Seeing Clearly

Published on by Tina Shippey Category: Epistle, New Testament, Sermon

Seventh Day of Easter

Today’s readings are:
Acts 16:16-43
Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
John 17:20-26

Click here to access these readings.

We humans are so often pessimists.  We look at situation – be they in our lives, or in the culture around us – and we say, ahh, this isn’t going to end well.  We do our best to hope and to keep an open mind, but often there’s that little voice in the back of the head that whispers that everything is going to go south.  We do this a lot with the weather – I think a lot of us spent all week last week prophesying rain on Friday and Saturday for the fair – about traffic and delays and how horrible a dinner will turn out.  And we know this about ourselves, so much that movie makers take advantage of it with suspense.  The other night, Helene and I were watching a sci-fi show, and the main characters were investigating an abandoned ship. They were wandering through the dark hallways, looking this way and looking that, searching for what happened.  And it was all so suspenseful, which means that Helene and I both knew that something bad was going to happen: something would go wrong with the ship or some monster was going to pop out and scare everyone.  And at one point Helene just said out loud, “Get off the ship!  Just get off that ship already!”  And in the end, nothing happened, but we felt justified in thinking this anyway.  We humans are pessimists.

And it’s not just us in our culture, either.  In our first reading this morning, from the Book of Acts, we hear about a pessimistic set of magistrates and a pessimistic judge.  Here are Paul and Silas dragged before the authorities in the marketplace.  They’re accused of disturbing the city and just being generally un-Roman-like.  And what do the magistrates do?  They say, “Yeah, sure they’re probably up to no good,” and they have Paul and Silas beaten and then throw them in jail.  There’s no trial, no questioning of witnesses, and it doesn’t seem like Paul and Silas get to speak for themselves.  The magistrates, it seems, already know the outcome.  They’re pessimists.  They see these two raga-muffin characters, and, without hearing what they’re saying or seeing what they’re doing, they assume the worst, and throw them into jail.  And they probably think they’re justified in doing so.

And then there’s the jailer, who is, really, our hero in this short story.  He’s not a hero yet, but he will be.  Here’s a man who is, quite simply doing his job.  The magistrates tell him to keep Paul and Silas securely, and so he casts them into the innermost cell and fastens their feet with shackles.  He’s not taking any chances.  He wants to do his job and to do it well.  He doesn’t care what Paul and Silas are in for; he got an order, and he’s going to follow it out.

Then there’s the earthquake.  Then the ground shakes so violently that all the doors of the prison are thrown open and all the chains are broken.  And the jailer wakes up and sees everything that he has been tasked to protect split open and destroyed.  And, yeah, I’m coming down hard on pessimists this morning, but your heart really goes out to this man, doesn’t it?  Put yourself in his shoes for a moment: your one job in life is to make sure that these doors stay locked.  It’s your job to make sure that the doors that hold all these people – all these people that the culture has deemed so dangerous that you’ve got to lock them up – that these doors are now split open and torn from their frames.  Imagine working in a bank, and coming in to find all the doors (and to your terror) even the door of the vault thrown open.  Or that you come home from vacation and you find your front door wide open.  These doors, this vault, these chains, they’re here for a reason, and that is so that things stay inside and definitely not outside.  And when the jailer sees all this, he assumes the worst: everyone’s fled away.  And then he assumes the worst again: the only proper response is to fall on his sword and kill himself.

Now, when I take this man to task for being a pessimist, I think that he’d do better in being an optimist.  We should still criticize this man if, after waking up from the earthquake and seeing the doors thrown open, he just kinda shrugged his shoulders and said, “I’m sure everything’ll be fine.”  The cure for pessimism isn’t just a good dose of optimism.  This story isn’t here to encourage us to just look on the bright side of life and make the best of what we have.  And, to look a bit outside the story, the point of the Christian life isn’t just to move from pessimism to optimism, to just be happy and go-lucky, to look for the silver lining because Jesus has our back and nothing bad can happen to us.  No, one of the main points of the Christian life, and one of the main points of this story, is to see clearly, to call for a light, to rush into the darkness, and to see what is actually there.

