Old Testament

Fr. Tim’s Sermon for October 21st, 2018

Published on by Tina Shippey

Proper 24
22nd Sunday after Pentecost
October 21st, 2018

Isaiah 53:4-12
Psalm 91:9-16
Hebrews 5:1-10
Mark 10:35-45

Click here to access these readings.

The first Bible I ever owned was a red-letter Bible that I got in middle school. I probably had a Bible before this, and there were definitely Bibles around the house growing up, but this Bible was the first one I remember having as my own. It was given to me for my confirmation. It was nice, with a kind of fake leather cover in black, and it came with my name printed on it in little gold colors. “Timmy Hannon.”

       I really liked this Bible, and for a while it was the only one I owned. I kept it by my bedside for years. I liked the maps in the back of it which were all in watercolor. I liked the pages, too, because they were thin and light like sand or air. And, as I said, it was a red-letter Bible, so that every time Jesus spoke, his words were written in red. So, all of the beginning was just like a normal Bible, all the way up to the New Testament, and suddenly there was this flood of red. Sometimes there was more and sometimes there was less, and I liked thinking of Jesus’s words like the ocean, his voice like a tide flowing in and out. And then, towards the end of each of the gospels, it suddenly turned black again, save for a few words here or there. “My God, my god, why have you forsaken me?” or “Into your arms I commend my spirit.” These stark, red lines in the Bible had a deep effect on me as a young Christian and, in a way, they still do.

       Now, I liked these red-letter Bibles. Some people don’t, but I do. And one of the things that’s helpful about them is that they show how often we look only at what Jesus said and not what Jesus did. And this is, of course, pretty natural. Jesus’s words are so full and robust. They’re bursting at the seams with love and joy and hope. We want to drink them in, as if they were water on a hot day, or savor them, as if they were warm tea and a blanket in the winter. Jesus is the Word of God, and we want to know what his words are so that we can feel that love and live that joy and be filled with all that he was and is and will be. Jesus’s words are precious.

       But Jesus is the Word of God not only in what he said but also in what he did. We’re reminded of what he did in some of our readings today. We’re reminded of what he did for us on Calvary, of the sacrifice that he made for us – and not just for those who knew him in life or who were present at the crucifixion, but for all people, everywhere, throughout time and across the world. With Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, he became “the source of eternal salvation,” as we hear in the letter to the Hebrews. We are alive in God because of what Jesus Christ did for us. You are alive in God because of what Jesus Christ did for you.

       But it’s not just the big stuff. The big stuff is important, and in a little bit, from Advent all the way to Pentecost, we’ll be talking about the big stuff. But the small stuff is important too, those small, little acts between the red letters that we might often skip over; those small acts of a man who was also God and who was also a man; these small acts that helped to save us.

       Look at our gospel reading this morning. Here, we find the disciples preparing for something great that they just know is going to happen. Jesus has been talking about the end, about the fulfillment of their ministry on earth. And where Jesus is talking about his death and his resurrection, the disciples are planning on what is going to happen afterwards. A lot of people in Jesus’s time were waiting for a Messiah that was going to come in with a great army and kick Rome out of Palestine. Many of them were waiting for a great leader or a king, someone who would bring back the days of David or Solomon.

       And there’s a bit of anxiety among the disciples, it seems. They’re wondering who will be on top when everything happens. And so James and John, the sons of Zebedee, they go up to Jesus and they ask if they can sit on his right hand and on his left. This question sets the rest of the disciples into an uproar. They surround the brothers, literally “surrounding” them; the Greek is “and they were angry around – surrounding – James and John.” And we, hearing this story, are waiting for what Jesus will say to break up this argument. But the first thing Jesus does isn’t teach them why arguing is bad, or why the last will be first and the last first; he does that, eventually, but not first. No, first he calls them, he summons them, he gathers them around himself. Then, and only then, does Jesus begin to teach.

