Sermon for Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Amos 5:14-15, 21-24
“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…  But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

In today’s reading from Amos – and also in the Psalm –  we see a strain of Old Testament piety that says, in effect, “Your worship is nice, but…  I don’t want your worship if you are not going to back up your worship with justice.”

1. Amos:  “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.  Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.”  Rather, what I really want, is that you “Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate,” and “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
2. Psalm 50:  “I do not accuse you because of your sacrifices;” I have no complaint with your worship.  But your covenant that you have made with me regarding your conduct and your justice… “Make good your vows to the most high.”  Here is true worship!

 

The occasion of these two readings is as good an opportunity as any to introduce you to an acquaintance of mine, Bp. Frank Weston of Zanzibar.

1. Bp. Frank was the Anglican Bishop of Zanzibar from 1908 until his death in 1924, and is famous for two things:  1)  His liturgical style (very “high” church), and 2) his commitment to social justice.
2. Bp. Frank is most famously known for a speech he gave at the conclusion of the Anglo-Catholic conference of 1922.
3. This conference was famously an excess of anglo-catholic frippery, with choir boys and bishops, fluttering surplices and clouds of incense.
4. To this gathering, he preached:

I recall you to the Christ of the Blessed Sacrament. I beg you, brethren, not to yield one inch to those who would for any reason or specious excuse deprive you of your Tabernacles.  I want you to make your stand for the Tabernacle, not for your own sakes but for the sake of truth… because the one great thing that England needs to learn is that Christ is found in and amid matter… God in flesh, God in the Sacrament. But I say to you, and I say it to you with all the earnestness that I have, that if you are prepared to fight for the right of adoring Jesus in his Blessed Sacrament, then you have got to come out from before your Tabernacle and walk, with Christ mystically present in you, out into the streets of this country, and find the same Jesus in the people of your cities and your villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum.
Now mark that—this is the Gospel truth. If you are prepared to say that the Anglo-Catholic is at perfect liberty to rake in all the money he can get no matter what the wages are that are paid, no matter what the conditions are under which people work; if you say that the Anglo-Catholic has a right to hold his peace while his fellow citizens are living in hovels below the levels of the streets, this I say to you, that you do not yet know the Lord Jesus in his Sacrament. You have begun with the Christ of Bethlehem, you have gone on to know something of the Christ of Calvary—but the Christ of the Sacrament, not yet. Oh brethren! if only you listen to-night your movement is going to sweep England. If you listen. I am not talking economics, I do not understand them. I am not talking politics, I do not understand them. I am talking the Gospel, and I say to you this: If you are Christians then your Jesus is one and the same: Jesus on the Throne of his glory, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus received into your hearts in Communion, Jesus with you mystically as you pray, and Jesus enthroned in the hearts and bodies of his brothers and sisters up and down this country. And it is folly—it is madness—to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the Throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children.
Both worship and justice

1. Bp. Frank is right:  it would be a mockery of the Christian faith to worship without accompanying that worship with action.
2. As are the words of Amos, Bp. Frank’s words are timeless; every age is tempted to worship without accompanying that worship with action in the world.
3. I also think that we can do the opposite:  worship doesn’t matter nearly as much as justice and “social action.”
1. “Worship is nice and all, but the point of worship – and what really matters – is that we’re feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, and generally working to make this world a better place.”
2. See this in our parishes: people make social justice activities a priority – God bless them! – but do not make the same priority for worship.
3. Dioceses:  Calls for unity around mission.  “Let’s put our other differences – e.g., over human sexuality – behind us and let’s just do good work together.”
4. National Church:  See this in the espousing of the MDG’s by our own presiding bishop.
4. But what about the importance of worship? 
1. What about the deuteronomist, the author of Deuteronomy and the books of Samuel and Kings, in whose eyes Israel and Judah rose and fall depending on right worship?
2. What about the story of Mary breaking open the expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet, and to the objections of Judas, Jesus replied, “You will always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

I think there is a “both / and.”  Authentic Christian discipleship is worship and action, and both feed on the other in a cycle.