This is what the jailer does, and what he finds are Paul and Silas, sitting and waiting for him.  But that’s not all.  He also sees their wounds, fresh from their beating and certainly in need of some medical attention.  He sees them for the situation they’re in: that they’re cold, tired, probably hungry, and most likely bleeding.  He sees them and, within an hour, has them home, and is cleaning their wounds.  And Paul and Silas, in that light, see the jailer, too, and they see what he needs: they speak the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in the house, and they baptize them.  And the night ends, not in a dark jail cell, but in the full light of a household with everyone rejoicing in God.

Now, it’s easy to be pessimistic.  It’s easy to assume the worst.  Or, well, it seems easy.  It seems easy because getting your hopes up is hard sometimes, especially when disappointment is so often waiting just around the corner.  Once hurt, shame on you; twice hurt, shame on me, as the saying goes.  But in being pessimistic, and, really, in being too optimistic as well, we miss what is right in front of us.  We miss seeing the problem for what it actually is, and we miss seeing the people in the problem.  And, perhaps most of all, we miss seeing the grace of God.

Now this seeing, this act of looking not on the bright side or the dark side, but of seeing, this is something that Jesus Christ was (and is) really good at.  Time and time again in the gospels, Jesus encountered people up on life and down on life.  He encountered prostitutes and rich young men, he met tax collectors with pockets full of other people’s money, and he met those who struggled every day to glorify God.  Jesus met sinners and those who had been blessed.  But Jesus looked beyond all this and saw the person, the person himself or herself, whoever they were in the eyes of God.  And perhaps most of all, he met them where they were thirsty, where they yearned for something more or better or more holy.  He met them at their core, and it was from here, from seeing who they were at their depths, that he sought to heal them and to make them whole.

And, if I can speak for you all, I think we’ve known this sight of God, too.  God has looked at us and seen us.  He’s looked past the bad and the good, beyond everything who think we are to who we are inside.  And God looks with eyes of love – not love that ignores the bad and puffs up the good too much, but eyes of true love, that see us for who we are, which is beloved children of his own making.  God lights a candle in the darkness of our own soul, and he picks us up and brings us to his home.  And there he tends to our wounds, so many of them self-inflicted, so many of them at the hands of others, but without blame, without hatred, without anger, God washes those wounds with the hands of Jesus Christ and the cool waters of baptism.  And then he feeds us with food fit for the soul, that grows Daughters and Sons in the image of his own Son.  This is what we experience in the sacraments, in the community that we call the Church, and in our prayers.  This is the life lived with Jesus Christ growing inside of us.

And so we, too, are asked to see.  Not to hold ourselves back in pessimism or to shrug our shoulders in optimism, but to open our eyes and see the light of Jesus Christ.  And in that light, we see those who are hurt, we hear the call from God to go to them, we see the hope of God in his Creation, and we see and experience the healing hands of Jesus Christ, his Son, our savior.

 

Ascension Day

Published on by Tina Shippey Category: Uncategorized

Ascension Day

Today’s readings are:
Acts 1:1-11
Psalm 47 or 93
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-53

Click here to access these readings.

Today is the Feast of Ascension Day.  It’s one of the big days of the Church.  Another way to say this is that it’s one of the Principle Feasts, alongside Easter, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, All Saints’ Day, Christmas, and Epiphany.  Principal Feasts are the holiest of holy days, and we celebrate them with special acts of devotion, prayer, and joy.  There’s a world-wide effort, actually, to encourage pray all across the Church on these ten days between Ascension and Pentecost.  I’ve posted a few of these on our Facebook page, but you can also find the main page here.

