tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33267920942873258812024-03-11T17:11:50.170-05:00a long way from homeEvan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.comBlogger1855125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-54505392567608128042024-03-11T17:06:00.002-05:002024-03-11T17:11:19.437-05:00Our Daily Bread<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">March 10, 2024 – The Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Lent/BLent4_RCL.html" target="_blank">Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2024 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon is available <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-3-10-24-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video can be seen <a href="https://youtu.be/8WW52a0bdPQ?t=1211" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><p>Is there any such thing as bad bread? From the nutritionally vacuous white bread to the hardiest whole-grain varieties, just about any bread will do. Yes, I know it can get moldy, but you can usually cut off the green edges. Yes, I know it can grow stale, but that just means it’s time for croutons, breadcrumbs, French toast, or even bread pudding. Although bread can go bad, it all starts off pretty good. As a child, I didn’t like the end-piece or the heel, and I preferred pillowy soft Wonder Bread to the more healthful stuff my mother bought, but, these days, it’s hard to find a bread I don’t like. </p><p>But, after wandering in the desert for almost forty years, the people of God had had enough of the bread that God had given them. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” they grumbled against God and against Moses. “For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food!” Literally, “Our very souls loathe wretched food,” implying, perhaps, that the Israelites had eaten so much manna for so long that they wretched or gagged at the mere thought of it. I suppose four decades of eating the same thing would make any of us a little irritable.</p><p>But God wasn’t having it: “The Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.” The poisonous snakes—sometimes translated “fiery serpents,” presumably because their venom felt like burning to those who were bit—were God’s response to the people’s ingratitude. Apparently, taking for granted God’s heavenly provision made God angry enough to teach them a deadly lesson. But what is this strange story supposed to teach us?</p><p>The manna from heaven was always designed to be a test. In Exodus 16, shortly after the Israelites had escaped captivity in Egypt, the people ran out of food. So they grumbled against Moses and his brother Aaron, saying, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” Back then, God heard the people’s complaint, and God said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not.”</p><p>The next morning, when the Israelites awoke, there was a layer of dew all around the camp. When the dew lifted, a fine flaky substance was left behind, “as fine as frost on the ground.” The people asked, “What is it?”—a phrase which in Hebrew sounds like “manna.” “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat,” Moses explained to them. “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather as much of it as each of you needs, [one measure] to a person according to the number of persons, all providing for those in their own tents.” In other words, the people were told to gather as much as each person needed—no more, no less. If they gathered too much, by the next morning, the excess had become foul-smelling and worm-infested, unless it was the sabbath. On the day before the Sabbath, the people were told to gather two portions per person because the manna did not appear on the sacred day of rest. And, if they forgot to gather a double-portion, they went hungry for a day.</p><p>The rhythm of receiving, gathering, and depending on God’s provision, which was literally their daily bread, was itself a test. Each day, God gave them everything they needed, but there was no opportunity to horde leftovers, to commodify God’s bounty, or to leverage their blessings to get ahead. The test God gave them, therefore, was not a test of survival but one of faithfulness. When everyone has exactly what he or she needs and no one must struggle to survive, there is no way to confuse our accomplishments with God’s generosity. In a manna economy, people learn to depend on God each day, and the test is whether we will be satisfied with the portion we have been given.</p><p>That’s why the people’s grumbling in Numbers 21 invokes such a strong response from God. Their complaints are not merely a reflection of their “menu fatigue” but also of their collective refusal to accept what God had given them. “There is no food and no water,” the Israelites claimed, shoving the manna away like a dissatisfied toddler, refusing even to consider it as real food. “We would rather die than eat what God has given us,” they effectively said. “We would rather be slaves in Egypt than free people who belong to God.”</p><p>In effect, God gave them what they asked for, though it came in the form of poisonous snakes rather than starvation. When interpreting this strange passage, the rabbis teach that God sent serpents upon the people because a snake was the first creature who slandered God.[1] Because the people had spoken falsely against God’s goodness, they were to be punished by the original slanderer. But there is more to this punishment than the fiery serpents that bit the people. In the reading of this story, we cannot separate the punishment from its remedy.</p><p>The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed. But, instead of taking the serpents away, as the people asked, God devised an even stranger means for their salvation. “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole,” God said to Moses, “and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” In so doing, the people were saved not because they looked upon the cast bronze image of a snake but, as the rabbis teach, because they lifted up their eyes to heaven.[2] A symbol of death became the window through which God’s people looked for God and God’s salvation. And, thus, by returning to their dependence on God’s sustenance, the people returned to their faith.</p><p>When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he taught us to ask our heavenly Father for our daily bread. Every time we gather as God’s family, we ask God to give us this day the sustenance we need to make it until tomorrow—no more, no less. Our test is no different from that of the Israelites in the wilderness. Will we recognize that God has given us enough, and will we be satisfied with what we have been given? In an economy like ours, which rewards the accumulation of wealth and punishes those who have nothing, it is perilously easy to confuse our accomplishments with God’s generosity and fail the test that we have been given. When it comes to remaining faithful to God by depending solely on God’s daily provision, we are snakebit.</p><p>But there’s hope, although it might not be the answer we want. We want God to take away our struggles and hardships, even when they are the problems of our own making. God hears our prayers and beckons us to return, but the window through which we gaze upon God and God’s mercy is, again, the symbol of our own death—nothing less than the cross of Christ. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” Jesus taught us, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”</p><p>We look upon Jesus, crucified for our sins, in order that we might lift our eyes up to heaven. The cross is a sign of our failure to believe in God and trust in God’s sustenance. It is the embodiment of our greed and our self-indulgent ways. It is the ultimate sign of our refusal to accept what God has given us and our decision to choose our own death and slavery to sin rather than the freedom and abundant life God chooses for us. And yet that same cross becomes the means of our salvation—the window into our forgiveness, our redemption, and our eternal life. </p><p>The hope that God gives us is not a denial of our failures but our salvation from them. We must journey through the death of the cross in order to enter everlasting life. We must look upon the one who was crucified for our sins that we might be forgiven. And, by returning to our dependence on God’s sustenance—on God’s saving grace—we return to our faith—the faith by which we are saved. Here, we receive the true bread that came down from heaven to give life to the world, even God’s Son, Jesus Christ, our savior, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.</p><p>__________________________________________</p><p>1. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">See, for example, </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Bamidbar
Rabbah</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> 19:22.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">2. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">See </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ein Yaakov</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">
(Glick Edition), Rosh Hashanah 3:1.</span></p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-31073556645173658122024-02-12T08:37:00.002-06:002024-02-12T08:37:21.499-06:00How Far Will We Go?<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">February 11, 2024 – The Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpiLast_RCL.html" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpiLast_RCL.html" target="_blank">2 Kings 2:1-12; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2024 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon is available <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-2-11-24-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video can be seen <a href="https://youtu.be/odsG8COdvG0?t=1430" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><p>Where must we go to see the power of God manifest in the world? How far are we willing to travel in order to find God’s Spirit taking hold in this life?</p><p>When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, he said to Elisha, his protégé, “Stay here, for the Lord has sent me as far as Bethel.” But Elisha replied, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” A second time, Elijah said, “Stay here; for the Lord has sent me to Jericho.” But Elisha replied, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not forsake you.” A third time, Elijah said to his faithful companion, “Stay here, for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.” But Elisha replied yet again, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not abandon you.”</p><p>Elijah knew that his time had come to depart the earth. Elijah knew it. Elisha knew it. All the prophets knew it. Everyone knew that the day had come for God to take the prophet from them. In his last great act of faithfulness, Elijah travelled from place to place throughout central Israel, going wherever the Lord commanded him. He knew that being faithful to God had gotten him this far and that remaining faithful would see him through. But, for some reason, he didn’t want Elisha to follow him. </p><p>“Stay here,” he said three times. But why? Maybe it was because Elijah believed that his successor was already called to work among the cities and villages of Israel and not to waste any time venturing out into the wilderness beyond the Jordan River. Or maybe it was because Elijah wasn’t fond of tearful goodbyes and wanted to approach the end of his life on this earth alone. Or maybe it was because Elijah knew that, unlike any human being who had ever lived, he was to be taken up into heaven in a fiery whirlwind and that God’s power and might, which were to be revealed in that dramatic ascension, should not be seen—or could not be seen—by mere mortals.</p><p>But Elisha would not listen. “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you,” the prophet-in-training vowed three times, using a word for “leave” that carries the force of abandonment. If Elijah knew that being faithful to God meant going wherever the Lord sent him, Elisha knew that for him it meant staying beside his master until God decided to split them apart.</p><p>Among God’s people, no prophet except Moses had rivaled Elijah in importance. God had sent him to confront Ahab, the King of Israel, who had made a career of leading God’s people astray. False worship, unholy alliances, and inhumane practices had defined Ahab’s rule, and Elijah alone had stood up to the monarchy and all its pomp and power. Numerous times, after denouncing the king’s policies, Elijah had fled for his life. And it was during one of those desperate times that God came to Elijah and, in a whisper, told him to seek out Elisha and anoint him as his successor. When he found him, the great prophet threw his cloak around the unsuspecting man’s shoulders, literally passing the mantle onto his successor. But neither of them knew whether God’s Spirit could be passed along so easily.</p><p>“Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you,” Elijah said to Elisha after they had crossed the Jordan and entered the wilderness. “Please, let me inherit a double-share of your spirit,” Elisha begged, in effect asking for the double-size portion of an inheritance that would traditionally pass to a first-born son. Elisha knew that, if he were to follow in the footsteps of Elijah’s greatness, he would as much of the prophet’s spirit as he could receive. But God’s Spirit does not change hands as easily as a piece of land or a beloved cloak. “You ask a hard thing,” the senior prophet replied to the junior’s request, acknowledging his own uncertainty of whether that spirit was his to give away. “Yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.”</p><p>Elijah recognized that the passing of the Spirit from one prophet to another is the work of God and God alone. If God allowed Elisha to see this holy departure that was about to take place, it would be a sign that God had indeed chosen him to be Elijah’s fully empowered successor. But, if the would-be prophet were not worthy of that charge, he would not be able to see his master being lifted up into heaven, and he would know that the full power of God’s Spirit would not rest on him. As it was beyond their control, all Elisha could do was remain beside his teacher as far as he could go and pray.</p><p>Our reading from the Old Testament stops before we know for sure whether the spiritual transfer was complete. In fact, even Elisha isn’t sure until he leaves that place and comes back to the Jordan River—the boundary between the untamed wilds where God’s Spirit runs free and the domesticated territory of the king, who does his best to suppress that Spirit. Like Elijah before him, Elisha takes the prophet’s mantle and rolls it up, striking the river’s surface, proclaiming, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” The text is unclear, Walter Bruggemann argues, whether Elisha strikes the water once or twice, suggesting that the successor prophet may not have as much spiritual power as his predecessor. Regardless, it is enough. The river divides in two, and Elisha walks across on dry ground, returning to the jurisdiction of the earthly king and taking with him the power that God had bestowed on him to confront that king.</p><p>The kingdoms of this world rely upon clearly defined mechanisms for the transfer of power. Whether it is the death of a monarch, the inauguration of a president, or the surrender of a general, we recognize how authority is passed from one leader to the next. And we know that when the peaceful transfer of power is disrupted or discredited—when the mechanisms that we have established and accepted are threatened—our confidence in the society in which we live can be shaken. And we don’t like that. </p><p>But God doesn’t rely on the mechanisms we choose. God’s Spirit and power cannot be confined to predetermined channels. We do not get to decide when and how that Spirit will show up or on whom that Spirit will come to rest. Not even Elijah had that power. And sometimes the church has a hard time remembering that. In a church like ours, we pretend that we are good at defining the ways in which God’s Spirit will become manifest. Principally, we pass along the Spirit’s power through the hands of bishops, who, themselves, were set apart by the hands of other bishops, who were set apart by bishops before them. With the laying on of those episcopal hands, we set people apart for the holy work of ministry. But is that the only way we think God works among us? </p><p>God’s Spirit and power cannot be confined to authorized prayers and processes because how else will God’s Spirit ever rise up and challenge those in authority? How can the untamed power of God confront those in power if only those in power get to decide when God is allowed to show up? We don’t spend a lot of time in this church talking about the gifts of the Spirit—gifts like prophecy, healing, and speaking in tongues—because there aren’t many things less Episcopal than speaking in tongues. But who are we to tell God how God should become manifest? Who are we to decide when and where God will show up? Maybe God is already showing up in powerful ways that we haven’t noticed because we aren’t willing to leave our domesticated lives behind and look for them out in the wilderness.</p><p>How far are we willing to go to find the power of God taking hold in this world? When our lives are enhanced by the earthly powers at work around us, we are generally content to stay put—to stay here—and leave the work of prophets to someone else. But, when we see that the ways of the world are a betrayal of the ways of God—when God opens our eyes and shows us how far we have strayed from the world that God envisions—how can we afford to stay put?</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-2613914864076884722024-01-08T09:09:00.002-06:002024-01-08T09:09:21.598-06:00Baptizing Baby Jesus<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">January 7, 2024 – The 1st Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of our Lord, Year B</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi1_RCL.html" target="_blank">Genesis 1:1-5; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2024 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-1-7-24-11-eg" target="_blank">here</a>. Video can be seen <a href="https://youtu.be/qQfJuQpsIXM?t=1258" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><p>In a little while, we are going to baptize baby Jesus. A few weeks ago, here at St. Paul’s, Ceclia Diane Johnson, our baptismal candidate, played the starring role in our Christmas pageant. And she was wonderful! Each year, as we approach Christmas, we look though the congregation for a young child about her age—seven months—who is small enough to play the role but old enough not to be too fragile for the kid playing Mary to hold during the pageant. Sometimes we get wiggly, screaming babies who miss their real mothers, and other times we get babies like Cecelia—babies who take to their stage mothers, soak up the spotlight, and seem born for their role.</p><p>But, as far as I can remember, we’ve never had the chance to baptize baby Jesus on the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord a few weeks later. Ceclia better be careful that she doesn’t get typecast at a young age. Of course, as we hear in the gospel, Jesus wasn’t baptized as an infant, but I still think the connection is too good to pass up. Each year we celebrate Jesus’ baptism on the first Sunday after the Epiphany because it was a pivotal moment in salvation history. For the first time, all three persons of the Holy Trinity were manifest to humanity—the Son is baptized; the Spirit descends; and the Father speaks. That’s a moment worth remembering. But the fact that this year we have a closer connection with the Jesus who is baptized this day—even if it’s a humorous one—gives us the chance to think more carefully about our relationship with the one who was baptized in the River Jordan all those years ago.</p><p>Why was Jesus baptized in the first place? John the Baptist, who dunked Jesus under the water, preached a baptism of repentance. He told the people to repent of their sins and be baptized as a way of preparing themselves and purifying themselves for the one who was coming after him. But Jesus was the one he had been talking about. Jesus was the one they were getting ready for. And Jesus, we believe, was without sin—perfect God and perfect human from the moment of his conception. Why did Jesus need to be baptized? Mark’s gospel account doesn’t make a big deal about it, but Matthew’s version of the story has John initially refusing to baptize Jesus, saying, “I need to be baptized by you!”</p><p>It could be that Jesus wanted to endorse John’s message as the starting point for his own ministry. After all, both of them preached that the reign of God was coming and that we need to prepare ourselves to receive it. Or it could be that Jesus wanted to give us a pattern to follow—a “do what I do, not just what I say” sort of thing. In Matthew’s version, the reply Jesus gives to John’s objection is, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” I don’t really know what that means. It’s a fairly enigmatic statement. But it sounds important and suggests that something of eternal significance is at work. I think allowing ourselves to come closer to the Jesus who was baptized is a good way to receive the truth that those words convey.</p><p>What is the connection between Jesus’ baptism and our own? As Episcopalians, our doctrine—what we believe—is expressed primarily through our worship—how we pray. So, if you want to know what the Episcopal Church believes about Baptism, there’s no better place to look than our baptismal liturgy. When Sara asks God to bless the water before Cecelia’s baptism, she will pray, “We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit (BCP 306).” Listen to those incredible words! In Baptism, each one of us is buried with Christ, raised with him to new life, and endued with the Holy Spirit’s power. That means that, in the waters of Baptism, we become one with Jesus and all that he has accomplished on our behalf. In Baptism, we become a part of Jesus who, at the Incarnation, has become a part of us.</p><p>But how does that work? Does that mean that we must be baptized in order to be saved? I believe that God already loves Cecelia Diane Johnson as fully and perfectly as God will ever love her, even before she is baptized. And I believe that is true for every human being who has ever lived. Baptism does not change the way that God loves us. It changes the way we participate in that love. If the work of salvation belongs to God, then our work is to recognize it, receive it, believe in it, and celebrate it. In the incarnation, Jesus took upon himself our human nature. At the cross, he purified what was broken within us. In his resurrection, he restored and redeemed every one of us. Because of Jesus, we know that God’s infinite grace, acceptance, and love await each one of us in the next life. But it is Baptism that allows us to know and live fully into that love here and now.</p><p>Jesus is baptized on our behalf so that, in our baptism, we can be immersed in those waters with him—within him. Baptism is what makes God’s universal work of salvation real and personal to every baby, every child, every person who comes to the font. Baptism is what makes that salvation real and active not only in the moment of our death but in every moment of our lives. Baptism is how we as individuals and as the community of faith recognize the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus within ourselves and each other. </p><p>Because we have been baptized into Jesus Christ, he takes us with him under those waters. We emerge from the water with him and see that the way to heaven, which had been hidden from us, is now torn open and that the fullness and nearness of God is now revealed to us. We see the Holy Spirit descend upon us, and we feel its power equipping us for the life ahead. And, because we are in Jesus, we hear the Father say to each one of us, “You are my child, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” </p><p>Jesus was baptized so that we might be baptized into union with him. That means that every child we baptize is Jesus, whether they had a role in the pageant or not. And that means that you are Jesus, too. You have died with Christ. You have been raised with him. You have received his Spirit. Therefore, you are God’s beloved child, with whom God is well pleased. Receive that truth again today—God’s truth of who you really are. And let that truth shape your life until you recognize it every time you see your reflection looking back from the water.