Fr. Tim’s Sermon for November 18th, 2018

Published on November 27, 2018November 27, 2018 by Tina Shippey

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
Psalm 93
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37

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Today is the last Sunday of Pentecost. And while it’s the last day of the long season of green, and your bulletin inserts have the same green header as we’ve had since spring, and it says “Last Pentecost” on the top – you’ll notice that our color today is white. That’s because today is the feast of “Christ the King Sunday.” This feast is celebrated on the last day of Pentecost, whenever that day falls. It’s a pretty recent addition to the church year; Roman Catholics started the feast in 1925, and we Anglicans (along with Lutherans and some other Protestants) only adopted it in the 70s. And while it’s a young feast, I think it’s an important one; it asks us to pause and to think about what kings are.

They’re all over the Bible, and Jesus is the King of Kings, but in our world today, we don’t see many kings. There are the royals in Britain – Queen Elizabeth II, William and Kate, and the rest. And while Queen Elizabeth is certainly a queen and in line with all other kings of Britain before her, she doesn’t have much political power. Then, there are medieval kings we might see in movies or read about in books. These kings are powerful, have an iron grip on their kingdom, and often do so with an iron fist. But, in truth (I’m sorry to ruin it), most of the kings we see in movies are more fantasy and romance than reality. People didn’t run around in full armor all the time.

Kings are pretty distant to us Americans. And that is, in a large part, because we threw out our king in the Revolutionary War. The colonists were being oppressed with heavy taxation by a king who lived a whole lifetime away across the Atlantic Ocean. Colonists wanted to rule themselves, to have a country of the people, by the people, and for the people. They wanted to make their own choices when it came to their government, and so they revolted and founded what we now know as the United States. Thinking of our history, we might rightly wonder whether we need a king at all, even in religion. Perhaps, we might say, kings were just a good metaphor in Jesus’s time, but now, for us, who know better than to have kings, we should find different metaphor. Maybe like “Christ the President” or “Christ the Head Hancho” or “Christ the guy in charge.”

But we have to be cautious, of course, of getting rid of things in the past because they might not speak to us in our modern day. There are times when turning away from the past is important, both in our communal life and our personal lives. There are some things that we should, certainly, put behind us and forget about. Our government does this with diplomacy: although we fought a war against Great Britain, we’ve put that past behind us so we can work for the good of one another and of the world. Our churches do this too: Anglicans used to really not like Roman Catholics (this is an understatement, to be sure!), but two Sundays ago, we not only gathered together at Holy Name Catholic Church, but with all the other churches in Coquille for an ecumenical service. We put our past fights behind us so that we could glorify God in some semblance of what the Church should be.

But there are many things in the past that we shouldn’t forget: things like veterans and the wars they fought in, or difficult times in our country’s history like the Civil Rights movement. And we remember them not just to lightly smile at and pat ourselves on the back that things are perhaps better now. No, we remember because in these moments our country and we ourselves learned something and grew. We gained wisdom in going through those difficult times, and it is good to look back and revisit that wisdom. Often we’ve forgotten it.

So, enough of an old history buff’s lesson on why we should love history. What about this kingship thing? Why do we still refer to Christ as King? Why do we talk about Christ’s kingdom instead of use some other image or metaphor?

We have to remember, though, that when we balk at the idea of a king, when we hear “king” and translate it in our heads to “tyrant”, we’re not alone. The people of Jesus’s day had seen their fair share of tyrants. The Jewish people, throughout their whole history from their first king Saul down to the emperor in Rome, had know what it was like to be under the thumb of a tyrant. This is why, for some, the Messiah was supposed to be a great military leader who came and destroyed all the tyrants. The Messiah was supposed to come in power and might, and when they looked at Jesus, they probably laughed and said, “Yeah, like this guy can stand up to Rome. Where’s the real Messiah?” And they said this not because they had a fanciful image of kings but because they had seen so many kings mess up.

So when you think of kings, and of Christ as our king, I want you to think of this image: when we were kids, my neighborhood friends and I used to play a lot of baseball. We played in my friend’s backyard, and this friend had a dog named Tess. Now Tess was a sheep-dog, not by training but by breeding. I don’t think Tess ever saw a sheep in her life, but herding sheep was in her bones. So, instead of white fluffy animals, she had us kids to tend. And whenever we played baseball, she would run around the whole field, circling us, nonstop. The poor dog never stopped running. And when we hit a ball out of the field, be it into a neighbor’s yard or into the woods, and someone had to go and get it, Tess would follow us and bite at our feet. She’d shove and push and bite us until we got back into the field with the ball. Then she’d run around and around us again.