Ascension Day looks to the passages in Luke and Acts listed above, where, following his Resurrection and teaching the disciples, Jesus ascends bodily to be with God in Heaven.  There’s a lot of great art throughout the history of the Church that depicts this event.  There is also a chapel dedicated to the ascension in the church of Our Lady of Walsingham in England.  Inside the chapel, if you look up, you’ll see a set of feet (Jesus’) ascending through the ceiling.  You can see this picture above.

Now, Ascension Day (and images like feet sticking through the ceiling) might seem like a strange or really very particular sort of thing to celebrate.  Jesus’ ascension may appear to be another bit of theological nit-picking much like the old medieval discussion of how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.  Whether Jesus died again after the Resurrection, or wandered away to some other country, or rose bodily to Heaven, may not seem to matter all that much.  Jesus is with us, and isn’t that alone important?  But I think that the ascension is one of the really important parts of the story of Jesus, and it’s a part of the story that touches us closely.

Let me take a step back for a moment and tell a story.  After my wife and I had our first child, a friend of ours in seminary gave us a little book called “Holding your Newborn Child.”  It was a set of meditations on bits of Scripture and prayers that the Church holds dear.  Nor was it all a bunch of vague philosophizing, but were centered on the new life that we held in our arms.  

And I remember, very well, how real that life was.  As an infant, my daughter wouldn’t sleep unless she was held, and so my wife and I traded off holding her all through the night.  We were exhausted, but it also bound us with our daughter in a really special and amazing way.  During those long nights, I remember praying in a way that I had never prayed before.  I had always had worries, sure, and been anxious or joyful or hopeful about the future, but in holding that young baby, just a few days old, I was centered in my prayers so much on the present moments of grace.  The reality of this child, this small weight of life in my arms, and my love for her, was my prayer.  I found that I had no words to pray other than, very simply, to hold my daughter.

And just like a newborn, Jesus is not just some vague “figure” or spiritual force that exists in our lives.  Jesus is not just a hope, not just a dream, nor just some “energy” that we direct with our prayers.  Jesus is real, and Jesus is alive.  And Jesus is alive not as a spirit, but in his body as well.  And that brings us, who are both bodies and souls, so much closer to him.  It reminds us that our bodies matter, that our care for Creation matters, and that our lives matter.  Christians can’t just look to the future when all will be made right; we must also look to what is present, to the life that is in our hands and indeed all around us.  And we are also reminded that God holds us, for we are to him his beloved children.  God’s real arms, as Jesus Christ, are holding us, even now, in our grief, raising us up in our sorrow, and celebrating with us in our joy.  God is truly, truly present.

There are a lot of parts of our Church and our Christian lives together that is about stuff.  On Sunday we gather together in a single place, kneel or stand with one another, and join together in the Eucharist, which is the eating of real bread and the drinking of real wine.  And when we go out from our worship into the world, we work with our hands and our feet, our voices and our bodies, to do the work of God.  And God is present in each of them, both bodily and spiritually, especially in the Eucharist but also in our good work as Christians. 

In the end, Ascension Day reminds us that God is real, and not in some “purer” way that hates the world and is ashamed of bodies.  No, on Ascension Day we remember that Jesus Christ is, even now, in bodily form, but in the most perfect bodily form.  And it is this form to which we will one day go ourselves, and which all the world, in the New Heaven and the New Earth, will one day be.  And it is a further emphasis of the promise that God is with us, always and forever.

The Holy Spirit and the Church

Published on by Tina Shippey Category: New Testament, Sermon

The Sixth Sunday of Easter

This Sunday’s Readings are:
Acts 16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 14: 23-29

Click here to access these readings.

This morning we hear about the Advocate; or, in other translations, the Encourager or Comforter.  These translations lead to the joke that those who don’t go to church on Sunday morning and sleep in are “attending the church of the Holy Comforter.”  But all these words – the advocate, the encourager, the comforter, even the friend – all of these are translations of the single Greek word paraklete, or paraklaytos.  Jesus will soon ascend to sit at the right hand of God the Father and no longer be among humans.  And another, someone who the Father will send in Christ’s name, will come to teach, to lead, to remind the disciples of what Jesus said; to encourage, to comfort, to advocate; to paraklete. 