       This calling the disciples, this “gathering” them around himself, this is so very small but it is so very important. It’s not just a stage direction we can skim over. For it says something very important about anger. For when we’re angry about something, we fixate on it. Think about when you get angry – really angry. That thing we’re angry about becomes all-encompassing, it becomes the center of our world. Once, while driving from Tennessee to New Jersey, I was cut off. We were in New Jersey by this time, and we had driven something like twelve hours straight. It was dark and the kids were crying and we were looking for that last exit before getting to my parents’ house. And this guy cuts me off. Oh, I was angry! And in this anger, I started making up stories. I thought, this guy did it on purpose, everyone in New Jersey is so rude, this whole place is filled with angry people, and on and on and on. Anger does this sort of thing (especially when we’re tired). It blossoms into this ugly flower of lies with a stinking fragrance. It becomes the center of frustration and hatred.

       And how does Jesus respond to the anger of his disciples? He doesn’t jump to admonish them and tell them why they’re wrong. That first act, that first response to anger is to call them around himself, to gather them and change what they’re centered on, what they’re surrounding. He takes James and John who are at the center of his disciples’ anger, and he replaces them with himself. Now he is the center, now he is the focal point, now he is the foundation. And while we don’t hear how the disciples responded to this, I assume they quieted down, and were calmed, and they listened. And I assume this because we have recorded what Jesus said. People listened to him when he was at their center and they remembered what he said. People opened their ears and heard what this man who was also God said to them and taught them, because of this simple act of placing himself – of placing God – at the center of their community. And this made all the difference.

       Can we do this ourselves? Can we, who are the disciples of Jesus Christ, make that same Jesus Christ our center? Now, our world is a very angry world. Some of that anger is justified, and people should be angry; and some of it is not justified, and it’s scary. But whatever the case, whether anger is justified or it is not, whatever we do needs to be centered on Jesus Christ. And this is the same for all things: our relationships, our hope, our love, our striving and our dreams and the goodness we hope to see in the world – all of it needs, as their center, Jesus Christ. For in Jesus is the Light and the Life; in Him is our Salvation and our Resurrection. All good flows from God through Jesus His Son, the center and very heart of our world. And, like the twelve disciples, we are called, we are summoned to gather around that heart. Let us listen to that voice and heed its call in our lives, for there we shall find the true drink to quench our most desperate thirst.

 

Fr. Tim’s Sermon for September 30th, 2018

Published on by Tina Shippey

 

Proper 21
19th Sunday after Pentecost
September 30th, 2018

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
Psalm 19:7-14
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50
Click here to access these readings

            Today begins the 19th week in the season of Pentecost. Outside in the world it’s almost October. The season has changed from summer to autumn. Helene and I took out our fall decorations, and Gwendolyn’s been going around the house with a book about Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin. But here in the Church we’re in the long slog of green, and we will be until the end of November. Last night at our Michaelmas Eucharist we got a little peak of white, and in October our Thursday Eucharist will see both white and red, but, really, we’re not going to see other colors for a while. The season of Pentecost is called Ordinary time, but it often seems like just Normal Time or, really, Boring Time.

            But, in truth, the season of Pentecost is the season of fire. Look at your bulletin inserts. Look at the title there on the front: sure it’s green with white lettering, but the image on either side is of flames. Pentecost, if you remember, is the birth of the Church, it’s the coming of the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire upon the heads of the disciples. This season is the season of the Holy Spirit, where we are moved to ministry, to our work with a hurting world, and to the growth of Christ in our hearts.

            As Christians, the Holy Spirit is what we live in – or, as we hear in the Book of Acts: in Him we live and move and have our being. And, often, the Holy Spirit is like water for fish: we don’t see it because it’s all around us. We often don’t notice the Spirit because he is, often, elusive. He can’t be bound up in a nice, tidy definition. We can’t hold on to him and study him. He is a bird, a dove, a flame, a breath, a gentle wind upon the heart or a great rushing gust that blows us over. The Spirit is the glue that holds us all together, that holds the Church together, and leads us forward. The Spirit is like the side-kick who ends up having the greatest wisdom. Look at the hymn we just sang, hymn 371. The third verse is all about the Holy Spirit, and all the verbs are active and moving. The Spirit doesn’t just stay in one place, but pushes and urges us on. The Spirit is that part of God that reaches out to us, holds us together, and urges us, pushes us, to overcome divisions.

