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Sermon
Synopses - July/Aug 2007
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.
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Sermon for Wednesday,
August 15, 2007
St. Mary the Virgin
Todd noted that, though he
has never developed a devotion to “Our Lady,” millions
of Christians the world over do have a devotion to her. Because
of their witness, he feels compelled to keep looking for
a way in, to see if he might discover a devotion to her. One
possible “way in” that he passed on to us comes
from the “Angelus” devotion. (“The
angel of the Lord announced unto Mary” “And
she conceived by the Holy Spirit.” “Hail
Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you…) One
of the lines in the devotion – a line taken from
John 1 – is “And the Word was made flesh” “And
dwelt among us.” The reason, Todd said, why
Mary is regarded as the “saint of saints” is
because she was the very first to make the Word flesh. All
subsequent saints of the church are saints because they
have, in their own unique way, enfleshed the Word in their
persons. We are all called to be like Mary, to enflesh
the Word in our lives. We are called to take the
Word into us, in the scriptures and in the sacraments. We
are called to nurture and gestate that Word through prayer,
worship and service. And we are called to bear forth
into the world the Word, raising it up and sending it forth,
enfleshing the Word in the unique way that only we can
do.
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Sermon for Wednesday, July
25, 2007
St. James the Apostle
Text: Matther 20:20-28
In the month of July we celebrate
the feast of two saints, one who is the icon of stability,
and the other who is an icon of pilgrimage. On July
11 we celebrated St. Benedict, who founded monasteries
that committed brothers to remaining in one place, trusting
that their transformation would be worked out as they persevered
in one place through thick and thin. Today we celebrate
the feast of St. James, the saint associated with the great
medieval pilgrimage site of Santiago de Compostela, in
northern Spain. Pilgrims held that spiritual advantage
was to be had in their journey, in moving about, trusting
that conversion and deepening of faith would occur as they
saw distant places and experienced the “new” every
day.
Which is the right way? Both
are right! But, since today is the feast of St. James,
today we will focus on journey and pilgrimage.
A pilgrimage is a time of
decision and resolution, a time of preparation and planning,
a time for leaving the familiar and setting out toward
the unknown, a time of risk, a time for forming bonds with
new friends and fellow travelers, a time to consider goals
and destinations. A pilgrimage is also a time for
dreaming and imagining, looking out at the horizon and
wondering what lies beyond. But a pilgrimage
is not just a time for any kind of dreaming – it
is a time for imagining what your life with God might look
like.
In today’s Gospel lesson,
Jesus and his disciples are on a journey, going up to Jerusalem. The
mother of James and John has given herself over to the
dreaming and imagining that come with journeys; she has
a vision of what her sons’ lives with Jesus
might look like: “Declare that these two sons
of mine will sit, one at your right had and one at your
left, in your kingdom.” Journeys are also a
time to consider what it would take to make the dream happen. Jesus
responds to her with a question to James and John: “Are
you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” As
any experienced traveler knows, journeys always contain
an element of risk. The risk for James’ and
John’s journey with Jesus is death, which James was
the first among the apostles to suffer.
As we gather around the “cup” here
at the Eucharist, Jesus’ question to James and John
is apropos for us. Are we able to drink this cup? The “cup” is
a place of dreaming and imagining what our life with God
could look like – intimate, even drinking God’s
very essence. Are we ready for this kind of relationship
with God? The “cup” is also a reminder of the
risks of the commitment we have made – being a Christian
has the power to change our lives as we now know them;
we are called to die to our old ways of being and to take
on Christ. Are we ready to die for this new way of
living?
The Feast of St. James calls
us to a place of vision and imagining. What do you
envision your life with God might look like? What
do you imagine it might take to make this dream a reality? Are
you prepare to “drink the cup” that Jesus’ drinks?
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Sermon for Sunday, July
22, 2007
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Martha, Martha, you are
worried and distracted by many things; there is need
for only one thing. Mary has chosen the better
part, which will not be taken away from her.” Luke
10:41-42
Todd said that if there is
a scripture for the modern age – one we can all
relate to, that speaks a timely truth to us – it
is today’s gospel lesson. All of us can relate
to being “worried and distracted by many things.” We
all long to be told of a simpler way, that “there
is need for only one thing.” We all know in
our heart of hearts that God – not our homes, not
our work, nor even our family – is the “one
thing” necessary.