        Now, in John’s gospel, Jesus pretty clearly identifies this paraklete as the Holy Spirit.  But following the crucifixion, there were a number of people who stood up and said, “Oh, that paraklete guy, yeah that’s me.  I’m the one who can interpret what Jesus said.  I’m the one who will continue his teaching.  I’m the one who understood Jesus, not that other guy over there.  Listen to me, not to him.”  And we see a bit of this infighting in Acts and the epistles, and especially in 1 Corinthians, where some say they’re with Paul, and others to Apollos.  This is something that was happening rather often in the first century, and it’s something that’s happened ever since.

        Now, we always have to be cautious of someone who says that they speak directly for God.  We can interpret God’s word for us, sure.  We can discern what God may mean by his presence in our lives, yes.  But we come to some pretty shaky ground when we think that God gave me these specific words to tell you. 

        And, sure, we can enter into this way of thinking pretty naturally and innocently.  God really is present in our lives, talking to us, guiding us, and loving us into the fullness of Being.  God is concerned with us – that’s all of us as a group and as a people – and with us, each and everyone, individually.  I believe that God called me, Timothy Robert Hannon, born in New Jersey husband to Helene and father of Gwendolyn and Fiona, to be a priest in his church.  Through thoughtful prayer and discernment, through looking at God’s voice to me in my life and through talking to others about it, I actually think that God led me to be a priest and to stand up here each and every week to tell you all that God’s word to you is LOVE.  I do believe that.

        But the question isn’t whether or not God is present in our lives but in how God is present in our lives.  Again and again, we hear in the Bible about how God is present to people – but how is God present?  Most often, when God reveals himself, it is to a group of people: the Israelites in Exodus as they fled from Egypt, or to two men on the road to Emmaus, or to all the disciples when they were mourning the loss of their beloved teacher and friend.

        And when God reveals himself to just one person, it is always at the service of the community.  Why does God reveal himself to Moses in the burning bush?  Not to make Moses feel important or good about himself, or because he really just likes Moses and doesn’t want to talk to the rest of the rabble.  No, it’s to equip and inform Moses so that he can go into Egypt and lead an entire people from slavery.  And Jesus comes to Peter after the Resurrection not just to guilt him and make him feel bad, but why?  What does Jesus tell him, three times, to do?  Feed my sheep.  Peter, get out there and feel my sheep. 

        Now, an introvert, this aspect of the Bible and the Christian life used to make me feel uncomfortable.  I like being alone.  I like sitting down with a good book on a stormy, rainy day.  I like sitting out at the shore and just quietly watching the ocean.  And I like these things, because I’m filled by them.  I meet God in them.  God is present in the quiet, and I believe that God heals me and nurtures me in the quiet.  And, in many ways, I think that my relationship with God was built during the beautiful, quiet moments, alone, just me and my God.

        But when we seek to understand what God is trying to say, when we seek to know God’s will in our lives and in the world, when we hope for and in the kingdom, we do this in community as the Church.  That’s the real reason we in the Episcopal Church have so many committees and delegations and conventions.  Often we get lost in them, thinking that the BAC or the vestry or the convention is really important because we get together and not that we get together because together we can more fully and completely hear God speaking to us.  We gather together each Sunday and on days throughout the week not just to do our own personal, individual prayers alone, but this time just with someone sitting next to us doing her own personal, individual prayers.  No, we come together so that we may bring each of our needs, our hopes, our yearnings, our loves, and our joys together, together before God.  And after we pray together, hear the Bible together, and join together in the Eucharist, then we go out, separate but together, to bring the love of God into a needy and despairing world.

