New Testament

Fr. Tim’s sermon for March 3rd, 2019

Published on by Tina Shippey

Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-43a

Click here to access these readings.

        Okay, it’s time for another field trip in the BCP.  Can you all pick up your red BCP and open up to page 363.  Now, look down at the bottom of the page.  Do you see those two little phrases there, one right next to the other, is two columns.  There’s something interesting that happens here, and it’s always made me smile. 

        Now, this is right after the Eucharistic Prayer.  We’ve heard Jesus’ invitation to us (“Take, eat, this is my Body”), and the priest has consecrated the bread and wine.  We’ve proclaimed the mystery of faith, and we’ve all said the great AMEN.  And here, at the bottom of 363, we have to choose one of these two phrases to say, though they both basically say the same thing.  We here at St. James’ choose the left side and I say, “And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to say.” 

        Now, when I was first coming into the Episcopal Church, this phrase always made me smile.  Because it’s rather grand, isn’t it?  This word “bold”; it makes this sound like Star Trek: “to boldly go where no one has gone before.”  And I liked that.  There is a power to the phrase, and a joy.  I felt like the priest was saying to me, “Get ready!  This next thing is gonna be big!  Time to be bold!”

        And what was this phrase preparing us to say?  What’s the next part of the liturgy? [wait for answers].  That’s right, the Lord’s Prayer.  This surprised me.  I wondered, at the time, “What is so bold about the Lord’s Prayer?”  This was my good-night prayer.  My parents taught it to me before I was in elementary school.  I could rattle this thing off without even thinking of the words; what’s so bold about saying the Lord’s Prayer?

        Now, this word “bold” here is important, and that’s one of the reasons we use it here at St. James’.  First of all, here in the liturgy, it’s a sort of marker.  If you flip to the next page, you’ll see two different translations of the Lord’s Prayer, one in traditional language, the other in contemporary language.  And you, the people, know which we’ll use by whether I say “we are bold to say” or “we now pray.”  So “bold” is a sort of liturgical marker to help you all along with a liturgy that can be, at times, complicated.  I use the traditional translation, because I like its theology better, and so I say, “we are bold to say.”

        But I say “bold” for another reason.  Think about this: God Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, who made everything from the Sun in the sky to the tiniest little one celled organism, who sustains our life and leads us to eternal salvation, came down to earth as a human being and taught us how to pray.  And the way he taught us to address God, the Ruler of All Things, basically, was to say, “Daddy.”  There’s a boldness to this.  There’s an audacity to looking up to the Creator of Existence and saying, “Hi.  I’m hungry, and I’m sorry.  Please be with us forever.” 

        Early Christian leaders were in awe of the Lord’s Prayer.  They called it the perfect prayer, and some early writers even considered it one of the Sacraments.  Every single type of prayer, from intercession to thanksgiving, is found in the Lord’s Prayer.  And it was spoken by Jesus Christ himself, our Lord and our Redeemer, the man who joined Heaven and Earth and brought us eternal salvation. 

        When I think about this, when I think about all the history of this prayer, the holy lips that first spoke it, and the eternal Being that I address when I speak it, I feel in awe, and I hesitate.  It seems too much for me, I who am so small, just a single man who is trying his best to be a good Christian.  And I’m not alone in feeling this, because I think it’s something of what Peter felt when he saw Jesus Transfigured on the mountaintop.

        You see, Peter is also struggling to understand the power and the grandeur that’s right in front of him.  Earlier in chapter nine of Luke’s gospel (where we are in our gospel reading this morning) Jesus takes five loaves and two fishes and feeds five thousand people.  He then tells the disciples that his road isn’t to glory, but to death, and a pretty nasty one at that.  And he also tells them that if they really want to follow him, whoever really wants to save their life, they must lose it.  And if that’s not enough, up on a mountaintop, Peter and John and James witness Christ revealed, in all his heavenly splendor.  Their heads must have been spinning.  This guy who they’ve been traveling with, this man who they’ve been eating with, sleeping next to on the dusty ground, trudging under the hot sun with, and probably complaining to, this guy is not just a guy, but God Almighty, here in the flesh.  On the front of your bulletin is an icon of this scene, and in it, one of the disciples is so amazed that he’s fallen on his back with his feet up in the air.  His world has turned upside-down. 

