Sermons at St. Paul's

When available, the texts for the most recent sermons given at St. Paul's appear below.

Pentecost 2 – Proper 5
Year C

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Corinth, Mississippi

The Rev. LARAE J. RUTENBAR
Preacher

Scripture for Today 1 Kings 17: 8 – 16, 17-24  PSALM 146 Galatians 1: 11 - 24   Luke 7: 11 - 17

On June 1 of this year an article appeared in the New York Times:

After serving 8 years of a 10-to-25-year sentence for second-degree murder, the doctor walked out of the Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater, Mich., and into the predictable media frenzy. He had only a few offhand, characteristically vinegary remarks for the legions of reporters and camera crews on the scene, but there will be all manner of TV appearances and news conferences in the days and weeks to come, one may be sure.

Seventy-nine and not in the best of health himself, Dr. Kevorkian returns on parole to a society that still hasn’t figured out what to do about one of the great unintended consequences of modern science: The growing number of people with profound illnesses whose death can be staved off indefinitely but whose suffering and misery, physical or psychic or both, cannot be meaningfully relieved.

He’s promised not to assist suicides any more; he seems unlikely to want to break parole and go back to jail. But his views on the issue haven’t changed, his associates say, and we’ll doubtless be hearing him expound them quite a bit now that he’s back in circulation.

I thought about this event when I read the lessons for this morning. Here we have on one side a person who is famous for giving a person a choice to die and here we have – in all the lessons - a God who is famous for giving people a chance to live. Elijah, as we will remember, felt compelled to go to the village of a widow. When Elijah found this widow he asks for a drink of water, but, when he asks for a morsel of bread she tells him: I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.This widow was feeling hopeless. She had only enough bread to make a small loaf and didn’t have any idea what would come after that loaf – but Elijah tells her not to be afraid – God will provide.

In the Epistle to the Galatians Paul recounts his life bent on killing that was transformed into a new life. Once this man had brought the message of death to the followers of Jesus, but after experiencing the power of the risen Christ, he now brings the message of life to the same group of believers. 

 In the Gospel Jesus is moved with compassion by the sight of a woman who had lost her only son. Her only source of life in a community that depended upon the male income for survival and he offered her a way to go on, a son who was once dead has now been made alive.

 One of the themes that run through all of holy writing is the promise from God that we all have a chance to start over, to begin again, to bring life to that which we once thought was dead and gone. God is continually seeking out the creation to offer them this new beginning. From the days of Genesis to the days of Revelation and right up until this day, God speaks to us and asks us to contemplate – beginning again. But, the question becomes, how do we begin again? 

 My husband and I have been married for almost 28 years. It’s been a good marriage and full of the ups and downs of all loving relationships. After 28 years we have sort of learned to live with each others eccentricities and faults. I have to admit it, one of my faults is failing to record expenditures I have incurred. Now, it is not something I am proud of and I must admit that as I have matured I have become much better at making amends. But, a month ago or so, it happened again. It wasn’t just one of the $10 items here or there but it was a sizable expenditure. It was discovered, I fessed up to it and my husband and I spend a very quiet evening at home – a very quiet, uncomfortable evening at home. It happens in all relationships – someone does something that they have done time and time again and, well frankly, we just get tired of arguing about it. Do you understand what I am saying? Well, the next morning I apologized with a sincere promise to ‘begin again.’ My husband gave the familiar shake of his head and ‘well, you have gotten better!’ pep talk. 

 All loving relationship need to contain this ability to allow ourselves and the other to ‘begin again.’ We all make mistakes, we all fall short of our best selves and we all disappoint ourselves and those whom we love in our life. They are small things and they are substantial things, but, if we follow the example that God has given to us, then we need to have the courage and fortitude to begin again and to allow others to begin again. It doesn’t mean that we don’t hold to the consequences of our actions. The money I forgot to record in our budget has to come from somewhere – something else will have to give. Yet, we need to incorporate in all of our relationships this chance of new life and new hope. 

 When I read the gospel readings I am forever in awe at how Jesus looks at people and understands what it is that they need in order to start over. For the woman caught in adultery, she needed to be given another chance by her community who was ready to stone her. For the man who had sat on the edge of the pool of Salome for years – he needed someone to put him in the water of new birth. From the raising of the physically dead to the raising of the emotionally wounded Jesus calls us all to ‘live again.’ 

 Maybe I am one of the few that likes the confession in the liturgy, but for me, it is like taking a shower. Things happen during my week. I don’t live up to the person I know God created me to be, that is, I involve myself in sinful behavior. Not the big sins that will get me on the front page of the paper, but, the little things that cling on to me like dirt.  A snide comment here, a roll of the eyes there, a white lie or a criticizing comment might pass my mind, but, they wear on a person. Even at the time we know it probably isn’t our best self, but, well, we do it anyway. We may not even consciously remember it, but, our brain records it somewhere and it just has a way of wearing on us, on those we love and on our Lord. Sundays are a change to wade into the water of forgiveness and to begin again, to be showered with the grace of God and to become the hopeful people God has created us to be. 

 Some might argue that Dr. Kevorkian allows people to begin again in the afterlife and some might call it murder. It just seems to me that we are a culture that is more fascinated with dying than we are with really living. I have a woman who I play golf with who is in her late eighties. Every once in a while when she makes a great putt she’ll look at me with a grin on her face and say: honey, I’m livin’ until I die! It’s a good thought, to live and to live again and again and again until it is time to even begin again. For I am sure that not even the power of death will be the final word. No, even with death comes to this body of our it will be time to, begin again.

Sermon for Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 6, 2007

Rev. George F. Woodliff III, Preacher

Acts 13:44-52; Psalm 145:1-9; Revelation 19:1,4-9; John 13:31-35

I. Zola and Baptism

The famed French author, Emile Zola, who was at the pinnacle of his career, sat at his desk in his study and stared at the letter from a dear friend of his informing him that in all probability he would soon be inducted into the French Academy, an honor which he had sought all of his life. He would then join the immortals of French letters and finally obtain the recognition of a grateful nation.

At that moment an unexpected visitor sought an audience with him in his study. Her name was Madame Dreyfus, the wife of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had been convicted in a military court-martial of high treason for passing secret information to the German embassy and had been sentenced to life imprisonment in Devil’s Island.

Madame Dreyfus had documentary proof of her husband’s innocence, and she tried to enlist Monsieur Zola's assistance in reopening the case so that justice might be done. Zola, however, was very uncomfortable with this request and informed her that he was not at all interested. He made it quite clear to her that he had already fought his battles. Now he just wanted a life of peace and quiet. She left very disheartened with the packet of papers still on his desk.

Zola sat down and picked up the packet and began reading the papers. He realized that what she had been saying was true and that an innocent man had been condemned. He also realized that if he did nothing, Alfred Dreyfus would die on Devil's Island.

He picked up the letter about his imminent induction into the French Academy. He realized that if he became embroiled in the Dreyfus controversy, he would probably not be invited into the Academy, one of the greatest ambitions of his life. He looked up and saw the self-portrait of his old friend, Paul Cezanne, who had once confronted him about his becoming too rich and complacent, and then he tore the letter about the French Academy into pieces.

