Psalm

Fr. Tim’s Sermon for 18 November 2018

Published on 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 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 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.