Now as kids, we thought this was annoying. Tess would mess up our shoes and, often, really hurt us when she bit us. But what was she doing? She was protecting us, she thought, from wolves. For shepherds, like sheep dogs, are there to protect their sheep, to guide them through difficult terrain, to go out and seek those who are lost and alone. And a king isn’t supposed to do this just for sheep, but for his people: to guide them through tough times, to teach them and nurture them, and every once in a while give them a firm look to let them know they’re serious.

And isn’t this what Christ does for us? We who are so scattered and wayward, hasn’t Christ gone out into the wild of the world and gathered us all together, too? Hasn’t Christ brought us out of the hazardous lands of Sin and Death and given us New Life in his flock that we call the Church? And doesn’t Christ continue to teach and to guide us, to run around us like a sheep dog, to protect us; and, when we err, to come and seek us out so that we may rejoin his people?

And for these reasons, and many many others, we give him honor and praise and our loyalty. We turn to Christ not because he commands authority like some tyrant, but because to him, and to him alone, should we train our hearts. Christ is a king, though a king that is also a shepherd, a sheepdog, a lamb, a Son, and a brother. Christ is the king of our lives, of our journey in this world, of our relationships and our communities, of our hearts, and of all our deepest loves. In all things we turn to Christ who gives us the rule of faith. And his throne is the cross. And his decrees are love and hope and joy in God. And his kingdom is life, life everlasting.

Christ is a king – no other metaphors will do. For in God’s kingdom are all our hopes. In God’s hands is all our love, in a great world of joy that has no end.

Fr. Tim’s Sermon for 18 November 2018

Published on November 18, 2018November 27, 2018 by Tina Shippey

Painting by Jeff Watkins

Daniel 12:1-3
Psalm 16
Hebrews 10:11-25
Mark 13:1-8

Click here to access these readings.

We are, at last, in the final weeks of the season of Pentecost. We have only this week and next week, and next week is something special. This week is the last “normal”, green week of Pentecost. Soon we’ll be in the thick of purple for Advent. We’ll switch from reading the gospel of Mark each week and start reading the gospel of Luke. Then it will be the Christmas, then Epiphany, Lent, and Easter: those seasons where we live with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But for now, the season of Pentecost, which is the season of the Church, is almost over.

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but our readings over the past few weeks have been settling into this feeling of “being over.” We’ve been hearing the promises of the Old Testament and of Revelation, of some great End that may come with grief and anguish, but which will lead to a new beginning. We read in Hebrews this week of a change, how priests used to sacrifice every day for the people, now have given away to Christ, whose sacrifice is once and for all. The need for sacrifices is over, for Christ died on the Cross and Rose again. And this sense of “ending”, of “being over”, is mirrored in the seasons of the world, so that as the days get darker and the year draws to an end, we read from the Bible of anticipation, of waiting, and of things that are finished.

We Christians are a people of ends, but also of new beginnings. We are called to die to our sins daily, to reflect on how we have lived in the past, and to bear our own cross. Yet we are also called to new life in Christ. We are called to nurture the seeds of God within us, to pray in the Spirit, and to live lives of fullness and hope and love. We are to die, and we are to be reborn. And through these deaths and resurrections in our lives, which we experience each and every day, we are led deeper into the life of God in Jesus Christ. This is the Christian life. Our prayers nurture the Spirit within us; in the Sacraments we meet and are healed by God; and we encourage one another, in the Spirit, to a life of ministry to the sick, the lonely, and the needy of the world. And although we still sin, and sin daily, our Christian lives lead us closer and closer to God, until that last day and that final death, when Death and Sin are at last left behind and we enter into the fullness of God.

But not yet. We live in an odd sort of paradox, we Christians. Death and Sin are defeated, but we are still affected by them. As the author of the letter to the Hebrews writes, “Christ offered himself for our sins once, in a single sacrifice, for all time.” And yet, even with Sin and Death defeated, even with Christ’s great victory, we still sin. To put it another way, we Christians are an “already, but not yet” people. We are already forgiven, but we are not yet in the fullness of God. Christ has died for our sins, but we not yet free of the muck and the shadows of this world. We are an “already, but not yet” people.