            When we do work – when we live as Christians – we are called by the Spirit into a partnership with not just all Christians, nor with just all people, but with all of Creation. Recently, I’ve been preaching on the seeds that God has planted inside our hearts; but the funny thing about them is that seeds that we must nurture and tend and encourage, but these seeds will not grow without the growth of the seeds around them.

            This is not, of course, how normal seeds work. Normally, you can’t plant seeds too close to one another, and you have to weed around them, so that the seeds have enough room to grow. Plants need their own nutrients, and they don’t need dandelions stealing their water and soil or big trees stealing their sunlight. Our seeds, the seeds of Christ, work just the opposite. Christ-seeds need to be around one another, and they need to work with one another in order to grow big and strong. Our hope and joy and love of God, and the good works we do, are food for each another. They need to be fed by the Spirit.

            Now, Jesus puts this in a really beautiful way. For the disciples are so full of joy in their ministries. They go out and do works of healing that are making a difference. Perhaps some of them had, before they met Jesus, seen the corruption of the world and despaired. Maybe they saw the needs of the world – those desperate needs – but could only shake their heads. “What can I do?” they might have wondered. “Me? Just a little fisherman? I see the world turning to darkness, but I can do so little.” But now, with Jesus, they could do something. All that pain they saw, all that sorrow and depression, finally they could do something about it all. With Jesus. With the power that Jesus had given them.

            And yet, then, here come others. Other people they don’t know doing the same thing they’re doing. And the worst part is that they’re doing it all in Jesus’s name, even though they aren’t Jesus’s disciples or even one of the seventy. “Who are these guys?” they wonder. “Who are these who weren’t given the power to heal from Jesus himself?” And for a moment, for one terrifying moment, the disciples sound a bit too much like, the Pharasees: if these people don’t have my authority, they must be with another, more sinister authority.

            Now, Jesus’s response here is perfect: “whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lost the reward.” You see, Jesus’s disciples are playing what’s called a zero-sum game. They’re treating the power of Christ like it’s money: there’s only a limited amount of it in the world, and if someone has a lot of it, then that must mean that other people don’t have any. It’s like a birthday cake split in eight slices for ten people. Two of those people just aren’t going to have any cake.

            But Jesus lives in a different world. Jesus, breathing the Holy Spirit, lives in a world where giving doesn’t mean that you have less – it means that you have more. Imagine if you gave someone $10 and suddenly had fifty more in the bank. Or that in feeding people who are cold and hungry you realize suddenly that you yourself are full, even though you didn’t eat a thing. Or that spending a day with your kids or grandkids you come home exhausted but with a full and glorious heart. This isn’t how our human systems work; this is God’s system, and Jesus is saying that maybe yours ought to work a bit more like our Father’s in Heaven.

            Sometimes we allow jealousy to get the best of us. Sometimes we struggle so hard to get something that we think we own it. But our Christian lives aren’t ours to own. They belong to the sick, the destitute, the abused, and the lost who we pray for every week. These vestments, the pews, the altar back there, they’re not ours; they belong to the hungry and the thirsty. And the Eucharist feeds us because it feeds the person sitting next to you, and because it feeds our hope to heal and love more fully. And when we ourselves lose hope, when we fall into despair, or are cold and alone, it is the Eucharist and the love of the Church that heal us. For the Spirit breathes through them all, and they are Christ’s arms to hold us.

            So have no fear. Love with reckless abandon. For that well of love shall refresh us more than any water, and fill us more than any food.

Fr. Tim’s Sermon for September 9th, 2018

Published on by Tina Shippey

The Trinity, or The Man in Sapphire Blue, Hildegard of Bingen, c. 1151

Proper 18
16th Sunday after Pentecost
September 9th, 2018

Isaiah35:4-7a
Psalm 146
James 2:1-17
Mark 7:24-37
Click here to access these readings

Have you ever seen a miracle?  A real miracle, not just when it snows on Christmas, or you realize you still have ice cream in the fridge even though you thought you ate it all already.  Those are great things, but I’m talking about miracles, real, true, honest to God miracles.  Have you ever seen one?

Isaiah has, it seems, at least in a vision or a dream.  He writes about them in our Old Testament reading this morning.  Look at it again.  I’ll start at the end of verse 4: “’He [meaning God] will come and save you.’  Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for you.  For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.”