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-36591353376258504962023-12-27T09:08:00.001-06:002023-12-27T09:08:43.591-06:00Love Has No To-Do List<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">December 24, 2023 – Christmas I</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/Christmas/ChrsDay1_RCL.html" target="_blank">Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-15-20</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-12-24-23-evan-garner-christmas-eve" target="_blank">here</a>. Video can be seen <a href="https://youtu.be/ug8_5CSnBmk?t=3345" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><p>Merry Christmas! You’re here. You made it. You can check getting to church off your list. Take a deep breath. Know that God is here and that, simply by showing up, you’ve already done everything you need to do in order for God to meet you in this place. I’m glad you’re here. And I believe that God is, too. I just wish the secret to navigating the rest of my holiday stress was as simple as showing up.</p><p>The holidays are hard, aren’t they? And that’s true even when Christmas Eve doesn’t fall on a Sunday. You’ve got to figure out what gifts to buy and where to find them. You’ve got to go to work parties and neighborhood parties and friend parties and family parties. There’s food to make for your own household and food to give away. Then there’s travelling—either loading up the car and setting out or welcoming your family in from out of town. Either way, it’s a hassle. And the whole time there’s the struggle of trying to keep the peace between people who seem to show up just looking for a fight.</p><p>All we really want is for the people we love to be happy, but making other people happy is a pretty stressful affair. Maybe if they just told us what they want—if they made a list of all the gifts and foods and conversation topics that would make them happy and gave it to us, then we would know exactly what to buy, what to cook, and what conversations to steer away from. If we could just add all of their preferences to our holiday to do list, then maybe everything would work out just right. But you know that isn’t how it works, don’t you?</p><p>When I was a little kid, I spent a week at my grandparents’ house every summer. It was a magical week of being the center of attention. Each day while I was there, my grandmother planned a different activity like going to the museum, playing miniature golf, or showing me off to some of her friends. One thing we never failed to do was go Christmas shopping. My grandmother would take me through the mall—from Toys-R-Us to Macy’s department store to Barnes and Noble—and let me pick out whatever I wanted to find under the tree five months later. At first, it was a fabulous arrangement. Who doesn’t want to pick out his own presents? There was no risk that an out-of-touch septuagenarian would choose the wrong thing. </p><p>But, before long, the magic was lost. By the time I was eight, my memory was good enough that I could pick up every wrapped gift and know exactly what was inside before I tore off the paper. About that same time, I started to feel some pressure to pick out the “right” gift—the one that would make my grandmother happy. As we went shopping, I picked up on what I thought were subtle clues about what she thought her grandson should want, and I often ended up with a pile of books, CDs, and learning games that were better suited for a classroom than a playroom. She wanted to make me happy, and I wanted to make her happy, and, in the end, neither of us was.</p><p>Even perfectly made and perfectly executed plans fall short. We don’t want stuff under the tree. We want the stuff under the tree to be a sign that we are loved. And we want to be loved without having to tell someone what to get or what to cook or what to say in order to make us feel loved. We want to be loved by someone who loves us enough to know us and care about us and do all those things for us just because they love us. And we want to love them back in the same way. We want to love them in a way that shows them just how much we love them—more than they can possibly imagine. But loving someone like that isn’t easy. Even perfect plans fall short. And that’s why the holidays are so stressful. But it’s also why Christmas is so important.</p><p>On this holy night, we hear the angel say, “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” And, with those words, God let us know that it doesn’t matter whether our plans are perfect or whether they miss the mark completely. What matters is that God has already loved us and that God’s love has the power to make us perfect.</p><p>The birth of Jesus was not a plan set in motion but the fulfillment of God’s love for all time. The angel didn’t say that the child would one day grow up to be our savior. God did not tell the shepherds to come back in thirty years when the child was ready to take charge. God did not ask the world to stay tuned and wait for the day when Jesus would come and save them. The good news of Christmas is that our salvation comes to us as fully and completely as a newborn baby. Like any child who comes into our lives, God’s salvation isn’t something we need to learn how to take advantage of or figure out how to use. It’s not something we can mess up or get wrong. The gift itself is perfect because it is perfect love.</p><p>There in Bethlehem, all the love we would ever want to show or ever hope to receive is wrapped up in those bands of cloth and laid in that manger. That’s because, in the birth of Jesus, God has taken what is unavoidably imperfect within us and united it to God’s perfect self in order that all our brokenness might be made whole. And all we have to do is show up. There is no assembly required. There is no need to keep up with gift receipts. There is no chance that something will not fit. There is no worry that our plans will fall short. </p><p>By coming to us as perfect love, God makes our love for each other perfect. God does not give us the Christ child to show us that we have the potential to become better—that, if we work at it hard enough, we might actually succeed in loving one another as fully as we hope. No, in the birth of our savior, God has already made our love perfect by loving us perfectly. </p><p>We come this night to see again how much we are loved—enough that God would be born in us and for us. On this night, our souls are filled again to overflowing, not because they have been empty or lacking but because, at Christmas, we see again that they have always been full. It is nothing less than our own perfect love that we behold in the birth of Jesus our savior. </p><p>“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” Let us see in the Christ child how much we have been loved by God—loved even to perfection—and let us love one another with that perfect love which is God’s gift to us this night.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-65975354125471655392023-12-23T17:22:00.004-06:002023-12-23T17:22:43.133-06:00The Days Are Getting Longer<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">December 21, 2023 – St. Thomas (Blue Christmas)</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC/HolyDays/Thomas.html" target="_blank">Habakkuk 2:1-4; Hebrews 10:35-11:1; John 20:24-29</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p>St. Thomas feels like an odd choice for a congregation that is looking for comfort and reassurance at Christmas time. This Blue Christmas service is for those who are hurting during the holidays—those for whom the bright lights of the season obscure the loss and grief we carry underneath the surface. We’re used to hearing this gospel passage about Doubting Thomas on the Second Sunday of Easter, when associate rectors are called upon to preach about the one who was not with the other disciples when Jesus came.</p><p>But we also hear from St. Thomas at funerals. When families meet to plan the funeral of their loved one, we offer them a list of gospel lessons to choose from, but, more often than not, families choose the reading from John 14. “Lord, we do not know where you are going,” Thomas said to Jesus. “How can we know the way?” This was Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. He had told his closest friends that he would be leaving them. And, although Jesus promised to come back and take them to himself, Thomas—of course, it was Thomas—put into words the confusion and doubt that others must have been feeling, too.</p><p>In a very real and practical way, St. Thomas’ association with our Blue Christmas service isn’t really a choice at all. We commemorate St. Thomas this night—the longest night of the year—because, back in the 9th century, when the calendar of saints’ days was being compiled, this was the day when legend held that Thomas had died. In the Christian tradition, we typically remember the saints of God on the anniversaries of their deaths. But not every denomination celebrates Thomas on December 21. Centuries after the calendar of saints was established, a competing tradition was found—a legend that suggested Thomas died on July 3. And some churches, in an attempt to make the days leading up to Christmas a little less busy, moved Thomas’ feast day to that summer date.</p><p>I don’t know when Thomas actually died. And I don’t think it matters whether we remember him in the depths of December or the brightness of July. But I don’t think it’s an accident that Thomas’ feast was originally set for the longest night of the year. I can think of no better saint to commemorate in our moment of deepest darkness because doubt is just another word for grief.</p><p></p><blockquote><p>Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?</p><p>Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Those are not the words of a skeptic but the confessions of a man whose grief is insurmountable. Faced with the loss of Jesus, Thomas no longer knew how to make sense of the world, and his words reflect an inability to hang onto the tenets of the faith he had been taking for granted. How could someone so sure of who Jesus was and what he had promised—sure enough to give up his life in order to follow him—now be left with nothing but doubt? </p><p>Grief robs us of what we need most in our moment of loss. When we experience a loss that touches our souls and wounds us that deeply, we, too, find ourselves confused, disoriented, unsure of things we had always known to be true. That is the moment when we need God’s help most of all, but that is also precisely the moment when God feels furthest away. Sometimes without even realizing it, our language of grief comes out as words of doubt.</p><p></p><blockquote><p>I don’t know if I can keep going.</p><p><span style="white-space: normal; white-space: pre;"> </span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;">I don’t know what do to without him.</span></p><p>I don’t know how to pray anymore. I can’t find the words. I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know whom to pray to. </p><p>I don’t know if I believe in God anymore. I’m not sure I want to believe.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Grief has the power to turn everything upside down. Like a child caught by surprise under a pounding wave, we swim back toward the surface only to come up with a handful of sand instead lungs full of air. We no longer know which way is up, what day it is, or who we are. We can’t figure out how to take a single step. We’re not sure of anything anymore.</p><p>We remember Thomas on the longest night of the year because tonight is the night when we need to remember that God’s response to our disorienting grief is always to come and find us. “A week later, Jesus’ disciples were again in the house, and [this time] Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’” Do not be overwhelmed by your grief. I am here. I am with you. Come and see.</p><p>When we have lost the will to believe, God comes and finds us. When we have forgotten what it means to have hope, God comes and find us. When we aren’t sure whether things could ever get better, God comes and finds us.</p><p>In the moments of our lives when that message is hardest to receive, God does not hide it away from us, testing to see if we have the strength to go and find it. Instead, God brings it to us by coming and accompanying us in our grief. God declares to the prophet, “Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets so that anyone can read it. Make it big enough that even someone running by could make it out.” God wants you to know that it doesn’t matter whether you are sure of anything because God’s love for you is sure. Your grief—your doubt—is not an obstacle to God’s love but the very channel through which that love comes and finds you. God asks nothing more of you than to sit in your grief until you recognize that God is there with you—until that is enough for you to see that the days are getting longer.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-48220183170304216642023-12-10T13:04:00.001-06:002023-12-10T13:04:33.120-06:00Who Needs Good News?<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">December 10, 2023 – The 2nd Sunday of Advent, Year B</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Advent/BAdv2_RCL.html" target="_blank">Isaiah 40:1-11; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-12-10-23-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video can be seen <a href="https://youtu.be/cT0NkMLDid0?t=1222" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><p>In 1864, the Radical Democracy Party nominated John C. Frémont as their candidate for the highest office in the land. Frustrated by Abraham Lincoln’s promise to reconcile with the southern states once the Civil War was over, the hardline abolitionists’ choice of Frémont was as incendiary as it was strategic. Frémont had previously been appointed by Lincoln as commander of the Department of the West—a prestigious military post, which Frémont then squandered by overplaying his anti-slavery tactics. After declaring martial law in all of Missouri, promising to arrest and execute any civilian found to have secessionist sympathies, and declaring the emancipation of all enslaved persons within the state two years before Lincoln himself issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Frémont was relieved of his command. </p><p>When President Lincoln got word that his irascible former general had been nominated by a convention attended by only four hundred delegates, Lincoln responded by appealing to the Good Book. Quoting a passage about David running from King Saul in 1 Samuel 22, the President said, “And everyone that was in distress, and everyone that was in debt, and everyone that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them; and there were with him about four hundred men.” It was a clever way to disparage not only Frémont but also the ragtag group of disaffected Republicans that supported him, but one wonders whether likening Frémont to David, who later defeated Saul and became Israel’s greatest king, was a wise choice for a biblical allusion.</p><p>At the very beginning of Mark’s gospel account, the gospel writer quotes Isaiah 40: “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” In fact, all four gospel accounts—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—use these words from the prophet Isaiah to define the theological content of John the Baptist’s prophecy. He was, in their understanding, the one who prepared the way of the Lord and made his paths straight. But I wonder, two thousand years later, whether we rightly remember what those words meant to Jesus and his contemporaries. To really understand the original biblical allusion, we have to go back even further, about five hundred forty years before Jesus’ birth, and not to Israel but to Babylon, where God’s people lived in exile.</p><p>At that time, God’s people were desperate for some good news. For sixty years, they had suffered under the tyranny of the Babylonian king. Jerusalem had been ransacked by invaders. The holy temple had been destroyed. The people had been carted off in captivity. Their leaders had been executed. The calamity that befell them was not only political and economic but also theological. How could they continue to believe in the God of their ancestors if that God had failed them so completely? Who could make sense of what had happened without abandoning the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—of Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel?</p><p>Into that theological void, the prophets had spoken. Prophets like Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Obadiah, had helped God’s people recognize that it was not God who had abandoned them but their leaders who had given up on God and God’s ways generations earlier. The only language the prophets could find to explain how their God had allowed such a disaster to occur was language of judgment and condemnation. God’s people had gone astray, so God punished them severely. But, after sixty years of total humiliation, God’s people had heard enough of that. They were tired of the children’s teeth being set on edge because their parents had eaten sour grapes. Something had to change. A new theology was needed.</p><p>Like a gentle breeze blowing across their face after a summer storm had passed, the prophet Isaiah brought words of consolation to God’s people: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” At last, God’s word to God’s people was, “Comfort.” The debt of their sins had been paid, including the interest that was due. God was prepared to do a new thing, and that meant salvation for God’s people.</p><p>Now the time had come for God’s people to make a highway through the wilderness—a wide and impressive boulevard like those they had seen in Babylon, but this highway would stretch through the desert places so that it might reach God’s people in their distress. For decades, they had seen their captors parade their gods up and down the city’s streets in festal processions designed to celebrate the enthronement of their deities, but now the God of their ancestors would come and reveal God’s glory—God’s magnificence and might—so that all people would see it together—so that no one would mistake which God was really in charge.</p><p>A voice said to the prophet, “Cry out!” And the prophet said, “What shall I cry? What words could I possibly say to help my people believe again—to help them have hope again?” And the voice replied, “Say that all people are grass. Remind them that, though the grass withers and the flower fades, the word of our God will stand forever. Help them see that the empire which surrounds them is here today but gone tomorrow. Tell them that their God is coming to save them and that God will lead them like a shepherd, feeding his flock with justice and gathering the lambs in his bosom and leading them so gently that even a nursing ewe can keep up.” </p><p>A half of a millennium later—after about as much time as has passed since European settlers came to this continent—God’s people were again surrounded by imperial oppressors, and the good news of Jesus Christ began to unfold with the proclamation of John the Baptist. This was God’s consolation for God’s people. Again, they were desperate for some good news, and this time it sounded like this: “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” </p><p>John went out into the wilderness, clothed in the prophet’s garments of camel skins and a leather belt, eating the uncivilized food of locusts and wild honey, in order to prepare a highway on which God’s people would encounter their savior. John knew that it was in the desert places, apart from the structures and institutions of the empire, out where the wounded and brokenhearted people had gathered, where God would again come to God’s people. That’s because, whenever God saves us, it is always an act of disruption—an unsettling of the status quo that has imprisoned us. And that means that the highway we must travel in order to find our savior is always the road of repentance. </p><p>Two thousand years later, we must be sure that we are hearing the biblical allusion in the right way. We must hear the invitation to repent with the same spirit of comfort and hopefulness that John the Baptist invoked two thousand years ago. It is no accident that all four gospel accounts link Isaiah’s message of comfort with John’s baptism of repentance. Repentance doesn’t mean enduring the harsh words of judgment and condemnation. It means turning away from them because they no longer have any authority in our lives. </p><p>Repentance is that great and hopeful disruption of our lives which our souls crave. Repentance is the food of the anxious spirit, the balm of the grieving countenance, the light of the wayward conscience. Repentance is daring to believe that God can and will come to save us even though the world wants us to think that God’s salvation has passed us by. Repentance means turning aside to find the one who comes to rescue us. It means believing that God’s words of comfort and reassurance are meant for each one of us. Surely that is good news that we, too, are desperate to hear.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-52361663273873836142023-11-26T17:43:00.002-06:002023-11-26T17:43:23.240-06:00Liturgies of Thanksgiving<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">November 23, 2023 – Thanksgiving Day, Year A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/HolyDays/Thanks_A_RCL.html" target="_blank">Deuteronomy 8:7-18; 2 Corinthians 9:6-15; Luke 17:11-19</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-11-23-23-eg" target="_blank">here</a>. Video can be seen <a href="https://youtu.be/ePqyvLCWFQI?t=1243" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><p></p><blockquote><p>Dear God, we thank you for the food that we will eat this day and the hands that have prepared it. We thank you for the farmers that tended the fields and cared for the flocks. We thank you for the laborers who harvested the produce and packaged it for transport. We thank you for the truck drivers who delivered it and the shelve stockers who made it available to us. We thank you for the cashiers who may or may not have helped us purchase it and the marketing teams who showed us where to shop for it. </p><p>We thank you for the oil workers and power plant laborers who make it possible for those trucks to run and stores to stay open. We thank you for the road crews and first responders who make safe and efficient transportation possible. We thank you for the financial professionals and software engineers who enable us to use a debit card or a smartphone to move money from one account to another whenever we buy something.</p><p>We thank you for the support staff who helped us do our jobs and the managers who trained us for them. We thank you for the HR professionals who hired us and the teachers and professors who taught us. We thank you for the investment managers who safeguard our resources and the government officials who protect our markets. We thank you for the labor organizers and creative geniuses and venture capitalists and bond issuers who keep our economy going.</p><p>We thank you for every sacrifice that was made in order for us to feast on the bounty that will be on our tables today, and we pray that you would make us mindful of the innumerable multitude that has contributed to our celebration this Thanksgiving. Amen.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>It takes a lot of work to make a Thanksgiving meal happen. How much are you responsible for? Moses has an answer.</p><p>“When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God…Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.”</p><p>When Moses spoke those words to the people of Israel, they were nearing the end of their journey through the wilderness from Egypt to the land of Canaan. The snakes and scorpions they had encountered in that arid wasteland were memories that had not yet begun to fade. Everyone who heard Moses’ voice had a story of struggle and triumph that they could tell. They all knew where they had been and that it was God alone who had brought them safely to that point. But Moses knew that it would not be long before the people forgot—before the stories of struggle lost some of their historical precision and became mere legendary tales of the ancestors passed down through their families.</p><p>“Remember the LORD your God, for it is God who gives you power to get wealth,” Moses urged the people. That’s easier said than done. That kind of remembering takes considerable effort, especially when our tables are full of food and those moments of hardship have passed beyond our personal experience. To remember the way that God invites us to—in a way that brings the covenant between us back to life—is more than a conscious recollection. It means to reembody something—to reconstitute in our lives a truth that is more than the stories we tell. But how can we make real for ourselves something that none of us remembers?</p><p>We use liturgies to help us with that. Some of our liturgies are formal and religious. Think of the truths we bring to life each time we gather for Holy Communion or Ash Wednesday, for a baptism or a funeral. Other liturgies are personal and familial. Think about how you open presents at Christmas or what you do to celebrate a birthday. Think about what you communicate to the members of your family when you fall almost effortlessly back into the pattern of doing things the way that they have been done for years and years. Our liturgies are what tie us to the past and help us reencounter that part of our story that we can’t afford to lose.