Little Reflections on the Liturgy

The Twelve Days of Christmas

2011-12-28T13:23:00.000-08:00

The thing about sacred time is that it is, on a basic, sensible, everyday level, not transformative. I am no more compassionate nor any more peaceful just because it is the fourth day of Christmas. Listening to Nat King Cole sing the Christmas Song, while delightful, does make me a better person. Not even singing the host of wonderful hymns for the season, my favourite is 'Lo How a Rose,' has the capacity to make me more like Christ. Envy, sorrow, pettiness: these continue to be Christmas emotions. Sadly, not even togetherness, the most valuable part of the season according to the secular world, has the capacity to always be transformative.

To the extent that the Holy Time has meaning it's practical and mnemonic. Liturgical practices help us to remember past sacred events. Even more so, though, the offices and mass give us a means to participate in the holy events that are so important. By gathering and bringing our prayers and our sacrifices of praise, we continue the divine narrative that has Jesus, and his incarnation at its centre. The entirety of our experience, our emotions, and our desires, are woven into the coming of the Kingdom of God through the liturgy, where heaven intersects with earth.

This is the point of the holy season of Christmas. If we are to grow in compassion, love and care for others, it must happen as we are brought into God, not as we go through the motions of marking time.

The mystery of humanity being taken up into God

2011-11-14T14:21:00.001-08:00

Part of the mystery of the incarnation is that God incorporates humanity into his being. This important truth has been utterly mangled in the contemporary mindset, since the value of an individual is equal to what he or she can do for me. Is she in the way of my achieving a goal? Is he antagonistic or helpful towards me? Is her productivity high enough? Can he put me in touch with the right people? Did she follow the right rules of etiquette? Is he fun to be around? These questions make everyone else conditionally valuable based on what the ego needs at this moment.

Of course one's value in relation to me is quite different than one's standing before the cross. Enthroned on the cross, Jesus looks out at the multitude of humans who were and will be and sees so many folk who may or may not have any value to him at all. But inasmuch as he is properly human, while we are all deficiently human, his actions focus on what he is able to do for them, for the many, for all people. Human value comes to reside in what he does for others, giving value to each and every one of his sisters and brothers.

If the folks on wall street and in the occupy protests, and frankly all of us, could see that human value resides in the action and nature of God, we'd move a long ways from valuing each individual based on how how valuable their labour is.

Liturgy allows us to be fully human...

2011-11-12T05:49:00.001-08:00

In our desperate Western quest to understand we have too often relegated emotion to the periphery, turning it into the untethered conduit for sentimentality. This mistake has made us forget that the liturgy can bear and use all things human, including our emotion. A melody well sung, a harmony that unites the discordant singers, an 'amen' that crescendos a community into oneness and decrescendos into the still, small voice of God's presence - these all should evoke emotional response in the people. Worship must be aesthetically meaningful and rich in texture precisely so such an appropriate emotional experience might occur. Yielding to sentimentality is hopeless and ultimately meaningless. Worshipping without emotion equally so. The wisdom of the liturgy is that the fixed form and content, like a jazz standard, steer the community between Scylla's threat of novel nothingness and Charybdis' jaws of cold objectivity.

End Times, Autumn and waiting...

2011-11-11T14:55:00.001-08:00

The task of prayer is a task of grace. Grace towards oneself first. If we cannot be gracious enough to give ourselves time to hear, speak and pray the Word (and particularly the psalms) how can we give the time that is due to the children of God whom we meet on a day to day basis? Prayer and interpersonal grace go hand in hand since caring about the condition of others eventually softens the heart of the pray-er towards the pray-ee. Some people naturally have personalities that are caring towards others. For the rest of us, there is the discipline of waiting patiently and repetitively for the Word to work on our hearts.

Not even the son knows the day

2010-09-11T20:40:00.000-07:00

How should I know what is going to happen when even the Word doesn't?
I wish my anxiety were less than his.

Lectionary 16 - Year C

2010-07-21T14:42:00.000-07:00

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.”
Have you ever done that you thought was right, but it turned out that what you were doing was wrong all along?
When you did what was expected of you but it turned out you were misguided from the start?
Have you chosen between bad and worse, rather than bad and good?

Martha, Abraham and Sarah are in exactly such situations this morning.

The rub is that all three of them are doing what they are supposed to do, they are being hospitable. In the time of the patriarchs and the time of the our Lord’s life on earth, hospitality was one of the most important parts of life in the near east. To be a poor host or hostess was shameful and could even provoke violence. To be a poor guest was equally shameful, and, for nomads like the three divine visitors in the Genesis story, could mean losing a meal and having to go home a different way, quite a hassle in the days before interstates.
So, in both stories, our mothers and father in the faith launched into their duties. their responsibilities, so that they could be hospitable. The inhospitable one in the stories is Mary, who shirks her duties. Nobody likes a layabout.
Everybody can get behind being hospitable.

Except for Jesus.
Why is it that the eternal Word who formed us and this world out of the void and who was miraculously born of a virgin never seems to have the same expectations that we feeble humans have created for ourselves?
Rather than chastising Mary for her sloth and for being out of her place, Jesus, I imagine taking a deep sight, addresses Martha: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.”

In the midst of Martha’s distraction there is the only one thing that matters. The only one person who matters. In the midst of Sarah and Abraham’s hustle and bustle, there are only three divine ones who matter. One Trinity that matters.

Now, before we apply the sharp two edged sword of the Word to ourselves, we need to follow our ancestors a little further.

Sarah and Abraham probably sought a blessing, given how Abraham bows to this guests and refers to them as Lord, Kyrios. Unjaded by our materialism and atheistic worldview, angel visitors would not have been outside the realm of possibility for them. But Holy Mother Church teaches that indeed, whether in angel form or human form, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were the three guests lounging in the shade of the oak trees on that hot afternoon. They came not just with a promise of more sheep and more goats. God came with the promise of himself. The eternal Son received hospitality from his great-great-great... grandfather and the eternal Father promised that Abraham would be the father and Sarah the mother of the chose lineage.
How did Abraham and Sarah react to this promise, laughter, worry and distraction. Sarah, just a couple verses after our lesson ends, laughs on account of her age. Later on, distrusting the divine promise, Abraham sleeps with Haggai, begetting Ishmael. Their reaction to God’s gift is disbelief. Disbelief that they act on.

So it is with Martha also. She rushes to go about business as usual even though Jesus had already set his eyes towards Jerusalem. She set out host a great rabbi. Mary sat at the feet of the lamb who was about to be slain. Who knows exactly what Martha meant when she asked Jesus to chastise her lazy sister. Perhaps she just needed a helper. Perhaps she understood too well what Jesus was headed for, and wanted him to pause so that the cross would not loom so large over her home.

Now, blessedly, because God is faithful and merciful, all three of our protagonists finally “get it.” Sarah and Abraham do have Isaac, and in faith Abraham even takes Isaac to be sacrificed, before, of course, God provides the sacrifice. Martha, you’ll remember is the sister of Lazarus. And when he dies, she says to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” And then, when Jesus asks if she trusts that he is the “way the truth and the light,” she responds, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world."

All three, not by their own will or choice or actions, but by God’s patience and favor, come to see the goodness of Christ unfolding in the world.

So what about us, as we flounder in a world of worry and distraction? As we flounder in selves made of worry and distraction? This question is especially though for us since our individual and collective wills are misordered by sin. I know I’ve manufactured situations where I bad and worse were the only possible outcomes. I know our society has labored for goals, thinking them to be right, only to find out that we were misguided from the beginning.

St. Athanasius approaches our problem with this question that is insightful because it moves the focus from our problem to God’s response. He asks: “What was God to do in the face of the dehumanizing of humankind...”
To him, the worry and distraction of our human condition, even when we seeking the right and good, is dehumanizing. Made in our creator’s image in order to worship our creator we get distracted and cast our eyes onto worldly things. Like Abraham, Sarah, and Martha, we fail to see Christ right in front of us. We fail to see Christ dwelling in our neighbors. We turn away from the prospect of crosses.

But, you see it is only in Christ’s being one of us, by taking on our lot, by shattering the divide between creator and creation, that we are saved by God. The Trinity at Marme, shrouded in mystery, was just a glimpse, a shadow of the the real human baby who was to be born 1400 years later. But the messiah, that child who came into the world in Bethlehem and took his first step towards Jerusalem when he was young sojourning in Egypt as Abraham and Sarah had, that divine child in his body bore the remedy for our distraction. God became incarnate for the wondrous task of bring we who are incarnate, fleshy, into God.

And so, fellow Marthas and Abrahams and Sarahs, when we laugh or stand incredulous in the face of God’s promises, know that they are unfolding in spite of us. And know that you are beloved in spite of your defiant laughter and in spite of your Haggais and in spite of your poor dinner party etiquette, and in spite of the million other things that we exclude God from but put ourselves into. And know that your neighbor is beloved, and the person sitting next to your neighbor is beloved. And know that this is because Christ, who died a human death, has, in his humanity, risen to redeem all this world’s deaths, be they the daily ones we inflict on each other or the final ones that end our lives. Christ, who has been making promises for a long time, speaks the final word to you as he did to Mary, “ you have been given the better part, and it will not be taken from you.”
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Good Friday 2010

2010-04-06T14:56:00.000-07:00

Just last night our Lord Christ offered his true body and blood for us as a last will and testament that is designed to nourish us in our struggle with our own sin, the temptations of the father of lies, and the social sins that pervade everything about the cultures we create. Last night, Christ offered us the feast of paradise, a foretaste of the new Jerusalem's milk and honey.

But tonight, with Peter and the disciples, we turn away from Jesus, abandoning him as he is taken to his execution. Tonight, with Judas we betray our Lord to the powers that will condemn him and bring the prince of peace to death.

Tonight sisters and brothers, our wearied, fickle and selfish hearts are revealed on the cross. In the starkness of nails pounded through flesh and bone, in the sting of open wounds, in the belaboured breaths of the innocent lamb of God, all about us that chooses death over life, anger over love, destruction over creation is laid before us to see, plain as day.

Not the Jews of the Sanhedrin nor imperial Pilate are to blame, we are. With blessed Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we confess on this gruesome evening: "When the Church looks upon her people, she does not not see any cause for self-glorification."

The execution we remember tonight is so egregious, in fact, that we do not even need our experience to confirm our sin. Certainly as we meditate today we can all think of slights we've committed against others, greed which we've nourished, and care for self that we have elevated over care for others.

But we daren't turn our eyes onto ourselves tonight, lest we break our gaze on the crucified one. The crucified one whose heart beat more and more weakly with each passing moment. The crucified one who once smiled and laughed with the glee of a child. The crucified one who lifted his wine-filled glass with joy in Cana. The crucified one who ate by the lakeshore with the crowd, content with five loaves and five fish. The crucified one who calmed a terrible storm.
The crucified one who wept when his friend Lazarus died.

As saints baptized into his death we cannot take our eyes off the Lord as he hangs on the cross. Again, Pr. Bonhoeffer instructs us: "[the church's] members are not saints because they are without sin; their holiness is not the fruit of human endeavor but depends solely on God's action. The Church is therefore a community of sinners; she is a community of the godless, of people who are lost."

