern tribes after his father's death, so they formed a separate alliance and selected another king. The northern kingdom became known as Israel and had its capital at Samaria. The southern tribes made their capital at Jerusalem and were known as the Kingdom of Judah. When the Assyrians conquered Israel in the late 700s B.C. the alienation became even deeper.
The prophet Jeremiah lived about 100 years later, in the 600s B.C. In Jeremiah's time, the main threat to peace in the Middle East came from Babylon -- some things never change. Jeremiah warned the people of Judah that if they didn't go back to worshipping God properly and obeying his laws, the Babylonians would come in and overrun them. Jeremiah turned out to be exactly right, which did not help his popularity at all.
In any event, along with his prophecies of doom, Jeremiah preached that in the long run God's purposes would prevail. Splitting the nation, and then being conquered and carried off into captivity and scattered into exile throughout the world had brought disgrace upon God's people -- but that disgrace was not going to last forever.
Through Jeremiah -- and some of the other prophets -- God promised his people that some day he would send them a proper king who would straighten everything out. The new monarch was not going to be another Solomon, even though Solomon was arguably Israel's most successful king. The new king was going to be a second David.
Jeremiah tells us this morning, "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch." The new king was going to be a branch of David's family tree -- a rod, or root, of Jesse, David's father. It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out why the New Testament writers go to such lengths to show that Jesus is a descendant of David and that he was born in Bethlehem, royal David's city.
We believe Jesus is the king Jeremiah and the other Hebrew prophets promised. That is what we mean when we call him "Christ." Jesus comes to us not only as a Jew himself, but also as the fulfillment of promises which were made first of all to Jews, God's chosen people. God is kind enough to share King Jesus with us Gentiles, but how and why he does that is a story for a different season.
Jeremiah says that when the Branch finally comes, he will accomplish something mighty and dramatic. Remember, the Bible mainly describes God not as a collection of abstract characteristics, but as a person who does things.
The Hebrew people identified their God as the one who led them out of slavery in Egypt. The Exodus was their clearest evidence that God acts in history to save his people. Jeremiah says that what the Branch will do will be so great that it will make people forget about the Exodus.
Jeremiah says the Branch is going to bring all of God's people back to their own land. They will not be divided any more; they will not be scattered to the four winds any more. And when the Branch gathers his people together he will "reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth."
My guess is that Jeremiah believed that that promise would come true within history -- that a king would arise who would literally bring all of the Hebrew people back to the Promised Land of Israel and establish them in an earthly kingdom.
We believe God's promise about the Branch is fulfilled in this world in the church -- where Jesus gathers all of God's people together in one body -- and finally in heaven, the real Promised Land. That doesn't mean we have to think Jeremiah was wrong. We have the grace to see that God's promises are deeper and broader than Jeremiah could have imagined.
In this morning's gospel lesson, Jesus feeds five thousand people with only a little fish and bread. When the people are done eating, he tells the disciples, "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." The leftovers fill twelve baskets. There were twelve tribes in Israel and Judah.
So the crowd saw that Jesus is not only a miracle worker, but also someone who gathers, to be sure nothing is lost. It is not much of a stretch to believe that they were thinking of Jeremiah's Branch as they looked at Jesus and said, "This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world."
The Collect: Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Jeremiah 23: 5 - 8
The Gospel: St. John 6: 5 - 14
Trinity XXV
, November 16, 1997The end of the world is not going to come either quietly or secretly. That is the main point Jesus makes in this morning's gospel. When he came the first time he came in obscurity -- as a baby born in a barn in a small town in an out-of-the-way province of a great empire. It won't be that way when he comes the second time. He shall come again, as the Nicene Creed puts it, "with glory" -- a spectacular light show.
Jesus warns his disciples and us that when he comes again everybody will know about it. It won't be private, so only a small group knows, and someone will have to tell us, or we will miss out.
Jesus says, "Don't worry about that. My return is going to be about as secret as lightning. You are going to know I'm back as surely as you know where an animal carcass is by where buzzards have flocked together."
He is coming back to judge the world, as we know perfectly well. That is the theme that will be with us from now until Christmas. We are preparing ourselves for that judgment all the time -- and especially during our Sunday celebrations of Holy Communion.
It is in church that we hear what God wants us to do; we apply that standard to the reality of our own lives; we admit where we have fallen short; and we say we are sorry and resolve to do better. That is what experiencing God's judgment is. It will be just the same when he comes again. All that will be different is the drama and the finality.
My younger daughter did not come with me to church last Sunday, because she had been invited to a sleep-over party in Gettysburg. Our family rule is that if the girls are not in Alexandria on Sunday, they have to attend some other service of Holy Communion that we consider valid. Margaret fills in that square by attending the mass for Roman Catholic students on the Gettysburg College campus Sunday evening -- an enterprise which has greatly deepened her commitment to Prayer Book worship.
Last Sunday night when I got home from my confirmation in Warrenton, she informed me that she had gone not only to mass in the evening but also to a Lutheran service in the morning with her sleep-over hostess. It seems it was pledging Sunday, and the message about giving money to the church was delivered not by the pastor but by a layman. That impressed her.
Margaret has spent her whole conscious life as a tither. That means the first thing she does when she gets any money is to give ten percent of it to Jesus through the church. She gives additional money to other causes she approves of -- like adopting starving children in the Third World.
When I asked her what the layman said about giving money, she replied, matter-of-factly, "He said that God expects us to tithe, and that when we do what God wants we feel better and things go better." She found his message and his rationale utterly unremarkable. She knows God is good and generous to our family as a whole, and to each of the four of us individually. She knows we all tithe and more than tithe. No problem.
It has been my pattern to preach specifically about giving money away only once a year. As a percentage of all you have to listen to from me, that may not be enough. Both Jesus and St. Paul talked about money to their listeners more than one-fiftieth of the time. So you can be grateful for that small favor.
We have a sane and prudent vestry here, thank God. I have never had to get up in front of you and say, "I need a hundred thousand dollars by tomorrow" as I did more than once during the building project my former parish in California undertook.
So we have the luxury of looking at our giving right now not as a desperate matter of the parish's survival, but as a way of assessing whether or not we are doing what God wants -- a way, if you will, of experiencing his judgment.
God wants you to give him the first ten percent of your income. That is not because he is greedy or because he wants to impose an impossible burden upon you. God wants to show you how much he blesses you when you obey him. I have never known anyone who tithes who thinks he is being denied anything that matters. I have never known any tither whose financial life is in chaos. That should tell you something.
If you are not a tither already, there are two secrets of getting started. First, resolve to give on a percentage basis with ten percent as your minimum goal; and, second, resolve to give to God first -- not wait around until you see what you have left over after you have paid for everything else.
As we wait together for the time when we "see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory," let me give you some Bible verses to think about: from Jesus, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also;" from the prophet Malachi, (The Lord says) "You are robbing me ... in your tithes and offerings ... Bring the full tithes into the storehouse ... and thereby put me to the test ... (if) I will (not) open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing." And St. Paul, "He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully...God loveth a cheerful giver."
The Collect: O God, whose blessed Son was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil, and make us the sons of God, and heirs of eternal life; Grant us, we beseech thee, that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves, even as he is pure; that, when he shall appear again with power and great glory, we may be made like unto him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Ghost, he liveth and reigneth ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 St. John 3: 1 - 8
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24: 23 - 31
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