Trinity Sunday 2013

          Spiritual forces include both an outward force that calls us into relationships outside ourselves and an inward force that calls us to protect the self. These spiritual forces need to kept in balance. Too much of the outward force and we become divided and fragmented. Too much of the inward force and we become self-centered and selfish. God the Holy Trinity is the spiritual force of balance, the force that both keeps us together and keeps us reaching out. As St. Augustine of Hippo in North Africa taught us 1600 years ago, the unifying love of the persons of the Holy Trinity is both the example and the power of our created unity in diversity.

          Most special days in the church year remember events in the life of Christ or his church. For 800 years Christians in Western Europe and in churches planted from Western Europe have kept the Sunday after Pentecost as Trinity Sunday, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.” Today we celebrate God as revealed to us in the Bible and in the life of his church.

          God is revealed as one, as a unity expressed in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The unity of the three persons of God is formed by the love they share. Trinity Sunday reminds us we are one person in many relationships, our unity formed by God’s gift of love in Jesus.

          Maintaining the balance among the forces in our lives takes love, attention,  and spiritual effort. Too much of the outward force and we become divided and fragmented. Too much of the inward force and we become self-centered and selfish

          God’s unity in trinity in the relationship of mutual love is our example, our guide, and by God’s gift of love in the Holy Spirit of Jesus our strength and power. So the Trinity is important, important in our thinking and important in our lives.

 
          The church’s teaching about God is based on God’s self-revelation in the Bible, particularly in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  The church’s teaching about God is summarized in the creeds. The Episcopal Church expands the creeds in the Prayer Book Catechism (pp 845-862) and the Historical Documents, the Athanasian Creed and the Articles of Religion.

          The creeds start with the unity of God. “We believe in one God.” Jesus, when asked a trick question (St. Matthew 22:35-40, St. Mark 12:28-31, St. Luke 10:25-28) answered from Deuteronomy 6:4-5, “Shema Israel, Adonai elohenu, adonai echad. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.” He added from Leviticus 19:18 “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Observant Jews begin and end the day with the Shema; it is a good spiritual practice.

          God is not fragmented; God is a unity. We are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26).We are not essentially fragmented; we are created a unity.  We maintain our unity in love.  “God is love and those who dwell in love dwell in God, and God in them.” (I John 4:16)

          Just as the Father loves the Son and the Son the Father in the bond of the love of the Holy Spirit, by the same Holy Spirit God dwells in us, and we in him. The love of God in Trinity is our example of unity, and the love of God in Trinity  creates and sustains us as whole and balanced people.

          This truth held clearly in our minds can set us free from all that divides us, both within ourselves and between one another. The God who made us loves us. He poured out his love on us in the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. We are set free from the need to sin, from the need to hurt as we have been hurt. We can accept God’s forgiveness and in the power of that forgiveness forgive those who have sinned against us.

          Maintaining the balance among the forces in our lives takes love, attention,  and spiritual effort. Too much of the outward force and we become divided and fragmented. Too much of the inward force and we become self-centered and selfish

          Our various relationships and roles vie for our attention; each wants to be supreme. We need to pay continuing attention to the question, “What is most important in our lives?” How are we maintaining balance among the forces in our lives? How are we both internalizing and expressing God’s love for us in Jesus Christ? 

          God the Holy Trinity is the spiritual force of balance, the force that both keeps us together and keeps us reaching out. So let us now celebrate God’s unity in trinity in the words of the Nicene Creed.  

Funeral sermon

          This is what I peached at a friend's funeral 2-16-2013

          The first man and the first woman “heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the evening;” and they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God. The Lord called to Adam, “Where art thou?” And Adam said, “I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.”  The Lord responded, “Who told thee thou was naked; hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat?” And Adam gave a perfectly human response, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.”  In spelling out the consequences of their disobedience the Lord God gave the sentence we hear each Ash Wednesday, “dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return.”  (Genesis 3:19)

          I was asked to speak about death. Death is real. Death is separation. Death is painful. And death is not the final answer. Christians believe in the death of Jesus, and Christians believe in the resurrection of Jesus for all who believe in him. As St. Paul wrote the church in Corinth, “As in Adam all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Cor. 15:22)

          At the Committal we will say, “In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother; and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him, the Lord lift up his countenance upon him and give him peace.  Amen.”

          The last part of that prayer comes from Numbers 7:24-27 where the Lord spoke to Moses, “Speak thus unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, on this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel.”  Following the words of the blessing we read, “And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.” 