How do we get the “one
thing” that we need? Todd said that we would
do well to recover a lost word in our tradition, a Greek
word with a relatively common English cognate: askesis,
which literally means “exercise,” and its cognate “ascetic.” Though
we might think of wan-cheeked monks who don’t eat
or sleep enough when we hear the word ascetic, “ascetic” at
its truest meaning is one who is unafraid to make hard
choices in order to attain his or her goal, the “one
thing.” We are all called to make God our “one
thing,” to order our lives around God, to choose
God above all else. Todd mentioned the merchant
in search of fine pearls and the man who found a treasure
hidden in a field (Matt 13). They were true “ascetics” who
chose to sell all they had in order to get their “one
thing,” the pearl of great price and the buried treasure,
respectively. “We Christians are called to
be ascetics, boldly – even ruthlessly – cutting
away all that would hinder us from attaining our ‘one
thing,’ God.”
Turning to the Gospel reading,
Todd noted that that which gets in the way of our pursuit
of God are “good things.” In being a
good hostess and serving food to our Lord, Martha was doing
a good work. “It is good things that the Evil
One uses to keep us from the one Great Thing.” Todd
noted that our lives tend to be filled, not with bad, but
good things: hockey teams, swim lessons, music lesson,
exercise, time with our families, cooking meals, etc. “and
it is these that the tempter uses to keep us from the ‘one
thing’ necessary.” Todd noted
that there are many people who claim to live good lives. “There
are hundreds, thousands of people here in Newton who live
good lives. It’s not hard to live a good life.” We
Christians are called not merely to live good lives, he
said, but great lives. “We are to live great
lives. And the greatest life we can live is a life
centered around our ‘one thing,’ God.”
Todd left us with an image
from Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk. The
weasel hunts by grabbing on to the jugular of its victim
and holding on until the prey drops. A weasel can
bring down animals many times its size by its tenacity. There
was a 19th century hunter who shot an eagle out of the
sky with the skeletal jaws of a weasel hanging from its
neck. In the last seconds of its life, as it was
grabbed by the eagle’s talons, the weasel had instinctively
turned around and gone for the jugular and never let go. We
are to go for the “one thing,” for God, and
to never let go. If we do so, we will have “chosen
the better part, which will never be taken away from us.”
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Sermon for Wednesday, July
18, 2007
Text: “Ah,
Assyria, the rod of my anger – the club in their
hands is my fury! Against, a godless nation I send
him, and against the people of my wrath I command him,
to take spoil and seize and plunder, and to tread them
down like the mire of the streets.” – Isaiah
10:5-6
Todd began by noting that
a famous televangelist (Falwell?) said after September
11, 2001, that the twin towers’ fall was God punishing
the United States. Todd said that his first, knee-jerk
reaction was, “Oh my God, how could he possibly say
that?” and “What an embarrassment for Christianity!” Mainline
leaders excoriated (Falwell?) for his statements. But
upon further reflection, Todd noted that he had to admit
that in ascribing a national calamity to God, Falwell (?)
fell squarely in the Christian tradition.
The setting for today’s
text from Isaiah is the Assyrian invasion of the Southern
Kingdom of Judah in the 8th century BC. Assyria had
laid waste to the countryside and was besieging Jerusalem. According
to Isaiah, God not only allowed Assyria to invade Judah
but actually caused Assyria to invade Judah. Assyria
was “the rod of [God’s] anger.” “Against
a godless nation I [God] sent him, and against the people
of my wrath I [God] command him… to seize and plunder,
and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.” In
Isaiah’s eyes, God used Assyria to punish Israel
for its faithlessness and lack of concern for the widow,
the orphan and the stranger. (See Isaiah 9:13-21).
Though we modern Protestant
don’t like to say that God caused a disaster – a
sickness, a death, a natural catastrophe – the bulk
of Christians for the last 2,000 years have ascribed disasters
to the hand of God. We are currently out of step
with the vast weight of our tradition on this issue. Because
of this tradition, Todd said that he is not so quick to
dismiss the hand of God as being present in disaster. He
told the story of one of his colleagues who, when a woman
asked him, “Why did God let my husband suffer and
die?” assured her that “God doesn’t
work that way.” “How do we know God doesn’t
work that way?” asked Todd. “And to say
that God was not behind her husband’s suffering and
death hinders her from the one possible way of making sense
of her husband’s suffering and death – that
God somehow was involved in it.”