1. Augustine:  Love of God and love of neighbor
2. Baptismal vows:  “Continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship…” and “Seek and serve Christ in all people, loving your neighbor…”
3. Collect will share with you shortly:  “…Our lips may praise you, and our lives may bless you.”
4. Both feed the other:  Worship and prayer feed action, and – many of us in New England forget this – action serve to feed worship and prayer.
5. Don’t always remember both ends of this cycle.  Sometimes get stuck more in one than the other.Must from time to time correct our excesses, one way or the other à What Amos and Psalmist were doing.

Close with collect for Saturday evening prayer
O God, the source of eternal light:  shed forth your unending day upon us who watch for you, that our lips may praise you, and our lives may bless you, and our worship on the morrow give you glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Sermon for Tuesday, June 29, 2010
The Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul

Today is the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul.  What an auspicious day on which to end and begin our reading of the scriptures! 

1. For those of you finishing our reading, here are two saints rooted in the world of the Old Testament and who between them have written much of the New.
2. For those just beginning the reading, or just beginning the second year,  Peter and Paul are good patrons as you begin your reading.  As our texts for today imply, Peter and Paul are both shepherds, called by Christ to feed his sheep, and they can help shepherd us on our way as we embark on our reading.  Each brings different gifts to our experience.
3. Paul is a man who has experience with journeys
1. Paul can be an invaluable support to us.
2. Paul knows what journeys are like: warm hospitality and “otherness;” great rewards and great challenges; times of “darkness” and “light.”  
3. When we get discouraged – not if, but when! – we can take inspiration from Paul’s experience of discouragement about which he writes in the opening chapter of 2 Corinthians: we can own up to our own insufficiency and increase our reliance on the Lord.   (Go ahead and read ahead; check it out!)
4. Peter is a man who has weathered failure.
1. Remember how Peter once boasted to Jesus that, even though others might desert Jesus, Peter never would? 
2. Remember what happened next? 
3. In today’s gospel lesson, we see that Jesus still loved Peter – and Peter Jesus – and Jesus even entrusted his ongoing work to Peter:  “Feed my sheep.”  Peter weathered failure.
4. We can take inspiration from Peter on our journey through scripture.  Of course we will get behind and miss days!   It’s not fatal; we can move through it.  Just pick up and move on.

Show you my hand:  Why am I so excited that so many folks want to read the scriptures?  Conversion! 

1. So much engagement with the scriptures bodes well for our souls and for Trinity’s future; scriptures carry the power for conversion.  “For us, for now, the scriptures are the face of God.” 
2. Peter and Paul are both men of conversion. 
3. Paul in spectacular fashion on Damascus Road
4. Peter in small (but big! Does Peter every do anything small?) incidents like denying Jesus, then following him; or in refusing Jesus to let him wash his feet at first, but then “Not only my feet…”

The more people we have engaging with the Word, the greater the possibility for continued conversion in our lives – and in the lives of those around us.  Bit by bit we will be formed in the word until we, without knowing it, manifest in ourselves the Word to the world around us. 

Congratulations and good luck!

1. Congratulations to those who are finishing.  Congrats to those who are beginning.  You are in for an extraordinary experience!

Good luck.  Good luck to those who are beginning – this is quite a journey you are embarking on.  Good luck to those who are finishing.  Good luck – like Peter and Paul –  taking this word that you have taken into yourselves and taking it out into the world around, that through you the Word may shine.

Sermon for Sunday, June 13, 2010

Third Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 7:36-8:3 

Today, I’m going to preach about Trinity Parish’s mission. Did you know that we at Trinity Parish have a mission statement?  Trinity Parish’s mission statement is a given – we did not vote on it at a meeting – our mission statement is a given and is found in the Book of Common Prayer (p 855).  “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”  This morning, I’m going to tell us that the main thing we Christians do to carry out our mission to restore all people to unity with God and each other – though spelled out more completely in our baptismal vows, is summed up in one word, “reparation,” to work toward repairing what has been broken. I’m going to tell you that both today’s gospel lesson, and a story that I will shortly relate, show the two sides of reparation, one side that helps to restore unity to God and the other side that helps to restore unity to each other.  And I’m going to tell us that the essence of Christian discipleship – the essence of being a member of Trinity Parish – is to do this work of reparation.  

First, the two stories of reparation.

