Sermon Synopses - 2011

Sermons at Trinity are usually ex tempore, that is done without notes...Please enjoy our "Sermon Synopses" or short summaries of sermons preached at Trinity

Link to Sermons Synopses for additional summaries available from this year.

Sermon for Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday in Easter Week
Acts 3: 1-10
Luke 24:13-35

Wasn’t today a beautiful day?  If you were outside at lunch time, you probably saw what I saw when I was at Boston College for a class I am taking: the students were wearing shorts and sandals, and scores were outside on the benches and lawns, eating lunch, chatting with friends and basking in the warm sun. 

This week, the week after Easter Sunday, among orthodox Christians is called “Bright Week,” and today is “Bright Wednesday.”  I love this nomenclature for the feast days of Easter week, for it reminds me that this week is a week to stop and bask in the glow of the resurrection.

The time will come again for us to “press on toward the goal:” to apply ourselves to discipline, to stretch ourselves for spiritual growth, to do things like fast or read more scripture or to pray more, or to remember and repent of our sins.  But this week is a time to bask in the glow of the resurrection.

The readings for this week – accounts of Jesus resurrection from the different gospels, and in the Acts of the Apostles the preaching of Peter about Jesus’ resurrection – can help us bask in the resurrection.  They tell and re-tell and tell again the stories of Jesus’ resurrection; they let the “sun” shine forth so that we might stop for a while and rest its light, warming ourselves and letting the promise of spring unfold.

It is not always easy for us to bask when it comes to the spiritual life.  So often we forget that joy is something that God wishes for us to experience, that God wishes for us to savor.  We are suspicious of joy, “This is too good to be true.”  But Jesus’ resurrection, with all its mercies, benefits, gifts – however you want to call it – is rife with joy, and God wants us to share in, to bask in, his joy! 

I invite you today and for the rest of this week to bask in the glow of the resurrection.  I invite you to read and re-read the stories of Jesus’ resurrection in the gospels that are used at the liturgies this week. (They can be found on page 894 in the Book of Common Prayer.)  Let the light of these accounts soak into you and warm you; rest in them.  Ask Jesus for those quintessential gifts of the resurrection, peace and joy, and bask in them.

Sermon for Saturday, April 23, 2011
The Great Vigil of Easter
Ezekiel 37:1-14

Tonight, I’m going to tell you the point of the sermon right from the beginning; or, to use imagery from Ezekiel, I am going to give you the bones of the sermon first, and then we’ll put flesh on them as we go along.  The point – the “bones” – of tonight’s sermon is this:  We are alive to the extent that we love.  And we are able to love to the extent that we let Jesus love us.

That’s the point of my sermon; its end.  And now I’m going to begin as Peter Gomes, the late preacher at the Memorial Church at Harvard, once began an Easter sermon:  “I wish you could see what I see from up here.  Just look at all of you!  You, the faithful, and you, the curious; you, all bright shining faces and gussied up in your Easter best.  I feel like Ezekiel looking over the valley at that vast multitude.  And, the same question the Spirit of the Lord put to Ezekial – ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ – is the question for us this morning:  ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’”

Peter Gomes’ question to those at Memorial chapel many Easters ago is our question tonight.  These “bones” that are here tonight, gathered in the “valley” of Trinity Parish, can they live? We are going to look at this question, “Can these bones live?” in the context of John’s gospel, from which we heard during the Sundays of Lent.  Think back a couple of weeks.  (And if tonight is your first night here, welcome!  ‘Imagine’ back a couple of weeks!)  The readings from John’s gospel during Lent took us from being in darkness with Nicodemus, who could not see Jesus, even though Jesus was there right next to him; to being seen by Jesus in broad daylight with the woman at the well, who was accepted by Jesus in spite of his knowing everything she had ever done.  Our journey then took us to letting Jesus touch us and open our eyes to see him, like the man born blind.  And finally the readings took us to hearing Jesus the Good Shepherd call us by name and bring us out, like Lazarus, from the place of death.  Over the season of Lent we saw that everything Jesus did, Jesus did because he loves us.  Love is the point of John’s gospel.  John’s gospel is a love story that tell us much God loves us, and how much God wishes for us to love in return.

And so, to return to our question: “Can these bones live?”   John has much to say about what it means to be, and who is, “alive.”  John makes explicit that life – real life, eternal life – is what is found only in the one who loves us. 

• “I am the way, the truth and the life,” said Jesus.
• “I am the resurrection and I am the life.”

And John likewise makes plain that those who are “alive” are those who love.  In his epistle he writes:

• “Whoever does not love abides in death.” (1 John 3:14b)
• “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another.”

For John, we are alive to the extent that we love.  “Can these bones live?” “By all means!  Provided these bones can love…”  And we are able love to the extent that we let Jesus love us.