        And Luke doesn’t record it, but I wonder if, after the Transfiguration, after they’ve come down from the mountaintop, the Peter, James, and John gather together and wonder what to do.  “We’ve just seen God, all but face-to-face.  How do we go on?  How can we just sit down next to God himself and eat a bit of bread, or fall asleep around the campfire next to him, or wake up in the morning without constantly falling to our knees and worshipping him”.  I’m not sure if the disciples wondered about this, but I know I would.  Here is a piece of Heaven on earth; how do we go about our normal lives in front of him?  Or, thinking of the Lord’s Prayer, another piece of Heaven on earth, how can we just say it, knowing the holiness from which it came?

        Now, if this worry bothered the disciples, it certainly didn’t bother Jesus.  Because look at what happens after they come down from the mountaintop: Jesus is back with the crowd, back with those who are hungry and scared, sick and in need.  A man comes up to him, shouting, probably not just to be heard but because of the pain in his heart, begging Jesus to heal his son.  And what does Jesus do?  Jesus who just yesterday stood as God on the mountaintop?  He invites them in, and he heals the boy, and gives him back to his father. 

        And, maybe, maybe Peter realized something when he saw this.  Maybe he saw that holiness doesn’t mean falling on your face but opening your arms.  There is a boldness to saying the Lord’s Prayer, surely, but it is a boldness that says, “God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, and of all things in the cosmos, whose voice is contentment, and whose presence is balm, our God:  is here.”  Our God is not some distant being, off somewhere beyond all knowledge, checking in on us every once in a while to make sure we’re not ruining the place.  No, our God is with a young boy who is sick, and his father who has nowhere else to turn.  Our God is with poor, the sick, those who mourn, the meek, the peaceful, and the merciful.  As one of our collects at morning prayer says, “Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace.”  Holiness is the presence of God in the very fabric of our lives.

        In seminary, we were introduced to a bunch of different Sunday school curriculums.  Each of them were good in their own way, but one I really liked.  It instructed kids on how to be Episcopalians, and so it taught a lot about the liturgy, about the sacraments, and the church year.  And, when teaching about the Eucharist, it encouraged the teacher to use the actual vessels that are used in the church service.  You know, the expensive, highly breakable, glass vessels.  At first, I was really anxious about this.  I knew these things were going to break.  The kids would pick them up, and not even by anyone’s fault, they’d drop them and they’d break.  And the instructor said, yeah, sometimes they break, but actually, this is how kids learn about holiness.  They pick up holiness and they turn it in their hands.  And she said, the reverence these kids have for these vessels, and for the Bible, and the altar, and, really, for God, is amazing, because they could touch them, use them, see how we treat them  Letting kids touch these vessels was inviting them into that holiness.

        Nor is this lesson just for children, but for us adults as well.  God has invited us into the holy through Jesus Christ.

Father Tim’s sermon for February 24th, 2019

Published on by Tina Shippey
Jesus in the Desert, by Ivan Kramskoi

Genesis 45:3-11, 15
Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Luke 6:27-38

Click here to access these readings.

        To much joy and many accolades from the children, we are going to be changing our seasonal colors again soon.  We’ve been in green for six or seven weeks, and, after Ash Wednesday, we’ll be in the long months of purple.  And you’ll probably remember from my sermons before and during Advent, purple is the color of contemplation, reflection, and penitence.  Purple marks the times of the year when we sit down, alone or in community, and look at our lives in a mirror, strengthen ourselves and deepen our faith.  It is a quiet time, a calmness before the storm.  But the storm in this case is Easter, when light and life and joy is poured out upon us by the Spirit.  In this time of Lent, we remember and witness in our own hearts the last gasp of Death before the Resurrection, when Jesus rose above death and made the whole creation new.

        This time of reflection, though, is not often easy.  These times of muted colors, when we turn to face the darkness of the world and the darkness of ourselves as well, are not easy.  And it is not a coincidence that the time of Lent follows the season of winter, and that time just before the coming of spring.  Oregon seems particularly apt for a dark, cloudy, stormy Lent.  I wrote this sermon on Saturday morning, when it was cold and rainy and still.  And so it may seem like the best cure for the dark and dreary is for a nice dose of joy, to turn up the lights, lighten to some happy music, and sing and dance.  And doing so may certainly help, but doing so would ignore the wisdom that is in the dark and stormy times, not just of the seasons but in our own hearts as well.  In Lent, the Christian tradition says, “God is here as well.”

