Proper 12C July 27, 2014

          Today’s scriptures offer a creative tension between verses from the Epistle and the Gospel. The Epistle ends with a wonderful verse familiar from funerals, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That is wonderful good news, and we are glad to hear it. 

          And today’s Gospel reading ends, “. . . at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” That is also good news, but not news we like to hear.

     Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. That is gospel truth and we can trust it for our salvation. But our created human nature includes free will. The God who created humankind created us with the freedom to choose. The story of Adam and Eve in the garden teaches us that from the beginning we have freedom to choose to do or not to do God’s will.  In The Great Divorce C.S. Lewis put it this way, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek, find. To those who knock it is opened.”    

          Today’s gospel teaches, “the angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous.” We are all sinners; we are all sinners saved by God’s grace in Jesus Christ. All of us have fallen short of the glory of God. Jesus teaches the standard of Christian life in St. Matthew 22:37-40, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as your self.” Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy “Love God” and Leviticus “Love your neighbor.”  In our general confession later in this service we will remind the Lord and ourselves of our failure to live up to God’s expectations.

          We know from I John (1:9) that if we confess our sins God is faithful and just and forgives our sins. God forgives the sins we remember, and in his love and mercy forgives what we don’t remember, or can’t recognize as sin.  We are made righteous by Jesus’ death and resurrection.

          But what of those who do not confess, who do not claim righteousness only by Jesus’ death and resurrection? We have to leave them finally to God’s love and mercy. As we have opportunity we show them as best we can a life of righteousness and faith as sinners saved by grace. And we speak and act for truth and righteousness. 

          God will direct the angels in the last day how to separate the evil from the righteous. His judgment is perfect; our judgment in this life is partial and imperfect. We don’t get to make the final decisions. But we are called from time to time to exercise the good judgment God gives us by his spirit to recognize evil and to deal with it – in our own lives first and then in our families, our friends, and in the communities where we live.

          Discernment is not easy. Our natural human tendency is to judge our own behavior by our intentions and others behavior by their actions as we experience them. We naturally tend to be easy on ourselves and hard on others. As forgiven sinners we benefit by looking to other peoples intentions as best we can understand them and then judging by good intentions.  When I had done something really dumb my father used to ask, “Tom, what were you trying to accomplish?” 

          That said, we also have to recognize the reality of evil in the world. Adam and Eve chose to disobey God’s command not to eat of the forbidden fruit. The 7 capital sins – Wrath, Avarice, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, and Gluttony – are real. We all know the temptations and we have all fallen into sin. Yes, there may be mitigating circumstances, but when we are honest we can rely on God’s gift of conscience – that quiet voice that says, “Is that the truth?”

          When we see evil in our lives and in the world around us we can rely on God’s Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth to speak and do the truth, the Spirit of Power to speak and act, the Spirit of Love to guide and direct us in action.  In God’s good time God’s perfect justice will be done. Thanks be to God

            So both readings are good news: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And “. . . at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  

Pentecost 2014

Pentecost  2014

          On their way to the Ascension, the disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, will you now restore again the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus said, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But you shall receive power, after the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”  

          Today we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit on the apostles at the first Pentecost, like the rush of a violent wind, and tongues of fire. All were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak as the Spirit gave them ability. The list of those who heard begins in Iran and moves west along the north shore of the Mediterranean as far as Rome and back to North Africa. Peter interprets this experience as a sign of “the Lord's great and glorious day” and ends with the missionary imperative, “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

          From that day on the Church, the spiritual body of Christ on earth, has continued to witness to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, so that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

          We all know the saying, “when you are up to your neck (or some other part of the body) in alligators, it is hard to remember you set out to drain the swamp.” We all know how easy it is to lose focus, to deal with the immediate and ignore the important. 

          Anniversaries help us remember our purpose. Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, even Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and of course Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, provide opportunity to look at where we’ve been and where we want to go.    

          Last Thursday’s 70^th anniversary of D-Day drew special attention because we expect most of those who were there will die in the next 10 years. Queen Elizabeth is 88 and served in the British Womens Auxiliary Territorial Service as a truck driver and mechanic. Prince Philip is 93; he served in the British navy in the Mediterranean and the Pacific. When I checked these dates I learned they met when he was 18 and she was 13 – a 75 year love affair. God bless them.  