Todd wants to know that God
is in all things, above all things and through all things. Todd
said that he wants to believe that God desires us above
all else and will stop at nothing to bring us closer to
him. Perhaps the tradition has a point. Perhaps
God is somehow involved when disaster strikes. Who
are we to say that God does not work in a certain way? Who
can fathom the mind of God?
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Sermon for Sunday, July 8, 2007
Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
“The harvest is
plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore,
ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into
his harvest.”
– From Luke 10
Today Todd preached without
notes (unlike the last three Sundays). Here follows
a synopsis.
Todd pointed out that preaching
is not just something the preacher does; preaching is a
collaborative effort between preacher and hearers. He
quoted from St. Gregory the Great:
What did the Lord say when
he sent forth preachers? ‘The harvest is plentiful,
but the laborers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest
to send out workers to it.’ Many hear the good
news, but we lack people to preach it…
Pray for us, dear brothers
and sisters, that we may be worthy workers among you and
that our tongues may not grow weary of exhorting, lest,
after we have accepted the office of preacher, our silence
accuse us to the just Judge. Often it is the preacher’s
own wickedness that makes them hold their tongues, but
often too it is the fault of the subjects that their leaders
go silent.
The wickedness of the preachers
can still their tongues, as the psalmist attests: ‘To
the sinner God says: How can you tell of my saving
deeds?’ But the wickedness of the hearers can
also silence the preacher’s voice, as the Lord indicates
when he says to Ezekiel: ‘I shall make your
tongue stick to your palate and you will be mute and offer
no exhortation, for this people provokes my wrath.’ It
is as if he were saying: Your power to preach I take away
because this people angers me with its actions and does
not deserve to hear the truth. It is not easy to
know whose fault it is that makes preachers silent.
Todd pointed out that Gregory,
in his turn-of-the-seventh-century language – “wickedness” – is
talking about holiness. The holiness of both the
preacher and the hearers affects whether God’s truth
can be proclaimed.
Since “holiness” can
be a large, amorphous term, Todd offered three concrete
ways to increase our capacity to hear sermons (and also
increase our holiness):
- Read the Sunday’s scriptures in
advance! The lectionary (cycle of readings) can
be found at the end of the Book of Common Prayer, currently
on page 919.
- Pray for the preacher. Pray that
the preacher may continue faithful in his or her prayer. It
is the preacher’s prayer – and not eloquence
or rhetorical training – that enables him or her
to preach the Word.
- Pray for ourselves. Todd mentioned
an elder brother in the monastery where he once was a
brother, who before every service would ask God for a “Word.” Pray
that you may hear a Word.
We all sit through sermons here week after
week. We may as well increase our capacity to make
the most of the time that I, Sharon or Sheela are talking
to you,” said Todd. If we are faithful in our
reading of the scriptures and our prayer, he said, we can
be certain that the words we together “preach” here
will go forth and not return empty. They will accomplish
that for which God purposes them.
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Sermon for Sunday, July
1, 2007
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
“For freedom Christ
has set us free… You were called to freedom,
brothers and sisters.” -- From Galatians
5
One of my colleagues formerly
served at a parish outside New York City, a parish that
had a regular Jazz Mass. He tells the story of how
he took one of his friends, a rock musician, to meet Phil
Smith (not his real name), a hulking guitarist who played
from time to time for the jazz mass. Now, there is
a friendly rivalry between jazz and rock musicians, the
rock musicians jealous of the jazz musicians’ ability
to improvise, and the jazz musicians jealous of the rock
musicians’ ability to make money. As soon
as my friend introduced the rock musician to Phil, the
rock musician, right on cue, began to gush about how much
he admired jazz musicians and their ability to improvise. “I
can’t believe you can play all this music without
a single page in front of you!” The hulk of
Phil Smith just stood calmly, placidly, arms crossed while
the loquacious rock musician excitedly waxed on and on
about his admiration. Finally, the rock musician
asked, “So, tell me, how do you do it? How
do you improvise?” Phil Smith paused for a
minute, and then said, “Well, first, you have to
listen.”
What Phil said rings true
with what I have heard from other jazz musicians: If
you want to improvise, to have freedom from the written
score, you have to listen, and listen carefully. Listen
to the tunes. Listen carefully to how others have
improvised on those tunes. Listen to your instrument
and get to know its sounds. Listen carefully to those
playing with you. And listen to yourself, to you
abilities and creativity. For a jazz musician, the
freedom of improvisation is borne out of a great discipline
of listening.