Zola proceeded to put his reputation and life on the line by publishing an open letter in the newspaper accusing the general staff of the French military of framing Captain Dreyfus and exonerating the real traitor. As he knew that it would, the publication of this letter resulted in his being sued for libel, but his purpose was to expose to the French public the true facts about the Dreyfus affair. His decision to do the right thing cost him dearly, and he was subjected to ostracism, vilification and the hatred of the mob. At times his life was actually in danger, and yet he persevered. Although, due to the prejudicial rulings of the court, Zola was found guilty in the libel action, his courage in standing firm against the entire military establishment and government eventually led to the complete exoneration and reinstatement of Captain Dreyfus. Emile Zola had taken the hard path of courage and justice and love for his fellow man.

II. Jesus Glorified

In the Gospel reading for today, we encounter another man who was falsely condemned but who willingly accepted his unjust sentence. This man rather astoundingly referred to his betrayal and execution as his glorification.

The departure of Judas from the last supper into the night signaled the beginning of events which would lead to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus addressed his disciples as 'little children' and told them that he was leaving them and that they could not come where he was going.

According to the prologue of this Gospel, 'to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God. . . .' Therefore, when Jesus called his disciples 'little children,' he was affirming the truth of that statement. They were no longer merely creatures of God made in His image; they were now in some wonderful sense actually His children and entitled to call Him Father just as Jesus did. They were part of the family of God.

All baptized Christians are children of God, no matter what their chronological age. It is through the water of baptism that we are incorporated into that new life in Jesus Christ. God made water in creation, and God sanctifies the water of baptism. According to the early Church Father, Tertullian, 'water acquires the mysterious power of conveying sanctity.' He also wrote in a treatise on baptism in about 200 AD: 'Christ was never without water. He himself was baptized with water; when invited to a marriage heinaugurates the exercise of his power with water; when talking he invites the thirsty to partake of his own everlasting water; when teaching about charity he approves among the works of love the offering of a cup of water to a neighbor; he refreshes his strength at a well-side; he walks on water; he crosses it at will; he uses water to do an act of service to his disciples. This witness to baptism continues right up to the passion. When he is handed over to the cross, water plays a part (witness Pilate's hands); and when he is pierced, water gushes out from his side (witness the soldier's spear).' [Tertullian as quoted in Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (Yale University Press 2003), pp. 40-41]It is through the water of baptism that Mollie Jones will soon be incorporated into the Body of Christ and become one of the children of God.

III. The New Commandment

It is very interesting that the Gospel reading for today presents us with the scene of Jesus departing from his disciples whereas the second reading from Revelation presents us with the glorious vision of the future reunion of Jesus and his disciples. It is portrayed in terms of a marriage'the marriage of the Lamb.

One of the recurring images in the Old Testament that was used to convey the special covenant relationship between God and Israel was that of a marriage. In the New Testament that same image was used to convey the relationship between Christ and his church. The church is seen as the bride of Christ, and at the end of the age the two will be united in a marriage that will be eternal. The angel in the vision of John in Revelation said, ' Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.' [19:9]

In the vision the bride will be 'clothed with fine linen, bright and pure', and we are told that the fine linen represents 'the righteous deeds of the saints.' This is consistent with what Jesus told his disciples at the last supper in the Gospel reading for today. He said, 'I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.' [John 13:34]

The commandment to love your neighbor as yourself was part of the law in Leviticus, so in what sense was this a new commandment' In the extravagant nature of the love. The disciples of Jesus were told to love each other in the same way that Jesus loved them. We live in the in-between time from the time Jesus left his disciples to the glorious marriage supper of the Lamb at the end of the age, and our principal instruction on how to live in that period is to love on another with the same extravagant love that knows no limits which the Father and the Son demonstrated to us and for us on the cross.

Our Lord has commanded us to love one another in the body of believers. To love another person is to actively seek the best for that person's life and to do so regardless of personal cost. It is to put one's life on the line as Emile Zola did for Alfred Dreyfus. When people outside of the church look inside the church, this is what they should see. Jesus said that if they see this quality of love in the community, then they will know that they are his disciples.

It is not possible for me to love another person like that on my own power. I must call on God to help me love like that, but I must be willing to take the step in that direction. I must be willing to say, 'Lord, I am weak, and I am selfish. But I do love you, and I want to love my brother and sister believers with the same extravagant love that you have loved us. I lay aside my self-interest, and I work with all my heart for the best interest of my fellow believers.' If we lived that way consistently'if we loved each other with the extravagant love that Jesus loved us, the world would take note, and, when the day arrived, we would be more than ready for the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Easter Day, 2007

Tim Jones

Christianity knows human existence to be deeply mysterious, and the resurrection from the dead of Jesus of Nazareth is the biggest enigma of human history. I don't intend that to be hyperbole, or sermon-candy of any kind. I mean it quite literally to be true. Human history is a short lived affair so far. What we know about the personalities and events of former times goes back just a few thousand years at most. Two thousand years ago people started making a claim that is, whichever way you look at it, impossible: that someone who was really dead became alive again.

The witnesses regarding this claim are, for us, only four, - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - and they are second hand, save perhaps for John. Each write for us their account of what happened that Sunday morning after the Passover, and their accounts do not tally. Luke, for instance, tells us that Joanna was there. No one else mentions her. John tells us only that Mary Magdalen was there. The central claim of Christianity is clouded in mystery, even in the minds of those who are convinced that it is true.

"What then, shall we say about these things?" Well, if nothing else it does show that the accounts of Jesus' resurrection are not some vast conspiracy! Quite clearly, the chief communicators of the news have not conspired, because their accounts are all different! In the culture of first century Judaism, which valued witnesses so highly, getting the list of witnesses right is serious business, and they didn't do it!

It also shows that whatever confusion might have reigned concerning the discovery of Jesus' resurrection, those contemporaries who believed it to be true really did believe it to true, even though that belief left them startled and confused.

I share their belief. Jesus Christ is risen. He IS risen indeed - alleluia!

The question then becomes a question of meaning. What on earth, in heaven's name, is going on? What is being done? What are we being shown?

Those are actually two quite separate questions.

1] What is being done?

2] What is being shown?

It is important to recognize that both questions need to be asked, and both have important answers.

Have you ever wondered why we have vergers? You know the vergers here at St. Paul's - David Dierks, Debbie Orr, Christy Caldwell, Nick Phillips. They are the ones who wear distinctive gray and blue robes, and carry a stick in front of them, leading all the processions around in church! Why do we have them? What are they for? Surely, many may say, it is just liturgical fluff - we don't need to have more people in funny clothes wandering about in processions.

Such an attitude, though, would be to confuse what is being done with what is being seen. We see the clothes and the procession, but rarely get to see deeper than that. There exists, for the vergers at this church, a page long list of duties. In summary, it is their job to make sure that the place and the people of God are prepared and ready for worship. When I arrived at church at 5am to get ready for the sunrise service this morning, the verger was already here, about her work. It is the vergers who turn on the lights, who open the doors, who attend to the heating, who make sure that everything we will need is available in the right place, who allocate responsibilities for the various tasks that need to be performed. Quite literally, they make the worship happen. Many churches do not have people called vergers, but someone still has to do the jobs done by the vergers. Those tasks are absolutely necessary and in no way optional, for any church. In every church, those tasks get done, almost always behind the scenes, and usually with less thanks than they deserve.