          Archbishop Welby of Canterbury recommended this prayer for Thursday’s 70^th anniversary of D-Day:  Almighty and eternal God, from whose love in Christ we cannot be parted, either by death or life: hear our prayers and thanksgivings for all whom we remember this day; fulfil in them the purpose of your love; and bring us all, with them, to your eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.  (Archbishop Welby 2014) 

          The place of the Christian church this Pentecost Sunday in our society is different from what it was 70 years ago, or even 40 years ago when I moved to Asheboro, North Carolina. Bishop Tom Fraser gathered the clergy new to that diocese. I remember he said, “Boys (and we were all boys in those days), you are fortunate to be living in a place where people think going to church will do you some good.” In those days one of the signs of responsibility and reliability was participation in church life. Businesses were mostly local and people knew where their accountant, their insurance agent, their car dealer, all went to church. Those local businesses have been bought out by national chains, and no one seems to care where, or if, the managers of the big box stores go to church.

The church has always been counter-cultural. Human beings are fundamentally self-centered; Christ calls us to center our lives on God. From infancy we have wanted what we wanted when we wanted it. Christ calls us to seek and do the will of God. We seek our personal advantage; Christ calls us to seek first the good of others.

          Human government has always made a supreme claim on the lives of the governed. Governments and societies have alternated between trying to silence the church and trying to get the church to support the interests of government. Christians are commanded by the bible to pray for those in authority and to comply with the legitimate demands of those in authority – and we are commanded to resist those demands when they conflict with God’s will.  That has been the case from the first Pentecost until now. Hitler tried with some success to make the Protestant and Catholic church  subservient to the ideology of the Nazi regime; Communist Russia tried to exterminate the church, murdering clergy, stealing property. We frequently read of Christians being persecuted, murdered, dispossessed, in some Muslim majority countries.

          The other day at a clergy meeting Morgan Gardner raised the question, “What are we going to do when churches have to pay property tax?” The last NC legislature tried to collect sales tax from larger charities, mostly hospitals and schools, not small churches, yet. The First Amendment provides that Congress shall make no law “respecting an establishment of religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” When that was adopted Massachusetts and Connecticut collected a tax for the support of the Congregational church in each town. Before the Revolution Maryland and Virginia, and to a lesser extent the Carolinas and Georgia had collected an income tax for the support of the Church of England parishes. The courts have interpreted the establishment clause to forbid some religious activities in some public places. Some anti-Christians interpret “free exercise” to mean “freedom of worship.”  But they continually complain about the “free exercise” of any public prayer outside a church building, church floats in the Christmas parade, and the like.    

          We’ve been here before, and the history is that God sends revival in the worst of times – in the mid 18^th century, in the early 19^th century, in the early 20^th century, in the mid 20^th century. We’re about due for another mighty work of God. And we have been from Pentecost to Pentecost since the Spirit first fell on the apostles, like the rush of a violent wind, and tongues of fire. All were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak as the Spirit gave them ability.

          We continue to meet Sunday by Sunday.  It is not for us to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But we have received power. The Holy Ghost has come upon us: and we are Christ’s witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth – even western North Carolina. We continue to hear and obey Peter’s call that first Pentecost, to continue to be the spiritual body of Christ on earth and to continue to witness to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, so that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”   

Proper 7A June 23, 2014

Today’s gospel ends with Jesus’ word to his disciples as he sent them out,  “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

From Advent through Trinity Sunday we remember the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus and his gift of his Holy Spirit. From Trinity Sunday to Advent we hear again of Jesus’ life and teaching.

Jesus’ life and teaching led him to the cross. Jesus life and teaching confront human sin in all its forms. Confronting sin led to his Jesus’ death on the cross. But the cross is the sign that in Jesus’ death the power of sin is forever broken. Beyond the cross we find the empty tomb and the witness of Jesus’ new life in the power of the Holy Spirit.  In our own lives as we confront our own sin in all its forms we come to spiritual death with Jesus. In death through Jesus our sin is defeated and we are given new spiritual life in the power of the Holy Spirit.  “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

In today’s Gospel we hear Jesus teaching to his disciples as he sends them out, “as you go, preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (10:7) Jesus gave continued, “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils; freely you have received, freely give.” At Pentecost the spiritual power Jesus gave these disciples came to the whole church, and ever since we who “profess and call ourselves Christians” have been doing as Jesus commanded. The good news of the kingdom has been preached; the sick have been healed, lepers cleansed, the dead raised, devils cast out; we who have freely received freely give.