This week our nation will
celebrate Independence Day. One of our 4th of July
words – “freedom” – is a word that
appears in today’s second lesson, from Paul’s
letter to the Galatians: “For freedom Christ
has set us free… You were called to freedom,
brothers and sisters.” When we Americans hear
the word “freedom” in the context of the 4th
of July, we tend to think of colonists throwing off the
yoke of tyranny from unjust rulers; we tend to think of
certain, inalienable rights; we tend to think of being
free to do what we want, so long as it is within the bounds
of the law. We Americans cherish our freedom. The “freedom” of
which Paul speaks in this morning’s reading from
Galatians is a very different kind of freedom. Freedom
for Paul is not merely about throwing off something – such
as sin, death and the Law – but it is also about
putting on Jesus Christ. Freedom for Paul might sound
something like our civil rights – “There is
no longer Jew or Greek… slave or free… male
or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus…” – but
Paul is very clear that “we are not our own,” that “we
have been bought with a price.” And freedom
for Paul is not about being able to do whatever we want;
freedom is about “through love becoming slaves of
one another.”
How can Paul’s “freedom” truly
be freeing? And if we chose to adopt Paul’s
vision of freedom as our own, how do we go about it?
During the month of July the
Episcopal Church not only keeps Independence Day as one
of its feasts, it also keeps the feast day of a saint who – perhaps
more than any other and in ways hidden and unknown to us – has
shaped our tradition as Episcopalians. St. Benedict
has his feast day on July 11, and this 6th century monk
and founder of the Benedictine order – whose descendants
founded Canterbury cathedral, the seat of the Anglican
Communion worldwide, and whose worship traditions permeate
our Book of Common Prayer – wrote a Rule of Life
for his brothers to follow. In his Rule, Benedict
does not shirk from using words like “yoke,” and “discipline,” “practice” and “commandments” – for
Benedict, the Christian life is a journey that is not always
easy, that makes demands of us, and that calls forth commitments
from us. But Benedict is also clear that the purpose
of taking on these disciplines is freedom; we bind ourselves
in order to be free. Listen, for example, to these
famous words from the Prologue of Benedict’s Rule:
We intend to establish a school
for the Lord’s service… Do not be daunted
immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads
to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. But
as we progress in the way of life and faith, we shall run
on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing
with the inexpressible delight of love.
Freedom, for Benedict and
Paul, is not about rights, not about casting off yokes,
not about being free to do what we want – freedom
is something that results from entering a school, of taking
on a discipline; it results from setting out on a road,
and becoming through love slaves to one another. This
freedom is experienced as “love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness” and all the other so-called “fruits
of the Spirit,” to use Paul’s language; and
it is experienced, in Benedict’s language, as a fountain, “overflowing
with the inexpressible delight of love.”
If we decide to pursue this
kind of freedom, how do we go about it?
Here, Benedict and Phil Smith
have something in common. The very first word of
Benedict’s Rule – and a word that appears again
and again throughout the Rule – is the word… “listen.”
Listen carefully, my son,
to the master’s instructions, and attend to them
with the ear of your heart.
If we would find true freedom – a
freedom marked by love, joy, peace, patience and by our “hearts
overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love” – we
must, above all, listen.
Our path, our “school,” is
set before us:If we would know freedom, we are to gather
here Sunday by Sunday, to listen to our scriptures, our “tunes.”
- If we would know freedom, we are to
listen in this community to the voices of the Tradition – voices
like Augustine or Benedict, or Rowan Williams or our
hymn writers – to hear how they have “improvised” on
our “tunes.”
- If we would know freedom, we are to
gather here Sunday by Sunday to listen to our sacraments,
our “instruments” whereby the beauty and
grace of God is made present to us.
- If we would know freedom, we are to
gather here week by week to listen to those around us,
to hear how Christ might be “playing” in
the face of a brother or sister.
- If we would know freedom, we are to
set aside regular times during the week to pray and meditate
with scripture, to listen to ourselves, to uncover our
ability and creativity to enter into the life of God.
- If we would live lives that are beautiful,
creative, exhilarating and free, we must, like a good
jazz musician, practice the discipline of listening.
All of us seek freedom. If
we would find freedom, the true freedom for which God has
created us, we are to bind ourselves to listening. We
are to listen.
Listen carefully!... Do
not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the
road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow
at the outset. But as we progress in the way of life
and faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments,
our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of
love.
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