</p><p>Thanksgiving is a holiday full of liturgy, and I don’t just mean what we do in church today. Think about the hand-shaped turkey you drew in grade school and how you learned from childhood to name the things for which you are thankful. Think about the way each member of the family is invited to say a word of gratitude before the Thanksgiving blessing is said. Think about the people whose recipes you will enjoy today—a great-grandmother’s cranberry relish or a housekeeper’s famous rolls. Allow your sense of gratitude to spring forth from the child within you and fill those lives that stretch back even to before you were born. </p><p>The kind of thankfulness that we are invited into this day is normally controversial. On almost any other day of the year, it is a hard thing to convince someone that every ounce of their success has been a gift. Whether it’s the college we got into or the business loan we received or the real estate holdings that were passed down to us or the property taxes that funded our education, we did not get where we are by ourselves. We had help along the way. Many of us had a lot of help. And even that bit of progress that we scratched out through our own sweat and toil is still a gift of God. It is all a gift. And we depend upon rituals of thanksgiving to help us remember that.</p><p>Moses did not tell the people of God to remember where their success had come from because God is expecting a thank you note. Neither do we come to church this day because we think that God will bless those who say the Litany of Thanksgiving once a year. We come because we cannot have a relationship with the giver of all good gifts if we have forgotten where those gifts come from. We cannot turn to God for help if we have forgotten that it is God who has helped us in every generation. Today we rekindle the spirit of gratitude that binds us to the God whose blessings have no limit. May the remembrances we offer to God this day strengthen our faith and sustain us in times of plenty and in times of want.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-4634148414591103402023-11-19T16:06:00.000-06:002023-11-19T16:06:09.270-06:00Celebrating All God's Gifts<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">November 19, 2023 – The 25th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 28A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp28_RCL.html" target="_blank">Judges 4:1-7; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-11-19-23-845-eg" target="_blank">here</a>. Video from the service can be seen <a href="https://youtu.be/ZGSr3N88olM?t=1173" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><p>In November 1558, when Queen Mary died, the Church of England was in crisis. Thirty-five years earlier, Henry VIII, Mary’s father, had refused to accept the authority of the Pope, and Parliament had passed legislation making it clear that the English monarch alone was supreme head of the Church in his realm. When Henry died and his nine-year-old son Edward took the throne, Protestant leaders carried out further reforms in the boy-king’s name, stripping the church of many of the catholic practices that Henry had maintained. But, six years later, Edward became ill and died, clearing the way for his older and faithfully Catholic half-sister Mary to become queen. She undid virtually all the reforms put in place by her father and half-brother, including the act of Parliament that had made the monarch the supreme head of the Church.</p><p>Five years later, when Mary died, her half-sister Elizabeth ascended to the throne, and she and her Protestant allies began the work of reestablishing a Church of England that was separate from the Church in Rome. This time, however, the reformers had to act more gently in part because the nation was tired of flipping back and forth between Catholic and Protestant rulers but also because Elizabeth was a woman. One of the first acts passed by her Parliament was a new Act of Supremacy, modeled after the one her father had pushed through and which her half-sister had repealed. But, in this version, instead of calling Elizabeth the “supreme head” of the church—a title that upset both Pope-supporting Catholics and woman-skeptical Protestants—they identified the monarch as the “supreme governor” of the Church of England, and it has been the same ever since. </p><p>A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but how can a woman fulfill her destiny as the leader of her people if they refuse to call her by her proper title? Deborah, whose leadership we hear about in today’s reading from Judges, would like a word. This short passage is the only selection from the Book of Judges that we encounter in our three-year lectionary, so we had better make the best of it. </p><p>You might have noticed that Deborah is identified first as a prophetess and then as the wife of Lappidoth. Some more recent translations of the Bible take out the gender-exclusive suffix and identify Deborah as the full prophet that she was, but almost all translations continue to label her as Lappidoth’s wife. Several scholars, however, including recent Tippy speaker Wil Gafney, suggest that the Hebrew, which literally means “woman of Lappidoth” or “woman of torches,” just as likely means “fiery woman” as “Lappidoth’s wife” and that, since prophets were rarely married, the attempt to define Deborah by a husband’s name is probably an overreach by those who were not accustomed to strong, independent women exercising authority. [1]</p><p>Even more remarkable is how the author of Judges goes out of his way to describe how Deborah judged Israel without actually calling her a judge. At this time in their history, as the name of this book of the Bible implies, God’s people were ruled by judges, a pre-monarchical title that obscures the fact that these leaders were less likely to rule on matters of law and more likely to lead an army into battle. In fact, among all the judges mentioned in the book, Deborah is the only one who is said to have settled disputes among her people. As Robert Alter notes, a better title for these leaders would be “chieftains,” though “Book of Chieftans” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. [2] Perhaps the reason the author of Judges withholds that official title from Deborah is because, as a woman, she was less likely to ride out into battle with her people. But, if we expand today’s reading by only a few verses, we discover that that wasn’t the case either.</p><p>At the end of today’s reading, we hear Deborah order her general Barak to lead ten thousand troops to Mount Tabor, where they would fight against Sisera and Jabin’s army. In the very next verse, we hear Barak’s uncertain response. “If you will go with me,” he said to Deborah, “I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” To him, this mission against 900 iron chariots might have sounded like suicide. Or maybe he was simply unable to trust a woman commander. Regardless, Deborah would not allow his cowardice to thwart God’s plan, so she replied, “I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the LORD will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.”</p><p>After they had reached Mount Tabor, when Deborah perceived that the time to attack was right, she ordered Barak to lead his troops into the Wadi Kishon: “Up! For this is the day on which the LORD has given Sisera into your hand.” Her military insights proved effective. In the ensuing battle, God’s people routed their enemies. Amidst the chaotic fighting, Sisera got down from his chariot and ran away on foot, and Barak chased him. But, as Sisera approached the tent of one of his allies, a woman named Jael saw him and encouraged him to seek refuge inside. </p><p>Parched from the fighting, Sisera asked her for some water, but Jael went a step further, mothering the fugitive general by giving him milk to drink. “Stand at the entrance of the tent,” Sisera told his host, “and if a man comes and asks you if a man is [hiding] here, tell him no.” Then Jael, after having wrapped him up in a rug, snuck up to the great warrior, and, taking a tent peg and a hammer in her hands, she drove the tent peg through his temple and into the ground, killing him where he lay. When Barak finally showed up, Jael said to him with no small dose of irony, “Come, and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.” No glory came to Barak that day. It belonged to the women whom God had used to deliver God’s people, just as Deborah had prophesied.</p><p>Sometimes God gives us gifts that God’s people don’t want us to use. Sometimes God bestows talents upon individuals whom society will not allow to use them. Sometimes people who have been given the authority to speak for God will tell you that you had better bury your gifts in the ground or else you will be rejected for daring to show them off. But they are the ones whom God has rejected because God will never give you a gift that you are not supposed to use for God’s glory.</p><p>“You are the light of the world,” Jesus tells us. “A city built on a hill cannot be hid. People do not light a lamp and put it under a bushel basket; rather, they put it on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father in heaven.”</p><p>You are the light of the world. In every generation, God uses those who have been overlooked by the powerful and mighty as vessels for God’s work in the world. It is always those who work outside the power structures of society who bring victory to God’s people. And, because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we know that there is no force strong enough to defeat us or hold us back. Nothing can overshadow God’s glory shining through us. </p><p>As disciples of Jesus, we are called not only to devote our gifts to God’s transformation of the world, but we are also called to celebrate those among us whose gifts might be buried out of fear. We must encourage those who have been told that their gifts are not welcome to let their lights shine until the world sees how God is showing up around us. We must tell them that they have no reason to fear because God’s gifts always belong where everyone can see them. Jesus teaches us to watch for the coming reign of God wherever it may be hiding and give all that we’ve got to be sure that that reign comes. Surely God’s reign comes when all of God’s children are able to use what God has given them for the glory of God.</p><p>_________________________</p><p>1. Gafney, Wilda C. <i>Womanish Midrash</i>. Westminster
John Knox Press; Louisville: 2017, 97f10.</p><p class="MsoFootnoteText"><o:p></o:p></p><div>2. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Alter, Robert. </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
Hebrew Bible Vol. 2: Prophets</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">. W. W. Norton & Co.; New York: 2019, 77.</span></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-85048769137293555462023-11-18T07:01:00.005-06:002023-11-18T07:04:00.372-06:00Challenge to Faithfulness<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">November 12, 2023 – The 24th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 27A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp27_RCL.html" target="_blank">Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-11-12-23-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video can be seen <a href="https://youtu.be/kDuIqtNDRfA?t=1161" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><p>We all have a story of salvation to tell. What does your version sound like? When you tell the story of your people’s faithfulness—of the relationship with God that spans the generations and that has brought you to this moment—what story do you tell? Where does the story start? Who are its main characters? What are the plot twists and turns that reveal a covenant relationship built on God’s love and mercy and lived out in the lives of your spiritual ancestors? What are the themes that emerge again and again as your people have fallen in and out of love with the God whose love has never abated?</p><p>The Book of Joshua records a part of salvation history that we don’t tell very often. It’s the story of what happened after the twelve tribes of Israel entered the land of Canaan. It’s the story of Joshua’s leadership after Moses’ death. It’s the story of God’s people crossing the River Jordan, encountering the resident tribes, and destroying them through military conquest. It’s the story of Israel carving up the Canaanites’ land and redistributing it among their own ancestral tribes. It contains a few episodes of remarkable faithfulness that we teach to our children, like that of Rahab the Canaanite woman who gave shelter to two of Israel’s spies, but mostly the book is a blood-thirsty campaign of genocide that results in Israel’s occupation of the land promised to Abraham.</p><p>Like I said, it’s a part we usually skip over. But our spiritual ancestors did not record this part of our story because they wanted future generations to celebrate the violence carried out in God’s name. They recorded it because they wanted us to remember that we belong to a God whose identity is distinct—unequivocally distinct from all the other deities that are celebrated and worshipped throughout history, distinct in a way that doesn’t allow mixing or merging with other religions. And they wanted us to remember that, because we belong to that particular God, we must live in a particular way. The Book of Joshua isn’t written to be an historical account of how God’s people came to possess the land of Canaan. It’s a spiritual account of what happens when God’s people come face to face with the challenge of remaining faithful to God when that faithfulness is hardest to maintain. And that’s a story worth telling.</p><p>“Choose this day whom you will serve,” Joshua demands of the people of Israel, “…but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” If only faithfulness came as easily as the people’s response to Joshua’s words.</p><p>This is Joshua’s farewell speech to the people of Israel. These are his final instructions. Like any gifted leader, Joshua has a realistic understanding of the challenges that his people will face after he is gone. He knows that saying you will be faithful to God and being faithful to God are two different things, and he anticipates that Israel will have a hard time embodying the distinct identity of their God as the years go by.</p><p>“Choose this day whom you will serve,” Joshua said to the people, putting to them the decision of faithfulness. And what did they say in response? “Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods; for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight.” In their reply, the people rehearse for Joshua a brief summary of all that their God had done for them, including enabling their conquest of the Canaanites. Given God’s unwavering provision, how could they choose any deity but the God who had brough them thus far?</p><p>Yet, in a moment of remarkable leadership, Joshua refused to accept the people’s declaration of faith. “You cannot serve the LORD,” he said to them incredulously, “for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm, and consume you, after having done you good.” As if he had the power to see the future, Joshua knew that the God who had saved his people when they were slaves in Egypt and who had provided for them in the wilderness and who had brought them safely into a new land was not the same God to whom the people would turn in the years ahead.</p><p>But how did he know that? How was Joshua so sure that the people were making a promise they couldn’t keep? For starters, it helps that the Book of Joshua was revised into its current form generations later—after the people of God had experienced the hardship of attack, defeat, and exile. Those who retold this moment of decision already knew that the people of Israel would suffer great loss, and they identified the people’s faithlessness as the cause of their downfall. But you didn’t have to be a fortune teller or a revisionist historian to know that remaining faithful to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob wouldn’t be easy. That’s because our God isn’t the God of the prosperous and the powerful but the God of the weak and the vulnerable, the poor and the oppressed, the destitute and the brokenhearted. And building a nation around a relationship with that particular God isn’t easy at all.</p><p>Have you ever had a favorite restaurant go out of business because it grew too fast and lost touch with what made it special? Have you ever felt the spark that drew you to a challenging job fade when lean times at the company gave way to sustained success? Have you ever thought that a church which once embodied God’s mission in the community seemed to lose its way when it got so big that its leaders forgot what it means to be faithful?</p><p>Joshua knew that, as the nation grew in prosperity, God’s people would have a hard time staying true to their humble roots and to the God that had blessed them in their humility. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the people began to associate their success not with the God of the poor but with the gods whose carved images are overlayed with precious metal—the so-called gods of the Canaanites whose worship was never really removed from the land. And Joshua knew that, once you turn to a god who promises wealth and strength and success, only a path of pain and hardship can lead you back to the God who is found amidst the outcast and the downtrodden. How did he know? Because that unchangeable truth is written into our human nature. </p><p>We believe in a God who saves us not by giving us the power to avoid hardship but by promising to accompany us into it. That is the theme of salvation history. That is the truth that is lived out in every generation that belongs to our God. But it’s a truth that many people would rather forget. </p><p>If you ask a rich person which god they prefer to belong to, what do you expect them to say? It’s a whole lot more fun to belong to a deity who blesses the rich and rewards the powerful. Even though we know that those gods cannot promise anything but fleeting happiness and false security, we turn to them again and again because they are the gods that we have made in our own image—the idols of our success. This might not be our favorite part of our people’s story, but Joshua’s words are important for us to hear.</p><p>The Book of Joshua uses the language of violence and total destruction not because our God calls on us to commit genocide but because of our propensity to abandon the distinct ways of our God for the ways of the world around us. Joshua’s warning to the people is a warning to us—that, no matter how hard we try to get rid of those false gods, their allure is never-fading. It is a dangerous and evil myth, of course, that ethnic homogeneity could ever produce religious purity. Remember that caring for the stranger in our midst is a fundamental imperative in our religious tradition. The Book of Joshua’s portrayal of the Canaanite religions as self-serving is overly simplistic, just as its depiction of ethnic cleansing isn’t historically accurate either. But one aspect of the story is as true today as it was for the people who gathered around Joshua and heard his challenge.</p><p>When we replace the God of our ancestors with the god of our accomplishments, we bring ourselves face to face with God’s judgment. When we worship the idol of progress instead of the God who cares for the poor, we call God’s wrath down upon us. When we forget which God we belong to, we rob ourselves of the beautiful and life-giving truth that our God saves us. We are saved not because we have the power to make the world a better place but precisely because we don’t. We are rescued not because we can invent our way out of a crisis but specifically because we can’t. Choose this day whom you will serve, Joshua says to us—the gods of your greatest accomplishments or the God who rescues you, saves, you, and redeems you. To the only true God be all glory, honor, and praise, now and forever. Amen.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-70248674183781274422023-10-30T09:50:00.001-05:002023-10-30T09:50:22.181-05:00It's All About Love<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">October 29, 2023 – The 22nd Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 25A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp25_RCL.html" target="_blank">Deuteronomy 34:1-12; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay" target="_blank">here</a>. Video of the service can be seen <a href="https://youtu.be/6oQ0y5FOCt0?t=1347" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><p>If you were to ask a Roman Catholic priest what is the most important thing about being a Christian, what do you think he would say? If you were to ask a Southern Baptist preacher or an elder in the Church of Christ the same question, what answer would you expect to get? If you asked a Unitarian Universalist minister which of the Seven Principles that unite the diverse members of their denomination is most important, do you think they could name just one? If you asked an atheist what is the key to living a good life, do you think you could accept their answer for yourself? What about you—what do you think is the most important thing for you to do to be faithful to God, to your family and friends, to the world, and to the life you have been given?</p><p>In today’s gospel lesson, a religious leader, one of the experts in the Jewish law, came to Jesus and asked him that same question: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Matthew records this event as one of a series of challenges to Jesus’ authority—tests by the religious authorities who were trying to trap Jesus with his own words. Matthew presents this episode as if it were yet another attempt to catch Jesus in a mistake, but I think the gospel writer might be overplaying his hand. In Mark’s version of the same story, the man who asks this question does so genuinely, and, if you think about it, there’s no real way for Jesus to give an answer that would alienate his followers. </p><p>Instead, I like to think that this lawyer really wanted to know what Jesus thought. I like to hear in his voice a tone of respect when he calls Jesus, “Teacher.” After all, don’t we learn more from other people—especially our opponents—when we give them the benefit of the doubt? Whatever his motive, this man asks a good question, and I want to hear the answer. I want to know what Jesus really thinks is most important—not because he might say something controversial but because, in a world in which so many people have different opinions about what really matters, I think Jesus’ opinion is worth listening to.</p><p>And what is Jesus’ response? “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” We’re familiar with that answer. If you’ve been to the 7:30 service, you’ve heard those words. We say them every Sunday near the beginning of the liturgy. That’s how central they are to our understanding of what matters most. But I wonder whether we hear those words the way that Jesus intended them.</p><p>All my life, I’ve heard Jesus’ reply as if it comes in two distinct packets—first the part about loving God and then the bit about loving our neighbor. And I’ve always heard a qualitative distinction between the two. That’s a product of the English words “greatest” and “first.” Those words imply a singular object. They anticipate an answer with unique and unrivaled priority. Because of that, I’ve always understood Jesus to say something like, “The absolute most important commandment is to love God with your whole heart, soul, and mind. And a close second—not quite as important as the first but almost—is to love your neighbor as yourself.” </p><p>I think many Christians feel that way—that loving God comes first and then what’s left over goes to loving our neighbors. And I suspect that there are plenty of atheists (and Episcopalians) who would say that that’s what’s wrong with contemporary Christianity—that people who call themselves Christians spend too much time and energy getting people to believe what they believe and not enough helping those in need. But I don’t think that either of those perspectives is what Jesus had in mind.</p><p>As is often the case, some of the nuance gets lost in translation. Most English versions, including the one we use in worship, give weight to Semitic influences and use the superlative “greatest” in both the lawyer’s question and in Jesus’ response even though there is no superlative in the original text. That’s why we hear, “Which commandment in the law is the <i>greatest</i>?” But other versions prefer a simpler reading of the text and, instead, translate it without adding the superlative: “Which is the <i>great</i> commandment in the law?” Some scholars go a step further and note that, because the definite article is also missing, it might be better to hear the lawyer’s question as something like, “What sort of commandment in the law is really important?”