        And we know that God is here in the dark times, because Jesus was here when he walked on this earth.  Lent is forty days long, a number that is pretty rife with symbolism in the Bible.  Noah’s ark was out on the sea for forty days and forty nights; the Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years; and Jesus was tempted in the desert for forty days.  And on the cover of your bulletin, I’ve put a magnificent and haunting picture of Jesus in the desert.  It’s a 19th century oil painting by Ivan Kramskoi.  When I think of Jesus in the desert, I often think of him as stoic before the devil, denying each temptation with an easy wave of the hand.  But Jesus wasn’t annoyed by the devil; he was tempted.  In this image, Jesus remains strong and steady, but there is deep grief written all over his face and in his clenched hands.  God, in Jesus Christ, knows the dark times of this world and our hearts, because he lived through them, too.

        Now, during Lent, we are called upon by our Church to take on some practice or discipline.  And we do this not as some kind of self-improvement scheme but instead to help us see God more clearly in the world.  I remember one of the first times I took part in Lent, I gave up my mornings.  Now, I really, really, really like to sleep in, so I thought, hey, that’s something that I think is good, so why don’t I give them up for a few weeks?  I’ll wake up early, maybe pray a bit, read from a devotional book, and start the morning right.  Yes, that’s what I’ll do.  And I failed.  In those forty days, I think I got up a total of three times, and once I fell asleep in the chair while reading.  And part of the reason I failed is because I really, really, really like to sleep in, and my will-power is at about zero in the morning, but also because I did it because I thought I should do it.  I thought it’d be good for me, that God wanted me to get up early in the morning, because that’s just a good thing to do.  My discipline was more about me than it was about God.

        And it was around this time, as I was struggling with my disciplines, that our bishop, Michael Hanley, told a story about his own struggles.  He also met with failure, and he also realized that some of his practices were more about himself than about God.  And so he did something very simple: he sat down with God and said, “God, where do you want me to be today?  How can I do your will?  How can I give your love to your people today?”  And after praying, he wasn’t hit with a great epiphany of what to do or how to serve, but each time he sat down with God he asked this question again.  And just by praying this way, just by looking away from what he saw was his failure, he turned himself, each day, more and more fully to God.  This is what we should be doing in our practices.  If there’s a “goal” of Lent, this is what it is.

        Our practices are seeds.  St. Paul writes that we don’t sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed.  And what he means by this is that we don’t start in perfection.  We aren’t baptized into a full and perfect faith that never falters and never fails.  We may come into moments of beautiful clarity and presence before God, but then we see again the grief of the world, and we despair; or a loved one dies, and we doubt; or we speak an evil word, and we lose hope.  And we think: my faith is so weak, what good is such weak faith to God? 

But the ground, the soil, that we are sown into is pictured on the front of your bulletin.  Our ground, the thing that nurtures our seed, that gives it nutrients and water and warmth, that life-giving ground in which we grow is Jesus Christ.  And haven’t you experienced this life before?  Those times when you’ve prayed, “God, I need your help to get through this” and you find that, somehow, you can; or just that person you really needed to talk to calls up or walks in; or the grief lessens just a little bit so that you can see where to go next?  In our lives, be they in conscious practices of turning to God or us just going about our business, in all our lives we encounter these moments of life, of renewal, of hope, strained or free.  These are encounters with God, even if, or especially if, they are small.

We are about to enter into Lent, and Lent is something we prepare for.  A week or so ago, I gave you a challenge, and I gave the people at our Soup Supper last Wednesday a similar challenge.  And I’ll give it to you again this morning: God has planted seeds in our faith and in our lives, and God is right now nurturing those seeds.  Where is God calling you, right now, to focus.  To which seed, or which sapling, or which young tree, is God calling to you to tend and nurture with him?  How is God asking you to not only observe Lent but make it a holy, life-giving Lent?

Fr. Tim’s Sermon for January 13th, the Baptism of our Lord

Published on by Tina Shippey

Sketch of Jesus being baptized, by Rembrandt

Isaiah 43:1-7
Psalm 29
Acts 8:14-17
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Click here to access these readings.