What is DONE is absolutely necessary, out of sight though it may be.

What we see though is simply someone leading a procession. If the role of verger truly was purely liturgical, simply another person in funny clothes to clutter up the church, then it would be something rather pitiful, frankly. But given all the work that goes on behind the scenes, the liturgical function of a verger serves to give public expression to the truth which otherwise be hidden, that the good functioning of a church community requires many things to be done and people to pull their weight, and all of this co-ordinated well. It demonstrates the truth that the worship of God is not the prerogative of a priestly elite but is the practical calling of the people. Worship of the risen Christ happens because ordinary Christian people take the trouble to make it happen.

In Jesus Christ, was it done is shrouded in mystery. It is out of sight, behind the earthly scene. He DOES something - by the cross he effects the atonement, restores our eternal unity with God. How that happens is something we can only approach in metaphor; it is a debt being repaid, it is a criminal spared due punishment because of a willing, loving proxy, it is a cultic blood sacrifice to fulfill and utterly satisfy the need for any further sacrifice, it is the true Lion King dying to save his broken childish betrayer. True metaphor, truly pointing to mysterious truth - that by the cross, God in Jesus DOES something central to our life. It is not simply a nice philosophy; it is the very action of God on our behalf.

Something divine has been done. But on its own it looks pretty much just like any other public execution, another gratuitous act of violence peppering the reality of human life. How would we ever know of the truth?

We know because of what we see on the day of Resurrection, what we are shown, which is so extraordinary that it still makes us all, even we believers, gasp with disbelief to this very day. The dead man lives. We are shown this so that we might glimpse the truth, and it is essential that we glimpse the truth because it is the truth that sets us free.

It is the truth that sets us free.

Faith in Jesus is faith in the power of the cross and is made possible by the epiphany of the resurrection.

It is that faith which effects our salvation.

Jesus rises to show us something that we need to know if we are to know God and his true life, if our life is to be true life, eternal life. We need to know of what has been done. The women saw, and told the men. The men saw, and told the world. We see, through their testimony, and so we too are offered eternal life.

The biggest enigma of human history. It is your only gateway to truth.

2 Lent 2007
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18Psalm 27:10-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:22-35
Dr. Olivia H. McIntyre

We Do Not Presume

How many of you remember this book? [Holding up Authorized Services 1973]

Those of you who haven't been around the Episcopal Church long enough to remember this book cannot imagine the conflict and the anger created by this innocent-looking paperback book. This book brought the Episcopal Church to the brink of civil war. Many faithful church people hated it; some priests railed against it; some parishes pulled out of the Episcopal Church because of it. Francis has a wonderful story about how, at the church he attended at that time, the altar guild ladies, THE ALTAR GUILD LADIES, would come into the sanctuary every Saturday evening and remove all the copies of this “new” prayerbook so that only the old 1928 prayerbooks were available for worship on Sunday morning, then Sunday evening all these paperback books reappeared in the pews.

We human being just hate change. We want something in our lives to be familiar and comfortable and just like it used to be when we were young, especially at church. Thirty years ago I was young enough and new enough to the Episcopal Church to be flexible about changes in the liturgy, but it is time, now, for me to confess – I love the '28 prayerbook. I became an Episcopalian because of the 1928 prayerbook. I love the language of it, the poetry of it, the strength of it. Even before I was confirmed, I learned big chunks of the '28 liturgy by heart because it expressed so beautifully what I knew to be true about God. Even now, if you listen closely, you'll sometimes hear me forget how something is phrased in our “new” prayerbook and I'll slip back into the phrases of the '28.

There is only one thing from the '28 prayerbook that I continue to yearn for every week when we celebrate Holy Communion --- and that is the Prayer of Humble Access:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

New prayerbook or not, I still say this prayer every Sunday in the silence before I take communion. I know it is a little too sin-focussed and cannibalistic for modern sensibilities, but it expresses, more beautifully than I ever could in my own words, how much I NEED to partake of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus.

We human beings don't like change because change reminds us that we are not immortal. Most of us, if we could, would like to freeze time at a certain point in our lives, some point when we were busy and happy and felt “in control” of our lives, but change reminds us that we cannot do that. Change reminds us that dust we are and to dust we shall return. In our Gospel reading, Herod is trying to make sure that Jesus doesn't get close enough to Jerusalem to bring any troublesome changes to his life.

You have heard me preach often enough now that you know that I have a very vivid imagination. In fact, when I read the Bible, the characters actually leap up off the page and begin to act out the passage right before me! And this time they did it in a particularly unusual way.

Imagine a grainy, old, black and white movie -- the office of Sam Spade at the beginning of The Maltese Falcon. Two big mob guys swagger in; they're wearing double-breasted suits and black fedoras. The bigger of the two guys leans over the desk and says, 'Hey, punk, the boss says get out of town or you're toast.” Then the man behind the desk stands up. He has the worn, craggy visage of Humphrey Bogart and the barely controlled feistiness of Spencer Tracy. He leans across the desk, right into the mobster's face and says, “You go tell that son of a vixen that I don't leave until I'm ready to leave.” He flips open one of those old, ringed desk calendars and says, “today I have demons to cast out, tomorrow I got some guys to heal, and the next day I got some more work to do. After that, well, tell your boss I'm coming his way. Now scram.”

Jesus didn't act the way people were supposed to act. He wasn't intimidated by people in power. He didn't mind bending the religious law if it suited his purposes. (In fact, in the passage immediately following today's reading he heals a man on the sabbath.) And he wasn't afraid to tell nice, respectable people that they might not be among the saved. Everywhere that Jesus went, change was sure to go --and a lot of people didn't like that.

In the epistle reading, Paul tells the Philippians to “stand firm,” but if you read closely, you'll realize that what they are to stand firm in is not what IS but what IS TO BE. Stand firm in expectation, stand firm in transformation, stand firm in the knowledge that with Jesus comes change, sometimes change so great that we cannot now imagine it, but with that change comes glory and salvation.

Abraham looked at himself and his wife in their old age and could not see anyway that God's promise that he would have a legitimate heir, a son born of his wife, could be fulfilled. His rational, practical, human mind said “This is it. This is the way it is. Nothing can change it now.” but God told him to trust not what IS, but what IS TO BE. “And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

To embrace Jesus is to embrace change, however scary it may be. To embrace Jesus, is to let go of our fear and our certainty and believe in the Lord, and the Lord will reckon it to us as righteousness. “And people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.”

The Book of Common Prayer that Episcopalians now use every Sunday is, with just a few changes, the Authorized Services 1973 that tore us apart thirty years ago. The Prayer of Humble Access from the 1928 prayerbook is no longer part of our common worship, but its legacy – changed but not discarded -- continues to be available to us, to instruct and guide us as we seek to be transformed into the People of God.

Please turn to p. 337 of the prayerbook and let us say together:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. AMEN.