</p><p>Now that’s a question I find helpful for my own faith—not an attempt to narrow it down to one or even two commandments but a question about the nature of the law itself. What really matters? And, if we allow ourselves to hear the lawyer’s question in that way, Jesus’ response becomes much more significant. Instead of a providing two separate answers—Commandments 1A and 1B—Jesus names a unifying principle that undergirds all that is important in the law. One part of what matters most is to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and the second part is just like the first—without any distinction—and that’s to love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments, which together function like a single peg, hang all the law and the teaching of the prophets. </p><p>In one sense, that isn’t all that surprising. We know from reading the gospel that you can’t love God and forget about your neighbor. Earlier in Matthew, when the rich man came to Jesus and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus told him to keep the commandments, including loving his neighbor as himself. When the man acknowledged that he had kept them all since his youth but still felt like something was missing, Jesus told him to sell all of his possessions and give the money to the poor. Why? Because Jesus knew that a rich man who ignores the needs of his neighbors isn’t really keeping the commandments at all. How can we claim to love God if we do not love the ones whom God has made?</p><p>But, if these two commandments are actually two sides of the same coin—two halves of the same principle—can we recognize that the opposite claim is also true? Just as we acknowledge that you can’t love God without loving your neighbor, can we also say that it is impossible to love our neighbor without also loving God? I think so.</p><p>To love our neighbor is to love God because our neighbor is made in the image of God. Whether we acknowledge it or not, when we love another human being, we are loving the one in whose image they have been made. And, when that becomes the motivation for our love, when we learn to love others simply because they, too, share in the divine image, we learn to love others as God loves them. And that, in turn, teaches us about the nature of God’s love.</p><p>The desert mystic Evagrius Ponticus wrote that the work of love is to recognize that all people are made in God’s image and to love them as nearly as we love God regardless of how much they may seem to be unlike God (<i>Praktikos</i> 89). We don’t love our neighbors as ourselves because we like them or agree with them but because they are as precious to God as we are. And who teaches us how to love others like that? Jesus. Remember who it is that Jesus identifies as our neighbor? Not the member of our own clan or tribe or family. Not the one who deserves our love or who loves us first. But the person with whom we have nothing in common except our human nature—the very nature that God has taken upon Godself in order to redeem us all.</p><p>This is a place where that kind of love is put into action. At St. Paul’s, we not only recognize that we can’t love God without loving our neighbors, but this is also a place where we believe that loving other people teaches us how to love God. That is why I am proud to be the Rector of this church. Everything we do inside these walls equips us for the work we do beyond these walls, and our commitment to loving others in the community inevitably teaches us about God and God’s love. One doesn’t come before the other because they always go hand in hand. </p><p>When you make a financial commitment to this church, that is what you are giving yourself to—to a church that believes you don’t have to pick one or the other—loving God or loving your neighbor. At St. Paul’s, we believe that those two commandments are inseparable sides of the same truth. We love God by loving our neighbors, and we love our neighbors by loving God. When we make that love the first priority in our lives, we not only support a congregation that does a lot of good in the world, but we teach ourselves what it means to belong to a God who loves us and the whole world without limit. Nothing is more important than that.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-33475616686092127962023-10-23T09:02:00.002-05:002023-10-23T09:02:14.387-05:00Leaning Into the World<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">October 22, 2023 – The 21st Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 24A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp24_RCL.html" target="_blank">Exodus 33:12-23; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-10-22-23-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video of the service can be seen <a href="https://youtu.be/wOPFBHHMWMo?t=1099" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><p><br /></p><p>Should we pay taxes to the government or not? Should conscientious objectors be allowed to shield their tax payments from military spending? Should committed pro-life Christians be able to withhold some or all of their taxes as long as the Defense Department reimburses the travel expenses of servicemembers who go across state lines to get access to an abortion? Should the pro-choice residents of states that have restricted access to reproductive healthcare get a deduction on their taxes because of the lack of services being provided in their state? Should churches whose pastors receive a six- or seven-figure salary be exempt from corporate income taxes and property taxes just like the ones whose clergy have taken a vow of poverty? </p><p>When the Pharisees come to Jesus and ask him about paying taxes, the answer isn’t as obvious as we might assume. Like most issues that lie at the collision of politics and religion, it’s complicated. And, like Jesus, how we sort it out requires some careful, faithful thinking.</p><p>At the beginning of this gospel lesson, Matthew makes it clear that the religious leaders were out to get Jesus. He tells us that they met together and hatched a plot designed to ensnare him. After heaping upon Jesus the sort of empty flattery that only sets him up to disappoint his audience, they spring their trap: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not,” by which they mean, “Can a Torah-observant, sacred-law-abiding Jew pay taxes to the unholy Roman Empire, or should they refuse as a matter of conscience?”</p><p>It was a question that no rabbi wanted to answer, at least not on the record. If Jesus were to say, “Yes, faithful Jews are allowed to pay the tax,” he would alienate those who believed that no earthly kingdom could take the place of God’s reign. In fact, when the tax was first instituted in A.D. 6, another Galilean named Judas led a revolt, which, despite being put down quickly, remained a cause célèbre for Jewish patriots.[1] How could anyone pay tribute to a deified Caesar and remain loyal to God? As Jesus himself had already declared, “No one can serve two masters.”</p><p>But, on the other hand, if Jesus were to say, “No, a faithful Jew should not support the empire,” he would give his opponents all the evidence they needed to turn him over to the Roman authorities, who would surely execute him as a yet another failed Jewish rebel. No matter what he said, Jesus couldn’t win—or so they thought.</p><p>“Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?” he said to them. “Show me the coin used for the tax.” In an instant, Jesus set for them his own double-trap. For starters, the coin in question was an unholy symbol, which contained the graven image and blasphemous title of the emperor. To have such a coin in one’s pocket was itself an act of deep faithlessness, and to bring it into the sacred courts of the Jerusalem temple was an absolute no-no, kind of like trying to hide a cell phone in your pocket when the national emergency alert goes off. By getting the Pharisees to produce the coin, Jesus had already shown that these so-called religious leaders weren’t all that committed to their religion after all. </p><p>But Jesus didn’t stop there. “Whose head is this, and whose title?” he asked, twisting the rhetorical knife a little deeper. And when they acknowledged, probably reluctantly, that they belonged to the emperor, Jesus replied, “Then give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.” Game, set, match. When the religious leaders heard this, they were amazed. He had slipped through their trap and tripped them up in one of his own. It was a clever answer, which clearly bested his opponents, but I don’t know how satisfying it is, at least on the surface. When it comes to navigating the blurry border between belonging to God and belonging to the world, I think we yearn for more than clever.</p><p>After all, what kind of answer did Jesus give? In the end, is it lawful to pay the tax or not? If God is the source of all things and the ruler of heaven and earth, what actually belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God? And, if everything does belong to God, as I think we are supposed to believe, then why is the emperor’s graven image still stamped on the coin? Is God really in charge, or is the emperor? </p><p>Ultimately, those who would separate the kingdoms of this world from the kingdom of God are trapped by their own desire to avoid the messiness of how God works and where God’s reign is to be found. God doesn’t always show up in neat and clean ways that give us simple answers to hard problems. Sometimes faithfulness isn’t as clear as an up or down vote, and those who say otherwise aren’t being faithful. If we want to belong more fully to God’s kingdom, we shouldn’t try to escape this world or the powers that rule it but lean into the places and channels through which God’s reign is breaking into this life. And, at its core, that is what Jesus’ clever response is inviting us to do.</p><p>Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s. That is not an invitation to live a bifurcated life, with allegiances split between heaven and earth, but an invitation to trust that God’s reign is not divorced from the politics of this world but somehow revealed through them. As such, it is possible to use a Roman coin to pay a Roman tax without forgetting that the entire empire is contained within the kingdom of God. Jesus isn’t asking us to confuse the emperor’s ungodly ways with the will of God but to trust that God’s authority cannot be thwarted by the affairs of the state, no matter how irreligious it is. And if that’s true—if we believe that God is still in charge even when our leaders show no sign of godliness—it means that how we participate in earthly affairs has heavenly implications.</p><p>The real question we must ask ourselves is what it means to be faithful to the will and ways of God while living in a world in which those ways are often hidden. Jesus shows us that it doesn’t mean burying our head in the sand or hiding our light under a basket but pursuing God’s reign through our public lives. We know that God is at work in this world. We believe that God’s salvation is accomplished not by abandoning this world but by becoming enmeshed in it, through the Word-become-Flesh. God did not take our human nature upon Godself in order to forsake the earth but to transform it. And, if God is at work in this world, saving and redeeming that which God has made, then we, too, are called to lean into that work of transformation.</p><p>We are a part of this world, but we belong to the reign that is above—a reign that is not of this world yet one that cannot be confined to the heavens. When we see those moments of God’s power and presence breaking through into this world, giving us a glimpse of what is to come, we must devote ourselves to them fully. Whether it’s paying our taxes or casting our votes or donating to worthwhile causes or marching in the streets, our participation in the kingdoms of this world is not a rejection of God’s reign but an opportunity for that reign to become manifest through our actions. </p><p>Give to God the things that are God’s as you give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s. Don’t expect God to show up in that mythical place that is immune to the influences of this world. Ask God to help you influence the world in ways that allow God’s reign to show up more clearly. We are not faithful to God by withdrawing from the kingdoms of the earth but by allowing God to use us to bring God’s reign to the earth through them. “Thy kingdom come,” we say together. “Thy will be done,” we pray to God. And every time we say those words we offer ourselves into the service of God—not by pulling back but by leaning more deeply and faithfully into the world God has made.</p><div>________</div><div>1. W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew 19-28: Volume 3; International Critical Commentary; T & T Clark; Edinburgh: 2004, 465.</div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-74558885255428879032023-10-09T11:20:00.004-05:002023-10-09T11:20:27.373-05:00How God Measures Success<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">October 8, 2023 – The 19th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 22A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp22_RCL.html" target="_blank">Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-10-8-23-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video of the entire service can be seen <a href="https://youtu.be/6zx1C7TxiuY?t=1547" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><p>In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells another parable about the kingdom of God. This time, God’s reign is depicted as a vineyard, painstakingly prepared by the landowner and then leased to some less than honorable tenants. Sometimes Jesus’ parables are hard to understand. This isn’t one of those parables.</p><p>Tenant farming was common back in Jesus’ day. Landowners would lease their property to resident farmers and then send someone to collect their share of the produce at harvest time. Occasionally, a dispute would arise over how much produce the landowner was due, but the law was pretty clear in those situations. And, in situations like the one that Jesus describes in his parable, there was no doubt how things would turn out.</p><p>When it was time for the harvest, the landowner sent his slaves to collect what was due, but the tenants refused to pay up. In a brazen sign of rebellion, they beat, killed, and stoned the landowner’s slaves. So the landowner tried again, sending more slaves, perhaps unaware why the first group had failed. The second group fared no better than the first, and they, too, were beaten, killed, and stoned to death. Something else had to be done, so the landowner sent his son—the heir, his legal agent—who, unlike a slave, would be in a position to contact the authorities and declare his father’s arrangement with the tenants in abeyance. He would have the authority to boot the tenants off the land and have them arrested and punished and then lease the land out to someone else.</p><p>But the tenants had another idea. When they saw the landowner’s son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir! Come, let us kill him, and then we can keep the vineyard for ourselves.” It doesn’t take a legal scholar to know what will happen next. Using a common rabbinical technique, Jesus asked his audience what the owner of the vineyard will do when he comes to town, and their answer invited judgment upon themselves: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” </p><p>They know what the parable means, they know that Jesus is telling it about them. They know that God will not allow the kingdom to be hijacked by those who would keep it to themselves. It’s not hard to figure that part out, but what is hard is figuring out what this parable means for us. To understand that, we need to try to hear this parable not as one of Jesus’ disciples but as if we are the targets of his unveiled criticism. And I don’t think that’s as hard as it sounds.</p><p>This whole situation started when the chief priests and Pharisees came to Jesus to ask where he got the authority to challenge their leadership. But let’s back up a little further than that. When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem at the beginning of Matthew 21, he went straight to the temple, where he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. Effectively, Jesus forced the religious apparatus at the center of Judaism to come to a halt. Then, Matthew tells us, with worship interrupted, the blind and the lame came into the temple to find Jesus, who healed them. The buzz about this controversial figure quickly grew to a fevered pitch. Even the children in the temple were spontaneously crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” attributing to Jesus a title with clear messianic implications.</p><p>When they heard the children’s cries, the religious authorities became indignant. This was too much. Not only had Jesus asserted himself into the center of his people’s religious life, but he had done so in ways that left the people wondering whether he might be the Lord’s anointed—the messiah, the Christ—who had come to deliver them from the tyranny of the Roman Empire. Sure, he was popular among the crowds, but what had he done to earn the right to disrupt the careful balance of power between the Jewish and Roman authorities? What gave this carpenter’s son from Nazareth the right to displace the recognized religious leaders in favor of a new kingdom of God and install himself upon the throne?</p><p>I think we tend to discount the questions and objections of the religious leaders because we know how the story will end—because we know that Jesus will be vindicated in his resurrection on the third day—but, if we were in their place, wouldn’t we ask the same thing? Wouldn’t we insist on some sort of proof before we allowed a renegade stranger to throw away everything we know to be good and right about our church? Think of it this way. Whose criticism of our parish would we take to heart? What sort of outsider, with no connection to the history, tradition, and leadership of this church, would we invite to dress us down and tell us what we’re doing wrong? Whom would we allow to walk down that aisle and bring our Sunday worship to a halt? </p><p>In this tradition, we know where to look for someone with that kind of authority. We are accustomed to listening to the clergy, who are ordained and, thus, set apart for the work of proclaiming God’s word to our congregation. Vestries are elected by the members of the parish and entrusted with the responsibility of setting a budget and taking care of the buildings, so, in a sense, we listen to them every time we put something in the offering plate. Bishops have surprisingly little authority when it comes to the affairs of an individual parish, but, when the woman or man with the pointy hat shows up, we tend to listen, even when they say something controversial.</p><p>Some people in our parish have considerable authority even though it comes from unofficial sources. Volunteers like Albert Gray, without whom the church could not operate, are understood by many to be the authority on countless details. Parishioners who have worshipped here for more than fifty years are the ones we ask to help us understand our history. And those who show up and help out every time that help is needed—like the members of St. Spat’s—are the authorities we look to when we need to know how to take care of this place and each other. If any of those authority figures stood up and called us out, we’d at least give them a listen. But what about someone we didn’t recognize—someone who hadn’t put in the time to get to know us and how we do things? </p><p>When the religious leaders asked Jesus to explain where his authority came from, he didn’t waste any time or breath justifying his prophetic actions or tracing his messianic lineage. Instead, he told them some stories—stories about what it means to do the will of God and what happens when we forget that it is God whom we are called to serve: “The kingdom of God is like a landowner who planted a vineyard…[and] leased it to tenants and went to another country.” In this parable, Jesus teaches us that the authority of every religious institution and every religious leader is measured only by the extent to which they bear fruit for God.</p><p>In a church as old and beautiful as ours, in a denomination as tradition-rich and pretentious as ours, we must be careful that we do not confuse the fruit we have placed in our storehouses for the fruit we are called to give back to God. We have been tenants in this vineyard for a long, long time—so long that it is easy to forget that the vineyard does not belong to us. We are only leasing it from God. If we want to know whether we are being faithful tenants, we must listen not to the religious elites but to those whom Jesus came to serve. It is the poor, the oppressed, the incarcerated, and the marginalized who will tell us whether we are sharing our produce with God or trying to keep it all for ourselves. </p><p>If a guest at Community Meals stood up to tell us that we have our priorities backwards, would we listen? If one of the people who sleeps at night beside the playground interrupted our worship to show us that we aren’t getting any closer to God’s reign, would we allow them to speak? If Jesus came to the door and asked us by what authority we claim to be the Body of Christ—his hands and feet in the world—what would we say?</p><p>I think our parish does a lot of good in this community, and am I proud to be the Rector of St. Paul’s. To the people of Fayetteville, I think we represent hope and love and welcome for all. I think we are known to be a church that doesn’t just talk about helping others but a place where that talk becomes action. Over the years, we have produced a lot of good fruit for the kingdom of God, and we can’t stop now. Going forward, we must remember that the only true measure of our success is whether we bear fruit for God, and we must be willing to let those who operate outside the power structures of this church and our society tell us when we’ve lost our way. </p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-61377849832657255832023-09-25T08:59:00.001-05:002023-09-25T08:59:45.183-05:00God-Given Human Value<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">September 24, 2023 – The 17th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 20A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp20_RCL.html" target="_blank">Exodus 16:2-15; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Video of this sermon can be found <a href="https://youtu.be/5U0RaLtSWNg?t=1620" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><p>What does heaven look like? Do you ever think about that? As I get older, I spend less time thinking about it than I used to. I suppose I might reach a point in the future where that trend will start to reverse itself. Whether you think about it a lot or not, take a moment or two to let your imagination roam around the kingdom of God for a little bit. What does it look like? What does it feel like? Smell like? It is a familiar place? Somewhere you’ve been before? Or something completely new? Maybe it’s being held in your grandmother’s arms. Or sitting at a dinner table with all your heroes. Or walking through a grassy meadow with your best friend.</p><p>I always imagined heaven would be like sitting on the pier out on Mobile Bay down the hill from where I grew up. We didn’t go there often when I was a child, but every time we went I felt like I had come back to the place where I most belonged. I’ve never been one to sit still for very long, but I could let hours go by in that place, just watching the waves come in on the murky brackish water with a friendly breeze blowing in my face. I always knew it had been too long since I’d been back home when I could feel that ache in my soul that only the coast could soothe. I used to think that was what heaven must be like until someone told me that there is no sea in heaven.</p><p>In the Book of Revelation, John, the mystic seer, is given a glimpse at what awaits us, and he writes, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more” (21:1). When someone first told me that, I felt like everything good had just been drained out of the Bible. We were in a class, sharing our dreams about what heaven would be like, and, when I described a sunset over that pier, another student took the opportunity to burst my eschatological bubble.</p><p>It's not the pretty sunset over the water that’s the problem, of course. The reason that first-century author envisioned a paradise in which there was no seashore was because, to a first-century dreamer, the sea was a place where only nightmares came from. Imagine living on the coast but not knowing when the next storm would roll in. Imagine being out on the water when your boat was swallowed up by the sort of chaotic, primeval energy that only God could tame. Of course the ancient imagination of a world in which God’s reign was complete didn’t leave any room for the sea! Because a piece of my heart will always belong on the coast, it’s hard for me to accept that the vision of Revelation 21 is an authoritative depiction of the literal heaven that awaits us, but the exercise of having my earth-bound expectations of what will be stripped away is a pretty important step in getting ready to take part in the coming reign of God.