I think we kinda get what this means in our daily life. Think of Christmas Eve: one of the great joys of being a parent is setting up on Christmas Eve. The gifts are out, the stockings filled, the decorations tidy and finished. Tomorrow will be Christmas, and all the gifts will be opening, and there will be joy and family and laughing, but tonight, on Christmas Eve, there is silence and stillness. The whole house is set up, ready for the kids, but not yet, not until the morning. Already, but not yet.

Or, here’s another image. A friend of mine recently posted on facebook a video of a plant growing. All the dirt was pushed up against a glass, and the seed, too, so you could see each moment. The video was in fast-forward, so you could watch as the roots stretch out into the rich soil, first one, then another, then one would split and both would reach outwards. Then the seed broke fully and the plant rose above the soil. Two little leaves sprung out and wobbled as they grew larger and larger. And at each moment, the seed was growing, and it’s growth was alive and fully, but it wasn’t yet an adult plant, not until that last moment of the video. It was already alive, but not yet fully itself. And my friend’s comment on the video was that this seemed like a good image to have stored away somewhere in the depth of one’s being.

These images, I think, do a decent job of describing the idea of “already, but not yet.” But there’s another that works better, and that’s marriage. Helene and I were married in 2010 at a really beautiful ceremony out on the Jersey coast. The wedding itself was right on the beach, facing inland, out under the sky, and all our favorite people were there. It was a truly beautiful day. Helene and I said our vows, we exchanged rings, the pastor blessed the union, and we were, in all ways, “married.” We even had this nice, complicated document from the county to prove it. And I thought, cool, I’m married now. I’m a husband. Helene is my wife. We are “married.”

And so we were. We were husband and wife that summer day in 2010 on the shores of New Jersey. But marriage both is and isn’t a one time thing. Marriage isn’t something you do and are done with, like opening a present, or baking a pie, or tying your shoes. Marriage is something you live into. Marriage is a life that challenges us, tests us, encourages us, and leads us into deeper and deeper parts of ourselves, our spouses, and, truly, God. I am married because I said “I do” to Helene (and she said it back) in a ceremony by the shore, but each day I am growing and being grown in this marriage, so that, each day, I feel more and more “married.” And, I hope, I will continue to grow in our marriage until the day I die. Will I ever be “fully” married? Will there ever come a day when I say, “Okay, I got this. Helene and I are perfect and our lives together are perfect. I’m finished. Time to put my feet up and reap the benefits of perfection.” No, there won’t be. Even with this ring, even with the words “I do,” we still have room to grow together. Already, but not yet.

This is an image of the Christian life. Like all the other sacraments, marriage is an image of our relationship with God. Christ died for our sins, once and for all, and he defeated death, once and for all – but we Christians must live into that reality. Christ has given us a most precious gift, but we must not only unwrap it but use it, live it, and grow with it. As I said, this is the same for all the sacraments. In Baptism, we are joined with God in a bond that can never be broken, but even still, we must live into that baptism and allow it to nurture and grow us into Children of God. This is why we take the Eucharist each and every week. This is why we gather together as a Church, and this is why we not only love one another but seek to nurture Christ in each and every person we meet. The work of Christ is not finished and accomplished, once and for all, so that it can be done for us, like finding some kid in school who will do your homework for a dollar, or hiring someone to clean your house so you can relax when you get home.

The work of Christ was complete, and it was fully complete, but we small little people need to enter into that fullness, to grow within it, like a little sapling in the rain and sunshine. Christ gave us a gift, and that gift is a life lived, more and more fully, to God.

Fr. Tim’s Sermon for September 2nd, 2018

Published on September 2, 2018September 11, 2018 by Tina Shippey

Detail of a page from the Book of Kells (c. 800)

Proper 17
15th Sunday after Pentecost
September 2nd, 2018

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9
Psalm 15
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Click here to access these readings.

Sometimes our lectionary works really well. Sometimes we come to church, hear the readings, and you can see so easily how they connect. Sometimes, though, that’s not the case, and the readings seem like a Broadway play I once saw; it was a variety play, with all these different pieces with different songs and different sets and costumes. But when I saw it I didn’t know it was a variety play; I thought there was a story. And so with each new scene I was scratching my head, thinking, “What in the world is this about?” I did my best to create some semblance of a plot, and, for a while, I had one, and it was pretty compelling; but then at intermission, when I told my dad all of this, he just shook his head. “There’s no plot, Tim,” he said. “It’s just disconnected pieces. That’s part of the fun.” Sometimes the lectionary selections are like that. Sometimes life is like that.