          The sentence of God is real. We are dust, and we die. The mortal body dies and returns to dust and ashes. But death is not the final answer. God has put his name on us and God blesses us.  Baptism begins, “Name this child.” We receive our Christian name at baptism. At baptism we are washed clean of the sin we receive as an inheritance from our families and our humanity, we are born again in Christ, and we are “marked as Christ’s own for ever” with the sign of the cross – Christ’s cross, on which our Savior died to redeem us.

           We affirm in the creed that Jesus Christ “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again.”  As Jesus died, so our brother in Christ died. And as Jesus rose, so in God’s good time our brother will rise, not in the physical body but in a new and perfect spiritual body. That is God’s promise, and God’s promise is true.

           But we cannot misuse God’s true promise so as to avoid the reality and pain of true death. We go through the pains and difficulties of life and death and not around them  A Swiss physician noticed five emotional stages in grief: denial; anger; bargaining; depression; and, some degree of acceptance. Too quick a jump from death to resurrection may be a sign of denial. Death is real; death is separation – separation of the body and spirit, the end of life and of relationships in this life. The relationships continue. We continue to love despite death. But we mourn the loss.

           Anger is a normal and natural reaction to change and loss. We can be angry with God for cutting life short too soon; God can take it. We have a right to be angry. Life is too short for all we want to do, and sometimes it seems too long, and it is hard.  We want to bargain and we think of the “if only.” But it is what it is and we play the hand we’re dealt. Our brother certainly did that, and when his wife called to tell me of his untimely death my first reaction was to remember the grace with which he lived his life - as son to his mother, as husband, as friend to us all in his many areas of community service, and in business.

           We have all lost by his death, and we have a right to be depressed. Depression can be anger turned inward. Depression  is real. We all have much to be depressed about, in our personal lives and in the world around us. But by God’s grace we have the time if we will take it to feel that depression and to hold on with two hands to the blessed hope of God’s continuing love in Jesus Christ.

          We have no assurance of universal salvation; we are certainly not made right with God by our good works. Our assurance is in Jesus Christ - in his death to redeem us from sin and in his resurrection to new life for all who live in him.  The church at its best is the company of those who share this faith and assurance in Jesus Christ seek to live as he would have us live. And the church at its worst is a place where the envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness of the world are made more evident by the gap between belief and practice.  But our faith is not in the institutional church. Our faith is in the church’s Lord, Jesus Christ.  I know our brother lived that faith. I know he can claim Jesus’ resurrection.

           As we will say in the Commendation at the end of this service, “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” Amen.   

Epiphany 4 2013

Epiphany 4C SABC 2-3-13 Jeremiah 1-4-10, Psalm 71:1-6, I Corinthians 12, St. Luke 4:21-30

           “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.”  The Greek word is thumos, found 18 times in the New Testament: in St. Luke 4:28 and Acts 19:28 the rage of the crowd, 5 times in St. Paul, once in Hebrews for Moses’ faith fleeing from Pharaoh’s wrath, and in the Revelation about the wrath of God against evil-doing.

          Wrath is one of the 7 capital or deadly sins – Wrath, Avarice, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, and Gluttony.  All these sins are natural human characteristics taken to an extreme that dominates our lives and control us.  St. Paul calls wrath (in Galatians 5:20) one of the works of the flesh, and tells the Christians to put it away. 

          By God’s grace we can put away wrath and replace it in our lives by the love of God we read of in First Corinthians 13 in today’s epistle.

          In today’s gospel, “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage” Rage is anger out of proportion. The congregation began with positive feelings toward Jesus. “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” But Jesus disappointed them. He called them to repentance and a change of heart.

          An hour walk northwest of Nazareth is Sepporis, the traditional home of Mary’s parents, a center of Roman authority, with many Gentiles and Greek-speaking Jews, despised neighbors. Jesus calls the Nazareth congregation to repent of their attitude toward the Gentiles.

          The crowd’s response to Jesus’ call to repentance was anger, and more than anger, murderous rage. “They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”

          Acts 19 is similar. At Ephesus in Turkey was a great temple to the goddess Diana of the Ephesians with an image carved from a meteorite.  (black and white picture of an ivory statue) She was an ancient goddess of fertility.  St. Paul preached there over two years, and his ministry had been blessed by the Holy Spirit. Many had been converted and many healed, so many that the idol-makers feared for their business and raised a riot. But the city authorities held a hearing in the city theatre, and St. Paul’s friends sent him on his way to Macedonia.