Hospitals and schools began as ministries of the church. Many of the colonial Anglican clergy, including Samuel Seabury, the first American Episcopal bishop, had medical training and served as priests and physicians and educators. Western society has handed over responsibility for treating the body and mind to specialists, but we continue to work to heal the soul.  

We know the hymn, “There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.” The balm of Gilead comes from Jeremiah 8:22; the hymn from John Newton, the converted slave trader and Church of England priest who among other things wrote “Amazing Grace.” The reality is that our souls are sin sick. Our spiritual healing begins when we recognize that reality and turn to Jesus Christ for healing. 

          We confess our sins; we receive God’s forgiveness; we are justified – set right with God – not by anything we do, but by what Jesus Christ did on the cross for us. We depend day by day on the mercy and love of God. Day by day we receive new life in the resurrected Jesus; day by day we live in the truth and power of the Holy Spirit; day by day we fall short of the fullness of God’s love and God’s plan for our lives, and day by day we are restored and renewed.                   

The English writer G. K. Chesterton was born in 1874 and died in 1936.  He wrote in a book called, What's Wrong with the World, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”  

Chesterton was fond of hyperbole. The truth is that the Christian ideal has been tried; millions of Christian men and women all over the world day by day for almost 2,000 years have taken up the cross of the gospel and followed Jesus. Millions have found the truth in the paradox that as we lose our lives for Jesus’ sake we find new, godly, and fulfilling lives. 

I invite you to take your cross of the gospel today and follow Jesus. I invite you to confront your own sin in your own life and to confront human sin in all its forms wherever it is found. Recognize as we confront our own sin in all its forms we come to spiritual death with Jesus. But in death through Jesus our sin is defeated and we are given new spiritual life in the power of the Holy Spirit.  “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

 

Easter 5 May 17, 2014

Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

The Greek word here translated “dwelling place” in the King James as “mansions” is monai also translated “abide”. St. John 14:23 “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and abide with them.” 15:4 “Abide in me as I abide in you.” 15:10 “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” Jesus intends us to abide in him, to remain in him, to find our present and future place in his life, to gather with others in his body the church and to be reunited with him and the Father at our death – or when he comes again, whichever comes first.

That Christ will come again is a matter of faith in his promise. When he will come again he said only the Father knows, but in that day let us be found doing his will and enjoying his love.

          Professor C.S. Lewis, in the Preface to Mere Christianity, his BBC lectures during WW II, wrote, “Christianity is . . .  like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. . . . in the rooms, not in the hall, . . .there are fires and chairs and meals. . . . you must be asking which door is the true one; . . . the question should. . . be, “Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this?”  . . . When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.”

          Despite our divisions into our separate denominational rooms the Church has always remembered Jesus’ prayer that the disciples and the church might be one as he and the Father were one, united in being, united in thought, united in action. Throughout history Jesus’ disciples have lived with the tension of spiritual unity and organizational separation. Today’s first lesson tells of the death of Stephen the first martyr. Stephen and other deacons were chosen by the apostles to preserve the unity of the Jerusalem church by making sure that the Greek-speaking widows were not neglected in the daily distribution from the common supply of food. In several places Acts tells us how the church preserved unity in the face of threats of division. St. Paul wrote to the churches in Corinth, in Rome, and in other places to encourage them to preserve unity. Our epistle readings this Easter season from Peter describe Christ’s church as “living stones, built into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, who have received mercy.” All these descriptions speak of our spiritual unity.

           But as the Church grew in numbers and time passed, the spiritual unity broke down. The Gnostics relied on secret spiritual knowledge and broke the connection between faith and morals. They said, “if we are saved by faith (by which they meant the secret spiritual knowledge of Jesus’ teaching) then what we do with our bodies doesn’t matter.” The Gnostics were, and are, popular. It feels good to be part of a spiritual elite and not have membership in that elite affect your moral behavior. One reason the Gospels were written was make clear to the Gnostics that, as the Epistle of James writes, “faith without works is dead.”

          In Egypt a priest-philosopher named Arius tried to explain Jesus in terms from Greek philosophy,  and it took several councils and the Nicene Creed to make clear the paradox that Jesus is both fully and completely God and fully and completely human. Even so an Arian church continued for several hundred years.