When we fix our eyes Jesus as he hangs on the cross, we fix our eyes on our holiness, on our reconciliation with each other, on our priest who sacrifices himself so that God will not turn the divine visage from us when we cry out to him. Rather, even as we gaze upon our dying Lord with eyes bloodshot by sin and senses dulled by self-love, God now turns his holy face towards us. No longer in anger at our war and inequity and blasphemy but with love. God the Father, who weeps in heavenly sorrow for the death of his beloved only Son, wipes the divine eyes and in the midst of tears begins to crack a smile - improbable though it is. A fragile smile that zeroes in on Jesus wounds, a tepid smile that cannot begin to convey the grief pervading the communion of the most holy and divine Trinity. But a smile nevertheless. A smile that knows the pain of humankind. A smile that grows as the divine visage begins to gaze upon not just the scene of an execution on a hillside in Roman Judea but upon all humankind, who live on earth and who rest in hades.

A smile that grows so that the attending seraphs lose track of their mournful song and stare in awe as God the Father almighty sees humankind anew, as he has not seen them since the very beginning, when his breath brought them up from the earth into his image. Before they believed the lies of the adversary. The Father's smile was not delusional but redemptive, for in his Son's death he saw his Son's love.

And so from the smiling Father's mouth a new song sounded forth: "Worthy is Christ the Lamb who was slain... power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and blessing and glory are his..." And the seraphs and cherubs and newly freed ancestors joined in this new melody so that all creation, even the depths of hell, began to harmonize this song of new life.

Tonight is indeed the death of the messiah, tonight all humankind has conspired to kill God. But let us not dare look on our own sin but rather keep our eyes fixed on Christ, for if we gaze on his wounds and on his lifeless eyes we will see through death into life. We will see through the frown of the executed and abandoned Son to see the smile of the loving Father who in the unity of the Holy Spirit will teach us to sing our part in the lamb's wedding song of paradise.

In the name of the forgiving Father, the wounded Son and the sustaining Holy Spirit. Amen.

Holy Thursday 2010

2010-04-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

What do you hunger for? What are you thirsty for? We all know the expression "I want it so bad I can taste it," so the question to night is what can you want so bad that you can taste it?

For some people, though probably few of us here, the answer this question is literal food and drink. For our sisters and brothers who are so impoverished that they do not have anything to eat that their bellies bloat their eyes sag, hunger and thirst for just basic foodstuffs and clean water that won't make them ill is a dominating part of their lives in a way that many of us have never known.
Now for we who have, at least temporarily, lest we idolise ourselves, mastered the soil and made of it a chemically induced year round cornucopia, we tend to make hunger and thirst abstract, though the move from physical want to spiritual and emotional want makes our hunger pangs no less painful than those who long for tangible nourishment.
We hunger for wholeness, we thirst for personal peace. We can taste having no more anxiety for love and care for. We hunger for the end to sadness and sorrow, we thirst so deeply for a release from death that we have created entire new scriptures telling us we'll never get old, just look at the magazine racks in the supermarket aisle.
We hunger for personal fulfillment, we thirst to be loved.

Now, sisters and brothers, to hunger, to thirst, is neither good nor bad. Often our deep desires are for the sake of our loved ones and neighbours, to want the best for a child, to cry when a parent has to move out of their home into assisted living, to mourn when a brother or sister can't pay their bills, these are compassionate hunger pangs.

The problem with our human hunger is that while we are good at experiencing lack, we are too often not good a satisfying our need. We run to an odd buffet when we are hungriest, whose dishes are not what they seem and whose salads have no leafy greens but only green, red and orange jello. We seek out foods that will fill us up but won't really nourish us.

It's easy to wonder as we sit here today if all the ills of our world and of our personal selves don't come from our misguided attempts to slake our thirst. War to fight off the hunger for security; misguided sexual desires to water the thirst for deep love; overspending to feed a sense of insignificance; selfishness to water our fear that there isn't enough stuff to go around.
Even king David, who could sing in psalm 42 "As a deer longs for waterbrooks so longs my soul for you, O God," had other thirsts, just ask Bathsheeba, and battle-stricken Uriah.
We do indeed come up with strange feasts, sisters and brothers, so great is the grip of our hunger and thirst.
Now, lest we get stuck in the mire of self tonight, as I suspect our Father Peter and our brother Judas did at the first great meal, we ought to turn our attention to what God hungers for.
God thirsts for much the same things we do, we are made in the divine likeness after all. Peace, mercy, compassion, love, fairness, everyone have what they need and no more.
Isaiah sings this song of God's hunger:

Let me sing for my beloved

my love-song concerning his vineyard:

My beloved had a vineyard

on a very fertile hill.

He dug it and cleared it of stones,

and planted it with choice vines;

he built a watch-tower in the midst of it,

and hewed out a wine vat in it;

he expected it to yield grapes,

but it yielded wild grapes.
The vineyard, which had been cared for and loved and blessed with the sweat of the vinedresser yielded wild grapes, unfit for eating, no good for making wine. The divine vinedresser, the prophet goes on to tell us:

expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
but heard a cry of anguish!

How hungry and thirst God is for our goodness. And how we have refused to offer him anything to eat or drink, sour grapes the best we can come up with.

And yet, to quench the divine thirst God has not, as we have, cast about to find substitutes for real drink, real food. No, looking upon the plight of humankind, looking upon the hunger that led us to eat of the first apple in the garden, looking upon the thirst that makes us delirious with sin, God established a new banquet. Unlike any other.

This banquet, spoken into existence by his son as a last will and testament given to the disciples and the Church, feeds us, quenches our thirst in a way unlike any other. For at this banquet we eat only food grown up from creation but rather we eat food that is the creator. When our Lord Jesus first took the loaf of bread and spoke, "this is my body," and when he took the cup of wine and said, "this is my blood, shed for you," he brought down the celestial feast and offered it to us here, to eat, to fill our gut. The true Body and Blood of Christ, in, with, and under simple bread and wine, feeds us by forgiving our sins, by cleansing us from all unrighteousness. The true Body and Blood of Christ, even in a simple setting like this, gives us a foretaste of the land without hunger, without thirst, when all the wants we have will be filled to overflowing with the presence of God in the new Jerusalem. When we will no longer have to turn to alien nourishment, but rather our stomachs will be full of good, sweet tasting food that never disappoints and our souls will be drunk with the wine of Christ's embrace.
Tonight, sisters and brothers, as we celebrate the foundation of this holy meal, let us give thanks that the host of this feast gives himself to us, God nourishing we weak humans with food that cannot fail to make us full and quench our thirst. Amen.

Epiphany and Doubt

2010-01-07T15:56:00.000-08:00

I'm finding myself increasingly interested in Atheism - academically, not religiously - and have come across these two tidbits in the last month:

The Atheism Tapes with Jonathan Miller

and

Doubt by Jennifer Michael Hecht

If you get netflix, you can watch the BBC series on demand.
What I've been finding so interesting is that I find myself agreeing very much with many of the views of the doubters, but not with their ultimate conclusion that there is no God. The other piece that interests me is the claim made by athiests that they are rational thinkers, or at least more rational than theists are. I tend to think that both history and experience show such assertions to be nonsensical. My experience is an anecdote, I was trained in the Church's educational system. Evolution, the geologic timescale, and Marx were all taught to me by the faithful, if not by the clergy themselves. On a more universal level, I can't find any evidence for the assertion that atheists or antitheists are somehow a more rational crowd than theists in any way. Zany knows no theology. More importantly, war knows no theology - while those engaging in warfare might espouse theologies the rationale for war lies solidly in the material: territory, money, ethnicity, a lover (Helen comes to mind). Atheism is no antidote for violence - indeed sience, athiesm's vaunted tool, has, at least in the last century, advanced our ability to make war, the hydrogen bomb physics' tower of Babel.

There's much more to be pondered on this day after Epiphany, when we celebrate the wise mens' visit to our Lord, but this is it for now...

Christmas Eve 2009

2009-12-24T21:16:00.000-08:00

Let us pray. O Holy Child, grant us sincere humility, even as You exalt us by calling us God's Children. Amen. (TLSB)

This, the 2009th year of our Lord has not been an easy one for many of us. Whether our concerns and anxieties have been economic, familial, vocational, or spiritual, the winding down of this year and this decade evokes not simply the mirth of Christmas but the sighs and sorrows of deaths, lost opportunities, personal failures, dashed hopes, fractured relationships and all the other particular ways in which our old Adams and Eves seek to be cast out of God's presence yet again. Sad though it is, Christmastime does not erase the many and varied ills of our lives. And while, I admit with some shame, I am wont to tear up when I hear the line from "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" which goes:

From now on, our troubles will be out of sight...

I know that this sentiment is simply and sadly a pipe dream. I have wounded people and have wounds myself that cannot be bandaged by a Santa hat.

This is not a cheery way to begin a Christmas meditation, but what a wondrous thing that God confronts us this night, we who deal in sin and the wages of death every day, what a wondrous thing that tonight God confronts us with a baby. With a holy family, a man far from his home, a woman in the last moments of pregnancy, and finally with their child. And, by confronting us with this holy child God proclaims the redemption, healing and reconciliation of humankind.

What an absurd thing.

As contemporary Americans, we're trained to expect results. Now. As people who are living through recession we are being trained to not be lavish with our expectations, because they'll probably come to naught anyways. I wonder if our contemporary experience is unwittingly training us to be innkeepers, who haven't the space, time, or compassion to be hospitable to pregnant woman, weary man or lowly newborn.

What, after all, does this newborn accomplish?

The brokenness of our experience indicates that he may in fact accomplish nothing. Or perhaps the infant's only job is inspire within people the urge to try to be warm and outgoing for the four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas day.

Meditating on this quandary, Fr. Luther asserts:

The Christian faith is foolishness. It says that God can do anything and yet makes Jesus so weak...

Foolishness, we're spending an hour and half celebrating foolishness tonight sisters and brothers. Blessed foolishness. Divine foolishness. Foolishness that looks upon the muddled mess of humanity and proclaims with angelic strains:

Glory to God in the Highest Heaven and on earth peace among those whom he favours.

Foolishness that chose humble Bethlehem rather than mighty Jerusalem. Foolishness that looks upon the sin of the world and offers a babe. To our eyes God's ways are foolish. God does not get the job done the way we might want him to. But get the proverbial job done God does. Himself. Tonight of all nights we are invited to ponder most intimately the mystery of the Holy and Blessed Trinity, to wonder at the fact that God the Father in heaven sent God the Son to be born of Mary by the power of God the Holy Spirit. And while space may appear to separate the three persons, they are yet one in nature and bound by love so deep that it defies human sensibilities.

God, the eternal Word of the Father is born for us.

What an absurd thing.

That God can defy the laws of physics as we describe them, sure. But that God does so for us? Amazing. Have you met us? Have you wondered at whether we even are redeemable? And if we were redeemable shouldn't we be so through some program of self-improvement. Shouldn't God want us to be getting better all the time?

But God's answer is a baby. God's answer is his own divine self laid in a manger, no crib for his bed. No wetnurse. No heat. No painkillers for the holy Virgin.

A baby. Born in a cave-stable, anticipating his cave-tomb. God looks at our human woes and sends us a baby. Sends us a lowly Lord. Sends us our Christ. And by his birth we see that our redemption comes not by our willpower or strength or righteousness or any amount of bootstrap-pullin' but by God's weakness, self-sacrifice, humility, and littleness. Father Bonhoeffer meditated on this mysterious reality as he languished in a Nazi prison cell during Christmastime in 1943:

That misery, suffering, poverty, lowliness, helplessness and guilt look very different to the eyes of God from what they do to man, that God should come down to the very place which men usually abhor, that Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn - these are things which a prisoner can understand better than anyone else.