The woman of Luke 7. The first story we just heard, the story of the woman in Luke 7 who bathes Jesus’ feet with her tears and wipes them with her hair, and who kisses his feet and anoints them with ointment.  Because we just heard this story, we won’t take much time with it except to note that

• In her coming to Jesus, her bowing before him, her bringing of an offering, the woman “worships” Jesus. 
  

 

Ian Bedloe, young man who is the hero of Anne Tyler’s Saint Maybe.

The second story we will take more time with.  In her Anne Tyler’s novel Saint Maybe, the young, college freshman protagonist Ian Bedloe believes he has caused his brother to commit suicide, as a result of which his brother's wife also commits suicide. Weighed down by guilt, he encounters a little congregation, The Church of the Second Chance, which changes the whole trajectory of his life. I’d like to share with you from Tyler’s book.  Ian has just admitted in front of the tiny congregation that “I just assumed I wasn’t evil, but lately I don’t know what happened.  Everything I touch just goes wrong.”  And after the service the pastor, Reverend Emmett asks him if he had gotten a response to his prayer. 

“Response?”

“Did you get a reply?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“I see,” Reverend Emmett said..  “So, what was it that you needed forgiven?”

“I caused my brother to, um, kill himself”

Reverend Emmett gazed at him thoughtfully.

“I told him his wife was cheating on him,” Ian said in a rush, “and now I’m not even sure she was.  I mean I’m pretty sure she did in the past, I know I wasn’t totally wrong, but… so he drove into a wall.  And then his wife died of sleeping pills and I guess you could say I caused that, too…”

He paused, because Reverend Emmett might want to disagree here… But Reverend Emmett only rocked from heel to toe.

“So it looks as if my parents are going to have to raise the children,” Ian said… “Everything’s been dumped on my mom and I don’t think she’s up to it – her or my dad, either one…  And my sister’s busy with her own kids and I’m away at college most of the time…”

In the light of Reverend Emmett’s blue eyes… he began to relax.  “So anyhow,” he said, “that’s why I asked for that prayer.  And I honestly believed it might have worked.  Oh, it’s not like I got an answer in plain English, of course, but… don’t you think I’m forgiven?”

“Goodness, no,” Reverend Emmett said briskly. 

Ian could not believe his ears.  To be told he was not forgiven seemed to contradict everything he assumed about Christianity – “I thought God forgives everything.”  Reverend Emmett, agreeing, pointed out, ‘you can’t just say, ‘I’m sorry, God.’ Why anyone could do that much!  You have to offer reparation – concrete, practical reparation.”  Ian countered the suggestion that he had not been forgiven by observing, “but what if there isn’t any reparation?  What if it’s something nothing will fix?”  Reverend Emmett responded, using that “itchy” word, Jesus.  Jesus “helps us do what you can’t undo.  But only after you’ve tried to undo it.”  Ian could not imagine what such an undoing would take.  Reverend Emmett, however, was more than ready to tell him what he must do – he would have to begin by ‘seeing to the children.”

“Okay.  But… see to them in what way, exactly?”

“Why, raise them, I suppose.”

“Huh?  But I’m only a freshman!”

Reverend Emmett turned to face him.

“I’m away in Pennsylvania most of the time!” Ian told him.

“Then maybe you should drop out.”

“Drop out?”

“Right.”

“Drop out of college?”

“Right.”

Ian stared at him.

“This is some kind of test, isn’t it?” he said finally.

Reverend Emmett nodded, smiling.  Ian sagged with relief.

“It’s God’s test,” Reverend Emmett told him.

“So…”

“God wants to know how far you’ll go to undo the harm you’ve done.”

“But he wouldn’t really make me follow through with it,” Ian said.

“How else would he know, then?”

“Wait,” Ian said.  “You’re saying God would want me to gie up my education.  Change all my parents’ plans for me and give up my education?”

“Yes, if that’s what’s required,” Reverend Emmett said.

“Bu that’s crazy!  I’d have to be crazy!”

“’Let us not love in word, neither in tongue,’” Reverend Emmett said, “’but in deed and in truth.’ First John three, eighteen.”

“I can’t take a bunch of kids!  Who do you think I am?  I’m nineteen years old!” Ian said.  “What kind of cockeyed religion is this?”

“It’s the religion of atonement and complete forgiveness,” Reverend Emmett said.  “It’s the religion of the Second Chance.” 