</p><p>The kingdom of God, Jesus tells us, is like a landowner who doesn’t know the first thing about running a business. Actually, that’s not what Jesus says, but the parable he tells us isn’t like any economic situation I’ve ever seen. “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard,” Jesus says. “After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.” So far, nothing strange. But then, three hours later, he went out and hired additional workers. And then, at noon and three and five, he did the same thing again, each time promising to pay the laborers whatever was right. But, when it was time to pay everyone, he gave them all the same amount—the usual day’s wage. </p><p>When the workers who toiled all day long—twelve hours in the hot sun—realized that they had been paid the same amount as the ones who only worked one hour, they were angry. Of course they were angry! Who wouldn’t be angry? And why? Is there anything that hits home with us as clearly or forcefully as what they said to the landowner: “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us.” You have made them equal to us—to us, who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. If you think that anyone is going to show up at 6:00 in the morning the next time you’re looking for laborers, you’d better think again. </p><p>This parable flies in the face of first-century expectations just as fully as it slaps us in our twenty-first-century faces. We are no better than Jesus’ disciples at imagining a world in which a business owner would voluntarily pay their workers not in proportion to the work that they do but just because they showed up. But that’s exactly what the world looks like when God is in charge. That’s how the value of a human being is assessed in God’s economy—in the heaven that awaits us. And it’s no surprise that it’s hard to imagine that from here.</p><p>In this parable, Jesus gives us a glimpse into how people are received and valued and rewarded in God’s reign. In heaven, we matter to God not because of what we do or how long we’ve worked or how much we’ve produced. We matter to God because God is generous. “Take what belongs to you and go,” the landowner says. “I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” </p><p>Our expectations of how God will receive us when we get to heaven are conditioned by our experience in this life. We expect that people who have been faithful their whole lives will stand ahead of us in line at the pearly gates. We expect that the best seats at God’s banquet table are reserved for the saints who gave up the most for the sake of others. We expect that the golden, jewel-encrusted crowns worn by those who follow Jesus for decades will outshine the cheap, tin replicas worn by those who only forsake their wicked ways right before they take their last breath. But that’s not how the reign of God works. Our way of making sense of things doesn’t make sense in that place where all people are valued by their Creator not because of who they are or what they do or how good they’ve been but simply because God is the one who loves all of us with limitless generosity.</p><p>Our understanding of how things are supposed to work doesn’t often fit within the reign of God. That’s why Jesus uses parables to teach us what heaven is like—because straightforward thinking that doesn’t challenge our earthly assumptions rarely produces a dream worthy of God’s reign. But is the reverse is also true? If the way things work here on the earth can’t be used as a model for how things are when God is in charge, is it also true that how things are when God is in charge makes a poor blueprint for how life could be here on the earth? </p><p>The kingdom of God is like a landowner who hired laborers all throughout the day but paid them all the same amount—a denarius, a day’s wage, enough money for them and their families to live on. That’s no way to run a business when you’re trying to cut costs and maximize profits. Admittedly, Jesus wasn’t giving out business advice. He wasn’t teaching MBA students how to run a commercial enterprise. He was teaching us how to imagine ourselves in the reign of God. Surely, the stock market would be in a lot of trouble if preachers like Jesus were in charge of setting corporate policy, but what would the world look like if CEOs and corporate board members and hedge fund managers and day traders and casual investors like you and me woke up and suddenly realized that the value of a human being in this life is no different than their value in the next? Could we figure out how to live together in this world if we all agreed that the real, true, eternal value of a person isn’t tied to their output or the value they add to an economic model but simply to the basic humanity and personhood that all of us share?</p><p>I freely admit that I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to get from where we are into the radical reign of God and back again. But I do know that you are loved by God not because of what you’ve accomplished but because our God is generous and loving. I know that your place in the reign of God is secure because of who God is and not because of who you are. I know that you are important to God because God made you and not because of anything you have made. And I believe that that starting point has the power to change this world not only in the next life but also in the one we live here and now because, once we realize that God’s generosity has already made us equal in God’s eyes, the illusion that some people are worth more than others disappears completely.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-31803805500709855842023-09-10T21:03:00.000-05:002023-09-10T21:03:23.672-05:00Reconciled in Love<p><br /></p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">September 10, 2023 – The 15th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 18A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp18_RCL.html" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp18_RCL.html" target="_blank">Exodus 12:1-14; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-9-10-23-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video of the entire service can be seen <a href="https://youtu.be/0GOdJ4Txg8o?t=1336" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><p>Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” What do you think he meant by that? What do you think he had in mind? Pretty often, I hear people invoke those words to emphasize the validity and significance of a comparatively small gathering: on a workday when only a handful of volunteers show up or at a Bible study or a midweek service when it’s only the leader and a single participant. We say those words—when only two or three are gathered—to remind ourselves that God shows up even when most of us don’t. But I don’t think Jesus meant these words as encouragement to disappointingly small groups. I think he wanted us to realize that his presence is powerfully manifest anytime two or more of us can set aside our differences and come together in unity.</p><p>There is an independent Jewish teaching that was recorded about the same time as Jesus’ earthly ministry that helps us know what Jesus may have had in mind when he spoke those words. In the Mishnah known as “Pirkei Avot” or “Chapters of the Fathers,” Rabbi Hananiah taught, “If two sit together and there are no words of Torah [spoken] between them, then this is a session of scorners…but if two sit together and there are words of Torah [spoken] between them, then the Shekhinah abides among them.” [1] The Shekhinah is the divine presence—the dwelling or settling of God that was experienced in the burning bush and in the cloud that covered Mount Sinai and was said to rest in the Jerusalem temple, and yet the Mishnah teaches us that it is also found at a shared table at which the Word of God is spoken. </p><p>Later in that same writing, Rabbi Shimon taught, “If three have eaten at one table and have not spoken there words of Torah, [it is] as if they had eaten sacrifices [offered] to the dead, as it is said, ‘for all tables are full of filthy vomit, when the All-Present is absent’ (Isaiah 28:8). But, if three have eaten at one table, and have spoken there words of Torah, [it is] as if they had eaten at the table of the All-Present, blessed be He, as it is said, ‘And He said unto me, ‘this is the table before the Lord’ (Ezekiel 41:22).” [2] Where two or three are gathered at a table and the Word of God is invoked among them, the very presence of the Almighty dwells. Their ordinary table becomes the Table of the Lord, at which God himself is seated. Doesn’t that sound a lot like what we do here this morning?</p><p>We come together at this table in Jesus’ name to share God’s Word in order that the fullness of the divine presence might dwell here with us. This is holy ground. The Communion of Christ’s body and blood that we share is more than a symbolic memorial. It is more than a formative weekly experience. It is even more than a sacramental encounter by which we receive the grace of forgiveness and unity with God and each other. This gathering is the very embodiment of Jesus Christ. It is here, together, that we meet Almighty God, the one who created heaven and earth, the ruler of all the universe. Just as Jesus Christ is present here with us, so, too, in this Eucharist, do we ascend into the heavenly places to be in the very presence of God. This is not only our foretaste of the heavenly banquet but our living participation in it, and, because we know that Jesus is here, how we gather together with one another really matters.</p><p>Jesus said, “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” If the word “church” sounds funny on the lips of Jesus, it is. Matthew’s gospel account is the only one that uses that word. It’s found frequently in the Acts of the Apostles and in the letters of the New Testament, but it only occurs twice in the gospel—here and back in Matthew 16, when Jesus tells Peter that he is the rock on which he will build his church. The word “church” comes from <i>ekklesia</i>, which literally means “the called-out ones.” Within a generation, Jesus’ disciples began to use that word to define themselves as those called out by Jesus—called to a peculiar way of life that is defined by the one in whose name they gathered. Those who met together in Jesus’ name understood that they were called not only to recite his teachings but to live out his example.</p><p>Like shepherds in search of lost sheep, those who knew that someone within the community had gone astray were called to go out and find them: “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.” Notice how the method Jesus taught confronts the transgression while minimizing the shame. It starts small, alone, in secret. The goal is always restoration to the community. “But if you are not listened to,” Jesus continued, “take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.” At each step, the desire for reconciliation expands in the hope that more people can bring the lost sibling back. </p><p>That isn’t easy work for anyone. It is the one who was offended that initiates the attempt at reconciliation. Jesus does not simply call us to welcome back those who return on their own but to seek them out even when it costs us to do so. There are limits to this, of course, when someone’s physical or emotional safety is at risk. But, even when it’s only our egos that are vulnerable, it is still hard to confront someone who has hurt us and do so not with the desire for further estrangement but in a genuine attempt at reconciliation and renewal.</p><p>But sometimes there is no amount of persuading that can convince someone to repent and return. “If the offender refuses to listen even to the church,” Jesus said, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” I have hope that, just as Matthew the tax collector found a seat at Jesus’ table, there is no sinner beyond God’s grace and mercy, but I don’t think Jesus intended this warning as a backdoor opportunity for recalcitrant sinners to come in unchanged. We must always leave the door open for anyone who is ready to return, but the challenging consequence of being a community defined by the one who reconciles the world to himself is that we must take reconciliation seriously. This cannot be an experience of God’s presence—a gathering of two or three in which Jesus is here among us—if we are not committed to the hard work of being reconciled to each other and to God. Otherwise, this is merely a “session of scorners,” a gathering that undermines the very principles we claim to define us.</p><p>The connection between what happens here in this place and what is true in the eternal sense is stronger than we realize. Whatever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven, Jesus tells us, and whatever we loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. That isn’t some magic power that Jesus gave to Peter and the apostles and their successors. It’s a powerful insight to the way God works. It’s a reminder that how we practice repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation here on earth is a manifestation of how we live together in heaven. Those are not separate realities, divided by the veil between this life and the next, but two glimpses at the same truth. </p><p>We might wonder whether that is that asking too much. By calling us into the hard work of reconciliation and showing us that that work has eternal consequences, is Jesus asking too much of us? How will we ever be up to the task? The good news of our faith is that, in the cross of Jesus Christ, God has set us free from the power of sin and death, of ego and pride, of fear and stubbornness. The connection between reconciliation in heaven and reconciliation on earth does not flow only in one direction. In Christ, God has already made us whole. God has fully reconciled us to Godself. We are restored. And the truth of our restoration pours down upon us in limitless abundance.</p><p>All of our frailty, our self-doubt, our weakness, our vanity—all of those things that make us want to clamp down and say “No!” when asked to forgive or to accept forgiveness—have been nailed to the cross and put to death. All that is left in the eyes of God is a restored, renewed, reconciled child, unconditionally loved and universally accepted. You are loved just like that. Nothing can ever take that away from you. It is who you are because it is what God has given you. Only because we are loved like that can we love others in the same way.</p><p>[1] “Pirkei Avot,” 3.2, https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.3.2?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en.</p><p>[2] Ibid., 3.3.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-71990709008296165052023-09-05T08:49:00.001-05:002023-09-05T08:49:02.986-05:00The Hard Road to Salvation<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">September 3, 2023 – The 14th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 17A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp17_RCL.html" target="_blank">Exodus 3:1-15; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon is available <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-9-3-23-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video of the entire service can be seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjc2uKB7bCo" target="_blank">here</a> with the sermon beginning around 19:00</i></p><p>I can’t decide whether the authors of the lectionary did us a favor or a disservice by splitting this chapter in Matthew’s gospel account into two separate weeks. It can’t really be split up. Peter’s recognition of who Jesus really is, which we heard last Sunday, and Jesus’ teaching that, as the Messiah, he must suffer and be killed and on the third day be raised, which we hear today, must go together. You can’t have one without the other. But I also think it does us some good to hear the first part and then have a week to think about it before we come back and get slapped in the face with the harsh reality of what we heard.</p><p>What a difference a week makes! Last Sunday, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do the people say that the Son of Man is?” referring to himself, and they responded, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” In other words, we hear from Jesus’ closest followers that the crowds were likening him to some of the greatest prophetic leaders in their people’s history. And then, as if out of nowhere, when asked who they thought Jesus really was, Peter proclaimed, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” That insight was so remarkable that Jesus responded, saying, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” In other words, the truth of Jesus’ identity was so profound that only a divinely granted insight could explain Peter’s confession.</p><p>But this week feels like a bit of a “gotcha!”—one that leaves us wondering whether last week’s celebration might have been a mistake. Building on Peter’s insight, Jesus begins to expand our understanding of what it means for him to be the heaven-sent, God-anointed Messiah by teaching us that he must suffer greatly at the hands of the leaders of the people and be killed before being raised from the dead on the third day. “Now that you know who I really am,” Jesus seems to be telling the disciples, “I can tell you how the story will end. This is how I will fulfill God’s purposes. It is through my suffering and death that I will set our people free from the yoke, from the burden, that is upon them.”</p><p>Peter wants none of it. “God forbid it, Lord!” he said, so unnerved that the disciple would dare to rebuke the master. “This must never happen to you.” But Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting you mind not on divine things but on human things.” How quickly things had changed! The unassailable rock on which, only a few verses earlier, Jesus had promised to build his church was now standing on the side of Satan and had become a stumbling block—a tripping stone—that was standing in Jesus’ way. And it’s this moment—this turn—that I want to focus on today because I think the same thing happens to us all the time. </p><p>We have found Jesus. We have recognized who he is. We have committed ourselves to following him. We go to church. We say our prayers. We try to live by the Golden Rule. But, when we look around, it often feels more like we’re wandering through the valley of the shadow of death than making our way on the glorious road to heaven. If Jesus really is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, the one who came to set us free from the power of evil and sin and death, why is life so hard so much of the time? Why does it seem like things are getting worse and not better? Why do good, faithful, loving people face so much adversity? Is this really what it means to follow Jesus?</p><p>To those who are looking for comfort, Jesus’ words can feel like a splash of cold water: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” That’s a pretty high bar for discipleship. I haven’t been to a lot of congregations that list martyrdom in their literature for how to join the church. But, if that’s not something you’re ready to sign on for, don’t worry. I’ve got good news. Peter wasn’t ready for that brand of discipleship either. But that didn’t stop Jesus from choosing him to be the rock on which the church is built. </p><p>Jesus didn’t pick Peter because he had it all figured out. Instead, Jesus chose him because, when he looked at Peter, he saw someone whom God could use to do amazing things. And I think that’s what Jesus sees when he looks at each one of us. That’s what it means to be a Christian—that’s what it means to belong to Jesus. It means being someone whom God can use to do amazing things. But no one, least of all Jesus, said that it would be easy.</p><p>Just as Peter’s potential is our potential, so, too, is Peter’s problem our problem. When Jesus presents us with the reality of discipleship, we have a tendency to set our minds on human things instead of divine things. When Jesus tells us that things are going to be hard, we want to run in the other direction. And who can blame us? It’s a lot easier to navigate this life when we play by the world’s rules and seek the world’s comforts, but there is nothing fulfilling about a life that belongs only to this world. We don’t have a hard time recognizing Jesus, but, when we do, we want him to fit into this life, into this world, but he doesn’t. Being a Christian isn’t about getting ahead in this life. It’s about losing this life and everything in it because the life that Jesus yearns to give us is better than anything we have ever known. Jesus did not come to earth in order to be conformed to this world but to transform it, and the only way that transformation is possible is through his suffering and death and resurrection.</p><p>Why must it be that way? Our God is the God who hears the cries of those in need and answers them. Our God is the God whose heart belongs to the poor and the oppressed. Are we surprised that it is amidst the struggles of this life that God’s redemption is to be found? How else could the Son of God come and redeem this world except by embracing our suffering and experiencing our death? This is the faith to which we cling—that God saves us from suffering and death by becoming our suffering and death—and this faith gives us a hope that sustains us. If God were only to be found in lives immune from struggle or loss, even the smallest setback would be a sign of our abandonment. If Jesus’ victory were achieved through power and might, then only the powerful would have a reason to rejoice. But we know that that cannot be so because our God, in every generation, has always stood on the side of the weak and vulnerable, the wayward and the lost.</p><p>To belong to Jesus is not to forsake suffering in this world but to recognize that it is through suffering that God’s transformation takes place. We cannot accept that truth if our minds are set on the ways of this world and not on the ways of God. We grow in our understanding of God’s ways as Jesus Christ grows in us. As we are conformed to the mind of Christ, we begin to see that the places of deepest struggle within us are the places where God’s transformation is ready to break through. As we follow Jesus, we learn to celebrate not the ease that this world can provide but the redemption that only God can give us. When we offer ourselves to Jesus, we do so not as perfected saints prepared for martyrdom but as eager disciples who want to learn how to follow him. And, as we follow, we find that in him the losses we experience are the moments when he is closest to us and the parts of our journey when he has brought us closest to God.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-16245149559872112232023-05-29T22:11:00.001-05:002023-05-29T22:11:34.464-05:00The Spirit Doesn't Always Play By The Rules<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">May 28, 2023 – The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday, Year A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/APentDay_RCL.html" target="_blank">Numbers 11:24-30; Acts 2:1-21; John 20:19-23</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon is available <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-5-28-23-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video of the entire service can be seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_RlAH6FpUk" target="_blank">here</a> with the sermon beginning around 22:15.</i></p><p>Moses had a problem. The people of Israel wouldn’t stop grumbling about their situation, and the Lord was getting pretty angry about it. This time, the people were upset because they didn’t have any meat to eat. God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. God had led them through the Red Sea on dry land. God had rescued them from Pharaoh’s army. God had given them water to drink and manna to eat. But the people wanted more. </p><p>“The rabble among them had a strong craving,” the Book of Numbers tells us. “If only we had meat to eat!” the people cried. “We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” Then the Lord became very angry, and Moses, sensing that there was nothing he could do to satisfy the people’s hunger or assuage God’s mounting wrath, became distraught.</p><p>“Why have you treated your servant so badly?” Moses said to the Lord. “Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child, to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors?’ Where am I to get meat to give to all this people…? I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me.”</p><p>And God listened to Moses and told him what to do. “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel…bring them to the tent of meeting and have them take their place there with you. I will come down and talk with you there; and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.” </p><p>This was a good idea. Moses needed help, and God promised to give it to him. So Moses assembled seventy leaders from among the people, and God came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of his spirit and spread it among the seventy elders. As a sign that they had received a share of the spirit, those elders began to prophesy—they began to speak dramatically whatever words God gave them. Although, after a few moments, those prophetic utterances stopped, the community recognized that the elders had been endued with some of the divine spirit—that God had given them what they needed to accomplish their task. Finally, Moses would have the support he needed.