• Love does not originate with us.  “In this is love,” John writes, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
• All we need do is open to that love, to say “yes” to Jesus’ drawing near, touching us, calling us by name, and entering in.
• This “yes” is not easy.  As the scriptures for Lent showed us, saying “yes” to Jesus’ love is a journey.  Saying “yes” to Jesus’ love involves taking a step toward him in faith, even though it is dark and we cannot see where it will lead.  Saying “yes” to Jesus’ love involves standing before Jesus in the light, and accepting that he accepts us, even though he knows everything we have ever done.  Saying “yes” involves letting Jesus draw near and touch us, as did the man born blind.  And saying “yes” to Jesus’ love means responding and coming when the Good Shepherd calls us by name, even though we be so dead that there is a stench.
• Did you know, Jesus desires, craves our love? God is omnipotent, but there is one thing he can’t command:  our love.  Why not pray a prayer as simple as  “Lord, that I might love you.”  (As we heard earlier in Lent, “What?  Do you think he’s going to say ‘no?’”)
• We are alive to the extent that we love.  And we are able to love to the extent that we let Jesus love us. 

In a previous parish, I remember visiting one of the elderly gentlemen of the parish, who had just found out that he had cancer and only a few months to live.  He greeted me on the front steps with tears in his eyes.  As we sat down to a cup of tea, his words came spilling out.  His tears were not out of sadness for his diagnosis, his thoughts were not on himself: “Have I loved enough?”  he wondered. He was looking back over his life and thinking about his wife, deceased several years ago.  “Did I love her enough?”  He was wondering about his children, his siblings, his neighbors, the people at the parish.  “Did I love them enough?”  A poignant question.  And one that, in light of John’s gospel, we might restate, “Did I live before I died?”

“Mortal, can these bones live?”  Can you perceive Jesus calling you into the light, that he accepts you even though he knows everything you have ever done?  Can you let Jesus draw near and touch you and open your eyes?  Can you hear him calling you by name?  As we let him love us, and as we love in return, “Yes, these bones can live.”
 
As I mentioned, it is not easy to let Jesus love us – to be loved wholly and completely just as we are is difficult.  This kind of love requires the help of prayer.  And there is a beautiful prayer by St. Augustine in which he prays about his loving God.  “Late have I loved thee, O beauty so ancient, so new.”  It’s a great prayer, and in it he talks about having his eyes opened, his ears unstopped, about Jesus breathing into him and giving him life.  It ends “When at last I cling to you with all my being… my life will be alive indeed, alive, because filled with you.”  It’s a wonderful prayer, and you can find it by googling “Late have I loved thee.”
But there’s another prayer that might be even better for us:  It’s by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons, and it’s been “prayed” by people as diverse as Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Willie Nelson.  It’s a prayer that could be either ours to God, or God’s to us, and I have a hunch that, if we can truly pray it to God, or hear God saying it to us, these bones will indeed live.  It goes like this:

All of me
Why not take all of me
Can't you see
I'm no good without you
Take my lips
I want to lose them
Take my arms
I'll never use them
Your goodbye left me with eyes that cry
How can I go on dear, without you
You took the part that once was my heart
So why not take all of me

Sermon for Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Wednesday in the Fifth Week of Lent
John 8:31-42

Next Friday at our Good Friday liturgy, we will hear Pontius Pilate’s famous question to Jesus:  “What is truth?”  In today’s gospel lesson, we are given a clue as to what truth is:  Jesus says, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth.”  “Truth” is what we will know if we continue in Jesus’ word.

I’m told that Father Ed Vacek, SJ, who is on faculty at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, when a person comes into the room to make his or her confession, after the two are seated, always says, “Jesus is here.  And he wants you to know that he loves you.” And then they begin the rite.  What a wonderful way to begin confession!  And isn’t this truth – “Jesus is here.  And he wants you to know that he loves you.” – the truth of the Word in John’s gospel?  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son…”  For Jesus is here, dwelling among us; and Jesus is doing everything he can to let us know that he loves us:  raising Lazarus from the dead, washing the feet of his disciples, letting himself be “lifted up” that he might draw all people to himself, sending us the Comforter, the Spirit of truth.  In a nutshell the truth of Jesus’ word that, if we continue in it, we truly become his disciples, is this:  Jesus is here, and he wants us to know that he loves us.

Lent is a time of truth.  The wilderness is a place where illusions are unmasked and idols cast down.  And as we face the truth about ourselves – how we are “dust and to dust [we] shall return,” how “we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table” – let us also see the truth Fr. Vacek states at the beginning of confession, the truth John also wishes for us to see:  “Jesus is here.  And he wants you to know that he loves you.”  And as we know this truth, the truth will make us free, so that we might worship him, that we may feed his sheep, and that our joy may be complete.

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