While Father Bonhoeffer was in literal prison, what enlightening words these are too all humankind as we languish in the prison of sin. God's ways are not our ways. They are infinitely more gracious and infinitely more compassionate. Listen as Father Luther unfolds Bonhoeffer's thought:

The Kingdom of Christ is a proclamation of peace and grace, as the angels sang that he should be the Saviour of the whole world to free his people and save them from their sins. That he has done and still is doing. He is not the sort of Lord who fights with the sword... this is a fair, dear, and precious assurance to troubled and tormented consciences laden with sins, that to them and to us all a Child is born who will rule and vindicate, who will help, and not destroy...

A baby, a fair, dear and precious baby who brings peace and grace. Who by his birth filled in the chasm dividing God from humankind. Who by his birth dismissed the angels who guard paradise with fiery swords. Who by his birth shows us the foolishness of our ways and the wisdom of God.

Tonight, sisters and brothers, I hope we will be awash in Christmas cheer. God knows we need it. But when we get into our cars and drive home and as the days pass and the cares and concerns of life again make it so there is no room at our inns for the Christ child, may we all take a deep breath and luxuriate in the manger. Luxuriate in the promises of God fulfilled. Luxuriate even though it is cold in the cave and even though Mary and Joseph are scared. Luxuriate with the only ones who consented to be present, the smelly livestock and rank shepherds. Let us luxuriate in the presence of God become human, for reality is not what we see each day, not what we do, not what we earn, not what we fail to do, not how we are seen by mundane eyes. No. Reality is a baby. Born in the cold in Bethlehem. Born for me, born for you. Born for all humankind.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Advent 2, 2009

2009-12-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

Prepare the way of the Lord... more than just a song from Godspell, this word spoken first by Holy Isaiah and echoed by the forerunner cuts to the heart of what it means for us to be disciples of our incarnate Lord.

Now, as Lutherans, we are unwilling, like so many of our sisters and brothers in the Church, to simply assign an ethical meaning to this command. Rather, the call sounding forth from the Baptist's mouth this morning is the summation of the Old Testament, the last prophetic word spoken by the last of the prophets. For what is the scriptural record of the Old Testament if not a preparation for God's breaking, physically, into this world? What are all the paths walked by our ancestors if not the path to Bethlehem?

Abram and Sarai were called to walk a windy path from Chaldea, Iraq, to the Holy Land.
Joseph's path began in a pit and led to Egypt.
Moses, Aaron and the Israelite host wandered along their path for 40 years.
Ruth and Naomi walked the path from Moab to Jerusalem.
Elijah ran and hid in Aram, Syria.
David wandered from the sheepfold to the citadel of the Lord in Jerusalem.
After the exile, Ezra and Nehemiah came to the home of their ancestors from far off Susa, the capitol of Imperial Persia.
Even the holy family had to make the trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

In all they did, these mothers and fathers of ours, prepared the way of the Lord.

Not by being good people. Abram failed to trust God and had a child by his servant-girl. Moses failed to trust God and wasn't allowed into the promised Land. The Israelites cast a golden calf to worship. Naomi seduced Boaz in the stillness of the night. David had Uriah killed so he could sleep with Bathsheba. And on and on.

No, this dubious pack of liars, cheats, misfits and opportunists prepared the way of the Lord by the Lord's fiat, by the Lord's Word. In a very real way our ancestors in the scriptures are more important for the promises that God made to them rather than how they responded to the promises.

So it is also with our mothers and fathers in the ends times of the Church. The moral and practical lessons taught us by generations past are largely fine and good for our daily living. But more important is the baptismal covenant that God made with them and, through them, has made with us. In a very literal way, our parents prepared the way of the Lord by bringing us to the Font, where we were baptised not just for repentance but for new life. Hear Origen, third century teacher of the Church:

Coming down and rushing in full flood is the river of God, the Lord our Savior, in whom we were baptized. This is the real, life-giving water, and the sins of those baptized in it are forgiven.

What an odd way to prepare... to hear, to receive. To dwell in the unfolding of God's Kingdom. Fr. Luther is so plain the catechism as he discusses the petition 'your kingdom come:'

The kingdom of God comes indeed without our prayer, of itself; but we pray in this petition that it may come unto us also.

It's almost as if God has his own absolute plan that is unfolding that embraces all people and redeems all sin and will make whole every broken part of us. It's almost as if God's grace is bigger than we are. It's almost as the path is being made straight and level and smooth before us. Of course, don't trust my whimsy, let's listen to the Holy Forerunner again:

...all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

Saint John the Baptist echoes the words of Simeon, whose song we sing after receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord, ' My eyes have seen the salvation which God has prepared in the sight of every people...'

Sisters and brothers, as we wait this Advent for our Lord's return, we wait as people on the path prepared by God himself. Now, our humanity does have a nasty habit of straying from the path, it is true and lamentable that we seek to forge our own ways through the thickets of lust and greed and untruth and lack-of-trust. But God has even prepared ways back from such wanderings, through the sacrament of confession and absolution - as your Pastor it is profound and humbling to speak God's words of forgiveness - and through the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which is itself given for the forgiveness of sins. In these last days, it is the spoken Word, that leads us along the royal highway, even back up its steep banks when we fall off the sides.

And so, if the path of our most ancient ancestors was towards the humble stable in Bethlehem, and if our Lord's path was towards the cross, then is our path not ultimately leading towards the new Jerusalem? The words of T.S. Eliot ring true for us:

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

With the drawing of the Holy Trinity's perfect love and the calling of the Word made Flesh we will, sisters and brothers, we will, with eyes to see, gaze on the paradise of our first parents, but remade. No longer watered by the four rivers but watered by the living water that flows from the throne of God. No longer confused by the slithering of the serpent but adorned by the snaking throngs of the redeemed bringing the wealth of the nations into the Kingdom. No longer lit by the star around which we orbit but basking in the light and warmth of the only Son.

The path is made straight, let us rejoice. Let us see that is not our steps that prepare the way but rather that the way is prepared for us, and God has a destination in mind.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

First Sunday of Advent, 2009

2009-12-02T18:02:00.000-08:00

Jesuit theologian from the last century Pierre Teilhard de Chardin offers us this insightful reflection as we enter upon our Advent journey:

Expectation - anxious, collective and operative expectation of an end of the world... - that is perhaps the supreme Christian function and the most distinctive characteristic of our religion. Historically speaking, that expectation has never ceased to guide the progress of our faith like a torch... We persist in saying that we keep vigil for the Master. But in reality, we should have to admit, if we were sincere, that we no longer expect anything.

Is Fr. de Chardin to harsh. Do we expect God's return soon? Or do we go about our daily lives no longer expecting anything? I think the response to Fr. de. Chardin's assertion is a complicated one, but I do think that we lack the fervor of our mothers and fathers in the faith. Unlike St. Paul, I don't tend to pray that my beloved ones will be:

...blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.

Nor is my prayer life ultimately guided by our Lord's admonition that we:

...be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place and to stand before the Son of Man.

I tend to pray for more immediate things. "God, look after so and so. Lord forgive me for the sin I committed earlier today. Jesus, help me to be more humble." Et cetera. Going deeper than my prayer life, I worry that my actions bespeak my blase outlook. Have you ever been engaging in something you know to be wrong and wondered, "What if Jesus show's up now?" Have you ever been in the midst of sin that you know is offensive to God our Father wondered what the divine mind must be thinking of you? I have. Could it be that I no longer expect anything? Have I lost my will be a vigil-keeper? Have I become a foolish virgin, who will not "my lamp with gladness take" when the bridegroom comes?

Perhaps. Though I pray not. Fr. de. Chardin is correct that the expectation of our Lord's return is the torch that leads the Church through the night of this world. The Light of Christ is a light that draws us forward in time, towards the day, towards the end, towards the Advent of the only Son of God who will come again to judge the living and the dead.

So what does this mean? Simply we can take our Lord's admonitions to mean simply, "Stop!"
Stop sinning. Stop loving material things more than God. Stop being so selfish, thinking you know best for the world. Stop treating your neighbors as though they bear no reflection of the image of God.

Now, all these things are true. The law commands us to stop our sinning so that we may increase and abound in love, so that our hearts may be strengthened in holiness.

But we're not very good at stopping. The devil cut the brake lines back in the garden, and first gear will only slow us down so much. Our human capacity to be good is severely limited, in spite of the message of all the feel-good movies of Christmastime. Indeed, Christmastime highlights so many of our less-than-holy qualities, consumer lust, gluttony, and desire. Even more insipidly, Christmastime can highlight the losses and broken relationships in our lives, a absent family member, a meal that devolves into argument rather than fellowship.

We're not good at stopping, sisters and brothers. We're content to leave our lamps dry of oil. In too many ways, we have come to no longer expect anything.

But in the midst of our lack of expectation, Jesus' return is immanent. Close at hand. Indeed, every Sunday Jesus' returns to be grasped in our hands, in a preview of "the day" Christ is present every Sunday, his flesh and blood given for us to eat. In a very real way we:

... go until the halls we view where you have bid us dine with you.

in a very real way, in the Lord's Supper, Jesus comes with all his saints. We feast with them. We join in one worship with the faithful departed along with all the Church throughout the world. And we do so at the Lord's behest. We come to share in the proto-apolcalypse of the supper not because we are worthy to, or because we have stopped sinning but because Christ the physician commands us to. He shatters the division between the created order and the divine order and he judges us worthy to receive him based on his own merits, not based on ours. We are "well prepared," as Fr. Luther says in the catechism, when we " believe these words 'for you' and 'for the forgiveness of sins.' We are worthy of a glimpse and taste of Christ's return when we trust his word, his Word, which will not pass away even when we don't trust.

So, our Lord comes, Eucharist after Eucharist, offering himself, giving forgiveness freely to we his alternately expectant, alternately non-expectant sisters and brothers. Our Lord comes as our affections wax and wane. Our Lord comes as he came 2000 years ago, creator into the creation, for us.

As we walk through Advent this year, may we seek forgiveness when our steps on the way of discipleship falter. May we give God thanks when our steps are true, and God's will is done. And most of all, may we expect. May we we expect the return of our Lord, who may come at any time, but who in the meanwhile has a standing date with we, his bride, every week, here at the altar.

Amen.

Thanksgiving Eve 2009

2009-11-25T17:13:00.001-08:00

Anybody who has ever been responsible for another person in their life knows that our Lord's advice:

‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear."

is bunk! Whether we're democrats, republicans, greens, independents or whatever, the foundation of our American economy is worrying about what we will eat, drink, wear, where we will live, how we will get from home to work to school and back. Insipidly, worry, or incentive, dominates our work lives and assigns monetary values to our decisions and skills and labour.

In a more familiar way, worry bonds us to our dependents and partners. Anyone who has spent a sleepless night on account of the illness of a child or spouse or parent knows that worry is the fiercest weapon of fate, against which there is no shield that can defend from anxiety, doubt and fear. In this case, to worry is to enveloped with care for another.

Worry is a part of human life. Worry is one of the constants that defines who we are because we all do it. To worry is human, and according to our text tonight, to be blase is divine.

Or is it?

How much of a worrier was Jesus? He was certainly worried with the well-being of others. He healed, he rescued, he fed. Clearly Jesus was concerned with the fate of his fellow human beings. As he continues in his teaching tonight, he moves very quickly from advice, or indeed, command, directed towards us to description, description of how his Father views our worry.

...indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things...