        And this work of the Church is the work of the Spirit.  For there’s a reason that, in the Creeds, the parts that deal with the Holy Spirit all have to do with the community that is the Church.  Think about it.  The Creeds begin with God the Father and creation.  Then they move to God the Son, which is all about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and what that life, death, and resurrection did to bring salvation to us all.  And the next part, that third part, is about the Spirit, and it’s about the Church.  It’s about the good, everyday, sun-up and sun-down work of today, which is the life of the Church.  And this work is life.  It is the worship and glory of living a life to God, of the encouragement of the prophets, of Baptism and the forgiveness of sins, and of the Resurrection of the dead in the world to come.  In all, the Holy Spirit is the giving of life to our community and, through this community, through the Church, to the world.  The Holy Spirit is life.

        Soon it will be Pentecost.  Just two weeks and it will be green season again.  And we call this long season “the season of Pentecost” because it is the season of the Church, of the movement of the Spirit not just in our hearts but in all our hearts, individually and collectively.  It is the season when we all listen to the word of God and live a life not just dedicated to good works or good programs, but a life dedicated to the burning center of all existence: God the Almighty, God the Encourager, the Advocate, the Friend, the Comforter.  God the giver of life, love, and hope.

 

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Published on by Tina Shippey Category: Uncategorized

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Readings for this week are:
Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35

Click here to access these readings.

        What does it mean for God to make his home among mortals?  This is something that St. John writes in our reading from Revelation that we just heard: where the loud voice says from the throne: “See, the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.”  And John wasn’t the one who came up with this idea; all of the Bible, really, is trying to help people understand that God is with us.  And God is with us not in some small, secondary, or ancillary way, like a relative who stays (or overstays) through the holidays, or a friend who’s there in the good times but, really, when the going gets tough, is nowhere to be found.  No, the Bible tells us that God is with us.  That’s why Jesus, whose name means “to deliver” or “to rescue”, is also called Emmanuel, which means, quite simply, “God is with us.”  God is with us, God dwells with us, God lives with us; but what does it mean for God to make his home among us?  What does it look like in our lives, and what does it feel like in our hearts?

        Well, to be quite honest, I think often we think of God living with us like a boy getting a new dog.  Gwendolyn has this book called Charley’s First Night.  It’s a really wonderful book about Henry Korn getting a little puppy called Charley for his birthday.  It’s all written from Henry’s point of view, and it’s all about Henry showing Charley around his home.  And for Henry, everything (from the place where the vacuum is kept beneath the stairs to the moonlight through the kitchen window) everything becomes new and magnificent.  Everything speaks of Henry and Charley’s new love for one another.  And this is all summed up at the start of the book, where Henry says, “I carried him in my old baby blanket, which was soft and midnight blue, and we were new together and I was very, very careful not to slip in the snow and I thought about his name.  I was the one who thought up his name.  Charley.  Charley Korn.  My name is Henry.  Henry Korn.”

        Now, I mention this story not just because I really like children’s books, but because Henry’s love for his new dog Charley, and the way that they were “new together”, it’s really one of the ways we experience God.  And this is especially true when we’re young, or when we’ve been brought by the Spirit into a new closeness with God.  Think, yourself, of times of particular joy for you, recently or in the past.  Maybe when your kids or grandkids were born, or at the beginning of spring when all the flowers started blooming.  Doesn’t it feel that same way, that you and those things you loved, and God as well, all felt new together?  I think of the first day of my road trip from Georgia up here to Oregon with Helene.  We were delirious with joy, and each mile seemed new.  But I also think of the disciples in the Book of Acts on the day of Pentecost, when the tongues of flame settled above their heads, and they spoke in all the languages of the world and proclaimed the Good News, the Gospel, of Jesus Christ raised from the dead.  Everything is new in these moments, even Henry Korn’s old baby blanket, which became soft and midnight blue.  And they were new together.