"All you need is love.  Love is all you need."

Exodus 34:29-35    Psalm 99     1 Corinthians 12:27 - 13:13     Luke 9:28-36

Rev. Tim Jones

Last Saturday I preached the sermon at a friend’s wedding in Austin, Texas. A few weeks before the wedding she had called me to tell me what the readings were that she had chosen. She was apologetic, because one of the readings was our New Testament reading for today, the wonderful exhortation to love by St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter thirteen. Like all brides to be, she wanted her wedding to special and unique, and I think had wanted to avoid a passage so often used at weddings. "But it’s just so perfect," she admitted!

It is perfect, and that is what in part my wedding sermon ended up being about. It is an excellent reading for a wedding.

But that passage loses a lot by being read on its own, a snippet out of the whole letter to the Corinthians. On its own, it sounds like a lovely little prosaic homage to the emotion of love. But it isn’t. The first twelve chapters of that letter are dealing with the mess that the church in Corinth has got itself into. The people are trying to be a church, but it’s not working because, inevitably perhaps, they have imported into their Christian fellowship many of the attitudes and assumptions of the world of which they are a part. There is snobbery, and class distinction, greed, and grudge holding, and sexism, and judgementalism.

Paul responds to all of this by reminding them what following Jesus Christ is all about. He speaks of the way in which Jesus reveals God to be infinitely full of love for us, so much so that he risks life itself for us, and loses life. Christian community, then, is radical in its abandonment of the ways of the world as we seek to reflect that love of God in the way we live together as a community.

They say that Innuit Indians in the Arctic Circle have many words for snow. They live their lives dealing with snow, and they know it can exist in all kinds of different ways, and those different ways can have a real impact on their lives, so they need to be able to distinguish linguistically between the different types. Those of us whose lives are less affected by snow make do with just the one word - "snow."

Maybe we don’t pay enough attention to love. It has a massive impact on our lives. CS Lewis, in his book "The Four Loves", draws a distinction between the various words used in the Bible that are all translated into English simply as "love."

There is eros, sexual love. There is storge, the familiar love of fondness for what we know and have long experienced. There is philia, the strong bond existing between people who share a common interest or experience. And there is agape, a love directed towards our neighbors, not because we like them, or have grown up with them, or agree with them, or find them desirable. Agape is the love we have for each other just because we are there, children of God all, reflecting the love of God. It is the love of the Good Samaritan for his neighbor, and it is the most necessary characteristic of those who follow Jesus Christ.

When this famous passage talks about love, the original Greek word being translated is "agape", the self sacrificial love that we are all called to have for each other because it reflects the love of God.

We need to train each other up in agape. It doesn’t come on its own, like other loves do. We can’t help finding this person or that person sexually attractive. We can’t help feeling intense emotional bonds with those we have grown up with, or shared intense experiences with, or share deep interests with. But agape love doesn’t come naturally - on the contrary, it is the decision and action of loving people who we might well otherwise naturally move away from, or push away from ourselves. Agape is the love we show when we look at our income and decide how much we should on principle give to those in need, and then give it. Agape is when we see that thoroughly unpleasant person in church, but nonetheless exchange the peace, ask how they are, and if they are not OK then do all that we can to help and comfort them. Agape is helping the person on the street in need. Agape is when your boss drives you to wonder how much a hit man really does cost, but instead you seek to understand the darkness and bitterness in his life, and bring to it the healing light of Christ. That is agape, and it does not come naturally.

We need therefore to practice agape like we practice tennis or the piano, so that we can become better at it and so that it feels comfortable and natural. A primary calling of parents and Godparents, and all of us in the Christian community, is to model agape and encourage each other in agape.

When St. Paul writes to the church of ancient Corinth, chapter thirteen is not a sweet lovely piece of prose. It is a stinging reminder that in their boastfulness, in their arrogance, in their pride, they fail in their agape. And whatever other spiritual skills and talents they might possess, without agape they are worthless. Agape is the defining characteristic of authentic Christian discipleship.

6 Epiphany 2007
Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; I Corinthians 15;12-20; Luke 6:17-26
Dr. Olivia H. McIntyre

Plain Speaking

I need your help beginning today's sermon.

I need for you to suggest an exclamation – a sound or word -- which indicates pleasure or approval. Imagine, for example, that YOUR team in the Super Bowl runs back the kick off for a touchdown. What do you shout?

Now I need for you to suggest an exclamation --- a sound or word (appropriate for use in church!) which indicates displeasure or disapproval, for example, if the OTHER team in the Super Bowl runs back the kick off for a touchdown, what do you shout?

Now, I need for you to do something very, very difficult. I need for you to be rowdy in church. I'm going to say a word and hold up a card. If the card has a “+” I want you to express approval. If it has a “-” I want you to express disapproval. Ready?

Poor +, Rich -, Hungry +, Laughing -, Satisfied -, Weeping +, Praised -, Hated +

So, how did it feel to give these responses to these words??

As a public employee in the state of Mississippi, I'm almost certain that I'm not rich, but then I'm not poor either. Clearly, I am full more often than I am hungry, and I'd much rather laugh than weep, and I want people to speak well of me. In fact, given the choice between Group #1 and Group #2, Group #2 wins hands down. So, does this mean that I'm in trouble, that we're all in trouble?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it means exactly that. However much we nice, comfortable, middle-class Americans may not want to hear it, God might not be overwhelmingly happy with us.

Over the centuries, a lot of ink and paper have been used up trying to weasel around these blunt statements in Jesus' Sermon on the Plain. After all, we know that Jesus visited the rich as well as the poor; he accepted the hospitality of the wealthy, ate at their tables, and in the end was buried in the tomb that Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the High Council, had prepared for his own burial. Jesus couldn't really condemn the wealthy, could he? Not just because they are well-fed, happy, and respected, could he?

Apparently he could...and did...and he learned it from his mother.

Remember what Mary said in Chapter 1 of Luke's gospel:

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.

His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and send the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.

Like mother, like son.

In the kingdom of God, the mighty of this world are brought down and the lowly lifted up. The hungry are satisfied with good things and the rich are sent empty away. In the kingdom of God, everything is turned upside-down, inside-out, and all our possessions and creature comforts will do us no good.

I know that some preachers will tell you that prosperity is a sign of God's favor and that if you have enough faith and pray hard enough, you'll be richer than you can imagine, but the New Testament just doesn't back that up. The Gospel of Luke, in particular, dwells on the fact that those who follow Jesus will lose everything this world values.

So what are we supposed to do...give away everything we own? Maybe. Certainly some saints through the ages have done exactly that. There is an exquisitely beautiful scene in Franco Zefferelli's movie Brother Sun, Sister Moon that depicts the young St. Francis throwing bolt after bolt of silk fabric to starving, rag-dressed beggars. In our own time, Mother Teresa required her nuns to live in the same absolute poverty as the people they serve.

Sometimes I wish I had enough strength, enough faith, enough courage to do that, but I don't.

Do you?

Like it or not, I find myself lumped into Group #2 of the Sermon on the Plain. I am rich – I have a home and food and clothes, a car, a job, access to health care, and a reasonable expectation of a modest little pension. Am I just doomed to some unspecified but unending woe in the life to come?