Look at the flowers, look at the birds, they don't worry and yet they have enough.
Except, of course, for when they don't. For we who live on the fringe of the desert know that sometimes the rains don't come and if we travel out the state poppy preserve there will be no brilliant orange landscape gracing the desert floor. We who live in a post DDT America know that the eagles out on Catalina didn't lay eggs. We who live in the midst of this recession know that God's goodwill doesn't pay the rent, when the checking account is empty and the first of the month rolls around.

Is our Lord taunting us when when commands:

...you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?”

Is Jesus giving us a command we can never fulfill? If so, surely that's unkind at best and sociopathic at worst.

I've certainly failed at not worrying. I've certainly failed in having the radical trust demanded by the one true God.
But what if Jesus isn't simply giving us advice? What if he's not chastising we who were raised by dark Northern European, people who loved the films of Bergman and Rohmer, who are chronically early, who were ashamed by B+'s in school, whose natural instinct in times of trial is to go rigid and start to worry about something?

What if rather than giving us advice he's teaching us about ourselves and about God?

Sisters and brothers, on the eve of the national day of Thanksgiving, there is, on a practical level, a lot to be worried about in the world. Maybe a beloved one is sick, maybe your soul is hurting, maybe there isn't as much family as there used to be for supper tomorrow night, maybe a friendship has ended, a job has been lost, a company gone bust. Some of us embrace worry and others take it stride. But left to our own devices, the danger we face is that we will collectively break the first commandment and only see the world on this practical, worrisome level.

Tonight, our Lord Christ calls us to eyes to see the alternate reality, that God is good and God's incarnation has made it so there is, in the truest sense, nothing to worry about anymore. St. Mary the Virgin, mother of God, sang this tension: God has cast the mighty from their thrones and he has lifted up the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty. Mary could never have been anything more than poor to middle class, yet she knew that the incarnate one flipped the reality of this world on its head. Mighty Herod may have built the great temple in Jerusalem, but it was thrown down by the Romans, but the temple of our Lord Jesus Christ's body was rebuilt in three days.

There is nothing to worry about. Our broken relationships, which sting so badly now will be mended by the one who is love itself. Our battered souls will be made whole by the one who breathed the Spirit into the dust. Our tired bodies will be made new by the one whose own body bore wounds but no longer felt pain. Our anxious pocketbooks will be put to rest by the one who redeemed even tax collectors.

Hear the prophet Joel again:

I will repay you for the years
   that the swarming locust has eaten,
the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter,
   my great army, which I sent against you.

²⁶You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,
   and praise the name of the Lord your God,
   who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame.
²⁷You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel,
   and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other.
And my people shall never again
   be put to shame.

Tomorrow, as we collectively give thanks, may our hearts have mundane pleasures to ease the woes of this life and to bring smiles to our faces. But more deeply, may we, who are in the midst of a worrisome world remember that God is responsible for us and that even though Jesus was only one individual, he embraced all humankind in his birth, death and resurrection. God is responsible for us, for you. Worry not, we may not always see how our Father in heaven provides for us here, but our lives are founded in God's promise, not in the world's finitude. We are beloved by God more than any of his creatures and divine grace overflows, in God's time turning promise into paradise.

Have a happy Thanksgiving tomorrow.
Amen.

Festival of Christ the King, 2009

2009-11-23T17:45:00.001-08:00

Today Samuel Newton will hear the the promise of God with his name attached to it. In fact, more than just hearing the promise of God with his name attached to it, Samuel will be transformed by the promise of God as the Triune name is spoken and water is poured over him. Fr. Luther explains:

Baptism works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.

Note some things here: Baptism does not symbolise the forgiveness of sins. Baptism does not give one the opportunity to be delivered from death and the devil. Baptism does not start one on the path to salvation. No.

Baptism works, delivers, and gives. The promises made to Samuel today are true and are powerful because God is Truth and because Christ is Lord.

As if one divine promise isn't good enough, Samuel will hear another, as he is sealed with the Holy Spirit and blessed with oil that our lord bishop set aside during Holy Week for those entering the Church.

And as if two divine promises aren't enough for one morning, Samuel is going to hear his name attached to a third promise when Marybeth and Damien bring him up to receive the Holy Supper for the first time today, and he will hear the words "Samuel, this is the blood of Christ, shed for you." The blood of Christ which we know, because our Lord told us, forgives sins.

So today, Samuel receives a three-for-the-price-of-one outpouring of the grace of God for him. For him. Take note, as we celebrate these sacraments today Samuel's individual, existential reality is going to be changed as the the universal promises of God are proclaimed particularly for him. And the great part is, he will have nothing to do with this existential change. Samuel's only contribution to the morning's celebration is to look cute, and maybe pee, and maybe fuss is things go too long - and, while peeing on Satan is a noble gesture, it does not earn salvation before the most high God.

Sisters and brothers, the amazing reality of our faith is that we are the objects of God's promises. So, while we are explicitly named and changed and forgiven and delivered and given life by the holy sacraments, they aren't all about us. They're about God and what God is really doing for us.

Of course it's hard to see what God is doing sometimes. There are plenty of us who are baptized and have been forgiven our sins, delivered from death and devil and granted eternal salvation who look and seem and act as though none of these things are true. Who daily, through our actions, deny that God even exists. In fact, if we were to poll the room, each and every one of us falls into this category, we all fit into the demographic of those who are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. St. Augustine makes this point:

Though created by the true God, everyone born of the corrupt and accursed stock of Adam is of the world.

To our everyday eyes, the world looks as it did to Procurator Pilate, who could not fathom that our Lord Christ could be King of another realm. Pilate's mundane blinders kept him from seeing the deepest reality that Christ was not king of the Jews but king of the world, the Pantocrator, ruler of all. Pilate whose deaf ears could not hear the truth that Jesus of Nazareth is the firstborn of the dead, not a petty claimant of Pilate's power.
In the midst of our lives and our failures and our brokeness, it's easy to feel like the promises God makes to us are nothing but quaint fictions created by the Church to give us just enough umph to get through lives in which toil and woe often out-compete joy and gladness. Alternately, if we conjure up the willpower to believe that God does exist and does actually make gracious promises to humankind, it's all too easy to think that those promises apply to others but not to me personally.
In the face of such doubt, trust in God is not a straightforward proposition. Trust in the one who was and who is and who is to come isn't our default position.

But thanks be to our Father, to our Brother, his Son, and to the Holy Spirit that God's default position is keeping the divine promise. We experience this gracious outpouring of God's trust sacramentally, even though our names will only be attached to the promise of God in the water-washing and oil-anointing once, we come back every week to hear that Christ's true Body and precious blood are given and shed "for you". And you, and you, and you, and you to forgive your sins again and again and again.

Every week we approach the altar, in the midst of our sins and our subjective attempts at repentance, and we hear the words of Christ, who:

loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father...

So, as we celebrate the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Eucharist today, as we welcome Samuel into the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, let us give thanks that Christ our King has given us ears to hear his voice - and that his voice is active, proclaiming and working divine favor in us, even when we don't want to hear it. Again, St. Augustine explains:

For so has God snatched us from the powers of darkness, and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved Son: that kingdom of which he said: My kingdom is not of this world; my kingly power does not come from here.

Today Jesus welcomes Samuel into paradise. Today Jesus shares the meal of which the saints already partake around the throne of God. Today Jesus defeats Satan, Hell, and sin. For you.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Te Deum Laudamus

2009-11-11T11:58:00.000-08:00

This hymn comes to us from at least the 5th Century, and is mentioned by St. Caesarius of Arles in AD 498 as being used by in worship by the monks at Lerins, on the Mediterranean coast of France. The 5th Century was a turbulent time in Western Europe, as the last vestiges of Roman civilization slipped away. Part of the turbulence within the Church at the time was the conflict between catholic Christians and Arian Christians, the latter believing that Jesus was the first and greatest of God's creatures, while not being God himself. In this context, hymns addressing Christ flourished in the catholic community. The Te Deum, with its wonderful Trinitarian affirmations as well as the touching description of St. Mary's pregnancy with our Lord in verse eight, has spread from its turbulent beginnings to be used throughout the Church - by monastic communities and secular congregations alike. Fr. Luther translated the hymn into German in 1529, however Lutherans continued to sing the hymn in Latin for centuries after the reformation. Our version of the hymn in Evangelical Lutheran Worship is set to the tune of Henry Lawes, who lived in England in the 17th century. As a liturgical composer, his talents were out of favor during the Puritan Commonwealth, but when the Church of England was restored, he wrote an anthem for the coronation of King Charles II.

The text lends itself to use at the end of the Church year because of the eschatological (having to do with the end times) themes it lifts up. Verse seven begins the theme: "You Christ, are the king of glory, the eternal Son of the Father." We're reminded that the hymn was originally written in a community that wanted to defend the divinity of Christ. We also confess that Jesus is the King of kings. The following verses unfold the significance of this title. Jesus "took flesh to set us free;" "overcame the sting of death;" and "opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers." Jesus will "come again to be our judge." Here we see how the incarnation of Christ has meaning that is not simply limited to his ministry on earth, but how his life, death and resurrection have both cosmic and immanently personal ramifications. The actions of our Lord are shown to be freeing, though his role of judge of humankind is not diminished. Rather, his grace is lifted up, as it is made clear that his payment, on humankind's behalf, satisfies his righteous judgment. The final petitions, "Come then Lord, and help your people, bought with the price of your own blood, and bring us with your saints to glory everlasting," reinforces this truth. Jesus, in a happy exchange, pays for the sin of humankind in his death so that we will be judged not according to our own actions but according to his. Sinful humankind will be judged as good as the King of glory since the King was willing to be judged as sinful humankind.

As we approach the beginning of the third millenium of the end times, the time after Jesus' resurrection, we do well to remember that God is gathering humankind to himself. As we sing the Te Deum Laudimus, we can trust in God's gracious action in Jesus Christ, by which the angels, saints, martyrs, apostles, and prophets are already worshiping around the throne of God in the Kingdom of Heaven. As we sing this ancient hymn, which our mothers and fathers sang before us on earth, we join in the celestial praise, mingling our voices with the host arrayed in white, sending up one song to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Caesarius of Arles

Pentecost 23/Third-Last Sunday of the Year B

2009-11-10T08:08:00.001-08:00

When we hear God's demands, we are driven to despair by our helplessness. We see this in the Story of Elijah and the widow.

Elijah made two demands as he encountered the widow.

'Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.’
‘Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.’

Can you imagine the look on the widow's face when she heard him? I'm surprised that her outburst in response was so measured.
The prophet of God addressed her want, resignation and certain death with a demand for food, for himself.

She replied:

‘As the Lord your God lives, 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.’

We might think of her emphatically saying:

"As the Lord your God, your meddling God who has caused this drought just because he's angry with your King Ahab, who just happens to have married our princess from Sidon Jezebel, as your God who is rash and brash and meddling and vindictive, as your God lives, I have nothing left for my son and I, so we will eat our last meal, lay ourselves down and starve."

Given the widow's response, according to today's therapeutic logic, how easy it is to judge Elijah as selfish, as failing to walk with the widow, as callous. Oughtn't he have commiserated with her? Oughtn't he have helped her find food? Oughtn't he have defied God and spoken out so that the drought that was causing so much misery would end?

His demand brought only sorrow, sorrow unto death, to the woman. Furthermore, Elijah's God seemed pretty shabby, capricious, jealous, and unfeeling, in the midst of Elijah's demands. After all, it was God who had declared the drought.