        But over time, newness wears off.  Things become normal again.  Not even the saints live their full lives in the pure ecstasy of the newness of rebirth in the Spirit.  After a while, we go back to the work-a-day world, and not because God leaves us, but because we are called to bring God back into that work-a-day world.  We Christians are messengers, ambassadors, guides, who have seen the true light and wish to help others see it, experience it, and live it, too.  The Joy of God is not for us alone, but for us to give to others.

        But when this happens, when we come down from the summits of our experiences with God and go out into the world to do God’s work again, when this happens, God living with us might seem less like Henry and Charley and much more like Henry’s parents and Charley.  Dogs are fun for kids, sure, but parents end up doing all the work.  Dogs need to be walked, fed, potty trained, and brought to the vet when they’re sick.  I remember, as a kid, wondering why my own parents got frustrated with my dogs; weren’t dogs all fun and joy and beauty and wonder? 

        There are times for us Christians when God, or at the very least Christianity, can become something of a chore.  For God works deep into our lives, deep into the fabric, the warp and woof of our lives.  It’s great when God lifts our hearts to sing in the joy of the new spring of our souls, but, man, when God asks us to lay all things open before him, or to let parts of us (and, worst of all, parts of us that we might really like) die, when God says to love our enemies, to open our hearts even if it hurts, to love even if it means something like death on a cross – well, God begins to look much less like a puppy or a bright, sunny day and more like a hard-nosed boss who won’t stop nagging for more productivity.  As C.S. Lewis writes, we often want, not God the Father, but God the kindly Grandfather, who dotes on his grandkids and sits back to let them do what they want.

        Last week, I preached on the idea that the Bible isn’t a set of laws or rules that we need to follow, but that it is a book that we need to give our heart to and to love.  We enter into the world and the story of the Bible, and love it as a story, and doing so is what changes our lives and helps us grow closer to God in Christ.  And it’s the same with the Christian life.  If the Christian life were just a set of things to do, just a list of good deeds and best practices, then it wouldn’t mean much.  Because people, because the world, because life, isn’t just about best practices; life is about living, it’s about living to God and with God and in God.  The Good News of Jesus Christ isn’t the discovery of some new way to live, as if we uncovered some political system where true peace is possible, or some law code that explains and enacts justice perfectly.  The Good News of Jesus Christ is that all things, whatever they are, have the potential of rebirth baked into them.  That everything, from working in our garden to our old baby blankets to us broken, wayward humans, have the love of God deep down within them.  And not only that, but the Spirit of God himself is with us, to lift us through death and resurrection to a life fully renewed in love and hope.

        When God makes his home among us, then , it’s much less like getting a new puppy.  Or, well, perhaps it is, though it is God who brings us home, wrapped in his old blanket, which is soft and midnight blue.  It is God who brings us around the house to show us the light and the joy and the goodness in all the things.  It is God who is very, very careful not to slip in the snow, who shows us around the house saying, “This is home, my beloved”, and he says it again and again so that we know that we’re home.  And it is God who reminds us that part of our work is to go out into the cold, wet, rainy world and bring in others, so that we can bring them inside and show them that it is not just our home, but everyone’s home.  It is God’s home.

Sheep and Freedom

Published on by Tina Shippey Category: Epistle, New Testament, Psalm, Sermon

The Fourth Sunday of Easter
Good Shepherd Sunday

Our Readings for this week are:
Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30

Click here to access these readings

        Sheep get a pretty bad rap in our culture.  Sheep are seen as obedient, simple, and sometimes rather stupid animals in God’s great Creation.  Sheep follow without thinking, do what they are directed to do without much foresight or reflection, and often get themselves into trouble.  There’s a word in pop-culture, “sheeple”, that is a merger of the words “sheep” and “people”, and it means that people who are, simply, sheep: they are dull, uninteresting and uninterested people who just follow the status quo.  Sheeple are not individualists, striking out into unfamiliar territory and striving against expectations.  Sheeple, sheep-people, just do what they are told.