I might well be, but I think God offers even us comfortable, middle-class Americans a way out --- but only one way out --- and that is, by seizing the opportunity to implement the kingdom of God here and now. When I read the blessings and woes in our Gospel passage, I hear an implicit “while” in the dynamic tension between the two sets of statements. I hear “woe to you who are rich” (while some are poor); woe to you who are full now (while some are hungry); woe to you who are laughing now (while some weep); woe to you when all speak well of you (while some are excluded and reviled.)

If we aren't willing to join in the misery of others, then we have only one choice: we must eliminate their misery.

Once before I spoke to you about the Millenium Development Goals, the MDGs. These are 8 goals formulated by the U.N. And subsequently embraced by groups and churches around the world, including our own Episcopal Church, as a strategy for drastically improving the life of the poorest poor by the year 2015, 8 years from now. Among the MDGs are the goals to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, reduce child mortality, and achieve universal primary education. We comfortable, middle-class Americans already take these fundamentals so for granted that we don't even realize that these are the things that make us rich.

Our God is a loving God and he'll love us even if we do have a 72 inch plasma television while some people don't. But our God is also a God of justice, and we might just find ourselves on the woeful end of things if we have a 72 inch plasma television while children die from lack of clean water and a quarter's worth of Immodium.

We, right here, sitting together in this building, right now, have the opportunity to open the door to the Kingdom of heaven. Every time we put something in the basket for the AMEN food pantry or teach someone to read we are turning the knob of that door a little further...but we can do more.

What if...what if we took the Kingdom of God seriously? What if we adopt some village somewhere in the world and make sure that the people there have clean water, make sure that the children there learn to read and write, make sure that the families there have the means to put food on their tables?

Would we not all be “like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither” (Psalm 1:3)?

Wouldn't we all be richer and more blessed??

May it be so.
Amen.

5 Epiphany 2007
Judges 6:11-24a; Psalm 85:7-13; I Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11
Dr. Olivia H. McIntyre

“But, sir...”

This morning I feel like a real preacher, because I get to talk about SIN. Not just ordinary, everyday sins like lust, or gluttony, or greed, but about the BIG sin, the Mama of All Sins, PRIDE.

Let's take a look at Gideon. There he is – a strong, healthy, sunburned young man, sweaty and tired, standing in a big stone tub usually used at the grape harvest to hold the grapes while workers stomped them into juice. (Remember the I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel stomp the grapes?? No?? Never mind.) Gideon, however, is using the big vat as a shield, trying to hide what he is really doing – threshing the kernels of wheat from the stalks. He has to thresh in secret because the Midianites have conquered Israel and would demand the grain as taxes.

To look at him, you might think that Gideon has good reason to be proud – he's young, strong, perhaps good-looking, obviously not afraid to defy the foreign authorities. The stranger sitting over there in the shade of the oak tree calls him a “mighty warrior” and he does not protest, but Gideon's pride is not in his strength or his looks or his courage, Gideon's pride is in his bitterness.

Gideon believes that Yahweh has let him down, that God has failed the people of Israel. Gideon thinks that God has reneged on His promises; God brought the Israelites out of Egypt just to make them captives in their own land. Let the stranger say whatever he will, Gideon knows what he knows, and he KNOWS that God has let him down, so much so that he, a proud Israelite, is reduced to hiding in a wine press to prepare a few morsels of grain for his family.

Gideon argues with the stranger (who is sometimes called an angel of the Lord and sometimes just “the Lord”) -- “But, sir,” he says, “But, sir” if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?” “But, sir, how can I deliver Israel?” Gideon is so mired in his bitterness, in his anger at God, that he doesn't even really hear what the stranger is saying. The stranger says that he – he, Gideon – is the answer to his own questions, that God calls him, calls Gideon, to be the agent of God's will on earth. Through Gideon God will restore Israel to His people. God wants to save his people and He has chosen to do so through Gideon, but Gideon is so focused on his own bitterness that he doesn't believe what the stranger is saying to him.

Finally, at least a little of what the stranger is saying breaks through, and Gideon's response is basically: “oh yeah? Well prove it.” Gideon tells the stranger to wait while he fixes a meal fit to be an offering to God Himself, and the stranger “proves” himself by completing the scene, by tapping his staff on the rock and having the meal disappear in a flash of flame and smoke. Only then does Gideon realize what he has done – treated God with contempt.

God offered Gideon the opportunity for greatness; God offered Gideon the opportunity to do the miraculous – save his people from oppression – and Gideon asked for a parlor trick instead, some flashy sign to make the Lord “prove” who he is. Only when he gets the sign does Gideon realize what he has done – he, a human, a creature of God's own creation has tested God, has bossed God around, has been rude and insolent, and Gideon, quite rightly, is afraid. He realizes that he deserves to be brushed away in a flash of smoke just like the burnt offering was and he asks God for help, for forgiveness. Then the Lord said to him, “Peace be to you; do not fear, you shall not die. Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord, and called it, The Lord is Peace.”

If you read further in the book of Judges you'll find out that Gideon goes on to perform the miracle God commissioned him to do, although he never quite gives up his reluctance to believe what God tells him. He conquers the Midianites, but keeps on asking for “signs” at every turn.

The passage from the Gospel of Luke has some of these same dynamics. Jesus tells Peter to do something, in this case, to let down the nets for a catch and Peter replies in his quintessentially Peter way. You can just see him rolling his eyes and muttering under his breath, “Oh, for Pete's sake, what does he know about fishing? Yes, he can teach, even drive out demons, but fishing??? he doesn't know beans about fishing.” Peter, the master fisherman knows that he knows more about fishing that Jesus does. Peter explains not too patiently to Jesus: “Master, we have worked all night long and have caught nothing.” And, he might have muttered under his breath, we've spent the last hour cleaning the nets and now you want us to get them filthy again, but with exaggerated and exasperated compliance he says, “yet, if you say so, I will let down the nets.”

Peter, the master fisherman, certain of his knowledge and skills as a fisherman, was wrong. When he did what Jesus said, there were more fish than he could haul in by himself, so many the boat almost sank. Then Peter, like Gideon before him, recognized that he had made himself, his knowledge, his skills, his certainty bigger than his belief in God's will for His own creation. Like Gideon, Peter was afraid that God would punish him for his pride, but Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”

The moral that I take from both these stories is that we human beings have a real tendency to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to. Or, put another way, we find the sin of pride very attractive.

We like to think that we really know what we are talking about, that we know what we ought to do and how we ought to do it. Often we are so sure of ourselves that we don't pay any attention to what God wants to have happen. Don't you find yourself doing that? I know I do. I can get so focused on a particular track that I can't hear any other voice but my own.

The wonderful thing is that God KNOWS we do that and he doesn't get mad at us. He didn't smite down Gideon for being cheeky; he didn't send Peter away for being bossy. God just does something so amazing that we have to stop in our tracks, look around and listen to what he is really saying: “Peace be to you; do not fear; you shall not die."