God's demands drive humankind to despair because in the midst of our human brokeness and our society's complexity and our individual sinfulness we are so often hapless when called upon to be saviors to our neighbors and cold when asked to love those whom God has placed in our lives. Even the most exemplary saints have been riddled with doubt, hear the words of blessed Teresa of Calcutta, who herself lived through the terrible famine in Bengal in 1946-47, in which 2 million people died:

Where is my faith? Even deep down ... there is nothing but emptiness and darkness ... If there be God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul ... How painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal, ... What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.

God's demand to love our neighbors, God's demand to follow the divine will, bring us, even the most faithful, low.

Thank God that we are always given a promise after a divine demand. Elijah spoke the promise to the :

'For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.’

In a single sentence Elijah passes on the word from God that starvation will not be the final judgment for the widow, her son, and her household. Death's power is snatched away with a promise. A fantastic promise, there was nothing magical about her particular jar of meal or her particular jug of oil. They simply were changed because God's promise was attached to them.

So why is it that promises always follow demands?
Why doesn't God just give us the promise in the first place? Why does God either allow or create woe and then have the gall to demand honest, fair and just behavior from us in the midst of it?

Why is the world so complicated we often don't even know what the best way to do good is?

Sisters and brothers, we can answer these questions by getting angry with God. As blessed Teresa cried out so can we. As our Lord called out so can we, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!" "How long will these bones which you have crushed be out of joint?"

But to get lost in such anger, while a temptation, is not an option for we who walk on the way. The widow's actions are instructive for us. Upon hearing Elijah's demand for water, she went to get him some. In the middle of a withering drought. It was only when he asked for a cake that she responded with despair.

We too must seek soothing water for our neighbors, even when we are overwhelmed, even when our own sin is calling us to self-satisfaction. Even when we're angry at God for the challenges and hardships of our lives. Such is Christian discipleship in this world that is, frankly, made complicated by human actions. Remember that it as King Ahab whose antagonizing compelled God to call the drought, and what was Ahab's sin? Idolatry and warfare. Just like his king-fathers going back to Jeraboam, who led the civil war of Israel against Judah, and back to David himself who, for the sake of lust had poor Uriah killed in battle.
We make the world a rough and tumble place. Not God.

Precisely because humankind is a live and let die community God does intrude with demands and promises. Demands that we let live and promises that he will let us live even after all our failures. Here again the widow is instructive. She did not offer a great show of loyalty to Elijah. She did not make any great claim of faithfulness, saying that she would get him water and was sure that her god would provide for her. No, she complained. But God made a promise to her through Elijah anyways. She resigned herself and her household to death but God made a promise that gave her life through limitless meal and oil. Not because she trusted, not because she earned it, not because she even wanted it.

God made the promise to give life because that's what God does.
God provides. God gives freely. God gives life to the dead.

Will the world, as we experience it from day to day, continue to be a place of drought and famine? Yes. Will the world continue to be a place of inequalities and sinfulness? Yes. Will we as humans continue to choose strife and idols over the peace of God that passes all understanding? Lamentably yes.

But while the world is and will continue to be all these things, we know that there is a world yet to come. We know that the beginning of the end happened 2000 years ago as our Lord hung on the cross, for God, like the new testament widow had given "everything she had, all she had to live on,’literally in the Greek 'holon ton bion,' Christ gave his whole life.
And so while our world may not be too different from the violent, misguided and hungry world of Elijah, we know it's coming to a close. And we know that on the other side of that close is the promised new Jerusalem.

In two weeks, we will witness something similar to what the widow witnessed in our story. When Samuel Newton is baptized, we'll hear a promised attached to the water at the font. We'll hear how this promise is going to give the gift of new life, of redemption. It's a promise that won't fail. And unlike the jar of meal and jug of oil, which only flowed freely while the famine lasted, the that promise spoken, as by God's own self, is eternal. A promise that will not just care for us in the changes and chances of this world, but will carry and care for us in the next world, when we shall sit at the banquet table with holy Elijah, with the widow, her son, and her household, and we will feast at the meal that will have no end, for we will celebrate the wedding of the lamb to his church for ever, world without end. Amen.

All Saints 2009

2009-11-02T11:05:00.000-08:00

Jesus cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come out!

Deep in the dark of the cave-tomb Lazarus lie in the sleep of death until he heard this loud cry, this very same voice that had thundered over the waters at creation, making, those aeons ago, the very stone of Lazarus tomb itself. The voice of the Word called into the tomb and beckoned four-days-dead Lazarus out of death into life, out of darkness into light. With this loud cry, our Lord enfleshed the words of St. John the Divine at the beginning of his gospel account:

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Jesus shone in the darkness of Lazarus' death, in the darkness of Mary's grief over the loss of her brother, in the midst of the devil's reign over frail humanity through death's destructive event. And so compelled by the Word, Lazarus got up and walked into the light of Christ, the bright light of the morning star that outshone even the noonday sun.

And yet in the crowd who watched Lazarus walk into the morning star's light, there were those who chose to turn their eyes away from the divine radiance, prefering the shadows of the world. Again, as St. John reminds us:

...the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.

Lazarus walked from the pitch black of death into the shadows of a cosmos yet entangled in death, gloom and sin. His resurrection, as we know, would therefore be temporary, though the loud cry beckoned unto him he yet was in bondage to the wage of sin. Indeed, our Lord himself would, soon after this, find himself in bondage to the wage of sin. The sinless one himself was called into the courts of power, to stand before the Roman Procurator Pilate and to hear his own death sentence. Darkness could not abide the light. And so the morning star carried the tree of the cross up to Golgotha and he who had created the heavens and the air was hoisted up into them, his lifeblood falling back down to earth, the only human ever who could pay the debt of our ancestors' sin.

And just before the morning star ceased to shine, he cried out with a loud voice a second time:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.

As this voice thundered, it wrought destruction:

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.

It seemed that the darkness had overcome the light. But Satan was blinded by his vanity, he had fooled himself into thinking that raw power could quench the "splendor of light eternal and sun of righteousness." Evil always turns to power in the face of the light's humility. As brothers, sisters, servants and slaves of the one who "disperses the gloomy clouds of light and death's dark shadow puts to flight," we are called always choose meekness over domination, humility over strength, neighbor over self.

St. John Chyrsostom crystalizes this call as he eulogizes martyrs killed in Antioch during his time as Bishop:

The sky, decorated as it is with the chorus of stars, is not as brilliant as the bodies of martyrs, decorated with their brilliant chorus of wounds.

Thus is the discipleship of we who embrace the light. To be martyrs, witnesses, to the crucified one, shown forth by wounds inflicted by the world as we act on on behalf of our neighbors. If the world looks at us and sees no chorus of wounds then we must ask the question: How are we walking in the light?

Blessed Bishop John and so many of our forebears in the truth insisted that we can know that death has lost its sting precisely because Christians willingly embrace it, knowing it to not be the end. As we celebrate all the saints who have gone before us into the Church Triumphant today, we reaffirm this truth. Death, even though Satan and the world would have us believe it, is no end at all but rather the beginning of life eternal. Again, St. John the Silvertongued teaches so brightly:

Christ took death and converted it, and through it, led us back to heaven.

Or rather, will bring heaven back to us. We who struggle daily to walk humbly as our Lord did rely on his incessant gifts of grace. Walking the path of martyrdom is not easy and we stumble as we walk, we stumble badly, failing to witness to Christ through our unloving and misguided actions. Our nature keeps us stumbling off the narrow path into Lazarus' stony tomb.

But the light never ceases to shine. The chorus of stars makes its way about the universe such that the Morning Star himself must rise. Indeed, rise he did, beckoned from his tomb by the everlasting Father, the almighty one. And the same loud voice which called into Christ's tomb will out unto us at the last day:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

In this third time that the loud voice cries out, there will be no more death. For this proclamation announces that God in his fullness is coming to dwell with humankind. Unlike our brother Lazarus, we do not have to drag our dead and bandaged bodies into the light. The light will come to us:

the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

The loud voice of God, which cried out in the darkness will banish darkness forever. Satan will have no more power on which to rely. The saints from every age will stream into the city of God to bask in the light of the risen Son of God and will join in the wedding feast of eternity, our debts paid, our shadows enlightened and our very being enlivened beyond the grasp of death.

Come out, sisters and brothers, Christ calls us to the feast.

Amen.

Ascension Sermon

2008-05-05T12:05:00.000-07:00

There's nothing new under the sun sisters and brothers, and that being the case I thought we might go backwards before we go forwards this morning. In this case we go back to the story of Elijah and Elisha, which lives way back in the Second Book of the Kings. Recall the story if you can. Elijah, a powerful prophet in the time of King Ahab of Israel, who gave the starving widow the jar of meal and jug of oil that did not run out during the long drought? The one who defeated all the prophets of Baal in a 'whose God's more powerful contest'. Now, God had, in divine wisdom, decided that Elijah would not be subject to physical death, but rather would be taken up into the heavens in a whirlwind. So, on the appointed day, as Elijah and his disciple Elisha were walking along, Elijah told Elisha to basically run off so that the whirlwind could take him up to the heavens. But Elisha refused to run off, not once but three times. So, I imagine somewhat exasperated, Elijah said to Elisha, 'Look, you've proven your faithfulness and your ability to be a prophet of yahweh, tell me what I can do for you before God calls me away.' In response to this offer, Elisha asks 'Give me a double portion of your spirit, your pneuma in the greek of the Septuigint!' Elijah responded, 'Watch me as I am being taken from you and it will be so.' Even as Elijah spoke those words, a chariot of fire and horses of fire, in what must have been a spectacular scene came down from heaven, parted the two friends and carried blessed Elijah into the kingdom as Elisha watched. Then Elisha wept and tore his clothes in two for the loss of his friend and mentor. But he barely had time to mourn before he, who had been given a double-share of Elijah's Spirit, had to get to the work of being a prophet. The story goes that the local townfolk from Jericho came to him with a problem. 'Elisha,' they said, 'could you help us? We love our city but the water is bad here, unfit for growing crops.' So Elisha said, 'bring me a new bowl filled with salt.' The townsfolk did and in short order Elisha took it to their well, chucked it in, and said, ' I have made this water wholesome; from now on neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it.'

So, to recap: Elisha had to watch Elijah ascend into heaven in order that the Spirit be poured out on him and once the Spirit was poured out on him he showed this reality to the people of God by means of hallowed water.
Hmmm...

Sounds a lot like the story of the early Church, written for us by St. Luke in his gospel and in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. Indeed, we, by the teaching of the apostles in the holy scripture know that it was in fact one and the same Holy Spirit, one peuma, who enlivened Elijah and Elisha and who was promised by our Lord Christ to his apostles and to the faithful women at his Ascension.

Jesus said to the disciples, 'you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now...' Just as Elijah promised Elisha an outpouring of the Spirit. As the disciples watched, Jesus was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight just as the whirlwind took Elijah out of Elisha's sight as he watched. And just as Elisha showed forth the presence of the the most Holy Spirit by blessing water that gave physical life, the disciples showed forth the Spirit's abiding presence by means of water that gives eternal life, baptising in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, as our Lord commanded not long before he ascended.

God doesn't do things out of the blue, sisters and brothers, grace has abounded ever since the Holy Spirit swept over the face of the waters at the creation.

Now, without jumping the gun on the Feast of Pentecost too much, we are the people of the Holy Spirit. Christ, though he has ascended and sits at the right hand of God the Father, has indeed not left us orphaned, as we were reminded in St. John's gospel last week. The resurrected and ascended Christ is 'head over all thing for the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all,' as St. Peter tells us in our epistle lesson for today. Indeed, it is on account of the Holy Spirit that Christ is with us.