        And so it is, perhaps, a little strange that we Christians are so often described as, and describe ourselves as, sheep.  In our Baptismal Covenant, we are asked to continue in the apostles’ teaching, persevere in resisting evil, proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, seek and serve Christ in all persons, and strive for justice and peace among all people – not exactly dull and unimaginative work.  Christians are called to be a people apart from the world.  We are called to be not citizens of our present world but of the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus proclaimed.  We are to be in the world but not of the world.

        If we are, then, sheep, we are a very strange sort of sheep.  You see, when we Christians talk about “following”, we are saying something very special.  It’s not “following” like a duckling follows a mother duck, all nice and tight in a row, or how a train car “follows” the locomotive, just being pulled along a track without much will of its own.  It’s more like how we talk about how we’re asked to read and “follow” the Bible.  The Bible isn’t just a rulebook, like you use when you open up a new board game but don’t know how to play it yet; or when you are preparing your taxes, and you don’t understand the forms and so you look at one of those instruction sheets for which figure to put where.  Parts of the Bible are about instructions, certainly, and there are a few books that are, quite literally, a set of laws: when this happens, do this; when that happens, don’t do this.  But on a whole, the Bible isn’t a set of do’s and don’t’s, but is instead a story, and we follow stories much differently than laws books or instruction manuals.

        Think back to some of the stories that you’ve told me since I arrived last summer.  I’ve heard stories about how you celebrate: and not just Christmas and Easter, but birthdays and anniversaries, Thanksgiving and even that light, calm, joyous celebration of coffee hour.  I’ve heard stories about Ann Drake, Barbara and OJ Endicott, about who brought you into this church and why you stayed.  I’ve even heard stories about the different plants and trees around the church building, so that when the bushes outside the office erupted with blossoms, I had already been waiting all year in joyful anticipation for them.  You’ve told me stories while laughing, while in tears, while in hope, and while in grief.  You’ve told me stories of your life.  And while I’m sure some of those stories were meant to teach me something specific, or to make sure I do something (or don’t do something) very specifically, you told me these stories because you love your church, you love one another, and because you love your life in God.  And you want me to be a part of that, not just because you hired me to be your priest, but because you want me to love St. James, too, and to love you all and the way you all live your lives to God.  And I do, which helps me (I think) lead you into a deeper love of all those things as well.

        This is how we follow the Bible.  We hear its stories and we allow its love and hope to work within us.  And yeah, sure, there are times when Jesus says do this and don’t do this, and St. Paul, it seems, even moreso.  But are these the parts that really speak to us?  Truly?  Those parts that move us, that dig deep into us and challenge us to live more fully and opening and with more love, are those parts like the Annunciation, where the angel comes to Mary and says, “Rejoice!  For you shall bear the Son of the Most High!”; or Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, where he prays, “May this cup pass from me; but not my will, but your will.”  We read about Adam and Eve, about Cain and Abel, about David lamenting the death of his son, his son who betrayed him and revolted against him but was still his son and so beloved.  We read these stories and don’t learn something that we could answer on a test but, instead, learn about life and what it means to love God through thick and thin.  And even in that great passage in St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, where he writes that love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boatful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Even here, where Paul seems to be teaching specific lessons to be followed and obeyed, we give ourselves to this sort of love not because Paul said so but because we know, in our hearts and minds, in our guts and in our spirits, that love is the ground of all Creation.  And we want to live a life to God in love not because it has the greatest results in controlled experiments, but because the call to love answers something at the center of our being. 

And so we answer that call, given forth by Jesus on the cross and on the morning of the Resurrection, and follow the way of love.

        We are sheep, we Christians.  We are sheep, and we are called on to follow God in Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit.  But in doing so, in following and modeling our lives on our great shepherd, we are led to freedom.  And this freedom is a freedom from sin and despair, from hatred and malice, from our own slavery to evil.  In this freedom we find true health, true hope, true goodness that is so great that it cannot be contained in this world but smashes even death, which seemed to have the last and final word for we humans.  We follow, not just to obey, but to live, and to live without end, forever and ever with our God.