God doesn't "get us" if we disagree with him, or if we have doubts, or ask questions. God will even let us wallow in our own pride for a while to let us see that that doesn't really help anything. God is patient and kind and loving and knows that He created a hard-headed critter that is sometimes stubborn beyond belief, but he does not destroy us for that, he simply does something to get our attention and get us back on the right track...and that is what the Resurrection is all about.

We human beings are pretty sure that we know the difference between death and life. Dead people are dead, we know they are – see, they don't breathe or have a heartbeat; they begin to decay. We know about these things. Yet God, with infinite patience, showed us something that is contrary to everything we think we know. He showed us that the dead are not dead.

The passage from Paul's letter to the Corinthians contains the oldest Christian creed, the statement that the very first generation of Christians decided summed up what made them different from what other religious groups believed: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.”

This statement, called the kerygma, is the fundamental statement of Christian belief. We say it every time we celebrate the Eucharist: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” It is a statement of our belief that all we see and know as human beings is only partial truth. It is a reminder that we are not enslaved by our own incomplete vision of what is possible.

This is the Good News: we human beings do not know and cannot comprehend the fullness of God's power and grace, but we know that we do not need to be afraid. God is good. God loves us. God calls us --- proud, stubborn, sinful people that we are --- to let go of what we know from our own experience and live into what we know of our experience of God.

Let us join together in saying again verses 8-11 of our psalm:

I will listen to what the Lord God is saying, for he is speaking peace to his faithful people and to those who turn their hearts to him. Truly, his salvation is very near to those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land. Mercy and truth have met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring up from the earth and righteousness shall look down from heaven.

May it be so. Amen.

Rev. Tim Jones

Epiphany 4c, January 28th 2007

Jeremiah 1:4-10 Psalm 71 1 Corinthians 14:12b-20 Luke 4:21-32

 Many people here, I know, demean themselves by paying attention to their horoscope. They say they don’t take it seriously but they do. They take it about as seriously as they take the sermons they hear from this pulpit. Think about what the word horoscope means. A "telescope" is for looking at things far away. A "microscope" is for looking at very small things. A "Horoscope" is for looking into time, allegedly. (Maybe an "Episcope-al" is for looking at crazy Christians!)

Magazines know that the more attention they give to the horoscope, the better will be their sales figures. Even otherwise high brow newspapers carry horoscopes, even as the editorials sneer at organized religion.

Prophecy is often thought to be in pretty much the same league as horoscopes. The Old Testament prophets are sometimes understood as workers of mystical magic, looking into the future. But that is not what is meant by prophecy in the Bible. Biblical prophecy is all about holding fast to faith in God, and warning others that a course of action is faithless, or dangerous, or immoral, even when that warning is deeply unpopular.

The prophet Jeremiah was unpopular in the extreme.  He had led a privileged existence as a youth. He was born into a priestly family, and should therefore have naturally, as a very young man, begun to serve as a priest in the Jerusalem Temple. But as a young man he began to speak out, protesting against the faithlessness of the governing class and the oppression of the poor and enslavement of the rural classes. He warned that there would be terrible consequences from such faithless moral complacency. That is the sense in which he was a prophet.

Jeremiah was just a boy, but his age was of no matter to God. God calls who he will, and is not bound by our expectations of what people should do at particular stages of life.

2007 is the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade by Great Britain, an abolition that had huge repercussions on the ability to maintain the transatlantic slave trade and the moral acceptability of slavery in the western world.

The driving force behind the political movement to abolish the Atlantic slave trade was a member of Parliament, William Wilberforce. His determination was rooted in his strong Christian faith, and a related conviction that slavery is wholly immoral.

This faith and conviction derived in large part from the influence of man I am going to speak a great deal about in this sermon - Charles Simeon. Simeon was an eighteenth and nineteenth century British clergyman who spent just about his entire ministry and nearly all his adult life as the priest of a church in Cambridge.

When I was having trouble with my voice last year I found myself thinking often of Charles Simeon. In 1807, when he was 47 he lost his voice, and it stayed lost for thirteen years, until he was 60! He could only make any noise with a great effort, and he remarked once that after preaching he felt more dead than alive! (I only feel like I need a little afternoon nap!).

From the age of 60 onwards, until his death seventeen years later, Simeon’s ministry, already deeply influential upon a whole generation of Cambridge scholars, became all the more vigorous and energetic. Before his illness, Simeon had told himself that he should work reasonably hard until he was 60, and then take life easy thereafter. But then, after his voice and energy returned when he was 60, he wrote that he had the sense that God was at work in all this, as if God was saying,

"I laid you aside, because you entertained with satisfaction the thought of resting from your labor; but now you have arrived at the very period when you had promised yourself that satisfaction, and have determined instead to spend your strength for me to the latest hour of your life, I have doubled, trebled, quadrupled your strength, that you may execute your desire on a more extended plan."

I decided today that we would read the entirety of Psalm 71, because there is an important aspect of that psalm which is cut out by limiting ourselves to the few verses specified as set for today.

In verse 9, the psalmist writes "Do not cast me off in my old age; do not leave me when my strength fails."

And verse 18 continues, "Do not leave me not that I am old and gray headed, till I make known your strength to this generation and your power to all who are to come."

Our culture can have very clear ideas of what we should be doing at particular stages of life. As youngsters we should be seen and not heard, there simply in training to be adults, with no serious contribution to make to the world except perhaps to entertain adults. That’s what "American Idol" is for! The elderly similarly are expected to leave the workforce and stick to their gardening, Caribbean cruises, and "Days of Our Lives."

But scripture bears witness to the reality that God calls people of all ages, young and old, to throw themselves into the work of his Kingdom. Whatever our age, the concern is not, what can I do when I grow up, or what did I do when I was younger, but is rather, what does God call me to do TODAY. He gives us life TODAY, and calls us into the service of his Kingdom TODAY.

Charles Simeon retired in 1836, and died that same year. He had been the rector of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, for fifty-four years! Soon after his retirement, a friend was horrified to discover that Simeon was still getting out of bed at about four in the morning each day to light a fire and begin his daily prayers.

The friend protested with him: "Mr. Simeon, do you not think, now that you are retired, you might take things more easily?"

"What?" replied Simeon. "Shall I not now run with all my might when the winning post is in sight?"

We all, each of us, have skills and gifts given to us by God. St. Paul reminds us that we need to use them in our lesson from the New Testament today. The gift he encourages most is the gift of prophecy. That is not a commendation to write horoscopes for trashy magazines; it is the encouragement as Christians to speak our minds truthfully and boldly, even when we know that what we have to say will be unwelcome or unpopular.

"Shall I not now run with all my might when the winning post is in sight?"

January 7th, 2007 (Epiphany 1, the Baptism of Christ)

Rev. Tim Jones

One of the many sad divisions within Christianity involves baptism. Baptist churches, in their several denominations, all believe that no-one should be baptized until they are old enough to have an understanding of what they are doing, and sufficiently aware of the gospel to make a free personal decision to be baptized as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Almost all other mainline Christian denominations consider instead that it is perfectly possible - if not indeed desirable - to baptize people as infants, even if they are just a few seconds old.