St. Augustine tells us, 'Christ while in heaven is also with us; and we, while on earth are also with him. He is with us in this godhead and his power and his love; and we, though we cannot be with him in godhead as he is with us, we can be with in him our love, our love for him.' For the presence of Christ though the Holy Spirit produces love, or at least it should. Elisha's story is instructive for us. He did not receive a double measure of the Spirit just so he could feel good about himself, or just so he could show off how much he was loved by Yahweh. No, without even enough time to mourn he was called upon to help others, to love his neighbours, to perform an act of practical charity. So are we sisters and brothers, who have been blessed with wholesome water, from which death cannot come, we are called to acts of charity, to love our neighbours, to share the riches of Christ's glorious inheritance. We who have been baptised with the Spirit, we who serve Christ by serving our neighbors must be active. Be active in worship, blessing God continually as the disciples did, in actually taking time to gather around God's Word proclaimed in scripture and in the sacraments. Be active in works of love, this month our secular culture has had earth day and international labor day, may day, to lift up the environmental and economic issues which we face as a global community, we, the body of Christ, must be engaged in these everyday struggles, for, as Augustine says, 'Christ while in heaven is with also with us.' Christ is also with those who lack food, also with those who lack security, also with those who lack any future. The ascended Christ is Lord of all and we must be about his work, living out the hope to which he has called us, our eyes focused clearly on his presence amongst us, in bread, in wine, and in each other in time of need, until he returns again, riding his chariot of cloud down from the heavens, ready to lead us, his Church, into the new Jerusalem. Amen.

Amen.

Easter Day Sermon

2008-03-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

Grace and peace to you all this day, sisters and brothers, as we celebrate this feast of rich food and well-aged wines.

Anyone who has ever prepared a meal for a lot of people knows that it takes a lot of work. You have to figure out all the dishes you'll prepare, figure out how many guests you'll have, you have to collect all the ingredients, then, when the day comes, you have to plan out how to time everything so that dishes are completed in the right order so they can be served perfectly. There's a reason that catering businesses do such brisk business, preparing a feast is not a piece of cake, so hiring a caterer saves a lot of heartache and sweat.

God is somewhat different than we humans when it comes to preparing a feast. We fixate on preparing the food. God prepares the guests.

In our gospel story today we see how God begins to prepare the feast of the coming kingdom.

St. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, perhaps sister of Martha, are the first disciples to be prepared.
Full of devotion, sorrow and love, they went to go see Jesus' tomb but instead of morning stillness and the finality of death, they encountered an earthquake and an angel, shining like lightening.

They cowered, the guards ran. They were not ready for this amazing thing that God was doing. So God had to prepare them further.

'Do not be afraid' the angel said. 'Jesus isn't here, he's going ahead of you to Galilee, go tell your friends.'

The women must have been dumbfounded, not only were they in mourning, but to see this overwhelming divine presence... how could they believe that jesus was alive after seeing him crucified?

Turns out they required a little more prep time, so as they ran to tell the other disciples, our Lord himself met them suddenly, 'Greetings,' he simply said.

They rushed to him, grabbing the body they'd seen broken.
And so, by his presence he prepared them for the feast yet a little more.

And as we follow the gospel story further, we know that our Lord spent even more time with the faithful women and the other apostles before his ascension, eating meals with them, talking with them, teaching them. Futher preparing them for the rich feast, for the marriage banquet of the lamb in the new jerusalem.

Of course we also know that our Lord did ascend into heaven, sending the holy spirit, third-person of the most blessed Trinity, in his place to dwell within us, to make sure that we don't become lukewarm while we await the coming feast. Even more important than just dwelling in us though, the Spirit brings Christ to us in the sacrament of the holy eucharist, fulfilling the word's of Christ's promise at the last supper by making bread and wine into body and blood, further preparing us for the banquet of peace, love, and wholeness in the kingdom of heaven.

Sisters and brothers, we like St. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, like the apostles and all the early disciples, have our times of separation from God, of sorrow, of disbelief. God has to remake us because on our own and of our own volition, we don't really even want to go to this great feast. We as humans are exceedingly good at curving inwards on ourselves and explaining why we can't make it out to the party.

And yet this feast of rich food and well aged wines has been promised by the Triune God, Father, Redeeming Son, and enlivening Spirit.

So, when our Lord returns, after having prepared us, having removed from us the yeast of malice and evil, he will invite us by name to his marriage feast, when his bride the Church will enter through the gates of heaven and will will walk in his glowing light, saying to each other:

This is our God, we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

Amen.

Easter Morning Sermon

2008-03-25T14:15:00.001-07:00

Again you shall take your tambourines and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers!

Well, sisters and brother's while the prophet Jeremiah's prophecy about what the resurrection of the messiah means is certainly true, none of the apostles had their tambourines out on that first easter morning.

They were running rather than dancing.
Weeping rather than making joyful music.

After all, their friend, their teacher had been killed, and now, as far as any sensible person could tell, his body had been stolen, probably by the impious romans, adding insult to already grievous injury. We can only imagine what poor st. peter and poor st. john must have been thinking as they walked home, out of breath from running to the tomb, what st. mary must have been fixating on as she wept.

Poor foolish apostles, willing to take a first impression and believe it to be the final truth.
Poor foolish apostles, forgetting all the times that Jesus told them he had to die.
Poor foolish apostles, getting too caught up in themselves to trust that Jesus would rise on the third day.
Poor foolish Mary, who thought it more sensible to see a gardener, rather than her lord.

Sisters and brothers, this is the basic human condition, that we see what is right in front of us, our myopia turns divine poetry into mundane prose.
Our mother and father, eve and adam, only saw sweet fruit and the prospect of being as clever as god, they didn't see the all the beauty and grace that surrounded them in the garden.
And how many times have each and every one of us seen only part of the stanza that God is writing for us, failing to grasp the full beauty of the metre and rhyme that God has penned for our lives?
How many times have we been shortsighted to the point of failing to see god entirely, focusing only on ourselves or the situations unfolding immediately around us.

But God in Christ calls us out of this myopia, just as he called st. mary out of hers by speaking her name in the garden.

Mary...
Teacher...

As this single word rolled off St. Mary's tongue, the whole world must have opened up to her, a world in which death no longer meant the end of relationships, a world in which Christ, who is our life, has been revealed.

As we celebrate the this feast of our Lord's resurrection, we, with St. Mary Magdelene, can rejoice at seeing the risen christ, at knowing that God's promises are not just true but are visible, visible for us in bread and wine, christ's true body and blood, really present as we celebrate the holy eucharist. As we eat the drink the Spirit filled promise of salvation that Christ has left for we who live after easter, after acension.

That's what Jesus' resurrection is, isn't it? A promise for us to gaze upon, while we are still in the midst of sinful human myopia. A promise for us to gaze upon through life, a promise to gaze upon as we face death, and finally, a reality which we will see, when we see our Lord, and he will say to us: 'come, let us go up to zion, to the lord our God.'
Amen.

Holy Saturday Sermon

2008-03-25T14:11:00.000-07:00

Tonight, sisters and brothers, the tomb is remade.
Reconfigured. Reformed. Resignified.

Remade as our Lord's lifeless body lays yet while his soul, in which divinity and humanity are bound together, descends into hell.

His death, of course, was completed last night. He cried, 'It is finished'. And so tonight Christ goes in spirit to the spirits in prison, to the spirits asleep in Sheol, in the pit, in Gehenna, in Hades, in the dark place of the dead. He has sunk into the deep mire.

All this sounds so bad, as though our Lord Jesus is further suffering after his crucifixion. But it's not so! God lifts up the lowly, Christ descends into hell to rule as King of lovingkindness, to take the power of death away from Satan. The crucified one, having descended, is rising! It's not enough that he will appear to the women at the tomb, it's not enough that he will appear to the apostles in the upper room, it's not enough that he will appear to the men along the road to Emmaus. No, Christ's victory is so great that he must first appear to those who are most removed from God in order to liberate them, in order to proclaim the good news of salvation for all.

But this is par for the course, isn't it? God is just and loving. From the depths of God's love even those who reject him are brought into the promise of resurrection and the kingdom, which first broke into the world in Christ's birth and now breaks the power of hell, death and devil.

And so, while we may yet be tempted by the diabolic forces in this world, while Satan may yet call us away from God into narcissism, away from God's promise into self-fulfillment, away from God's good creation into destructiveness, it's all for naught, because Christ, crucified, has broken evil's power. And even though these 'calls' can appear to be true, even though death yet is our experience, we know them to be ultimately powerless because Easter begins while Christ is yet in the tomb.

Christ, our brother, is first born of the dead. And as his tomb was remade by his triumphal descent into hell to liberate our ancestors from death's fatal grip, so are our death and tomb remade, hear Blessed Brother Martin, ' We do not take our orientation from that which we see before our eyes as our body is buried, burned, or in some other way returns to earth. Ineste we should let God do and take care of what is supposed to come of it... in the midst of mourning and lamentation, we can draw comforting and joyful thoughts regarding life: God lets us be buried in the earth and rot for the winter so that in the summer we shall once again emerge much more beautiful than this sun. It is as if the grave were not a grave but rather a garden planted with wonderful carnations and roses that remain green and blossom the whole lovely summer through...'

Even as we mourn his death, let us attend to this joyous truth, that from his tomb Christ brings new life to the world as we yet wait for the stone to be rolled away tomorrow.

Amen.

Good Friday Sermon

2008-03-20T13:06:00.001-07:00

Christ, our passover lamb, has been sacrificed for us sisters and brothers. The great and mysterious sacrament of salvation that began so many years ago with blood upon the lintels of the israelites houses in egypt has come to its completion in the state execution of our Lord Jesus.

The words of the apostle are true indeed: although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered having been made perfect, he became the source of salvation for all who obey him...

Jesus, a real human being, learned obedience through what he suffered, through bodily harm, through a force march with his cross, through nails in his wrists and ankles. Through sorrow, through the tears of his mother and the abandonment of his friends. Suffering emotionally and physically, God in Jesus empathises with us.

Now we disciples have had a hard time with this most blessed truth because it doesn't make a lick of sense to our human sensibilities.

Thank God that this redemption makes sense to divine, triune sensibilities.

We must remember that God is love, as St. John the Evangelist tells us, yet love is deep and complex.

God can be love and yet still be righteously sorrowful and angry over sin. Any parent or teacher or anyone who has dealt with children knows that deep love can yet contain anger.

When we delude ourselves into thinking that God is not angry at the holocaust or at apartheid or at how american indians were treated by europeans or by how we grow enough food for the world's population but don't get it to starving people because it doesn't make economic sense or by how we maim the environment we fail to see the breadth and depth of our bondage to sin.

When we delude ourselves into thinking that God is not sorrowful when we personally live out our brokeness, with unkind words, with hurtful actions, with misordered desires, with unwillingness to love others we fail to see the bondage to sin that dwells inside each and every one of us.

And so God is sorrowful and angered.
And yet God is love.
And God is Jesus. Jesus born or Mary, true human and simulteneously true God.

And in his passion, his trial, his walk to golgotha, his crucifixion, the whole Jesus, the eternal Word, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the incarnate Son, suffers and in his suffering embraces all the guilt for all the brokeness of the world. And in embracing humankind's guilt he appeases god the father's anger.

Sisters and brothers, if we think of God and Jesus as two seperate beings, then God is unjust and unloving to Jesus in the crucifixion. Then God is sociopathic.