          From these bible accounts and our own experience we learn about thumos or rage.  Rage is anger carried to such an extreme that it takes control of our emotions and actions. Rage leads to extreme actions - in the biblical accounts to attempted murder, in our experience to similar tragedy. Rage comes on us suddenly without much warning.

          Anger is a reaction to disappointment, a feeling that comes when things are not as they should be, when we feel we are not getting what is due to us, what is fair. One of the spiritual gifts God gives children is a keen moral sense of what is fair to them. We are of course better able to discern what is not fair for us because we are keenly aware of all our circumstances – or think we are. We don’t know the details of others’ lives, and it is harder for us to see the unfairness that leads to their frustration.

          We all learn more or less well to deal with our angers. We can learn to stop, to “count to ten,” to withdraw and not be consumed by anger in others. Jesus “passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” St. Paul moved on from Ephesus to Macedonia, to begin proclaiming the good news of Jesus on the continent of Europe.

          We all have different triggers for our anger. Over time we can learn what situations evoke anger, what experiences tend to hook us in. Parents, siblings, and spouses learn what actions and situations give us pleasure and which evoke anger. Those of us who have taken a long car trip with two children in the back seat know what I’m talking about.  And that’s a small example. There are more serious ones.

          Anger and rage are human emotional reactions. So is love. And love is God’s antidote for anger and rage. Sometimes the hard word has to be said.  The people of the synagogue in Nazareth needed to hear Jesus’ true word of God’s love for their Gentile neighbors. St. Paul’s ministry in Ephesus was a fruitful ministry of preaching and healing. The church in Ephesus that Paul founded later offered refuge to St. John and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

          But as we learned from our parents, “Mean what you say, but don’t say it mean.” The God who made us loves us and pours out his love on us so we can love others in his name. St. Paul in today’s Epistle reminds us of this love.  By God’s grace we can put away wrath and replace it in our lives by the love of God, love that is patient, kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, love that does not insist on its own way, is not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”  This love is God’s love in Jesus given to us to share. May God give us grace and opportunity to drive anger and rage from our hearts and replace it with his love.

Epiphany 3 January 27, 2013 SABC

 

          From this morning’s Old Testament reading we learn three important things about the Word of God:

(1) The Word of God comes to us in our hour of need.

(2)   The Word of God brings us under judgment and calls us to repentance.
(3)    The Word of God is comfort to the repentant sinner.

The God who made us loves us; he wants what is best for us, and what is best for us is to do his will. God continually speaks, and he wants us to listen to his word.   We listen best in times of need and the Word of God comes to us in our hour of need when, like the people of Jerusalem in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, we are ready to listen.

Some background:  Jerusalem had fallen to the Babylonians (modern Iraq) in 586 BC.  To prevent rebellion Babylonian policy was population transfer. The top third of the people were sent to Babylon as poor strangers.  It worked. Babylon fell not to internal revolt but to Cyrus of Persia (modern Iran) in 525 PC. The Persians had a different policy to prevent rebellion. They chose to co-opt the local leaders. Cyrus returned the gold and silver vessels for Temple worship. He allowed the descendants of the exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. Some returned; many stayed. In 1949 there were still 150,000 Jews in Iraq; 5 years later practically none.

 

Most of the peoples exiled simply adopted the religious and cultural identity of the people among whom they were settled. The Jews were different. In their time of need God sent them the prophet Ezekiel and the writer of psalm 137, “By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered you, O Jerusalem” The Jews kept the law of God: Sabbath, circumcision, the food laws. They met week by week for prayer and study, for fellowship, and to remember Jerusalem. In exile they invented the synagogue. The word comes from the Greek “to come together.” So when God’s time came, some of the Jews returned to Jerusalem while others remained in Babylon to support them. After 20 some years and considerable prodding by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, the returned people rebuilt the Temple.

 

Then they fell into sin. Obedience to the Word of God had sustained their grand-fathers in exile. Obedience to the Word of God motivated their fathers to leave the comforts of Babylon to return and rebuild, but then obedience melted away like ice in the hot sun. They maintained the form of worship and sacrifice but not the spirit of sacrificial self-offering.

 

Ezra the priest came to investigate and reform. He came about 500 BC with the next generation of exiles. Ezra brought the people together outside the Temple and read from the Word of God.  The people were ready to listen.

And “all the people wept when they heard the words of the law.” They knew how far they had departed from the will of God, and they wept in repentance.  The Word of God brings us under judgment and calls us to repentance.