When we come to the world of the gospels, of the world where Jesus was born and lived, we come to a world of expectation.  Now, this isn’t the same kind of expectation that we had in Advent when we were waiting for Christmas.  Then, we knew when Christmas would be.  We knew that Christmas would be on the 25th, and each day we would check off another day on our calendars.  And as the day came closer and closer, we got more excited, maybe a bit more stressed and anxious that all would get finished, but the day of Christmas is set.  It doesn’t move.  It stays the same from year to year, and no matter how much more we have to get done, and no hard it is to wait, the day of Christmas remains the same.

The expectation of Jesus’ time was like this, but it was also different.  It is, perhaps, a little more like waiting for a baby to be born.  The doctors give you some vague day – April 14th…ish.  Or around there.  Maybe.  But you never know.  So when April comes along, even though it’s fourteen days until the due date, you start wondering: what about today?  What about now?  And as the due date gets closer, the doctors start saying, “Sure, but the baby could be late, too.  Or early.  Or on time.”  Helene and I had our bags packed and in the car, but we didn’t know if we’d leave for the hospital on the 12th or the 15th or the 20th.  Would it be morning?  The middle of the night?  During rush hour?  We were expecting a great moment and a great change in our lives and in our family, and we only had a slight inkling of when that change would come. 

The expectation of Jesus’ time was like this, but it was also different.  You see, people in Jesus’ day were sure that the Messiah would come.  Their Scriptures (which we know now as the Old Testament) said a lot about what the Messiah would do and how he would do it, but they didn’t say anything about “when.”  Or, they did, but it wasn’t like with Christmas (“the Messiah will come on December 25th, in the year 2 A.D., at 11:23 p.m.”), nor did they have a rough estimate (“some time in the spring, probably”).  They had this: soon.  The Messiah would come soon.  And that’s all they had to go on.

But there’s another difference, and this difference is important.  I wanted Christmas to come because I love Christmas Eve service, and I love Christmas morning.  I love exchanging gifts with my family and teaching Gwendolyn and Fiona about what giving means.  I love thinking about and, again, teaching what Jesus’ birth into this world means.  And with the births of my children, there was a lot of anxious waiting, but the thing we were waiting for was a new life in our lives.  Their births would be a great change – I knew this – but it was all a lot of joy.  For both, the time of expectation was good, sometimes tough, but overall really good.

But not all waiting is good.  Not all waiting is joyful.  The people of Jesus’ time were waiting, but they were waiting for salvation.  And so it might be better to compare their expectation with that of a person waiting for a donor for a heart transplant.  Or maybe a birth, but a birth with a lot of complications around it.  For these people, waiting isn’t just a bit of anxiety before getting a good thing.  They know something good is coming, but there’s a worry: what if it’s too late?  I’m hurting so much now, how can I live in this pain?  Why can’t God get on with it and give me some help?  Why do I have to wait?

In this sort of waiting, there’s a lot of doubt and a lot of grief.  And so when we come to Luke’s gospel, and we hear that the people were filled with expectation, we shouldn’t imagine, perhaps, everyone waiting in Times Square in New York City for the ball to drop on New Years Eve, but a man sitting alone in a waiting room praying “How long, O Lord, how long?”  Is there joy in this expectation?  Surely, but it might perhaps be better to call it hope, and a hope long fought for and struggled with. 

For Jesus’ world was in pain.  It was a world that had been ruled by a foreign empire for generations.  It was a world that saw war and famine, disease and heartache.  This world did not just wait for the Messiah – it longed for the Messiah.  It didn’t just call out, “God, save us” but “God, come on and save us already!”  Perhaps we can forgive them for running up to John and demanding, “Are you him, are you him, are you finally him?”

And it is into this expectation that Jesus does, finally, come.  But it is important how he comes.  Does Jesus come in, riding a tall, white horse, with a sword drawn?  Or does he come with a great cape and a magic wand, ready to whisk away pain in an instant?  No.  He doesn’t.  He comes in the midst of them.  He comes where they’re hurting the most.  He comes into their expectation and doubt and longing because he knows that we need that much more than we need a sword or a magic wand.  Jesus comes to be present in our pain.

And this answers a pretty good question we might ask the Bible: why does Jesus need to be baptized?  Baptism is about cleansing our sins, right?  It’s about washing away the dirt and gunk and stains, isn’t it?  And if Jesus is free of sin, then what is he doing in the Jordan river with everyone else being washed?  And we’re in good company in asking this question, because John the Baptist asks it in Matthew’s gospel when he sees Jesus coming into the river.  What are you up to, Lord?  Why come into this dirty river with us when you’re so clean?