       Some church divisions were over matters of conscience. Other divisions we now see as a result of different histories. People in the eastern Mediterranean spoke Greek; in the western Mediterranean people spoke Latin. The border is in the Balkans between Catholic Croatia and Eastern Orthodox Serbia. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, divided since 1056, are working on resolving the issues that divide them. One issue is about the Nicene Creed and the Holy Spirit.  The Latin version of the Nicene Creed says that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (Latin filioque). The Greek does not have the filioque.  Both agree that the Spirit is worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son. The Episcopal Church General Convention has said that if our churches can resolve other areas of disagreement we do not insist on the filioque.

          About 500 years ago the Western – Latin speaking – church divided north and south for reasons both religious and political. Much of northern Europe became Protestant; much of the south continued in a renewed Roman Catholic church.   England chose a third way, renewal of Catholic practice and biblical authority on the model of the early church. For reasons religious and political the Protestant churches divided into many fellowships, many of them brought by immigrants to America.

          We are familiar with gathering Sunday by Sunday in many rooms, and we assume that is what God intended. But in many parts of the world through history one church has officially included all the people. Dissenters were forced to leave. Immigrants to America founded churches that were either like the familiar church at home – or deliberately something very different from the church at home. Compare the colonial church in Virginia which tried to be like the Church of England and the colonial Congregational church in New England which tried to purify the church by the teachings of John Calvin. Their American experience brought changes to all the colonial churches. And we have American born churches such as the Pentecostals, the Mormons, and others.   

For the past 150 years Christians have worked together to recover spiritual unity and to understand and overcome our corporate divisions. I have spent much of my ministry in this ecumenical work.

          One way we witness to spiritual unity and seek to overcome organizational division is through ecumenical dialogue.  Anglicans and Roman Catholics meet in this country and abroad. The current discussion is how does the universal Church, and local churches, discern right ethical teaching. We continue to talk with the Eastern Orthodox churches, and interfaith dialogues are beginning.

           Some ecumenical dialogues lead to full communion agreements. These witness to agreement in faith and on that basis agree to invite members to share in holy communion and in common ministry. Bishop Weinhauer was the Episcopal cochair of the dialogue with the Lutheran Church that led to full communion in 1999. I was honored to have a part in developing a similar agreement with the Moravian Church concluded in 2011.  Dialogue with the United Methodist Church and other American churches continues.

          So let us remember that Jesus intends us to abide in him, to remain in him, to find our present and future place in his life, to gather with others in his body the church and to be reunited with him and the Father.  And as Professor Lewis wrote, “When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.”

 

Easter 2 2014

Easter 2

"Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."

How many of us have given this sort of ultimatum in a relationship?  And for how many of us was the ultimatum an emotional reaction to an unfulfilled hope or a cover for some other wish, one that perhaps we don’t know or don’t recognize?

I call this redlining God, and I’ve learned over the years that it is not possible to contain God inside my red lines any more than it is possible to contain God within the four dimensional box of my own imagination. Our minds are conditioned by what we can experience in length, width, height, and time – the space/time box of our senses.  We live much of the time inside that space/time box.

And it is inside that space/time box that much of the time we experience God’s love and grace. But many of the really important things we experience by God’s love and grace both inside and outside the space/time box.

The most common experience of God’s love and grace both inside and ourside the space/time box is human love. Those of us who are blessed with relationships of love – parent and child, husband and wife, family and friends, know love that is expressed both within the space/time box and love that transcends the space/time box.  We express in what we say and do a love that is greater than anything we can ever say and do.

In Genesis 1:26 we read, “Let us make humanity after our own likeness.” One way we are made in God’s image is that we have the gift of love. This side of the Resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit is that we share God’s spirit of love. As St. John says in his first Epistle (4:8, 10-11) “God is love . . .  and sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him . . . not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, is God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” 

We who love learn that red lines, ultimatums, have no place in relationships of love. Perfect love is without conditions.   But we are not perfect, and sometimes we do as Thomas did and give ultimatums like his. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

God is good to us. He loves us, and he gives us what we need.  So when Jesus appeared to his disciples again the Sunday after the Resurrection, he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

The gospel continues, “Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

We are not told that Thomas followed through on his ultimatum. We are not told that Thomas did in fact feel the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side.  Jesus offer was sufficient. In Jesus’ presence Thomas knew the divine love, love gave him the gift of faith to believe and confess, “My Lord and my God.”