 

The people renewed their commitment to know and to do God’s will.  Every Jewish community had a synagogue where men, and women, met regularly to study and worship. Those community structures continue to this day.

 

The people repented and were comforted. The Word of God is comfort for the repentant sinner.   “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”  We are comforted in the sense of the Latin word “com” and “fortis” with strength. We are made spiritually strong by God’s love and forgiveness. The joy of the Lord truly is our strength.

 

We are made strong in the Lord and we are made able to share what we have, from the abundance of God’s love for us, to share food for the body and food for the soul – social action and evangelism together.  St. Paul reminds us in the Epistle that we are all parts of the one body of Christ, all strengthened by the spiritual joy of the Lord, continually strengthened by the spiritual food of Jesus own body and blood, the blood shed for our sins, the body risen as a promise of our eternal life in him.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus, the Word of God incarnate, comes to his people in their hour of need. As in Ezra’s time the people needed to hear again the Word of God which Jesus proclaimed in the synagogue in the words of Isaiah. His teaching brought judgment and some repented.  To them, and to us, Jesus offers the joy and strength to love and serve.

 
The Word of God comes to us in our hour of need.
The Word of God brings us under judgment and calls us to repentance.
The Word of God is comfort to the repentant sinner.

Epiphany 2013

Epiphany 2013

          The Bible is the record of God in relationship with the world and the people he created. It is a book written by adults for adults. We can, and we should, tell Bible stories to our children and to ourselves, but the Bible is more than the stories we tell. Today’s Gospel is a story of an event in a baby’s life, and it is more simply that story. The Epiphany is literally in Greek the “showing forth” of God’s light in the darkness of sin and evil. 

The prophecy of Isaiah 60 written down some 500 years before Jesus was born includes kings bringing gold and frankincense from Sheba, silver and gold from Tarshish. Why does Isaiah prophesy that they will bring gold and frankincense, silver and gold?  They will bring them to proclaim the praise of the name of the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, because he has made light shine in the darkness, and as St. John tells us, “the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” Darkness does not understand light, and darkness can never overcome light.

 Today’s Gospel makes real the themes of Isaiah 60 and Psalm 72 about the promise of the messianic age, when the God of Israel will be universally acknowledged and worshipped as the only God. It also tells us of the meaning and purpose of Jesus’ life.  English-speaking Christians owe to John Henry Hopkins, a 19^th century Vermont Episcopal priest, the clear teaching in verses 2, 3, and 4, of his carol, “We three kings of Orient are.”  Hopkins reminds us that Jesus is, “King, and God, and Sacrifice.”

          “Born a king on Bethlehem’s plain, gold I bring to crown him again, king forever, ceasing never, over us all to reign.”  Jesus is king. Jesus is Lord. He is in charge, not us. That is good news, gospel news. The English lay theologian C. S. Lewis writes of humankind as rebels, called to lay down our arms in surrender. The story of the Fall in Genesis tells us of the universal human predicament. We want to be autonomous, free to do what we want, when we want, how we want. And we are not autonomous. We are limited – limited by location in time and space. In heaven we will be able to be at all places at all times, but until we get there we can only be at one place and one time doing one thing at a time. And we are limited by the network of relationships within which we live because we need them to be able to live. We have some freedom to chose within relationships, but we are never completely alone. We are always in relationship with the God who made us and who loves us. Spiritual maturity is recognizing that relationship, and recognizing that because God loves us he wants what is best for us, and what is best for us is what God wants for us.

          There is a comfort in recognizing that we live in relationship with Jesus, and that Jesus is king. Jesus is Lord. He is in charge, not us. That is good news, gospel news. We are not, finally responsible for everything, all the time. Our responsibility is to listen to Jesus’ “good, orderly direction” and do his will, recognizing that “his service is perfect freedom.” “Born a king on Bethlehem’s plain, gold I bring to crown him again, king forever, ceasing never, over us all to reign.”

          “Frankincense to offer have I, incense owns a Deity nigh, prayer and praising, gladly raising, worship him, God most high.”  Of all the religions of humankind, Christianity alone says that God became a man, “to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to . . . the God and Father of all.” A great many holy men and women have taught what they believe God revealed to them. They experienced God as distant, different, totally other than us, giving us rules to live by, and also giving us the hope of his mercy. Christians experience in Jesus God with us, showing us how to live, assuring us of his love and his forgiveness. At the end of life we commit our mortal remains to the ground, “in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We expect to spend eternity praising God, in ways shown us in the Revelation to St. John. We gather for worship here to practice what will be made perfect in due time. Worship for Christians is not an option, something that can be set aside if we have something better to do, guests or golf or snow. Worship is our life. “Frankincense to offer have I, incense owns a Deity nigh, prayer and praising, gladly raising, worship him, God most high.”  

“Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume, breaths a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone cold tomb.” Bishop Thomas Fraser of  NC used to tell the clergy, “Be hard on yourself and easy on others.” We all know our own failures, our mistakes, our sins. And we find ways to excuse ourselves and blame others, but when we get serious with ourselves, we know that without a savior we are lost. We have fought for our own way with our own strength and we have lost.

Jesus was content to be betrayed by one of his own disciples into the hands of those who hated him, who told lies about him to a corrupt governor, and who rejoiced at his execution. Jesus gave up his own life for them, and for us. Nailed to the cross he prayed, “Father, forgive them.” And because Jesus, as son of God, prayed for us, we are forgiven sinners. Our life cost him his. “Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume, breaths a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone cold tomb.”

But that is not the end of the story. “Glorious now behold him arise, King, and God, and Sacrifice; heaven sings alleluia, alleluia the earth replies.” The baby worshipped by the Wise Men is the same Jesus who died on the cross to redeem us and all who will believe from the death of sin and rose from the dead to bring us all new life in him.

 Today’s collect asks God to “lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face.” May God grant each of us, in this coming year, faith to see, as the wise men did, the glory of Jesus Christ, our resurrected and ever-living King, and God, and Sacrifice, crucified and risen Lord, and grace to follow where he leads the way. Amen.

Christ the King 11/25/2012

Christ the King Deerfield November 25, 2012

          Today is the feast of Christ the King. We celebrate Jesus’ present lordship in the world he has redeemed and we look forward to the time when all things are subject to Christ and we “enter the everlasting heritage” of God’s sons and daughters.

          In December, 1925 Pope Pius 11^th   ordered a new feast of Christ the King be kept on the last Sunday in October.  Three years before, in late October 1922, Mussolini’s Fascists had seized control of the Italian government. On May 30, 1924 Giacomo Matteotti spoke in the Italian parliament and charged the Fascists with electoral fraud and violence. Ten days later Matteotti was kidnapped and murdered.  About the same time Adolf Hitler’s Storm Troopers began to terrorize Germany. The Fascists were political gangsters, determined to maintain order at the expense of justice. Fascism opposed Communism, but both Fascism and Communism were totalitarian ideologies fundamentally incompatible with Christian faith.  The new feast of Christ the King in late October was the Pope’s 1direct challenge to Italian and German Fascism. That Fascism was defeated in World War II and in the calendar reform of 1969 Pope Pius 6^th moved the Feast of Christ the King to the Sunday before Advent.

The church feast of Christ the King is relatively new, but the idea is biblical. The whole Bible teaches that God rules the world he made. Nathan brought God’s judgment to David for his crimes of adultery and murder. Isaiah prophesied (9:6-7), “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, . . .The Prince of Peace . . . to establish (his kingdom) with judgment and with justice . . . for ever.”

Today’s scripture readings show us three aspects of the rule of Christ the King. First in the Gospel Jesus teaches Pilate about his rule and its relationship to the power of the state. Second Daniel and Revelation focus on Christ’s rule in the last days. And third, as we live in this world awaiting the last days we consider how we celebrate Jesus’ present lordship in the world he has redeemed.

First, today’s Gospel is part of St. John’s account of Jesus’ trial.  The next verse has Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” and Pilate’s judgment announced to the Jewish political and religious leadership, “I find in him no fault at all.”

Pilate’s judgment of innocence and his easy betrayal of that judgment under political pressure show his moral bankruptcy as governor.  The only moral reason for government is to maintain justice and civil order. Without these government is simply tyranny.   

When Pilate found Jesus innocent he took on a moral obligation to protect him, but instead Pilate caved into the mob and ordered Jesus’ execution. Christ the King calls us to use the authority we receive from God, as the prophet Micah commands (6:8), “to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.”  Doing justice requires us not only to be just and fair in our own doings but to do all we can to ensure just and fair treatment of all persons and in all situations, to “make no peace with oppression” as we pray in the Collect for Social Justice BCP 260.

Second, both Daniel and the Revelation remind us of the scriptural truth that the universe as we know it is not permanent. It had a beginning and it will end. The God who made the world will in God’s good time bring it to an end.  

Daniel says, “His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.” In Revelation St. John says, Jesus Christ our king “is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen. ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

By faith we believe that in the last day Christ will be king. The God who made the world will in God’s good time bring it to a just end. 