But not today, not this morning. This morning the lectionary works well. All the readings fit together. The Bible, you see, is full of many different themes: there’s hope, perseverance, dedication, struggle, even sorrow and frustration, but so too death and resurrection. All these themes run through the Bible, criss-crossing back and forth, weaving in and out of one another. And you can see these themes in some of the study Bibles around. John had one the other day, and in the margin on all the pages are little references to other passages in the Bible that are quoted, or mentioned, or referenced. Medieval artists tried to represent this tapestry-like nature of the Bible in the margins of their manuscripts, with all their mingled designs of animals, people, and geometric shapes. One job of the lectionary, and one of our jobs when we study the Bible inside or outside of church, is to take one of these pieces or threads and pull it out, look at it, and figure out how God is speaking a word to us in all these different parts of the Bible.

And this morning’s theme is about…well, it’s about freedom. And that might seem strange. For all these readings, in a way, are about rules and laws, what to do and what not to do. In Deuteronomy, we hear of statutes and ordinances. In the Psalm, we hear about keeping your word and swearing to do no wrong: “Whoever does these things, [these rules], shall never be overthrown.” In the letter of St. James, we hear of more things to do, and even in our gospel, we hear of Jesus Christ talking about practices, rules, and defilement. But even so, I believe all these readings are about freedom.

And what is freedom? Well, my atheist friends would say that freedom is the ability to do anything you want, to choose your own fate. They chafe at God because they don’t want someone telling them what to do, how to live, and what is good and what’s bad. They want the freedom from that sort of authority figure. I don’t agree with their image of God, but even so: they want a freedom from something.

Or perhaps freedom is like when teenagers go off to college. Now, they’re not only (supposedly) free from something (free from parents, they way things have been, etc.), but free to do things. They’re free to stay up however late they want, go to whatever parties they want, and goof off, as they want. And even if they choose not to goof off, and they sit and study, that is a choice they are free to make.

Now, these are certainly two different types of freedom. But the freedom that Jesus is talking about, and the freedom that we encounter in these readings this morning, is a little different. Elsewhere, Jesus said, “you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” (John 8:32). And we may rightly wonder, like those who were around him, what is this freedom that Jesus is talking about? And in Psalm 119, we hear “I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought your precepts.” And we may question, “How am I free if I am bound by precepts, bound by laws?” We get closer to what I’m talking about in 2 Timothy. Here we hear, “for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7). For where the spirit is, there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17), and that spirit is of power, and love, and self-discipline.

This freedom we hear of in the Bible is not just a freedom from something, or a freedom to do something, but a freedom in something. Think, for a moment, of baseball. There are rules, certainly: After three outs, the teams switch being at bat or in the field. When running to a base, you have to stay in the narrow, little baseline. And these rules are pretty strict. But when you’re playing the game, those rules fade into the background. Not that they disappear, but that they become the very foundation of the game, the ground you walk on and the air you breathe. And something happens when you “play by the rules”, or, rather, when you’re “in” the game. You hear athletes talk about it every now and again, for there’s a glory in the game, of breathing the air of the rules of baseball that is a freedom. There is a glory in the crack of the bat, in the lights, in the smell of the glove, even in the dust that you kick up. And this glory, this freedom, isn’t from something, or the ability to do something; it’s a freedom in baseball, a freedom in and through and up beyond and with the game that jostles the heart from its slumber and makes it alive again.

This is the sort of freedom that Jesus and the Bible are talking about. For Jesus didn’t come just to give us stuff to do so that we wouldn’t goof off all the time. Jesus came to save us from sin and death, not so that we could get back to the status quo. No, for Jesus freed us to something, to a life in God, to a life lived along a path of freedom. And this freedom may look at first like a lot of rules, a lot of words that so often can seem empty and rote, a lot of prayers we really don’t want to say so early in the morning or so late at night. But when we enter into them, when we live those prayers, and these liturgies, when we walk up to the communion rail not thinking about doing everything right but because we love Jesus and here is a way to meet him, when we see that the water in this font isn’t just liquid but the very light of salvation, then…then we see that this life is a holy life. We see that this life is a good life. And that little path, that narrow gate, opens up to a great landscape, burgeoning with life and love. This is the path that Christ calls us to live; this is the freedom that that path calls us to.