But when we remember that God is trinity in unity, that the bodily heart of the Son beats in rhythm with the divine heart of the father then we see how God is love. Self-giving love. Self-offering love that addresses the deepest and most shattered parts of humankind. Love that enters into death, the ultimate human brokenness, and redeems it.

God the Father was sorrowed at the death of his son Jesus, but as the Holy Spirit bound the Father and Son together in Jesus' death, God's sorrow flowed into compassion, compassion for the man born of blessed mother Mary, compassion for all humankind, compassion for all creation. Compassion that resides even more deeply within love than either anger or sorrow.

When our faith grasps God in the fullness of the divine, loving triune mystery then the darkness of Good Friday washes away and the light of Easter comes flooding in. Blessed Dr. Luther reminds us that, ' we know god aright when we grasp him not in his might or wisdom (for then he proves terrifying), but in his kindness and love. Then faith and confidence are able to exist, and then we are truly born anew.'

On this night of our Lord Jesus' passion, we recall, we find our very being, in the truth that God is love. And the human Jesus Christ is God, love come into brokeness. Love engaged in brokeness to the point of death. But not just to the point of death, Christ is love beyond death. Love to redemption and resurrection.

Amen.

Holy Thursday Sermon

2008-03-20T13:03:00.000-07:00

Grace, mercy, and peace be with you sisters and brothers this night, as, the church, begin our walk with our Lord though his final days of earthly life, from the footwashing and supper in the upper room, to his agony in Gethsemane, to his trial at the Roman governor's headquarters, along the streets of jeruselem, to the cross on golgotha, to the tomb, and finally even to hell itself.

Especially tonight, as we begin this walk with our Lord, we peer into the mystery of his last supper, which is the way that we, who live after our Lord's death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, experience the servant ministry of Christ, just as tangibly as St. Peter when our Lord knelt down to serve him.

This new covenant, this meal of christ's body and blood is nothing other than christ kneeling down from the vaults of heaven to serve us.

This meal is to us as christ's basin of water, loving hands, and towel were to the disciples.

What does christ say when he's washed peter's probably very dirty feet? 'One who has bathed need not wash, except for the feet...'

Similarly, we who have been baptised are clean, truly saints, and yet our feet remain dirty, we continue in our bondage to sin, adams and eves ready to pick the many apples which our lives and our devils place in front of us.

And so christ pours out on us the warm, soothing, cleansing water that is his body and blood, in and under bread and wine, given for us in a regenerating mystery.

But Christ doesn't pour out this sacrament only so that the broken parts of each of us might be healed. No, he serves us to make us new and to increase our love for one another.

'if I, your lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one an other's feet' he tells the disciples.

So, if christ becomes body and blood to nourish our souls and remake our hearts, then oughtn't we be daily bread for our neighbours? Oughtn't we love just as we have been loved?

Well yes, we ought.

Of course we don't always love, either as individuals or as groups. We are very good at getting our feet dirty even after they've been washed.

Yet Jesus Christ, the same one who shared the meal with this disciples in the upper room continues to be host at this table, offering us himself in bread broken and wine outpoured.

This is as counterintiuitive as it was to peter that the incarnate word, begotten before all things, creator of the world, born of a virgin, would stoop down to wash his feet yet as we pray the eucharistic prayer and the spirit blows over bread and wine and into our hearts we hear our lord's promise and are able to take hold of this good, life-giving promise for ourselves. 'Take eat, this is my body given for you, this is my blood of the new covenant, shed for you for the forgiveness of sin'

Listen as Blessed Dr. Luther explains this great mystery, 'God promised and in his sacraments he gave me a sure sign of his grace that Christ's life overcame my death in his death, that his obedience blotted out my sin in his suffering, that his love destroyed my hell in his forsakenness. This sign and promise of my salvation will not lie to me or deceive me. It is God who has promised it, and he cannot lie either in words or in deeds.'

God, who has been faithful to his chosen people even from before the night of the passover, god who in christ knelt down to wash his disciples feet in service, God, who was faithful to us even in his death on a cross, this God is yet faithful. As we go through this most holy week, let us give thanks that God accepts us as his own and nourishes us with this holy meal, cleansing our hearts, washing our souls, and making us the objects of his faithfulness.

Amen.

November 18

2007-11-20T15:24:00.000-08:00

Today we’re having a teaching liturgy. Instead of a sermon, we will pause at four times during the Divine Service in order to discuss the history and dynamics of what we do in worship. We will stop in four places:

After the Canticle of Praise (Dignus Est)
After the Peace
After the Post-Communion Canticle
After the Sending Hymn

Important:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Romans 12:1 (KJV)

A sacrament is a ceremony or act in which God offers us the content of the promise joined to the ceremony; thus Baptism is not an act which we offer to god but one in which God baptizes us through a minister… There are two, and only two, basic types of sacrifice. On is the propitiatory sacrifice; this is a work of satisfaction for guilt and punishment that reconciles God or placates his wrath or merits the forgiveness of sins for others. The other type is the Eucharistic sacrifice; this does not merit the forgiveness of sins or reconciliation, but by it those who are have been reconciled give thanks or show their gratitude for the forgiveness of sins and other blessings received. Apology of the Augsburg Confession xxiv:18-19 (Tr. Tappert)

November 11

2007-11-13T12:48:00.001-08:00

Q: Why do we go right from singing “Kyrie Eleison” (Lord, have mercy) to singing the Canticle of Praise?

A: The Canticle of Praise is the final element of the elaborate entrance rite that developed in the years when the Church was the official church of the Roman Empire. Remember back to our discussions about the Entrance Hymn and the Kyrie. The entrance hymn was generally a sung Psalm and the Kyrie a lengthy list of petitions, each ending with the assembly praying, “Lord, have mercy.” The Canticle of Praise was simply the last element of the entrance before all the clergy in large imperial churches got into place for the rest of the Divine Service.

A few things should be noted about the Canticle of Praise. First, what is a canticle? A canticle is a song that comes right from the a scriptural text. In the case of the “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” the text is from St. Luke’s Gospel, when the Angels address the shepherds. The “Gloria”, used initially as the Gospel Canticle in the daily office of Matins, has been used as the Canticle of Praise in the Western Church since at least the 8th Century. The “Dignus Est”, which was introduced in the Lutheran Book of Worship, is from St. John’s Revelation, and given its eschatological character, is especially appropriate for times of the year that focus on Christ’s return. Lutherans have a long tradition of using hymn versifications for Canticles, a tradition which is used Marty Haugen’s “Now the Feast and Celebration” setting for the Divine Service.

November 4

2007-11-05T10:13:00.000-08:00

Q: When and why do we use bells in church?

A: Ringing bells, like so many other things we do in worship, is grounded in scripture itself. King David tells us, in psalm 150, that we should worship God with ‘resounding cymbals, with loud clanging cymbals.” Our praise can be percussive! In the Church, tolling the bells has developed as a tradition in a couple different ways. Perhaps the central way in which the ringing of bells has been used is in connection with the Eucharist. In the Western Church (what we now think of as Roman Catholicism and Protestantism) bells came to rung at the words “do this in remembrance of me” during the Eucharistic prayer. This tradition is not just Roman Catholic, as bell ringing during the sacrament existed in Lutheran Churches and Anglican churches after the Reformation. The idea was that the bells helped accentuate the fact that Jesus Christ becomes really present in the bread and wine during the Eucharistic prayer. In this respect, we can think of the sound of bells as the sound of the division between heaven and earth falling down so that our risen and ascended savior can be really present with us, giving us his body and blood in his Holy Supper.

Ringing the bells during the Lord’s Prayer is a vestige of this earlier tradition but adapted for parishes that did not want to create the appearance of a magical ‘moment’ at the end of the words of institution, as though some ritual formula were being carried out in order that we could make Jesus be really present.

On All Saints’ Sunday, we ring the bells as we remember those saints who have gone before us. I think that image of the division between heaven and earth being rent asunder is a good one here. God gathers up the faithful departed so that they can worship around the divine throne in heaven.

October 28

2007-11-05T10:12:00.000-08:00

Q: What is the Te Deum Laudimus (You are God, we praise you) and why are we singing it today and next Sunday?

A: The Te Deum is a song that comes from Western Europe from at least 498 AD. The Te Deum dates from the time when Visigoths ruled most of France and Spain and promoted an Arian version of Christianity in which it was denied that Christ is really God. Like the Benedictus which we generally sing at this point in the liturgy, the Te Deum, is borrowed from Matins, the Church’s morning prayer service. The song is a lovely reflection on who Christ is and what his incarnation as truly human and truly God means for us. Moreover, the text has an emphasis on Christ in relation to the communion of Saints, the Church, which is fitting for these two Sundays in which we celebrate the reform of the Church and the memory of those saints who are awaiting the Kingdom of Heaven from the other side of the grave. As Lutherans we are able to have flexibility in our worship, so substituting this song for the Benedictus or the Dignus Est (This is the Feast) is a good way to praise God using a rich and lovely text that comes from deep within the tradition of the Church but is not as familiar to us as a worshipping body.

October 14

2007-10-16T16:09:00.001-07:00

Q: Why does the divine service begin with the Trinitarian greeting?

A: We’ve looked at why we sing a ‘Gathering Hymn’ at the very beginning of the Divine Service. Now, everyone is in their place and the Liturgy can begin to unfold. Thus the Presider, the pastor who will be the main celebrant at the Eucharist, greets the assembly with the words, “The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with you.” Note a couple things here. First, the Divine Liturgy does not being with “Good Morning!” or “How’s it going this Sunday Morning?” The Liturgy is not a lecture or a presentation or an informal meeting that starts with small-talk. Rather, the Presider, who is standing in Christ, the Great High Priest, greets the gathered people in the name of the Triune God. Why the name of the Holy Trinity and not just “The Love of Christ be with you?” Well, I am inclined to think that the most compelling reason for starting out with a Trinitarian greeting is that we interact with all three persons of God in worship. We pray to God the Father, who lovingly receives our praise, our intercessions for others, and our confession of our own sinfulness. We receive Christ, who is the Word proclaimed in the readings and in the sermon. We receive Christ’s Body and precious Blood in the sacrament of the Lord’s Table. Finally, the Holy Spirit binds us together, both working so that bread and wine become Body and Blood but also making us as an assembly of the baptized into what we receive, the Body of Christ.
So, to recap, we pray to God the Father, we receive God the Son, and God the Spirit is present to effect this communion we have with the Divine. By starting worship out with this explicit statement about how God is with us sets us up for the encounter we are going to have in which the boundary between heaven and earth is broken and we will sing songs and pray with the saints and angels who worship around God’s throne.

Next week: “Kyrie eleison,” but didn't we already confess our sin?

October 7

2007-10-09T16:56:00.000-07:00

Q: What are those funny candles over by the window?

A: They’re votive candles. Lighting candles has a long history in the Church. Initially candles were the main source of light in dimly lit worship spaces. Over time lighting candles took on a symbolic significance. Candles made there way onto the altar, symbolizing the light of Christ. In the Western Church, though never the Eastern Church, a candle sat next to the tabernacle whenever the blessed sacrament was being stored there during the week. In Both East and West, the tradition of lighting small candles for specific prayers developed. In the East, they tend to use long, slender candles and either they have elaborate candelabras (Russian Orthodox) or boxes full of sand (Greek and middle-Eastern Orthodox) in which the put votive candles, usually placed in front of an icon. Our sisters and brothers at St. Bede’s follow this practice, they have a box filled with sand for votive candles. In the Western Church, squat, little candles have been the preference for votive candles, usually placed in front of an image of Jesus or Mary, hence the location of our votive candles.