          In late July this year we will remember another ultimatum, made by Austria-Hungary to Serbia July 23, 1914 after the terrorist assassination June 28 of the heir to the Austrian and Hungarian thrones which resulted in World War One, and reverberates today.

 There have been other ultimatums since, internationally, nationally, in churches, in families, in relationships. It is hard for us to learn that ultimatums don’t work.

Ultimatums come from a mind-set like cement, all mixed up and firmly set.  Jesus calls us to be flexible.  Our brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic church are celebrating Pope Francis’ declaration that Popes John 23rd and John Paul 2^nd may be venerated as saints. The traditional rule is that God makes saints and the church recognizes God’s action by the evidence of at least two miracles. But in the face of complaints that this evidence of miracles has not been proved for two popes Pope Francis has apparently declared that the evidence of their lives is sufficient to demonstrate the sanctity of his predecessors.

Jesus calls us to be flexible, to respond to his presence, to his love shown forth.

The example of Thomas may help us learn the love of God shown in Jesus, love that brings us to repentance and faith in him, “Our Lord and our God!”

Our risen Lord Jesus continues to come to us. He continues to do “ many other signs in the presence of his disciples . . . that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” 

Easter Vigil 4-19-2014 St. John’s Haw Creek

          “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” “He is risen indeed, Alleluia”   And then . . 
          The take home is at the end of the Epistle reading, St. Paul to the Christians at Rome, “The death Jesus died, he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

We’ve heard a lot of Scripture tonight. We began with the story of Creation. The constant refrain is “And God saw that it was good. . . . God saw everything he had made, and indeed, it was very good. ” As created, the world was good.

But in a good world Korean ferries wouldn’t capsize and high school students wouldn’t be trapped and drown. The world as we experience it does not seem to be the good world God intended. Theology calls it “the problem of evil” and particularly since the Holocaust the problem of evil has troubled our society. It is not new. The great Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755 troubled the easy optimism of the Enlightment.

One response is to deny the goodness of creation. In 1651, over 100 years before the Lisbon earthquake, Thomas Hobbes wrote that the natural situation of humanity was to live in “continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” But we are Christians, Easter people, and like Mary Magdalene and the other Mary at the empty tomb we meet the risen Jesus and hear his voice, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers . . . they will see me.” We have seen the Lord; we have tasted his goodness; we know that as created, the world is good.

Another response to our experience of evil is to look for someone to blame. We see lots of that in our political life. But the truth is that we are all to blame. We live in what St. Paul calls “the body of sin.”  We are enslaved by our willing participation in a sinful and corrupt society.

But when Jesus died on the cross the body of sin was destroyed, and we are baptized into that death. Jesus’ resurrection sets us free, free in Christ, forgiven sinners, free to do what we can to live to God.

The first reading was about Creation. As created, the world was good. God continues to work in his creation. He works to restore his creation, not by coercion and violence, but by the exercise of our free will as we seek to know and do God’s will.

God called Abraham, blessed him with Sarah as his wife, with Isaac as his son. Abraham’s descendants were invited to Egypt and there fell into slavery to Pharaoh. And God called Moses to lead the people into freedom through the Red Sea waters. With Miriam we also “Sing to the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously.” We pass through the water of baptism into new life in God.

The people came to the promised land and eventually were taken prisoner to Babylon. There they heard the prophet Ezekiel’s vision that the dry bones would live, that the people would receive God’s spirit and live.

When we are baptized not only is the body of sin destroyed, but we also receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth and power, to know and do the will of God.

Jesus’ resurrection was a great work of God, not just then, but now.  “The death Jesus died, he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.” Our yearly celebration remembers the past event. But Easter is not a past event; it is a present reality and a continuing reality.

The Paschal candle we lit tonight continues to be lit for the great 50 days of Easter until Pentecost, when we celebrate the fire of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in all who “profess and call themselves” Christians. The new fire dwells in each of us, fueled by Christ’s body and blood received in the Eucharist.

“The death Jesus died, he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Amen.

Will you stand and turn with me to page 292 in the red Prayer Book for the renewal of baptismal vows.