So finally, what do we do until Christ returns to reign as king? First, because Christ is our king, because he is perfect justice and love, we seek “to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly” in his service.  And that means not only to be just and fair in our own doings but to do all we can to ensure just and fair treatment of all and in all situations, to “make no peace with oppression.”

Second, because Christ is our king, we “work, pray, and give for the spread of his kingdom” doing what we can as we can as a witness to Christ’s saving grace in our lives to the end that the world may come to know, love, and serve him in this life and the life to come.

And third, this is the feast of Christ the King. We celebrate Jesus’ present lordship in the world he has redeemed and we look forward to the time when all things are subject to Christ and we “enter the everlasting heritage” of God’s sons and daughters. Amen.  

Belief and Behavior

Proper 17B September 2, 2012 St. James Lenoir

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. Jesus said, “Nothing outside a person . . . can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”

          It is a real pleasure it is to be with you all today. I’m Tom Rightmyer. I was rector at Redeemer, Shelby, in the 1980’s. Mike Cogsdale helped us celebrate the church’s 125^th anniversary. When Mike was President of the NC Council of Churches I was a member of a Council committee and on the Ecumenical Committee of this diocese. I’m retired and live at Deerfield in Asheville.

This sermon is about the connection of belief and behavior.  Our life work is to keep together what we do and what we believe. Our beliefs and thoughts influence our behavior, and our behavior influences on what we think and believe. 

You have heard of the 7 major sinful tendencies that separate us from the love of God: Pride, Wrath, Avarice, and Envy are sins of the mind; Sloth, Lust, and Gluttony are sins of the body. All these natural characteristics become sinful when they get between us and God and between us and others.

There are also 7 capital or major virtues that can help us grow closer to God, and increase the connection between our beliefs and our behaviors:  Four are called natural virtues: Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude or Courage. Three are called theological virtues: Faith, Hope, and Charity or Love.

The natural virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude or Courage are taught by Plato in the Republic, by Aristotle, by Cicero, and in the intertestamental books of Wisdom (8.7) and 4 Maccabees (1:18-19) and by St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas.  The theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity or Love come from I Corinthians 13.

Prudence comes from the Latin pro-videntia to “see ahead.” It includes the reasonable ability to control our actions by good judgment, by “common sense” to have a right judgment of a situation and to do the right thing in that situation. We generally learn prudence as we practice it. Prudence keeps us out of trouble. 

Justice is having a right judgment of what properly belongs to us and what properly belongs to others. Children are generally blessed with the virtue of justice. They know and frequently say what is fair and what is not.  Power tends to corrupt the virtue of justice. 

Fortitude or Courage is the virtue that helps us deal with the fears, pains, and dangers that come to us in a fallen world. Fortitude includes steadfastness, perseverance, honesty. “Having done all to stand.” Moral fortitude is the ability to do what is right despite opposition. 

Temperance is the virtue of moderation, moderation in our use of the things of this world for ourselves and others. When we recycle we are exercising a contemporary virtue of Temperance. We learn these natural virtues in life as we practice them. 

These four natural virtues are common to all people, but the three spiritual virtues are God’s special gifts to bring us closer to him, and to help us to be more integrated people, with lives that more closely demonstrate in our behavior what we believe in our hearts.

Faith is God’s gift to make it possible to believe. We receive the gift of faith by hearing of God’s love in creation and in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As we hear and we learn God’s love pours out on us, over us, and through us, to bring us to himself. Faith is a personal gift from a personal God to bring us into personal relationship with him. The gift of faith is a free gift; we don’t earn it by anything we do, but once we receive the gift and the giver, we offer ourselves in gratitude.

Hope is God’s gift of happiness. By hope we desire a better life here and hereafter and are motivated to work toward that better life for ourselves and for others. Hope strengthens the   other virtues in our life. In the Epistle to the Hebrews (10.23) we read, “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful” and in the Epistle to Titus (3.6-7) “This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” 

          Charity or Love is God’s gift so we may love God above all things and in all things for his own sake, and love our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.  In St. John’s Gospel we learn that Jesus loved us to the end, to his painful death on the cross, and told the disciples and us,  (15:9, 12) “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” And “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

            The virtues offer a framework to evaluate how our faith and our behavior relate to one another. If we will pay regular attention regularly both to how we behave and what we believe, and if we will pray regularly God’s grace in Jesus will strengthen us and will bring us closer to him. Amen.