Often times a donation is associated with votive candles, if you’ve ever traveled in Europe and been inside churches you’ll probably have run into this. Since we, as Lutherans, don’t make a connection between monetary donations and the effectiveness of prayer, this is not the case for us here. Rather, it can sometimes be good and salutary to include a physical aspect to our prayers. Lighting a candle doesn’t make a prayer ‘work’ better nor does it make the prayer more important. The act of lighting a candle does, however, add a physical act to our intercessions, akin, I think to actually shaking hands or hugging during the passing of the peace or akin to dipping our fingers in the baptismal font and crossing ourselves in remembrance of our baptism. We don’t need to do these things, but we do because they make our spiritual life more tangible, more embodied. God gave us hands as well as hearts and minds, lets use them for prayer!

September 30

2007-10-09T16:55:00.001-07:00

Little reflections on the Liturgy

Q: Why aren’t we all singing the Gospel Acclamation before the gospel right now?

A: Well, there are a couple reasons. The first is that you’ll note that rubric 14 (on page 62 of your LBW) reads thus: “The appointed Verse is sung by the choir, or the congregation may sing the appropriate Verse below.” The preference is that “The appointed Alleluia Verse or the Lenten Verse should be sung by the choir or cantor.” (Pfatteicher, 220). However, singing “Alleluia, Lord to whom shall we go has become the default because it’s right there on the page. However, the LBW offers a specific scriptural Verse for each Sunday.

So there are two issues here.

The first is that by only singing “Lord to whom shall we go…” we are missing out on a wealth of biblical material that can enrich our worship. This is why we moved to using the ‘proper verse’ (‘proper’ just means ‘assigned specially for the day’). The second issue is the question of having a cantor or choir sing as opposed to having the entire congregation sing. On the one hand, congregational song is central to our identity as Lutheran Christians. On the other hand, we also have a strong tradition of choir-leadership in the Divine Service (think Bach!). I tend to think that since the Verse is the beginning of the Gospel, that it is nice to move back and forth between singing as a congregation and having the cantor lead us. When the cantor is singing, the assembly can listen attentively and use the Verse as the beginning of meditation on the Gospel. When we all sing, it’s as though we are all greeting the Gospel. Both are appropriate responses to hearing the saving Word of God proclaimed.

Either way, the Proper Verse is picked thematically to comment on the gospel. Listen to it this week and see how it molds your listening to the gospel.

Next week: What are those funny candles over by the window?

August Reflections

2007-10-04T07:59:00.000-07:00

Question: Why do we sing a hymn at the beginning of service?

Answer: Imagine it's the year 600 AD and you are worshipping at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (now Istanbul). You are in the biggest cathedral in the world, with a dome that is 31 meters in diameter and 56 meters above the sanctuary floor. There are over a thousand people standing with you waiting for the liturgy to begin inside the massive nave. Then suddenly you hear singing coming from the main entrance, as the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Roman Emperor and a host of clergy begin to make their long procession towards the chancel… Singing at the beginning of the service is first and foremost a practical thing.

The liturgy as we now celebrate it has many roots in early cathedral liturgies, like the one that would have been celebrated at Hagia Sophia, or at St. John Lateran in Rome or at the cathedrals in Seville or Milan. They had a practical problem at the beginning of each liturgy: "How do we get the bishop from the West door to the chancel at the East end of the building?"
Well, the answer was by means of a procession that mimicked secular processions used by Roman officials in places of government. As with so many things that the Church has stolen from the culture, our forebears 'dressed up' these processions by singing psalms. Many psalms lend themselves to use at the beginning of worship: "How dear to me is your dwelling, O Lord of hosts!" (Ps. 84) etc. So now, singing became both practical, it was something to do while the liturgists got to their places, and theological, it became a time for praising God. "I was glad when I entered your temple O Lord," became the mantra around which Christian worship began.

The Church has always taken any excuse to put more scripture into her liturgy. As time went on, and these cathedral liturgies became the norm in little parish churches like ours, the need for a five minute long processional became less, as there was probably only one priest and a few lay assistants. As it no longer became necessary to have music to cover movement, the opening hymn transformed into singing for singing's sake, which is a lovely devotion indeed, especially for we Lutherans, for whom singing together is one of our strongest spiritual disciplines.

So, to recap, the entrance hymn or introit (when it is psalm verses that are being sung) is both practical and spiritual in nature. Practically the liturgists enter the chancel. Spiritually, the liturgists come before the altar, where Christ will transcend the distance between heaven and earth in Holy Communion, and the congregation raises a joyful noise to the Lord to being the Divine Service proper.

Reflection question: What images from scripture or literature do you think of when you think of coming before God's presence.

For next week: Why do we call this the Divine Service, or, what's in a name?

August 26 th

Question: What is the name for the what we do on Sunday mornings?
Answer: There are lots of names. In the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, they refer to the Eucharistic gathering as the 'Divine Liturgy.' In the Roman Catholic Communion, they use the term 'Mass.' Among members of the Anglican Communion, all kinds of terms are used, sometimes 'Mass,' sometimes 'Holy Eucharist,' sometimes 'Service.' Among most Reformed, Evangelical and other varieties of Protestants, the term 'Service' is pretty prevalent.

In the Lutheran Communion (a Communion being a group of people who literally commune together, gathering around a common table and usually with a common Church governance and common theology) we tend to have a bunch of names for our weekly gathering. 'Service' is common. So is 'Mass', in the Scandinavian countries. In Germany, Luther's phrase Gottesdienst, literally 'God's service' or 'Divine Service.' This phrase is pleasing to me. First of all, it's ambiguous. God is doing service to us, Christ offers us his body and blood in Holy Communion. Second, we are performing service to God, our prayers are a sacrifice made acceptable by the work of Christ and are pleasing to God.

Moreover, we collect an offering which is given for the sake of the Church, the community, and the World, surely this also is God's service taking place as we work on behalf of our Lord's sisters and brothers in this world. Divine Service therefore casts a very broad net around all the things that are going on when we come together on Sunday to hear the Word, to pray, and to receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion. This is why our monthly worship books say "Divine Service" on them, we are joining many other Lutherans in use of this term to describe our common worship life.

August 5 - 10th Sunday after Holy Pentecost

Last week we mused on the thinking about confession and forgiveness as a sacrament. I posited that if we don’t think of it as completely sacramental, then at least we should think of it as a 1/2 sacrament, related to Holy Baptism.

Q: What is the historical context for using the Brief Order For Confession and Forgiveness?

Answer: By the middle ages, the Church, East and West, had developed a pattern of going to confession before receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion. This was not the case in the early Church. Very early on, before the Church was established as the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christians could receive forgiveness for grievous sins only once in their life, and only after a lengthy process of being denied Communion and performing public acts of penance.

This is how Lent developed, for the weeks before Easter, the penitents would gather outside of parishes and be denied Communion while they made retribution for their sins. This was somewhat harsh. It was in the solitary environs of the Celtic monasteries in the British isles that private confession took form. Monks and Nuns would privately make confession to the head of their communities.

This practice spread and gained great popularity, it being much less austere than the earlier practice of long-term, public penance. By the time of the Lutheran reformation, it was taken for granted that only those who had been to confession would receive Holy Communion. Melanchthon writes in the Apology to the Augsburg Confession: “In our churches Mass is celebrated every Sunday and on other festivals, when the sacrament is offered to those who wish for it after they have been examined and absolved .” (XXIV, The Mass)

In Lutheran practice this eventually took two forms. In one form, more common in Germany, those who were going to receive Communion would come to church early, maybe on Saturday, and individually announce to the pastor that they wanted to receive Communion. Then they would Confess privately to the pastor and the pastor would ask them questions from the Shorter Catechism. The other form, more popular in Scandinavia, was to have corporate Confession and Forgiveness take place directly before the Sunday service. It is this tradition that we continue with the Brief Order.

Reflection Question: Do we need to confess and in order to receive Holy Communion? July 29 - 9th

Sunday after Holy Pentecost

Last week I asked you to muse with me on the text of the Creed. This week, let’s think about The Brief Order for Confession and Forgiveness.

Question: Is Confession, as Lutherans understand it, a sacrament?

Answer: Yes! (though many people will tell you ’no’) If asked: ‘How many sacraments are there.’ The first answer tends to be: “Seven for Catholics, and two for Protestants.” This kind-of true for Lutherans. Luther, in the Babylonian Captivity of the Church , calls Confession the third sacrament. But then decides that it shouldn’t really be called a sacrament since it doesn’t have a physical element attached to the promise of forgiveness, which Holy Baptism (water) and Holy Communion (bread and wine) do.

However, in 1529, Luther lumped Confession with Baptism and Communion in the Large and Shorter Catechisms. Phillip Melanchthon, Luther’s second-in-command, wrote, “…the Word of Absolution… is not the voice or word of the man (sic) who speaks it, but it is the Word of God, who forgives sin, for it is spoken in God’s stead and by God’s command,” in the Augsburg Confession of 1530. That sounds a lot like the description of a sacrament to me. The practice of private Confession has always existed in the Lutheran Communion, even if it’s not required as in the Roman Catholic Communion and even if we don’t do it very often (see page 243 in ELW). Corporate Confession before the Divine Service has existed in the Lutheran Communion since at least 1531, in Sweden, we’ll look at this service in more depth next week. As for the original question, perhaps it’s best to think of ourselves, as Lutherans, as having 2 1/2 sacraments: Holy Baptism, Holy Communion, and, in a 1/2 way, Confession and Absolution.

Reflection Question: Do you tend to understand confession as a spiritual ‘hoop’ to jump through, as a time for forthright conversation with God, or as yet another rote ritual? Or perhaps something else?

July 22 - 8th Sunday after Holy Pentecost

Q: It’s July, in the midst of the long green time after Pentecost – why are the paraments white?

A: Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, which is a ‘Lesser Festival’ according to ELW (Easter, Christmas, Pentecost and the like are Principal Festivals in Lutheran-speak). Feasts tend to take priority over the regular Sunday propers. You will notice particularly that the Prayer of the Day, the Lessons and the Proper Preface (“It is our duty and delight”) are focused on the Feast. Also, the liturgy will be a little more ‘dressed up’ than it is on regular Sundays.

The Church has celebrations like this to remind us of the Work of the Holy Spirit through those who have gone before us, with the hope of focusing our eyes on to the work of the Spirit within our community today.

Q: We’ve been using the ELW texts for the Brief Order for Confession and Forgiveness (pg. 3) and for the Creed (pg. 11), why did we revert to the LBW texts today?

A: Partially because your pastor clicked the wrong option on the new online service that he uses to make the bulletins… And partially because I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about the new ELLC (English Language Liturgical Consultation) text of the Apostle’s Creed. Here’s the question in my head: Is substituting ‘God’s’ for ‘his’ in the third line of the text a good translation?

On the one hand, using ‘God’s’ frees us from having to use a masculine pronoun. This is commendable because we don’t understand God to be literally masculine. Also, we live in a country in which there are many Christians who have chosen to jettison the mystery of the Trinity in favor of a God who is masculine. Conversely, the Second Person of the Trinity is God also, saying “I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son our Lord,” could make it seem like God the Father is the true God and Jesus is somehow less in stature than the First Person of the Trinity. In short, both “God’s” and “his” have their setbacks, both their virtues. I haven’t figured out what to do yet, so I’d appreciate your input and feelings on this matter.

In the Fall, I hope discuss this as part of a discussion of our worship life here at St. Andrew’s and how we can be both faithful and welcoming as a community.