This is some amazing stuff.  And look closely, for it’s even more amazing than at first glance.  “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped”; these are miracles indeed, but the next are even greater miracles: the lame will not only get up and walk, but they’ll leap like deer!  And the tongue of the speechless will not only speak, but they’ll sing, and not just the blues or a dirge, but they’ll sing with joy!  And it gets better: out there in the wilderness, out in the desert, waters shall suddenly burst forth; and not just a few drops, but enough to fill streams.  And that sand will become a pool; and not just a pool that will dry up but that ground that is thirsty, that yearns for water, that’s whole being is leaning in hope for drink, that same ground will become a spring, and not just a spring but many springs of water.  In each picture, things get better and better and better.

This is some set of miracles Isaiah has seen; it’s some work of God!  But, I think that if we’re honest with ourselves, there’s a little part of us that wonders, “Yeah, but does stuff like this really happen?  Isn’t this just a metaphor about God’s love?”  We certainly pray for miracles: we pray for the healing of our friends or family who are sick, or we pray for the safety of our loved ones, or the rescue of the lost.  We pray that everything will turn out right, and that they’ll get better, that the medicine will work this time, that this new procedure will see them through.

And sometimes miracles do happen, and sometimes prayers heal.  But sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes accidents happen, and people don’t wake up, or the lost stay lost, or our loved ones, who are so joyful and happy and full of life, they fall, and slip away, and die.  And in those moments, it’s easy to feel a little disappointed.  Many of us slip into doubt.  We may feel like we’re not praying hard enough, or praying correctly, or that maybe if we weren’t such horrible sinners, our prayers might work a bit better.  A friend of mine once said, “Yeah sure, Jesus answers prayers.  He just doesn’t answer mine.”

But Jesus says, he always says, “Listen!  Listen!”  Grief and sorrow plug up our ears and stuff up our eyes, but when we look and listen not just to what we hope for but what God is already doing in the world, we see miracles all around us.  For, as John Rottman writes, “even when God does not work a miracle of physical healing, Jesus always heals his children when they come to him.  Sometimes he steadily brings them into closer and deeper relationship with him, giving contentment and peace even in the face of death. Sometimes he breaks the power of addiction and evil in their lives.  Sometimes he heals emotional wounds.  Even when he allows them to die, they are not beyond his healing power.  Death ushers them into the great and final healing of those who go to be with Christ.  When his children ask, he never turns them away at the door.  Jesus never fails to give his children the bread of his healing power.”

I find this quote very powerful.  People in our culture are always looking for reasons to doubt God, and we need to be, as Christians, the voice in their ears that reminds them, “Listen, listen!  God is at work healing even now, even at this very moment.  It might not always look like great flashes of light or earthquakes, but even still God’s life is in the world drawing all things to him.  Miracles are all around us, for life and love are poured into this world with reckless abandon; like a toddler trying to fill a cup with milk, the cup of this world runneth over.

I’ll end this sermon today with a story: during my time one summer as a hospital chaplain, I spent a lot of time with people who were facing death, or at least a rather serious operation.  Often people were worried, or scared, or just plain lonely for an ear, so I did a lot of sitting, listening to life stories, holding hands, and praying.

One couple, though, was different.  I saw on the patient’s chart that he, the husband, had just signed papers to be transferred to hospice.  He was going to die, and he knew it.  I took the elevator up to the room, expecting the man and his wife to be in tears.  But when I knocked and opened the door, I found something different.  The air in the room, it was light.  Not lit up by the sun or the overhead lights, but light, not heavy.  It was easy to breathe.  And the couple sat – the man in the bed, the wife on a chair next time him – with such ease, such grace.  And I sat down with them, we talked, and they told me their story.  And in the conversation, I asked, “Are you afraid?”  And both of them shook their heads, and the man said, “We’ve been Christians all our lives.  We’ve struggled and prayed and walked with Christ.  I’m ready to go to God.”  And I think for him, for this man, it was as if the waters broke forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert, that the burning sand become for him a pool, and his thirsty ground springs of water.  And I know this to be true, for he became a spring of water for me.  He was, I believe, a miracle of God.

 

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

Published on 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.