But that’s not how Luke sees it.  That’s not how Luke sees Jesus’ baptism.  For he looks at it and says, See, here Jesus is showing us that we don’t just need a bit of care or a nice pill that can take away the symptoms.  No, Jesus shows us that real healing – healing that digs out the root of our pain and our suffering, that answers those longings for help that go to the heart of our souls – that sort of healing is found only in God being born within us.  And to do this, God doesn’t just stand by us in our pain but enters into that pain.  God doesn’t just pat us on the hand and say, “There, there”, but cries with us, cries out with us, sits up all night in expectation with us, and not just with us, but in us.  It’s like how you make sweet tea in the south.  You don’t make tea and then add the sugar in later.  No, you add the sugar in while you’re brewing it, so that it’s not just a little sweet additive that’s sprinkled on top but cooked deep into the tea.  The sugar and the tea become fused together, so that one can’t be taken from the other.

And this is how God asks us to be with the world in our own ministries.  We don’t leave the door of the food bank open with a sign that says, “Take what you need.”  No, we are present in the room, talk to the people, and hand them a bag of food from our own hands.  Or, when new people come into our food ministries here, be it Emmaus Meals or Prayer Breakfast, we don’t give them a plate and shoo them out the door.  No, we invite them to sit with us, to tell us their story, to join in our conversation, and we tell them our story as well.  Doing ministry means getting into people’s lives, living with them, and walking with them. 

We can think of many ways to express this.  We can bring up a lot of different images and ideas and speak till we’re blue in the face.  But at the end of the day, we can just quote Isaiah when he writes, “And God said, ‘I love you.’”

Fr. Tim’s Sermon for the Feast of the Epiphany, Jan. 6th

Published on by Tina Shippey

The Adoration of the Magi by Edward Burne-Jones

Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72: 1-7, 10-14
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12

Click here to access these readings.

        Most of the stories we read in church are about the good examples.  Most often, we read of how God comes into people’s lives to change them and make them more holy, and these people turn to God and say, “Here I am, Lord.”  But not everyone.  Every now and again we get someone who isn’t exactly the best role model for our kids or grandkids.  Some people see God coming and they hide themselves, like Adam and Eve.  Some hear the word of God and they run the other way, like Jonah.  And some, like Herod, when they hear of a new star rising in the East, they are afraid.

And this story about King Herod comes on an important day.  For today is the Feast of the Epiphany, one of the major feasts of the church year.  Traditionally, there are three gospel stories associated with Epiphany: the wedding at Cana, where Jesus performs his first public miracle; the baptism of Jesus; and the coming of the three wise men.  In each, something new is happening.  Something unlooked for and un-hoped for comes about.  But in each, what seems like new turns out to have deep roots in the old. 

        But what is an “epiphany”?  This isn’t just a religious word.  We can use it in normal English, too.  It’s a sudden discovery, a sudden and powerful realization of how things are or how things work.  It’s like a scientist crying out “Eureka!”, but it’s not just a mental realization where you figure out how to solve a puzzle, but something where your whole self realizes something deep and true about the world.  It is the appearance of something holy, and something wholly other, in one’s life.  It is, in a way, a revelation of God.

        Epiphanies happen often in the Bible.  The Burning Bush is an epiphany.  Moses is walking along in the wilderness when, suddenly, he sees a bush on fire, yet not consumed.  Suddenly, he comes into the presence of God.  This happens to St. Paul, too.  Before he became the apostle to the gentiles, Paul went around persecuting Christians.  Then, one day, while he was riding into a city, a great light opens up from the sky and knocks him off his horse.  Then he heard a voice crying out, “Why are you persecuting me?”  The voice belonged to Jesus Christ, and it was a voice that turned Paul’s entire life around.  The voice and the light were epiphanies of God.

        But Epiphanies also happen outside the Bible as well.  They happen in ministry all the time.  One of my friends, another new priest who serves a parish down in Arkansas, told me about one the other day.  He had just gotten back from seeing some family after Christmas, and he was sitting in his office trying to get back into the swing of work.  But he felt unfocused in that Monday-after-a-vacation sort of way, and so, after fiddling around a little, he looked up and said, “Loving God, what do you want me to be up to today?”  And, literally fifteen seconds later, a gallon and a half of water pours through the light fixture above his desk.  “Ahh,” he said, “I see you want me to minister to the HVAC system upstairs!”