If you know the story, you know that Ian dropped out of college and became a cabinetmaker so that he has time to raise the children.   And in so doing, Ian learns – over the course of the next 20 years – that forgiveness is the gifts these children bring to him through making him more than he otherwise could have been.  He learns he must forgive as well as be forgiven, and by so doing he is able to claim the life he has been given as his own.  
 
Two sides of reparation.

Taken together, these two stories show the two sides of reparation, working toward fulfilling the Church’s mission – Trinity Parish’s mission – of restoring people to unity with God and with each other.

• On the one side, the Woman.  She came to Jesus, she bowed before Jesus, she made offering to Jesus – in short, she worshipped Jesus.  The one side of reparation is giving thanks to God, worshipping, for what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.  Worship helps to restore us to unity with God.
• On the other side, Ian.  Ian took steps to make reparation with those whom he had wronged.  He “saw to the children,” doing everything that “was required” to find forgiveness.  The other side of reparation is making amends to our fellow human beings so that we might be restored to unity with each other.
  

 

Reparation is discipleship.

• I like that, unlike the old lectionary, the current lectionary does not end today’s gospel story with Jesus’ saying to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”  I like that the new lectionary ends with lists of some of the disciples who followed Jesus.  This framing of the gospel narrative makes the connection between reparation and discipleship. 
• Reparation is discipleship.  To do reparation is to be a disciple; to be a disciple is to do reparation.
• Disciples are those who dedicate their lives to worshipping God so that we might be restored to unity with God, and disciples are those who take whatever steps they need in order to repair our relationships – make reparation – so that we might be restored to unity with others.
• Reparation is discipleship. 
  

 

Challenging!

Is the work of reparation is challenging?  Hugely challenging!  Reparation puts us face to face with truth.  Reparation forces us to admit that we have made mistakes.  Reparation inconveniences us.  Reparation puts us at the mercy of others, who may or may not forgive us.  And yet this is the path we Christians are called to walk.

What is our hope?  Where is our help?  Our hope and help is in Jesus Christ.

• We all have places in our lives that stand in need of reparation.  Hardly a day goes by that I don’t do or say something that I later regret and for which I must make reparation, if I want to restore unity.  And I suspect that each of us is the same.
• The good news is that we Christians follow a God who, in the words of the Eucharistic prayer we are shortly to pray, in infinite love made us for himself; and, when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death… in his mercy, sent Jesus Christ, his only and eternal Son, to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all.
• As we ask, Jesus will give us grace in proportion to do that which he is calling us to do. 
• If God is calling us to restore unity with Him in more faithful worship and prayer, by our asking God will give us the grace to be restored in unity with Him in more faithful worship and prayer.
• If God is calling us to restore unity with others – our spouse, a co-worker, an estranged sibling or family member – by our asking God will give us the grace to carry out the reparation required.
  

 

Disciples are those who make reparation: image of James and John

• The mission of the Church – the mission of Trinity Parish – is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.
• Christian disciples are those who make reparation, who work toward repairing the unity with God and each other that was broken in the opening chapters of Genesis
• Discipleship is reparation; doing the work of reparation is discipleship.

 

• Among the first disciples called, and those who were in Jesus’ inner circle of disciples, are James and John.  Remember what they were doing when Jesus called them?  “They were in their boat mending the nets.”  When Jesus saw them, he knew that these men would make good disciples, for they knew how to mend.  And not just how to mend anything, but nets, webs of relationship.
• We are not here at Trinity Parish this morning by accident.  God has called us here.  And I wonder if God has called us here this morning because, like Jesus on the shore, God sees in us the capacity for mending things, and not just mending anything, but helping to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Jesus Christ.
• I invite you, like the woman worshipped Jesus, to keep coming here to worship Jesus, that we may make progress restoring our unity with God.
• Ii invite you, like Ian in Anne Tyler’s novel, to courageously embrace the work of repairing what we have broken so that we may make progress restoring unity with each other.
• In so doing, we may learn like Ian that forgiveness is the gifts these children bring to us through making us more than we otherwise could have been.  In so doing, we may learn like Ian that we must forgive as well as be forgiven, and by so doing we will be able to claim the life we has been given as our own.