</p><p>But there was another problem. Eldad and Medad, who had been registered among the elders but who had not gone to the tent of meeting, received their own share of the spirit back in the camp, and they began to prophesy. This renegade activity, operating outside the boundaries that God had established through Moses, threatened to undermine his authority and that of the seventy elders whom God had deputized. “My lord Moses, stop them!” cried Joshua, Moses’ faithful righthand. But Moses didn’t seem at all concerned. “Are you jealous for my sake?” he asked. “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”</p><p>It turns out that God’s spirit is shared not only through duly authorized methods like the ordination of seventy elders but also through renegades like Eldad and Medad, who refuse to play by the rules. And, over the centuries, the rabbis have helped us understand why.</p><p>The ancient Jewish scholars who wrestled with this text proposed a few possible interpretations, most of which revolve around the mathematical challenge presented by the number seventy. God asked Moses to set apart seventy elders, but there were twelve ancestral tribes among the people, and seventy isn’t divisible by twelve. How was Moses supposed to spread his authority evenly among the tribes? If he chose six elders from each tribe, that would produce two too many, and five from each would leave him ten short. Jealousy would arise if he selected six from some tribes and five from others, so the rabbis, who creatively and faithfully interpreted the biblical text by expanding the story, proposed that Moses must have cast lots, writing the word “elder” on seventy slips of paper while leaving two slips blank. [1]</p><p>Some rabbis believe that Eldad and Medad drew the blank pieces of paper, but God’s spirit found them anyway. Others propose that those two were uncomfortable accepting the honor of being chosen an elder among their people, so they stayed back on purpose, trusting that God would use the seventy others in their place. And, in turn, God rewarded their humility and gave them the gift of prophecy that, unlike the gift given to the other seventy, did not cease. Still other rabbis believe that Eldad and Medad refused to accept an authority that was derivative of Moses’, preferring to exercise their own brand of leadership. [2]</p><p>In any case, it is remarkable that Moses responded to their unexpected and unauthorized prophecy not by becoming defensive but by encouraging more unbridled, unregulated work of the spirit. When Joshua came to him in a panic, he said to Moses literally, “My lord Moses, imprison them!” He wanted to lock them up, or at least place upon them the same burden of leadership that the seventy elders bore—a weight that, in theory, had left them with no time or ability to continue prophesying. The rabbinic tradition holds that Eldad and Medad had prophesied that Moses would die and that Joshua would be the one to lead them into the land of promise. No wonder Joshua reacted so strongly. Their prophesy represented a double-threat—both to Moses’ authority and to his life. But Moses, in his humility, would rather celebrate the spirit’s presence among God’s people than cling to either his own authority or his life.</p><p>This encounter reminds us that sometimes the Spirit shows up in ways that are prescribed by religious institutions, but sometimes those institutions fail to anticipate just how God’s Spirit will show up. Some of us like structure and good order. We find it easy to trust that God will become manifest through clearly defined channels like ordinations and vestries and bishop elections. And, while it’s true that the Spirit does show up in those ways, as the story of the seventy elders demonstrates, we must also recognize that there is no process, no prescription, no ballot, no liturgy, no sacrament that can contain the fullness of the Holy Ghost.</p><p>During the next three months, while I am on sabbatical, I bet the Holy Spirit will show up in ways that surprise all of us. If you haven’t noticed, I’m the kind of person who really likes it when God’s Spirit comes in carefully prescribed and clearly defined ways. Deep down, I know that my love of good order, although well-intentioned, can become an idolatry. By stepping away from this place for three months, I trust that new and unanticipated opportunities for leadership, creativity, and innovation will arise and that they will come not only in the ways that the staff, vestry, and I have planned but also in ways that right now only God can see. And I believe that will be true not only here at St. Paul’s but also in my own life as I leave behind the comfortable routines where I am in charge and accept a period of unfamiliar renewal.</p><p>When the Spirit shows up and surprises us, what will our reaction be—that of Moses or that of Joshua? Will we recognize the Spirit when she threatens our sense of order, or will we write her off because she hasn’t made an appointment or bothered to knock on the front door? The Spirit doesn’t always come as an invited guest. Sometimes she blows right in through the window with gale force winds, threatening to rip the shutters off. Sometimes it’s easier to dismiss her as a drunken mistake than to take her seriously. </p><p>But God’s ultimate vision for the world is not a neat and tidy place, where those who have been appointed by the religious community are permitted to speak with divine authority but a world in which all people have received a share of the divine spirit. In those days, God declares, all people will prophesy—not only the ones we expect to speak on behalf of God but all people, regardless of age, gender, or economic status. </p><p>Our celebration of Pentecost is a celebration that those last days are here among us, even now. This chapter of salvation history in which we live is defined by the universal, unrestrained work of the Holy Spirit. “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” Today, Moses’ dream has been realized. God has poured out that spirit upon all flesh. We are all Eldads and Medads. May God give us the wisdom and the humility to see it.</p><p>___________________________</p><p>1. <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.17a.5?lang=bi">https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.17a.5?lang=bi</a></p><p align="left" class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div>2. <a href="https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/4407977/jewish/Eldad-Medad-The-Mysterious-Prophets.htm#footnote6a4407977">https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/4407977/jewish/Eldad-Medad-The-Mysterious-Prophets.htm#footnote6a4407977</a></div><p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p></p>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-51645108873040402082023-05-21T18:51:00.001-05:002023-05-21T18:51:38.277-05:00Prayer Is Always The First Step<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">May 21, 2023 – The 7th Sunday of Easter, Year A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Easter/AEaster7_RCL.html" target="_blank">Acts 1:6-14; 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11; John 17:1-11</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Video of this service can be seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTfHVLbIUo" target="_blank">here</a> with the sermon beginning around 25:45. </i></p><p>For a group of church leaders who get a lot of credit, the disciples sure do spend a lot of time just sitting around. And that’s where God always seems to find them. Like a boss who checks up on you right when you’re taking a break, God seems to have a way of showing up when they are least prepared for it.</p><p>The risen Jesus didn’t reveal himself to the disciples while they were walking to Emmaus but after the journey was over as they sat together for the evening meal. He didn’t wait for the disciples to go out into the streets and share the good news of his resurrection but walked through locked doors in order to give them his peace. After Jesus blessed the apostles as he was ascending into heaven, God didn’t send the Spirit upon them immediately so that they could get right to work. Instead, they went back into the upper room, where they sat around and waited until the wind and fire of Holy Spirit came and filled the house.</p><p>It's a strange way to get things started—knowing that you have important work to do, unsure how you will get it done, a little confused about how God is going to help you, but somehow confident that something good is going to happen. After seeing Jesus taken up into heaven, the disciples were standing on the cusp of something completely new, so they did the only thing they knew how to do. The men and women who had followed Jesus got together in a room and devoted themselves to prayer and waited for God to show up.</p><p>That sounds a little bit like what happened in this community 175 years ago this Tuesday:</p><p></p><blockquote>May 23, 1848, after due notice a meeting of the members of the Church was held in the schoolroom—the usual place of worship—and after divine service the Rev. W. C. Stout, Missionary, was called to the chair, and Col. W. S. Gidham appointed secretary…Whereupon the following instrument was read by the [Secretary] and on motion of John W. Chew adopted and signed by those whose names are thereunto written. To-wit: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. We, the subscribers assembled for the purpose of organizing a parish of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the town of Fayetteville, County of Washington and State of Arkansas after due notice given do hereby agree to form a Parish to be known by the name of St. Paul’s Church Parish, and as such, do hereby acknowledge and accede to the doctrines, disciplines, and worship, the Constitution and canons of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America… [1]</blockquote><p></p><p>That’s how we got our start—gathered together in a room, unsure of what was ahead of us but confident that God would give us what we need, and devoted to prayer. </p><p>A whole lot of good has been done in and through St. Paul’s since that day. If we took time to pour through the archives, we could count the number of services, sermons, marriages, baptisms, confirmations, and burials that have been offered to God’s glory in this place. We could probably figure out how much money has been spent carrying out the ministries of this church and responding to the needs of the community. But the good work that has been accomplished here far exceeds what any service record, parish register, or balance sheet could attest. How many lives have been touched by the people of St. Paul’s? How many prayers have been answered? How many people have found a reason to hope in the midst of their struggle or recognized God’s presence in the face of hardship? For 175 years, the people of this parish have devoted themselves to carrying out God’s work in the world, and it should be no surprise to us that that work must always begin with prayer.</p><p>In this reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear two questions that make clear to us why prayer is essential if we are to be faithful in our work. First, the apostles ask Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” As Willie James Jennings notes, it is a perfectly natural question. They have journeyed from the depths of despair in the shadow of the cross to the heights of glory in the triumph of the risen Lord. They have seen God strike a fatal blow to death itself, and now they want to know what all of us who stand in the light of that victory want to know—is this the time when God will restore the kingdom to God’s people on earth? [2]</p><p>But every time we ask that question—and long to know the answer—we impose upon God the limitations of our own imaginations. For, whenever we ask God whether this is the real moment of triumph, we reveal our desire not to follow where Christ has led but to turn the resurrection of Jesus into a sign of our own victory. As Jennings writes, the desire imbedded within such a longing is fundamentally nationalistic—not a “nationalism bound to the anatomy of Israel, but the deeply human desire of every people to control their destiny and shape the world into their hoped-for eternal image.” [3]</p><p>Jesus’ reply to the apostles puts an end to such a fantasy: “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” As Jennings continues, Jesus alone “will define resurrection’s meaning and resurrection’s purpose. It will not be used by these disciples as an ideological tool for statecraft. Nor will it constitute [for] them the winner’s circle. Such ways of thinking resurrection turn Jesus into the greatest victor in an eternal competition and produces disciples who follow Jesus only because they worship power.” </p><p>Instead, we must wait in prayer for the power that comes to clothe us from on high. The power Jesus sends upon us is the power of the Holy Spirit—a power which is indistinguishable from the power of the Crucified One. It descends from the place where he has gone before, not to bestow upon us a power that belongs to this world but a power to transform it through his death and resurrection, through his sacrifice and love. Prayer is how we wait for the power that God will give us instead of rushing in and claiming only what the world can give.</p><p>But there is another danger we must face if we are to be faithful to the one who calls us and sends us and equips us with the Spirit’s power, and the second question in this reading from Acts helps us identify it. “While [Jesus] was going and [the apostles] were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’” Those who know the triumph of the risen Christ have a tendency to stand around, staring at what has already been accomplished without offering themselves to the work that lies ahead. Our first step might be to come together in prayer, but there’s a big difference between gazing at a memorial of what has been and praying that God will lead us into something new.</p><p>The challenge for us is holding onto both. We cannot charge ahead as if the reign of God is something we can bring about through our best efforts. It does not come from within us, no matter how good and wonderful our community of faith might be. It only comes from above. But neither can our waiting and watching and hoping be a mere passive expression of faith. We cannot remain still, standing in the fading glow of his ascension, even though standing still is often a lot more comfortable to us than stepping out into the unknown. </p><p>We do not know what lies ahead. We do not know what it will cost us. We do not know whether we will succeed. We do not know how or when the fullness of God’s reign will take hold in this world. But we do know that God has made us witnesses of Jesus Christ—missionaries of the good news of God’s infinite grace, acceptance, and love. And God has sent us the Holy Spirit to give us everything we need to be faithful to the work God is giving us to do.</p><p>In the end, prayer is how we balance the need to wait on God and the need to offer ourselves to God’s work. The majesty of God breaking forth fully into this world is not something for us to achieve, and yet it is something for us to give our whole lives to. That can only happen through prayer. Prayer is how we yield our egos over to God and allow the Spirit to shape and mold us into emissaries of God’s reign. Prayer is how we let go of our inadequate hopes and dreams and yoke ourselves instead to the dream of God. </p><p>Once again, the people of this parish stand on the cusp of something new and wonderful. We do not know what it will be, but God does. We cannot see how or when it will come to pass, but God can. If we will be a part of it, we must come together and devote ourselves to prayer. And prayer is enough, for, by offering ourselves to God in that way, we trust God to use us however God will, and that’s when we know God will show up.</p><p>_____________________________________</p><div>1. Stout, W. C.. “A Faithful Record of the Affairs, Spiritual and Temporal of St. Paul’s Parish,” 1848, p. 9.</div><div>2. Jennings, Willie James. Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible. Westminster John Knox Press; Louisville: 2017, p. 17.</div><div>3. Jennings, p. 19.</div><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-3768381574207673602023-05-01T08:39:00.006-05:002023-05-02T10:14:14.807-05:00Defined By Devotion<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">April 30, 2023 – The 4th Sunday of Easter, Year A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Easter/AEaster4_RCL.html" target="_blank">Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-4-30-23-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video of the entire service can be seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXoqsjnBYvg" target="_blank">here</a> with the sermon beginning around 23:05.</i></p><p>Tucker Carlson is an Episcopalian. Did you know that? He’s been an Episcopalian all his life. Born and baptized into an Episcopal parish in California, educated at an Episcopal school in Rhode Island, married to the daughter of an Episcopal priest, Carlson is as intimately familiar with the ins and outs of this denomination as almost anyone.[1] I bring him up not to discuss his politics or the implications of his dismissal from Fox News but to note how different today’s church, in which such divisive forces are present, is from the one we hear about in Acts 2. </p><p>Back then, “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” That’s not exactly the unity of spirit that comes to mind when you hear that Tucker Carlson is a member of our church. How did we get from “all things in common” to “I refuse to believe that he’s an Episcopalian?”</p><p>Today’s reading from Acts is yet another story from the afterglow of Pentecost. For the third week in a row, we hear a passage from those first few moments after the Holy Spirit descended from heaven and alighted on the apostles. We’ll go back and hear how the Spirit arrived and how the apostles began to speak in other languages four weeks from today, but today’s lesson is what happened after Peter finished his sermon—after those who had received his words had repented and been baptized. Given the rather blunt and accusatory tone of that sermon, we might think that the real miracle of the story is that 3,000 persons were added to the faith that day. But, when we pick up with today’s reading and hear how those Christians lived together in unity, there’s no doubt where the real miracle is.</p><p>This is the power of the Holy Spirit—that a community of diverse people—rich and poor, old and young, male and female, literate and uneducated, Hebrew-speaking and Hellenized, powerful and powerless—Jews from all over the known world—were able to put aside all of their differences and all of their individual desires, needs, and concerns and live in such unity that they could sell all of their possessions, pool together all of their resources, and not fight about it. Now, that’s a miracle. But don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that this description of material and spiritual unity is some utopian metaphor that modern Christians are supposed to mythologize. I believe that it is an actual, literal description of what the community looks like when we are devoted to Jesus Christ just as they were.</p><p>Devotion is what defined them. “Those who had been baptized,” the Book of Acts tells us, “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Their lives revolved around formation and community. They learned together. They ate together. They prayed together. And the Bible makes it clear that they didn’t do that once a week. Listen to the story’s description of how those early Christians lived: “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” This was not a Sunday-morning encounter but a daily endeavor. </p><p>Each day, they continued to go into the temple as they always had, honoring their commitment to corporate worship and prayer, but their fellowship didn’t stop at the temple gate. At night, they went into each other’s homes, where, the passage tells us, they “broke bread…and ate their food”—a double-description that conveys both the symbolic and literal nourishment they received at the table. Their hearts were glad and overflowed with generosity. They praised God and demonstrated God’s goodness to all people, not only to those in their company. </p><p>This was more than a church. This was more than a collection of believers. This was a community of faith—people bound together in joyous celebration of God’s unlimited goodness. There was no part of their lives that was untouched by this Spirit-filled movement. Everything they were and everything they had belonged to God, and the community grew and grew. </p><p>Don’t we want to be a part of something like that? Don’t we want to immerse ourselves in God’s goodness until the blessings become so thick and full that we can no longer tell where one person’s bounty ends and another person’s begins? Don’t we believe that what God wants for us is the kind of unity that runs deep into our souls and that has the power to shape the whole world until we are all reconciled to God and to each other? That is the peace of God that passes all understanding.</p><p>What will we do to make that peace come to the earth? What can we do to make that vision for the world our reality? What decisions can we make, what structures can we put into place, what boundaries can we set, what rules can we establish, what leaders can we elect to be sure that God’s dream for the world comes to pass? The answer is none of them. </p><p>Our job isn’t to make the reign of God a reality on the earth. That’s God’s job. And the good news of the Christian faith is that God has already brought that reality to the world in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our job is to devote ourselves to that truth. Our job is to commit ourselves—body, soul, and mind—time, talent, and treasure—to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers because that is how God’s reign comes into our lives, and it is our lives, lived together in unity, through which God’s reign takes hold in the world.</p><p>Given the state of our church, our country, and the world, it should come as no surprise that that sort of unity will not come about through expressions of power and might. The Holy Spirit doesn’t work by empowering us to make our vision for the world a reality. She works by taking hold of us and shaping us until our lives look like God’s life and our wills look like God’s will. Thus, the Spirit does not harden us with invincibility. She softens us to become vulnerable just as Christ was vulnerable. We do not have the power to bring the kind of unity described in Acts 2 into this or any other Christian community. But, by allowing the Holy Spirit to take control of our lives, God can and will make that same sort of unity the defining characteristic of our lives and of this congregation.</p><p>The vision for the church laid out in the Book of Acts is not an economic model or a recipe for communal life. It is simply a description of what the Body of Christ looks like when it is animated by the Holy Spirit and filled with God’s love. As Willie James Jennings wrote, “What is far more dangerous than any plan of shared wealth or fair distribution of goods and services is a God who dares impose on us divine love. Such love will not play fair. In the moment we think something is ours, or our people’s, that same God will demand we sell it, give it away, or offer more of it in order to feed the hungry, [clothe] the naked, or shelter the homeless, using it to create the bonds of shared life.”[2]</p><p>If we are going to get to a spiritual place where the total and complete demands of the Holy Spirit upon our lives fill us with joy instead of heartache and bring about unity instead of discord and inspire enthusiasm instead of reluctance, we must devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. That must be the life we live every day. That is how we learn how much God loves us. That is how we come to trust that God’s love for us and for the whole world is full and overflowing. That is how we learn to believe that what God has given us is infinitely more valuable than what the world can provide. Then our unity will no longer be our goal but the life we live together in God through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. </p><p>________________________________</p><p>1. Petiprin, Andrew, “Tucker Carlson, Episcopalian,” The Living Church; 26 June 2017: https://covenant.livingchurch.org/2017/06/26/tucker-carlson-episcopalian/. </p><p>2. Jennings, Willie James. Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible. Westminster John Knox Press: 2017, p. 40.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-81357071631620718132023-04-10T18:24:00.002-05:002023-04-10T18:24:08.224-05:00The Risen Jesus Gives Us Everything We Need<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">April 9, 2023 – The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day, Year A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Easter/AEasterPrin_RCL.html" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Easter/AEasterPrin_RCL.html" target="_blank">Acts 10:34-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon is available <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-4-9-23-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video of the entire service is available <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3N2W4i1Oa0" target="_blank">here</a> with the sermon beginning around 22:50.</i></p><p>I want to tell you something that I have kept quiet for a long time—something that will probably embarrass my children: I am a fan of <i>Star Trek: The Next Generation</i>. Now, I will admit that these days, when I watch reruns of the show, they don’t always hold up. Sometimes they’re too cheesy even for me. But I grew up loving nothing more than spending Monday nights on the couch with my father watching the crew of the Enterprise explore the galaxy in every new episode. </p><p>On Monday night, March 26, 1990, the episode “Allegiance” debuted. In the first scene, Captain Piccard is kidnapped from his quarters, and an imposter takes his place. The real Piccard wakes up in a holding cell alongside a handful of other prisoners. As the episode progresses, the audience watches as the group of prisoners—each representing a different alien species—encounters one problem after another. One of them, a naturally aggressive species, is unable to eat the food that is provided by their captors. Another, belonging to a race of avowed pacifists, begins to think that he might be killed for food. Some in the group want to try to escape, while others refuse to cooperate. In one scenario after another, Piccard and his fellow captives get tantalizingly close to opening their cell door only to discover another barrier they have to get past.</p><p>Eventually, Piccard realizes that it’s all a game—that there’s no way to escape. Their captors have brought them there to test them—to observe how different species will handle one agonizing setback after another. Once he recognizes that they’re just rats in a maze, he refuses to participate, and the alien species conducting the research returns him to his vessel. </p><p>I first saw that episode when I was nine years old. A rerun came on a few months ago, and I found myself appreciating it in a whole new way. Now, as a parent, priest, and spouse, I often feel like I’m in the midst of a sociological experiment, being tested to see how I will approach an unsolvable situation. Do you ever feel like that? Do you ever feel like life is just one big game in which you don’t quite have what you need in order to succeed? If you just had a little bit more time or a little bit more money, you could really get ahead. If you were just a little bit faster, a little bit smarter, a little bit luckier, then things would really start to go your way.</p><p>Sometimes life feels like one unsolvable problem after another. And religion, with its unrelenting invitation to be better, to try harder, to become holier has the power to make things even worse. On Easter Day, however, we gather together to hear the good news that, because Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, there is no situation in front of us that God has not already solved, and, whenever we encounter one, we know that we have already been given everything we need.</p><p>Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away. She didn’t bother to look inside or check around the tomb. Instead, she turned and ran, certain that Jesus’ body had been stolen from its resting place. Peter and the other disciple raced to the tomb to see it for themselves. When they got there, they looked inside and explored every inch and found only the linen grave cloths lying on the ground. They knew that the tomb was empty, but still they did not understand that Jesus had been raised from the dead. So they returned home. </p><p>Mary stayed there weeping, overcome with sorrow that not only had Jesus been killed but now his body had been stolen away, leaving her with grief piled upon grief. Even when Jesus came and spoke to her, she thought he was the gardener until he said her name. For us, it’s hard to appreciate just how impossible it was to understand what had happened. Before we came to church this morning, with the benefit of two thousand years of received testimony, we knew that Jesus had been raised, just as he had promised. But there was nothing that Mary and the disciples could do to put the pieces together on their own. Not even the empty tomb and the linen wrappings left behind were enough for Jesus’ closest friends to see and believe that he was alive—that he had triumphed over death exactly as he had told them he would.</p><p>The gap between us and what we need to solve all our problems might only be as thin as a strand of human hair, but, when it comes to fixing what is broken in our lives, it might as well be an infinite chasm that none of us can cross. Yet standing on the other side of that chasm is the risen Jesus, who sees us and calls out our name: “Mary!” As soon as she heard Jesus speak her name, Mary’s doubt and confusion, her grief and disbelief, evaporated. She had seen the Lord! And the risen Christ then sent her on to carry the good news of the resurrection to his disciples in order that their work of sharing that same good news might begin. All that was missing—everything that they needed, everything that hadn’t made sense—suddenly came clear. They couldn’t find it on their own, even when it was right in front of them, but when the risen Lord came and found them, he gave them everything they needed.</p><p>Our job isn’t to figure it all out on our own. Our job is simply to meet the risen Lord. In the decades that followed that Easter Day, the apostles didn’t travel around the Mediterranean teaching people that they should love their neighbors as themselves, giving them more impossible work to do. The world didn’t need Jesus to teach them that. That is a truth as ancient as civilization itself. Instead, the apostles took with them the good news that Jesus Christ had been raised from the dead. It is Christ’s victory over death that makes loving our neighbors the way God calls us to love them possible. It is the risen Christ who gives the world everything it needs to make God’s loving reign a reality.</p><p>I know that love is the answer. I know that selfless, sacrificial love is what it takes for the world to become the place of God’s dreams. I know that love is how poverty and hunger are put to death. Love is how violence and greed are finally defeated. Love is how hatred and bigotry and jealousy are wiped off the face of the earth. Love is how I become a better parent, a better priest, and a better spouse. But I also know that there is nothing I can do to solve those problems on my own. None of us can. Like rats in a maze, just when we think we’re getting ahead, human nature pops up again, and we’re back where we started. If it were up to us, we’d be doomed from the start. But the good news of Easter is that it isn’t up to us at all.</p><p>I don’t come to church because I want to be a better person, and I don’t raise my children in the faith because I hope that they will learn how to treat other people with respect. We come to church because this is the place where we proclaim that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. This is the place where death becomes life, where loss becomes gain, where love triumphs over all. And that alone has the power to change our lives. We are here to meet the one whom God raised from the dead. We are here to hear him speak our names. We are here to partake in his body and blood. We are here to see that God has already defeated everything that stands in the way of love taking charge in the world. We are here to let the risen Christ show us that he has already given us everything we need.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-18011913138220718012023-04-07T21:48:00.005-05:002023-04-07T21:48:56.844-05:00All We Can Do Is Pray<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">April 7, 2023 – Good Friday</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/HolyWk/GoodFri_RCL.html" target="_blank">Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon will be available soon. Video of the service can be seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7kYcc5zpZg" target="_blank">here</a> with the sermon beginning around 28:45.</i></p><p>In John’s gospel account, after telling his disciples that one of them would betray him and announcing that he would be taken from them, Jesus prays. In a red-letter edition of the Bible, except for words that introduce his prayer, all of John 17 is red. In that high-priestly prayer, Jesus prays for his disciples—that they would be protected and that they would be one. He prays for those throughout the world who will come to know God’s love because of the work that those disciples will carry out. And he prays that the glory of God will be revealed in what awaits him and that eternal life will be given to all who see and believe.</p><p>After that, John tells us, Jesus and his disciples set off across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden—a place that they knew well. John doesn’t tell us why the disciples met there frequently, but the synoptic tradition, which is reflected in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, helps us know that the garden was for them a place of prayer. In those accounts, instead of praying in the upper room before setting out, Jesus and the disciples go to the garden to pray. You might remember that, according to that tradition, each time Jesus comes and finds the disciples sleeping, he exhorts them to stay awake and pray so that they will have the strength to meet the days ahead of them. In the end, though, the outcome is the same, and we inevitably come to the arrest, torture, and death of our Lord supported only by prayer.</p><p>It turns out that the only thing we can do in the shadow of the cross is pray. Over the centuries, the church has struggled to figure out what sort of liturgical response is appropriate for Good Friday. In part, that struggle has arisen from a clear conviction in the western church that the Eucharist should not be celebrated on this day. Although the Divine Office of the eastern church has always been a part of their Good Friday observances, in the west, we have traditionally looked for other ways to remember Jesus’ death on the day when Jesus died on the cross.</p><p>In Jerusalem, as early as the fourth century, the faithful processed from the Garden of Gethsemane, where they had prayed through the night, into the city just as dawn was breaking. They read the story of Jesus’ trial at the governor’s headquarters. They stopped to pray at the column where Jesus had been scourged. After a break to return to their homes and rest for a while, they came to the church that had been built at Golgotha. There the relic of the true cross was laid upon the altar, and the people walked past it, kissing it or touching it with their hands or their foreheads. From noon until three o’clock in the afternoon, they stood in the courtyard outside the church and listened as all of the Old Testament prophecies and New Testament passages that alluded to Christ’s passion were read, stopping to pray in between each reading. Then, at three o’clock, the passion according to John was proclaimed, and shortly thereafter the service ended. </p><p>Christians in communities and churches away from the holy city, unable to walk the Via Dolorosa themselves, developed their own ways of commemorating Jesus’ death. Over the centuries, as fragments of the true cross were distributed throughout the world, similar acts of devotion—kissing and touching and reverencing those fragments—became common. Eventually, even in places where no relic of the cross was kept, the faithful drew near to a substitute cross, offering their silent prayers of adoration to the instrument upon which salvation was wrought. But, long before the creeping to the cross became common practice, the act of hearing the story of Jesus’ death and responding in prayer was central to the church’s Good Friday worship.</p><p>In our service today, our focus remains on hearing the passion and responding in prayer. In our Good Friday liturgy, the Solemn Collects are the defining element of our worship. Once we have beheld the death of Jesus, we kneel together to pray for ourselves and for the whole world. Scholars believe that this particular form of prayer may have been composed as early as the second century, and they note that the biddings or calls to prayer, which the deacon will read, likely were written before the collects themselves. That suggests that, even before the church had decided what words to say in prayer, God’s people felt a clear and undeniable urge to pray after they had seen the cross of Christ.</p><p>Today, the only thing we know how to do is to pray. In the silence that follows each bidding, we will pray first for the church, then for the nations of the world, then for all who suffer, then for those who do not yet know the love of God, and finally for ourselves. The collects that follow each silence are designed to bring together our unspoken prayers and longings in a unified expression. In each case, because we have seen what is offered and accomplished on the cross, we bring to God in prayer the brokenness of the world and of our lives, asking God to draw into the divine life all that is in need of redemption and restoration. In the cross, we have seen God’s love poured out for the sake of the world. In faith we recognize that all our hopes must find their fulfillment there. </p><p>On this day, there is nothing for us to produce or accomplish. All we can do is watch and pray. To see Christ die upon the cross—to hear him say, “It is finished,” and to watch him breathe his last—is to encounter more than a miscarriage of justice. Good Friday is not an inspirational moment, born of a tragedy, that demands from us a bold and decisive response. It is, in and of itself, the perfect and complete satisfaction of all that is amiss in the world. It is the means by which God reconciles and restores us to union with God and each other. The only possible response to what God has done is for us to enter into it through prayer.</p><p>Today, I urge you to bring the deepest needs of your life and of the world into the cross through prayer. Let your prayers be the channel through which everything around you that is broken comes into contact with God’s perfect love. Bring your doubts. Bring your sorrows. Bring your hardships into the cross in prayer. Bring your family. Bring this community. Bring this broken world into the cross in prayer. Bring everything that is affected by greed and violence and hatred and sin into the cross in prayer. See again what God has done, and use your prayers to enfold into Christ’s outstretched arms all that is in need of repair. Start with yourself. Feel that embrace. Allow your prayers to carry with you the burdens of your heart. Believe again that God’s love has no limits, and let that love draw you into the cross of Christ through prayer.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-59120625034987661592023-04-07T07:24:00.001-05:002023-04-07T07:24:08.903-05:00We Wash Because We Know<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">April 6, 2023 – Maundy Thursday</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/HolyWk/MaundyTh_RCL.html" target="_blank">Exodus 12:1-14a; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17; 31b-35 </a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-4-6-23-evan-garner-maundy-thursday" target="_blank">here</a>. Video of the service can be seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6U96gHbV50" target="_blank">here</a> with the sermon beginning around 22:00.</i></p><p>I don’t mind washing someone else’s feet. I wouldn’t want to do it all day long, and there are some feet I’d rather not touch, but, in a highly symbolic setting like this one, in which the washing of feet is more of a liturgical gesture than an ablutionary act, it doesn’t bother me to pour water over someone’s feet, rub them tenderly with my hands, and then dry them carefully with a towel. It’s letting one of you wash my feet that’s the problem.</p><p>I’m guessing that the discomfort to which Peter gives voice is one that many of us feel: “You will never wash my feet.” There’s something about just sitting there passively, not doing anything to help out, and letting someone we know—a friend, a mentor, a parishioner, a priest—wash that part of our body which we likely do the least to take care of that makes us highly uncomfortable. </p><p> In the ancient world, there were servants for that. Or, in a modest home, the host would provide the necessary equipment for you to do it yourself. But the one who welcomed you to their table would never greet you at the door and then take off your sandals and start washing your feet. It’s the reversal of roles that makes us feel the way that Peter did. We can go to the nail salon and give our feet to someone who does it for a living, but, when the person we’re prepared to dine with is also the one who washes our feet, we don’t know what to do. It’s easier when you can throw a tip at it and keep it professional.</p><p>But, for Jesus, this was more than a symbolic gesture or a provocative act. It was a deep reflection of his identity and the identity into which he calls each one of us. Washing someone else’s feet and letting them wash ours, too, is about knowing who we are and the one to whom we belong.</p><p>Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father…During supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself…You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand…Do you know what I have done to you?…If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them…By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.</p><p>This whole passage is about knowing and serving. Jesus knew that he belonged to God, that he had come from God, and that he was going to God, so he got up from the table and tied a towel around his waist and began to wash each of the disciples’ feet. John the evangelist wants us to recognize that it is because Jesus knew who he was that he stooped down to wash the disciples’ feet. But wouldn’t we expect someone who knows that they belong to God the way that Jesus does—someone who knows that he is even God among us—to sit back and wait on others to come and wash his feet? </p><p>Instead, Jesus shows us that the more fully one belongs to God the more completely one must empty oneself out in the service of others. Traditionally, we might use the phrase, “Know your place,” to remind someone that we think they belong beneath us—that they shouldn’t stray above their appointed station—but Jesus shows us that true knowledge of our place in the economy of God, as beloved participants in the divine life, compels us to get down on the floor and wash one another’s feet. That isn’t because we are worthless to God but because what it means to be precious in God’s sight is to love others in humble service. </p><p>Our God is the one who becomes a servant for the sake of the world. Our God is the one who loves the world by pouring Godself out in a complete and total self-offering. If that is true about our God, then it must become true about us as well. We do not wash each other’s feet because we are the least in the household of God. We do so because Jesus Christ has made us one with God and one with each other. And, as uncomfortable as it makes us, it also means that those who would serve us in Jesus’ name do so not in a socially threatening reversal of roles but as an expression of their own self-understanding as those who belong to God. So we must let them wash our feet, too.</p><p>We cannot become our truest selves until we learn that, at our core, we are servants of one another. And we stand in the way of other people becoming their truest, fullest selves when we refuse to allow them to love us back in that same way. These days, even in the fanciest houses, there is no one waiting at the door to wash your feet when you arrive. But this strange act of service, which we offer tonight, is a way to offer ourselves back into the service of God by recommitting ourselves to serving one another in God’s name. </p><p>When we wash another’s feet and allow someone else to wash ours, we get a glimpse into the divine nature and see again that together we belong to a loving, serving, self-giving God. This is who we are because this is who God is, and tonight—together—we come to know that more fully.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-87155762543768475362023-03-26T13:05:00.000-05:002023-03-26T13:05:01.957-05:00Death Is Not Natural<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">March 26, 2023 – The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Lent/ALent5_RCL.html" target="_blank">Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-3-26-23-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video of the entire service can be seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAlOkJI_CFc" target="_blank">here</a> with the sermon beginning around 24:50.</i></p><p>Barbara and Earl Pettey didn’t stand a chance. But, before I tell you why, let me ask you to play a little game with me. Take a look at the people on your pew and the pews around yours. Look around, and, in your mind, get a group of about a dozen people together. Got that group together in your mind? Now imagine that you are on a plane with those people and that that plane makes an emergency landing in the middle of the ocean. You scramble into a life raft before the plane sinks out of sight, and that group of people sitting around you is the group of people with you in the life raft. With me so far?</p><p>Before long, it becomes clear to you and everyone else in your raft that the raft isn’t big enough for all of you. You’ve begun taking on water, and the raft is sinking fast. Someone has to go. In fact, a quick assessment of the situation produces the incontrovertible fact that two people need to be thrown overboard or else the raft will sink and everyone will perish. For the purposes of this exercise—not unlike the movie Titanic—it is pointless to ask whether you could take turns in the raft or whether there is some way to shift people around or bail water quickly enough to avoid the necessity of sending two people to their deaths. Just accept the limits of the exercise and ask yourself who are your throwing overboard? Which two people in the pews around you would you vote off your bright yellow floating island? And why?</p><p>I asked a similar question to a group of people at a Theology on Tap gathering back in Decatur, Alabama. We met every week in a local restaurant for some theological conversation, and that question proved to be one of the more effective conversation starters. In the end, Earl and Barbara were voted off the raft unanimously. Both were in their eighties and by far the oldest people in the group. She was a violist, and he played the trombone, but both had retired a long time ago. Their children were all independent and healthy, and both the Petteys and the people around them felt that, if anyone needed to go into the drink, it should be they. </p><p>Did you come to a similar conclusion? Do you share that instinctive belief that older people’s lives are less important to preserve—less valuable—than those of younger people? Don’t we feel a greater sense of tragedy when a teenager dies than when an octogenarian passes on? What if I told you that the only reason we feel that way is because we have been fooled into thinking that death is a natural consequence of life? What if I told you that our faith actually teaches the opposite and that, in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus challenges the assumption that death is an unavoidable reality?</p><p>To get there, we have to hear this story as more than a miraculous resuscitation. We need to recognize the role it plays in the gospel writer’s deepening portrayal of Jesus as the Son of God. Since the second chapter of his gospel account, in one miraculous sign after another, John has been building the case for Jesus’ divinity. Last Sunday, we heard the story of Jesus healing a man who had been born blind. At one point, the once-blind man described the unparalleled nature of what Jesus had done, saying, “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If [Jesus] were not from God, he could do nothing.”