         Sometimes God calls us through a person in need, sometimes God calls us with water through the light fixture.  But all jokes aside, we witness to Epiphanies – we come into contact with God – when we are out in the world in ministry.  It doesn’t take a priest to see it.  A few weeks ago I mentioned how important our ministries – that to us can seem so small – are for people in need.  And when we are in people’s lives, living a life of hope and love, we see God at work constantly.  Miracles happen.  Sometimes they look like a sudden turn in a person’s health, and sometimes they look like doubt turned to hope in the final hours of life.  I saw them often while teaching.  For in teaching, like Christian ministry, you’re allowed into another person’s life, even for just a few moments.  But in that tiny amount of time, you’re given the opportunity to do such great acts of love.  Often it’s just being present, being just another human being sitting beside someone, often someone who’s confused or lost or doesn’t know where to go.  And that connection between two people, that’s where miracles happen, that’s where the love of God is made real and alive.  For, as Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am in the midst of them.”

        And yet, King Herod is afraid.  Jonah hears the word of God, and he runs the other way.  Adam and Eve hide themselves from God’s presence.  And, in a way, we can understand this fear, because we ourselves have felt it, too.  I know there are many times when I myself have heard God’s call and said, “Nuh-uh” and booked it.  But, from knowing Herod’s fear in our own hearts, we also know what it does to us.  It hardens us, doesn’t it?  When we reject God, we shut everything else out, we see and we hear less clearly.  We put up walls like medieval castles, where you can only get in through big, strong doors defended by armored me with swords and arrows.  We think we can do it alone, where God says, “I give you a new commandment: that you love one another.”  And love always reaches out, not waits around to bite.

        Fear is never an aspect of God.  When the Bible talks about “fearing” God, what it means is respect, trust, hope, and loyalty.  But fear – that feeling to push away something, to turn and run from it, to stop up our eyes and our ears and our hearts because something is too big or scary – that fear is not what God’s about.  And because of that, it’s not an part of the Christian life.  The Christian life is to live with an open heart.  And that doesn’t mean that we can’t reflect on what is before us, or hold it in prayer before God.  But we must begin with that open heart.  And that can make all the difference.

        And this is why King Herod’s opposite in the gospels is Mary.  And not because she accepted the angel Gabriel’s word where Herod rejected it.  Remember back to the story we heard on Christmas Eve, when the shepherds come to Mary and Joseph, telling them that they’ve seen a great heavenly host.  What does Mary do?  She treasures these words and ponders them in her heart.  Or think back further, to the story of the Annunciation: when Mary hears that she will bear the Son of the Most High, what does she do?  She doesn’t turn away in fear like Herod, nor does she hop up immediately and say, “Here I am, Lord!”  She takes it all in and contemplates these things in her heart.  She is open to the words, she discerns them and considers them in love, and only then does she say, “Yes, be it unto me according to thy word.”

        We live in difficult times.  We live in times where people are constantly trying to draw lines and separate people.  And we Christians are called to resist those lines and that separation.  So, let us begin this new year with open hearts and hope that the foundation of this world is not fear and doubt, but God Almighty, the very source of all life and light.

 

Fr. Tim’s Sermon for December 23rd, 2018

Published on by Tina Shippey

Micah 5:2-5a
Canticle 15 (The Magnificat, Luke 1:46-55)
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-55

Click here to access these readings.

        While I was in seminary, some of my friends and I went down to what is called the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama.  It was a massive structure out in the rural farmlands of the South.  St. James’ church could easily fit inside its courtyard, and it seemed like a giant could fit inside its doors.  The inside of the shrine was majestic, with pillars of marble and an altar all colored gold.  And above the altar was what’s called a monstrance: a kind of sunbeam to hold the consecrated Eucharist for adoration.

        It was a pretty amazing church, and praying there was a deeply beautiful experience.  But the church building itself wasn’t what struck my heart most deeply.  Downstairs of the nave, tucked away in a sort of corner off away from everything, was an alcove.  And in this alcove there were two pictures and a bench between them.  On one side was an image of Mary holding a child Jesus.  Jesus was about six or seven, and his hair was full and gold and curly.  Behind Mary was, if I remember correctly, a scene of Heaven, with golden clouds and angels attending the two.  And the look on her face: was joy.  Deep, calm, powerful joy down to the bones.  Untroubled joy, pure and kind.