I can understand the concerns of Baptists. One of the first baptism services I ever took after ordination was of a family of several children. One little boy, aged maybe five or six, screamed and shouted the whole time, and was in the end baptized while being held over the font by his father and uncle, while he tried to fight them off with fists, and with foul language let all of us know that he did not want to be baptized.

I’m reminded of a famous true story, in which in the mid 1930s an executive of the Cunard White Star shipping line met with the King of England, George V. The hapless executive told the King of Cunard White Star’s plans to name their grandest ship, still then under construction, after, open quotes, "the greatest of all English queens." close quotes!

"Oh," the king declared, "my wife will be pleased!"

And so the ship, originally to have been christened the "Queen Victoria", was, on the 21st September 1936, instead christened the "Queen Mary"!

In England, where the Anglican church is the state church, all people, whatever their age, have the legal right to be baptized in their parish church, whether or not they have any interest in the church or in the Christian faith. So for may people, baptism is understood simply as a naming ceremony, important, but still something more like the naming and launching of a ship than of entry into the Body of Christ by dying and rising again with Christ.

No wonder that many pious Christians are frustrated by this, and seek to limit baptism.

There are indeed problems with indiscriminate baptism. But let me, very briefly, say why I believe it to be right and good for Christian parents to bring their infant children to baptism.

As we bless the water in the baptism service, the priest reminds all present that it was through water that God led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the Promised Land. That is one of the central contributing ideas underlying what we are doing in baptism - we are participating in the salvation history of God and humanity. Those Hebrews, fleeing Pharaoh, picked up their children and took them with them, because they loved them and would not have dreamed of leaving them behind. They did not say, we are fleeing our slavery, but we will leave the children behind to make up their own minds when they’re old enough about whether or not they want to be slaves!

Of course they didn’t. Their pilgrimage was important, and they traveled as a community. Perhaps it is a shadow side of the awareness, gained over the last two or three centuries, of the deep importance of the economic, intellectual and political rights of the individual, that we have lost sight of the truth that humans are primarily social creatures, made for each other, who flourish as families and societies.

We baptize our children because we are on a pilgrimage, and we do not leave our children behind. The Queen Mary displaced nearly 82,000 tons. This wonderful ship which is the Church, tossed though it may be by storms and tempest, displaces an infinitely greater spiritual load, and we do not throw anyone overboard because they are not old enough to cry for help themselves. In the several baptism services to take place here at St. Paul’s in the next few months, let us rejoice that we make our pilgrimage is never solitary, because we travel together.

First Sunday after Christmas

December 31st, 2006

Fr. Tim Jones

Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3   Psalm 147   Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7   John 1:1-18

There is a 1994 movie, "True Lies," directed by James Cameron, and starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Arnold Schwarzenegger as a happily married couple, Mr. & Mrs. Harry Tasker, living a comfortable suburban lifestyle. Mrs. Tasker thinks she knows her husband well; Harry Tasker is a computer salesman, often away from home, out selling computers, and sometimes Mrs. Tasker finds his absences irritating, and her life a little tedious.

But there are things Mrs. Tasker just doesn’t know about Harry. She does know that he is kind, and loving, but she is completely unaware that he is the United States’ top secret agent (looking like Arnold Schwarzenneger should have been a clue!). It is a whole dimension of his life about which she knows nothing, and would not believe it if anyone told her. It is a hilarious, exciting movie.

Christians are not the only people who know God. Humans are made in the image of God, and yearn for him, so the seeking after God in religion is far from unusual in the human experience. Much of our belief in God is shared by the two other great Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Islam, and there is much that we might usefully and respectfully learn from each of these great faiths. But there is something that marks Christianity off as altogether distinctive from Judaism and Islam, an aspect of the identity of God that is beyond credibility for these faiths, and it is captured beautifully by that majestic passage, the opening verses of the Gospel according to John.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him ... and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us."

The Word, which was God and always had been, became flesh. God, Christians believe, became God incarnate, God enfleshed.

I fervently hope and pray for peace among all religions. There is a sloppy assumption made by many though, that the religions should all get along because there is only one God, and therefore it really doesn’t matter what we believe about him. But that’s not true. Mrs. Tasker knew her husband to be kind and loving, but her belief that he was a boring computer salesman was quite mistaken.

"No-one has ever seen God," writes St. John. "It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known."

Mrs. Tasker herself became a secret agent, adopted into the agency, and helped in the downfall of the wicked bad guys holding the world to ransom with their smuggled nuclear weapons!

There is a moment in the movie where Mrs. Tasker - and her husband - discover that she too has an aspect of her character of which they both previously have been unaware. She is being interrogated, alone in a room behind a one way mirror, and she uses her chair to batter her way out of the interrogation room. She was, she discovered, a more powerful person than anyone had imagined.

Do you seek after God? Then discover the power bestowed upon you by God. Accept St. John’s invitation. Those opening words of John’s gospel are an invitation to meet God in the only way that we ever can meet him in this life, in the person of Jesus Christ. Accept the invitation, and read on into the rest of the Gospel. Because this account is not just about people long, long ago, far, far away. This is all about you.

"To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power, to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God."

These words speak truth about you and about God. This is not just beautiful prose; it is essential truth about your life.

Christmas Day, 2006

Isaiah 9:2-4, 6-7   Psalm 96   Titus 2:11-14   Luke 2:1-20

Fr. Tim Jones

Psalm 96, in lieu of angels

There is a lot of searching in the Christmas story. The Emperor, searching for information about his conquered peoples. Mary and Joseph searching for a place to stay. The shepherds, searching for the child spoken of by angels. The wise men, seeking after the newborn king. Herod, searching for the infant rival to hunt him down. The Christmas story is a study in the art of searching.

Maybe that same search, in yet another form, is all part of the persistent rumour of God that draws us always back to God in prayer, and prompts us again and again to remember the stories of the Christ child we learnt as children ourselves. Maybe it is that same search that brings us again and again to church, whether it be daily, weekly or annually.

I wonder, exactly, what we’re searching for?

These two men decided one day that they would take their chainsaw out into the forest, and find themselves a real live Christmas tree that they could cut down and take home. So out into the forest they went one early December day. They found plenty of pine trees, but none of them seemed just right. On and on they went, and the day grew longer, and it colder and colder, and then, about an hour before sundown it started to rain. Still they hadn’t found a tree that seemed just right for Christmas. One of them finally had enough.

"OK," he said, "the very next small pine tree we find, that’s the one we’re cutting down to take home for our Christmas tree, whether it’s got any lights on it or not!"

I wonder just what we’re looking for at Christmas? Certainly, we’re looking for something spiritual, but how will we know we’ve found it when we do? What is something spiritual like?  Do we expect it to be festooned with fairy lights?

The Christmas story is this strange, bizarre conjunction of the utterly ordinary and the startlingly divine. Mary and Joseph are in Bethlehem because of a taxation protocol. If nothing else, that proves that God has a sense of humor. If need be, he might even use the IRS tax codes to change the world. Mary and Joseph cannot find a room in which to stay in Bethlehem. Take it from me, if you have ever tried to find a room in West Point Mississippi at nearly midnight, even without a wife in labour, you will know how crushingly mundane that part of the Christmas story is. And there is the child, lying in a manger, a feeding trough, a sign right from the very start of his life that he is not just the light of the world, but that he is also food for the world, the means by which God nourishes us. Taxes, full hotels, stables and feeding troughs. The deepest, most meaningful spiritual events EVER took place under the MOST ordinary circumstances!