Epiphany 6A February 16 SGWA

          From today’s collect: “. . . because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed. . . “

          Many of us much of the time give in to the temptation to live by law and not by grace.  Many of us have also learned by life experience that living by grace brings life, and creativity, and joy, while living by law brings death, and rigid structures, and it is boring.

Our experience with the living God in Jesus Christ teaches us that the good we do is a sign of God working in and through us, and when our lives show forth God’s love and grace we get a first taste of the joy of heaven.

          The Gospel lessons in February are from the 5^th chapter of St. Matthew – the Sermon on the Mount. We begin reading the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes on the 4^th Sunday of Epiphany (which this year was February 2 and gave place to our celebration of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.) Jesus’ teaching continues in last Sunday’s gospel – teaching about salt, and light, and fulfilling the law. That reading ended “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

          I have some sympathy for actor and skeptic W.C. Fields who is reported to have said to a friend who saw him reading the Bible in his retirement, “I’m looking for loopholes!” 

 

          Today’s gospel includes Jesus’ teaching on anger, on adultery, and on promises. They are hard teachings, and those of us who live by law have looked for, and found, our own loopholes.

 

          The first loophole has to do with anger. Jesus’ teaches self-control and love. We have found a loophole called “righteous indignation.”  Ephesians (4:26) tells us, “Be angry and sin not.”  Anger is a human response to fear and frustration, and also a response to injustice. We know ourselves better than we know others, and it is easier for us to recognize injustice done to us than to recognize injustice done to others.  Anger is a feeling; feelings come and go. Christian ethics regards feelings as morally neutral. How we deal with those feelings is the moral point.

 

          The gospel deals particularly with anger within the family and the church family where the basic relationship is one of love. I find no scriptural basis for the idea that God judges our feelings. Feelings are morally neutral. How we deal with those feelings is the moral point

 

          This morning we will exchange God’s peace as we have done at the eucharist for almost 50 years, restoring the practice before the Reformation.  We exchange the Peace is a sign that we obey Jesus’ teaching, “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”

          The gospel offers practical advice to a minority community under suspicion in disputes financial and personal, “Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him.” When I do pre-marital counselling I remind couples of three things. The first is, “Don’t go to bed mad. Stay up as long as you need to but either settle the dispute or agree to settle it at some definite time soon.”

          The other two points I make are from Romans 13:8,  “’Owe no man anything but to love God’ – that is stay out of consumer debt.” And from I Corinthians 7:5,  “Do not refuse yourselves to one another’ - Don’t use sex as a weapon.” In 411 BC Aristophanes wrote about a woman’s effort to end a war between Athens and Sparta by a sexual strike, but that’s Greek theatre, not Christian teaching.

          Jesus’ teaching about anger is followed by similar teaching about the feeling of lust. Feeling of sexual attraction are morally neutral. They come and go. Lust is  powerful emotion. In all created nature it serves to perpetuate the species.  

          Powerful sexual feelings need a strong social structure to be spiritually constructive rather than spiritually destructive.  Two of the Ten Commandments deal with sexual behavior – “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife or anything that is thy neighbors.” Jesus expands the understanding of adultery beyond the physical to include mental acts. The Roman world in New Testament times was a licentious culture and the Christian emphasis on the holiness of marriage was ridiculed, then as now. Jesus teaches sexual self-control, and the gospel adds teaching on divorce stricter than the rabbinic interpretation.  The gospel recognizes that marriages sometimes do not last, but it requires concern and care for the divorced spouse. Christians, as individuals and in churches, disagree on the interpretation of this gospel teaching, but we all know that ending a relationship is painful for all concerned, and the temptation to blame others and excuse one’s own behavior is strong.  

          Those temptations and the additional human temptation to boasting and overweening self-importance are the loopholes Jesus deals with in his teaching on oaths and promises. People are such natural liars that we need some way to say. “I really mean it this time.” Jesus expects us to mean what we say all the time.

          Our collect says, “. . . because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed. . .” When we compare our behavior and Jesus’ teaching we see how far short we fall. The first step of the 12 says, “We admitted we were powerless . . . that our lives had become unmanageable.” That’s a simple statement of fact, and it is hard for us to overcome our human pride to say it – and harder still to live it. Yet when we do we experience God’s grace, God’s love, the divine power to behave differently, to begin to recognize the work of the power greater than our own.

          We live by the life-giving, joy-giving grace of God. And that is good news. Amen.