        And on the other wall, opposite it, was a painting of Mary holding Jesus, dead, at the bottom of the cross.  Everything was grey: Jesus’ body, the muddy ground around the cross, and Mary’s face, which was no longer filled with joy, but sorrow and despair.  In both pictures, Mary was the same size and at the same height, so that when you turned your head from one to the other, the images of this woman blurred together.  It was a haunting image, and one that, for me, struck me deeper than any collection of gold or marble.  For it was an image of a person – a woman – not an figure or personality, but a human being.  It brought the story of Mary home to me like nothing ever really had.

        And one thing that these two images do, and one thing that Mary does for us, is challenge our understanding of what it means to be blessed.  For Mary’s song is one of the most beautiful in the whole of the Bible, and it’s beautiful because it knows that greatness, that being blessed and favored, doesn’t mean just being lucky.  But we use the word this way sometimes, don’t we?  I once heard a friend, talking about a mutual friend who seemed, somehow, to avoid mishap and failure that, “Well, Frank just lives a blessed life.”  Or, I once saw a post online where someone, who was a student, celebrated that he had done well in a class by posting “#blessed.”  And while I don’t like to criticize other Christians from the pulpit, there are some Christians out there who believe that the more stuff you have – the more successful you are – the more blessed you are.  If God loves you, they think, God will show it in the form of money, stability, and joy.

        But I don’t think that’s the way God works.  I don’t think that’s what “blessed” means.  And it’s certainly not what “blessed” means in the Magnificat, in Mary’s Song.  For here, being blessed doesn’t mean being favored over others, or having a lot of stuff, or being lucky.  Being blessed means being loved.  It means being lifted up when we’re low; it means being given food when we’re hungry – and not just any food, but good food.  It means being granted mercy, and mercy often when we don’t even deserve it.  Being blessed means having love as our foundation.

        But it also means more.  Being blessed doesn’t just mean being loved.  God loves us all, and that’s why he sent Jesus Christ, to be with us and walk with us, to teach us and to heal us.  But being blessed also means being given life, and the responsibility of life.

        Back when I was first getting into the study of theology, a friend of mine gave me a book by John Paul II called Love and Responsibility.  Now, as a young man, I was taken aback: “love and responsibility”?  I thought love was about freedom, about joy, about the fullness of life (you can probably guess how old I was when I got this book).  I balked at the idea of a “responsibility” in love.  But then I got married, and then I had a daughter, and then two.  Last week I spoke about the joy of holding my daughters, and that is a deep joy, but there’s also a weight, a weight of love that ties me to these children, to a future, to laughter and to tears, and to life.  It is a weight of life that I now carry with me.

        And all this is to say that being blessed didn’t keep Mary from grief.  Being blessed didn’t mean that Mary was allowed to live a life free from care, where all her needs were met, and sorrow and grief were unknown things that other people deal with.  Being blessed didn’t keep her from joy, either, of course, but it didn’t keep her from grief, either, because being blessed did not keep her from life.  Mary was entrusted with life, as we all are, and that weight of life brought her to the golden heavens of one picture and the grey despair of the other.  And the Christian life is sitting on that bench between the two.

        Think, for a moment, of your own lives as Christians.  Think of the lives that you have touched.  Think of the good that God has done in this world through you.  Think of the people you’ve lived with: those who’ve been sick, or heartbroken, or lonely; or the children you’ve taught and guided, that you’ve spent a few extra hours or even just minutes with so that they know someone’s cared.  Think of the people you’ve prayed for, those who have lost their homes in the fires in California, or Father Yohana’s Little Scholar’s School, who ask for things as simple as clean water.  Think of the people who come to the food pantry who you give bags of food to without any question.  Think of all the lives you’ve touched, even the ones when, if someone compliments you, you say, “Nah, that wasn’t all that big.”  Think of all those lives for whom you have been a blessing, because you have been, for them, life.  And think, too, of those who have been life for you, and in all these things you will see an image of the Church, which is Christ’s body in this world for the salvation and redemption of us lost and broken people.

        And this life, this little life which is the infant Christ, and this life that will then die on the cross, and this life that will then rise from the dead.  This life that is God, the one who is and was and forever shall be, world without end, this life is the life that we are given.  We are given Heaven in Jesus Christ.  And this is a life that will heal the world.