But Jesus had the angels, the lights on the tree, as it were. That is the most wonderful thing about the Christmas story. The clear signal that this most ordinary of situations is actually extraordinary beyond our capacity to understand. In the CS Lewis fantasy story about Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the young child Lucy is alerted to the fact that the forest in which she finds herself is strange indeed by the sudden surprising presence of a gas lantern from a Victorian city street, right there in the middle of the snowbound forest. It is as if those two men had wandered into the forest looking for a Christmas tree all lit up with fairy lights, and then found it, sparkling brightly, waiting for them to cut it down and take it home. Jesus’ birth may have been under the most extraordinary circumstances, but the gospel writers refuse to let us miss its significance. The sky is filled with the armies of God and their music, proclaiming the amazing news to the world.

Is that what we’re looking for, perhaps? Unambiguous, awesome glorious proclamation of the presence of God in our lives? Something clearly outside of the ordinary?

Suppose we got it? If the angels did appear, terrifying and glorious, at the first hint of doubt, despair or boredom? They would soon cease to be terrifying, and themselves become ordinary. That fact should provide us with a clue - the things that we perceive as ordinary because they are familiar to us, are now and have always been utterly wondrous. Look to the skies and gaze at the cosmos, for the heavens rejoice and the earth is glad! Stand on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and consider the thunder of the sea. Walk through forests and fields, and apprehend the trees of the wood shouting for joy - and all without the need of fairy lights! THAT’S what we’re truly searching for - a renewal of our wonder at the glory of God in the world he has given us, the world he redeems, the world he sustains. It is amazing. We are amazing, for great is the LORD and greatly to be praised!

What are we searching for? We’re still searching for Christ, even as we follow him, even as we know ourselves to be his disciples and we will find him here, in the ordinary things of our life, because this is where he is, and always has been, from long before the moment he was laid in the feeding trough; yea, even unto the ages.

Sunday, 24th December, 2006

Advent 4c

Micah 5:2-4   Psalm 80   Hebrews 10:5-10   Luke 1:39-56

Fr. Tim Jones

Ecce Virgo concipiet et pariet Filium

An old man and a young man were walking along one day, when this ugly looking toad suddenly called out to them.

"Help me, help me!" it cried, "I am a beautiful maiden turned into a toad. Kiss me, and I will be yours forever."

The old man hurried over, picked up the toad, and put it in his pocket, and carried on walking.

"Aren’t you going to kiss it?" asked the young man.

"No," replied the old man. "At my age I would much rather have a talking toad!"

Our gospel reading this morning talks of Mary going to visit Elizabeth, and when Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. This particular reading makes no reference to Mary’s virginity, but that’s what this sermon is to be about. The passages speaking of her as a virgin are always right on Christmas night or Christmas morning, and on those occasions I don’t want to talk about whether or not Mary was a virgin. So I’m going to do it now.

There are those who see the account of Mary’s virginity in pretty much the same category as the story of the talking toad. The story is funny, a parody of familiar fairy stories, illustrating something with an element of truth - that romantic conquest can cease to be of paramount interest to elderly men. And it includes for dramatic effect something that we all know to be totally impossible - in this case a talking toad. For many people, the belief in Mary’s virginity is akin to believing in a talking toad being a beautiful girl under a spell.

I believe in the virginity of Mary. I will try to tell you why, although I can only scratch the surface in the confines of one short sermon.

First of all, let me acknowledge the full magnitude of what we’re dealing with. I know about the birds and the bees. I know where babies come from, and how they come to be. I know what is possible and what is not possible. I have no time for complicated pseudoscientific theories about how, under the just the right circumstances, there is a one in a ten billion chance that a woman can spontaneously conceive. That may be scientifically true but I have my severe doubts. It reminds me of the wonderful story of the minie-ball pregnancy during the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, at the height of the American Civil War. A young lady was found to be pregnant, and it was decided that the only possible way this upright girl from a highly respected Southern family could possibly have become pregnant is that a federal bullet passed through the private parts of a handsome young officer standing nearby, and then hit the young lady in the abdomen. They were treated for their injuries and made a full recovery, but it was later found that the young lady had been left pregnant by the ordeal, and was given signed affidavits from respected local physicians to prove her story.

I don’t believe Mary became pregnant by some freakish alleged scientific anomaly. I believe she became pregnant by an act of God.

That is what the account of Mary’s pregnancy is all about. It is making a statement about God - who God is and what God does. It is not making a claim about what can sometimes happen in the world, whether or not God exists. The account of Mary becoming pregnant is telling us something about God, and thereby telling us something about God incarnate, Jesus the Christ.

John’s gospel says just the same thing as Luke’s gospel, without mentioning the Virgin Mary.

"In the beginning," writes John, "was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. ....

to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us."

The question of how Mary became pregnant rightly begins with the question of why Mary became pregnant. Mary became pregnant because God wanted it. Her pregnancy was not something that occurred coincidentally to God, or something that occurred irrespective of God. She became pregnant because of the will of God.

So this is a question of what we believe about God. Do we believe in a God who CAN do such things? Or do we believe in a God who can’t? Let me put it to you that a God who cannot do such things is not God. I do not believe that God is a nice theory or a helpful philosophy, a useful but impotent way of coping with the world. I believe that God is God, omnipotent, creative, redeeming, sustaining, inviting us into his life and being, and making himself known to us according to his own purposes, mysterious, awesome and majestic. Anything less is not God.

I believe God not only CAN do such things but that God has done such a thing, according to his will, and it is not for me to say whether or not God will or will not do such things at any time according to his pleasure. I might speculate as to why God might do such a thing. God is a revelatory God. We only know of him and about him because he reveals himself to us, in the scriptures and their communication to us of God’s open presence in the lives of the patriarchs, prophets and apostles, and supremely in his own incarnation. It is by that becoming flesh that his self disclosure becomes the means of our salvation. He saves us because he is our shepherd, and we are his flock, that persistent, consistent analogy used in scripture and found in both of our Old Testament readings this morning.

In the silly story about the toad, it was clear that the old man believed that the toad COULD be turned into a beautiful maiden by a kiss, even though he had never seen it happen. He believed it because of something else he had seen, a talking toad. Without a talking toad, belief in a toad that could turn into a woman would be ridiculous. But there he was, with a toad talking to him. The beautiful woman may not have been what he chose to have, but he accepted the possibility as no longer being ridiculous.

If you don’t believe in God as God almighty, who chose you, who formed you, who gives you breath and sustains you, who shares his life with you, who redeems you and offers you even some understanding of who he is so that you can respond to his love and his call - if you don’t believe that, then the notion of Mary conceiving purely by the will of God is something ridiculous, to be scorned. But if you do believe in God, and accept that his power is true, and accept that his love is true - then it is a different, glorious story.

"The Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among US. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Creator, full of grace and truth."

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