</p><p>By the time we get to today’s story, just two chapters later, it seems that Jesus’ reputation as a one-of-a-kind miracle worker has become well known. Did you notice how both of Lazarus’ sisters—first Martha and then Mary—said to Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died?” Both understood that, had he arrived in time, Jesus would have been able to keep their brother alive. Later on, while Jesus wept outside Lazarus’ tomb, some of those in the crowd looked on and asked, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” The point John seems to be making is that someone who had the power to give sight to a man born blind surely would have been able to heal his sick friend if only he had gotten there a little earlier. But Jesus didn’t want to.</p><p>When Jesus heard that his friend Lazarus was deathly ill, instead of dropping everything and rushing to his bedside, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, John tells us, even though Jesus loved Lazarus and his sisters, he decided to stay where he was for two more days—long enough for Lazarus to die. Why did he linger and only head to Bethany after it was too late? Because with Jesus it is never too late. Because John wants us to know that Jesus is more than a miraculous healer. John wants us to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world, and that he is even the Lord over life and death.</p><p>No one has the power to bring someone back from the four-days dead besides God. There is no spell, no incantation, no prayer that would work. Not even a once-in-a-millennium miracle worker could do such a thing. Only the one who has ultimate power over the universe and everything in it could call Lazarus out of the tomb, and that’s exactly what Jesus did. And that changes everything.</p><p>Most of us can muster enough faith to believe that, after we die, something good will be waiting for us. Although we don’t really know what it means, we maintain that generic, amorphous hope that we will go to heaven when we die. But how many of us have enough faith to recognize that Jesus’ victory over death is not just a bit of good news that waits for us on the other side of the grave but an earth-shattering, nature-redefining truth that reorients everything we know about this life and what awaits us? </p><p>Jesus’ power over death reminds us that God did not create us out of the dust of the earth and breathe into our nostrils the breath of life only to allow that breath to leave us when we are too old for this world. God did not establish an endless cycle of birth and life and death as the foundation upon which the universe is built. Death is not the natural consequence of the life God breathed into creation but a tragic consequence of the brokenness of creation that Jesus came to restore. He is more than the means by which we cheat death or escape its effect. He is the one through whom death itself has been put to death.</p><p>If you’re having a hard time figuring out how Jesus’ victory over death is real and complete even though the people we love still die, you’re not alone. I want you to know that I don’t understand how it works. I don’t know how it is that this universe and all of the matter and energy within it, although governed by the laws of thermodynamics, will somehow give way to a way of being that isn’t ruled by death and decay. But I take comfort in knowing that Martha didn’t understand it either. With tears streaming down her face, she said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Instinctively, she knew that Jesus was more than a miracle worker, but she still couldn’t quite understand the significance of the one who stood before her. </p><p>Jesus didn’t hesitate. “I am the resurrection and the life,” he said to her. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” he asked, coaxing from her a faith she did not know she had. “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world,” she replied. We can believe that, too, even though we cannot see clearly what is being given to us. Martha’s faith becomes our faith as we, like her, grapple with a reality we cannot fully understand and yet, nevertheless, fully give our lives to. </p><p>Every time someone we love dies, we experience the grief and pain that come with that loss. And so did Jesus. He wept the same tears we weep when a friend or family member dies. When death takes someone from us in an untimely fashion, we often feel anger and confusion at what should not have been. And so did Jesus. When he saw Mary crying, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved—moved to the point of trembling with indignance—at the thought that death could take his friend away. Even the one who had the power to bring Lazarus back from the dead experienced the sting of death in this life. Our grief, therefore, is not a sign of faithlessness but a mark of love. </p><p>But, because of Jesus, we know that our grief must give way to a new hope—not because we hope that one day death will be no more but because we have already seen in Jesus Christ God’s victory over the inevitability of death. In him, even the laws of nature become subject to the law of God’s unending love.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-44286401298591257992023-03-06T08:05:00.004-06:002023-03-06T08:05:43.134-06:00We Must Be Born Again<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">March 5, 2023 – The Second Sunday in Lent, Year A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Lent/ALent2_RCL.html" target="_blank">Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of the sermon is available <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-3-5-23-eg" target="_blank">here</a>. Video of the service can be seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVmQ6QCkjZs" target="_blank">here</a> with the sermon starting around 11:00.</i></p><p>Are you tired of Lent yet? My Lent Madness bracket is busted. My Lenten disciplines are hanging on by a thread. My quads and hamstrings are tight from all this kneeling. But there’s more to Lent than what we make of it. Several of you have reminded me that you don’t have to take on a penitential practice in order to experience a Lenten wilderness. For all too many of us, that desolate place of struggle comes and finds us whether we’re looking for it or not.</p><p>Several years ago, a bishop told me that he is suspicious of people who enjoy Lent. He was talking about me, of course. He had seen how much I love these forty days of self-imposed misery, and his words were offered as an important counter-balance—a reminder that my ability to choose a season of voluntary hunger and self-prescribed longing is a sign of considerable privilege. Not everyone has that choice. There is nothing holy about going to bed hungry each night if you don’t even have enough cornmeal to make one griddle cake for you and your child.</p><p>For plenty of us, there is a different nagging, crippling hunger that follows us day after day—the hunger to know that we are beloved of God. Too often religious leaders have singled us out as sinners in need of repentance—not because we carry our share of a universal brokenness that needs to be restored but because we have not lived up to their standards of holiness. You know what Jesus says to spiritual leaders who take pleasure in making us feel bad about ourselves? “Woe to you…for you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” Nevertheless, for those of us who have come to the Episcopal Church from other traditions that deal primarily in guilt and shame, Lent’s annual call to lament our sins and acknowledge our wretchedness—no matter how grace-filled we intend it to be—strikes at an old wound, reopening painful experiences of spiritual abuse. </p><p>Perhaps we should skip Lent altogether and jump straight to the end. Maybe we need less wilderness and more resurrection. Someone I only know through social media shared a post that rightly criticizes the institutional, imperial church for imposing a period self-denial instead of nurturing a season of human empowerment. The author of the original post, Susan Thistlethwaite of Chicago Theological Seminary, asks, “Why isn’t Lent observed by marching into the centers of power, overturning some tables, healing people, and arguing with authorities?” The answer she identifies is Constantine, which is to say the church’s continuing love affair with power. The problem, though, is that until we examine our own love affair with power, any tables we turn over in the name of Jesus we will only reset in ways that serve our own needs and not those of God people—God’s reign on the earth.</p><p>As if he were anticipating this intrinsic problem, Jesus warns us in today’s gospel lesson, saying, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the reign of God without being born from above—without being born again.” Those might be Jesus’ words, but is there anything more thoroughly un-Episcopalian than being born again? I’d bet that we’d happily accept the Great Litany every week during Lent if it meant we could avoid talking about being born again. Even the NRSV—the translation we use here in worship—renders Jesus’ criterion for seeing and entering God’s reign not as “born again” but as “born from above.” That’s how much we’d rather avoid it. </p><p>But it turns out that there’s a funny little word play in the Greek text that makes it seem like Jesus might be telling a joke at Nicodemus’ expense. The word in question—ἄνωθεν—means both “again” and “from above.” If you think about it, that dual meaning makes sense because starting over again is, in a way, like starting from the top. So, when Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born ἄνωθεν, and Nicodemus responds, “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born [again]?” it’s possible that Jesus chuckled a little bit because this religious leader, who had come to him by night, isn’t quite picking up what Jesus is laying down. Nicodemus seems to be confusing a heavenly rebirth with a second earthly nativity.</p><p>But I’m afraid that most of us aren’t getting what Jesus means either. Despite our namesake, aren’t we here at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church somewhat skeptical of any story of radial conversion as belonging to a brand of Christianity with which we’d rather not identify? We often use the label “born-again Christian” with a derisive tone in part because those who would emphasize the need for a born-again experience usually look down on those of us who never had one as insufficiently Christian. But Jesus wasn’t speaking to evangelicals or fundamentalists when he told Nicodemus that no one can see the reign of God without being “birthed” again.[1] He was talking to a died-in-the-wool religious elitist just like us.</p><p>We need to be birthed again, which is to say birthed from above, as much as Nicodemus. How often do we walk where he walked and ask the questions that he asked? We, too, have heard about this Jesus and the signs that he is able to do. We recognize that there must be something good and godly at work in this man. But, when it comes to showing up and taking our stand beside him, we’d rather lurk in the shadows, walking quickly in the dim light, lest someone confuse us for one of those religious zealots we like to point our fingers at. </p><p>Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, when no one else would notice, but isn’t our equivalent Sunday-morning worship, when there is nothing out of place or unseemly about showing up in church? This is the safe time to be faithful. No one thinks twice about you walking through those doors on a Sunday morning. But what if they saw you looking for Jesus at the quorum court meeting or the booking room at the county jail or standing in the line at the polling place? What if they heard you at a rally in Little Rock or at a march in Washington? What would they think if you went all in for Jesus? What would they say if you were truly born again?</p><p>We cannot follow Jesus into the majesty of God and do so halfheartedly. And if we are going to leave behind our attachment to this world and our love affair with the power structures that are inextricably intertwined with our way of life, we must climb back into the womb of God and be born anew—born not of the flesh of our earthly parents but of the water and the Spirit of our Mother God. Jesus challenges the assumption that our primary identity comes from this world. He asks us to believe that there is nothing more fundamental to our being than our place and participation in the family of God. And he knows that we will never achieve that focus—that singularity of identity—he knows that we can never give ourselves completely to God— until we are born all over again—reborn in the waters of baptism and in the tears of repentance and restoration.</p><p>We who belong to the institutional church have a rather unpleasant habit of rushing in and turning over all the tables so that we can put new tables in their place. But too often we do so without remembering the privilege that we carry or repenting of our lust for power. Think Christian antisemitism. Think Islamophobic crusades. Think transatlantic slave trade. Think settler colonialism. Think Manifest Destiny. Think marginalization of queer people. Think domination of women’s bodies. In every case, Christians, working in the name of Jesus, pushed aside an example of embodied power that they found threatening in order to establish their own self-serving power structure in its place. And to them it sounded like gospel work, but it was really just the kingdoms of this world operating in a Christian disguise. </p><p>There are plenty of tables of injustice and oppression in this world that need turning over, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ has shown us that in time God will flip them all. But, if we are going to be about the work of recognizing God’s reign and offering ourselves as vessels through which God’s majesty comes, we cannot skip ahead to the end. This Lenten journey of self-examination and repentance is essential because it is how we leave behind our attachment to this world and embrace the coming majesty of God. If we are going to be a part of God’s reign, we must be born again.</p><div>------</div><div>1. I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Wilda Gafney for the use of the word “birthed,” which she read aloud as her own translation of the text. </div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-31112664966078161242023-02-23T08:16:00.000-06:002023-02-23T08:16:00.603-06:00Fake It Until Christ Makes It<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">February 22, 2021 – Ash Wednesday</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC/Lent/AshWed.html" target="_blank">Isaiah 58:1-12; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon can be heard <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-2-19-23-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video of the entire service can be seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr3uJe_FrEM" target="_blank">here</a> with the sermon beginning at 17:50.</i></p><p>No one likes a hypocrite. And the bigger the fake the more hated they are. Maybe that’s why we can’t help but smile when a politician who runs for office on a family-values platform is exposed as an adulterer. The only hypocrites we would rather see fall from grace are the religious leaders who make a living pointing their fingers at sinners and dishing out heavy doses of judgement. Is there anything more satisfying than seeing the holier-than-thou preacher’s mugshot on the front page of the paper?</p><p>I learned only a few months ago that the term “hypocrite” didn’t have a negative connotation until it was taken over by Christian culture. A word that literally means “interpreter from underneath,” its origins are from the ancient Greek stage, on which actors would interpret their characters’ roles from underneath the masks they wore. The word hypocrite didn’t make an appearance in English until the 13th century, when it was used to describe someone who was pretending to be pious in order to deceive others, and it didn’t come to mean a person who was acting contrary to their stated beliefs until the 18th century. </p><p>In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the word that is sometimes translated for us as “hypocrite” actually means “godless” or “profane.” In other words, it referred not to someone who was faking religiosity but was used as a criticism for God’s people when they forgot what it meant to belong to God. Although the concept of a play-actor isn’t found in the Old Testament, we understand that, when prophets exposed the predatory lending practices or exploitation of widows and orphans by so-called religious leaders, they were highlighting the incongruity of a projected religious identity and a faithless way of life. </p><p>But, when it comes to religious practice and acts of piety, aren’t we all hypocrites to some degree? Aren’t we all here because we know that there’s at least a slight disconnect between our public lives and our private thoughts? We pretend to be nice. We hide our real feelings. We bite our tongues, and instead we say, “Bless your heart.” But don’t we want the inside to match what’s on the outside? Don’t we want loving-kindness to be our way of life not because it's how we’re supposed to act but because it’s what we really feel deep within us?</p><p>In some ways, I think that’s why we come to church—because we want to reconcile that difference and because we know that this is the place and that this is the community that can help us find that unity of identity we seek. We are here because we believe that the love and forgiveness and reconciliation that Jesus offers us can shape us from the inside out. Only then—only when what is within us has been renewed by God’s love—can what shows up on the outside reflect the truth that is within us. But that process of renewal doesn’t start by avoiding hypocrisy. It starts by embracing it. Here's what I mean. </p><p>Jesus doesn’t care if you’re a hypocrite. In fact, in a sense he encourages it. That’s why he tells the rich young man to sell all of his possessions and give the money away to the poor—not because the man has already figured out how to love God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength and his neighbor as himself but because Jesus knows that a radical outward action like that has the power to shape a person deep within. In the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee, Jesus praises the tax collector who lowers his head and beats his breast not because he has reformed his life but simply because his prayer is earnest and humble. Sometimes we say we’re sorry not because we mean it but because we want to mean it. Sometimes we say our prayers not because we want to but because we want to want to. The journey of faith must start somewhere. It starts even with a small step.</p><p>Of course, hypocrisy does have a dark side. The warning Jesus gives us every year on Ash Wednesday is an important one for us to hear: “Beware of practicing your piety in front of others in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” Using the example of the hypocrites, who like to make a big show about giving alms, saying their prayers, and fasting, Jesus tells us to hide our generosity, to pray only behind closed doors, and to wipe the ashen crosses off our foreheads before walking out the church door. Why? It’s not because Jesus is worried that our Lenten practices will mask our heart’s true intentions but because our piety will have no power to shape our hearts if it is only for show.</p><p>The spiritual problem with hypocrisy isn’t that we pretend to be something we’re not. It’s thinking that pretending is all that matters. Jesus calls us to go deeper than that. When a spiritual discipline is outwardly focused and the only thing we care about is what other people see, the only benefit we get is the esteem of our peers. But, when the practice starts on the surface and then turns within, causing us to examine our own hearts, then we have the opportunity to be shaped by the one whose example we seek to imitate. Then our piety draws our hearts closer to God, and our whole lives begin to follow suit.</p><p>When Jesus tells us that only those who practice their piety in secret will be rewarded by their Father in heaven, it’s because the only reward worth seeking is the one that is found in here—deep within our hearts, where no one but God can see. This Lent, may that be the spiritual journey we take. Even if we are only going through the motions of faithfulness, may they be for us an invitation to encounter God within our hearts. May our Lenten devotions be a personal journey back to God—the one whose love transforms us from the inside out.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3326792094287325881.post-23081696139791964172023-02-19T13:30:00.005-06:002023-02-19T13:30:45.090-06:00How Will We Ever Be Worthy?<p> </p><p></p><div style="text-align: right;">February 19, 2023 – The Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A</div><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Epiphany/AEpiLast_RCL.html" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Epiphany/AEpiLast_RCL.html" target="_blank">Exodus 24:12-18; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9</a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: right;">© 2023 Evan D. Garner</p><p><i>Audio of this sermon is available <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stpaulsfay/sermon-2-19-23-evan-garner" target="_blank">here</a>. Video of the entire service can be seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ4IxpDw9sM" target="_blank">here</a> with the sermon beginning around 18:45.</i></p><p>Everything was starting to come together. Things were really moving now. Six days earlier, Jesus had asked his disciples if they knew who he really was, and, even though the crowds still didn’t understand it, Peter had put his finger right on the pulse of Jesus’ identity: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Ever since that moment, Jesus had begun to speak more freely with his disciples about his plans and how God would use him to accomplish God’s saving work in the world.</p><p>These last six days had been a whirlwind, and now Jesus had invited Peter, James, and John—his very closest followers—to accompany him up to the top of a holy mountain where they could pray together. They had prayed with each other plenty of times, but this invitation was different. Jesus now seemed interested in allowing these three to join him in his most intimate, most holy spiritual practices. And the disciples were not disappointed.</p><p>Suddenly, as he was praying, Jesus’ skin began to give off its own radiant light. As if the sun itself had begun to shine from within him, his face was transfigured from its normal countenance into the very source of light itself. Basked in the stunning brightness emanating from Jesus, Peter and James and John looked up and saw Moses and Elijah standing there on the mountain top beside their teacher. “Can you believe it?” they said to themselves. “Is this really happening to us? How is it that we were chosen to see his glory?”</p><p>Peter knew better than to let this moment pass by. Having been given this astounding insight into Jesus’ true nature and glowing with the warmth of this privileged moment, Peter inched closer to Jesus and whispered, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. Only say the word, and I will build three booths—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah—so that you can dwell here forever.” But, before Jesus could answer, the bright cloud of the Divine Presence descended upon the mountaintop, and the voice of the Almighty thundered at them: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” </p><p>In an instant, the disciples’ excitement evaporated, and an overwhelming fear gripped them. They fell down to the ground and hid their faces in the dirt, praying that this moment would pass without costing them their lives. They had underestimated the significance of this encounter and their own worthiness to receive it. But, after only a moment, Jesus came and knelt down and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And, when the disciples dared to look around, everything had vanished. It was just they and Jesus and the empty summit. They had come that close to God and had lived to tell about it—but not until after Jesus had been raised from the dead.</p><p>Have you ever been given a gift that you did not deserve—an honor of which you were unworthy—only to discover that the gift itself was so magnificent as to require a response from you which you were utterly unable to give? Imagine being picked out of a crowd and told to hold in your hands something so precious that, if you were to drop it or squeeze it too tightly and crush it, the very light of the world would go out. How long before the privilege and honor of being chosen would give way to the doubt and fear of failure? At what point would the significance of what was being asked of you become so burdensome as to guarantee your inability to fulfill your responsibility?</p><p>Jesus Christ is God Incarnate. In him, God became flesh in order that our flesh might contain even the light of the world. Jesus has come to invite you to go up on the mountain with him and to pray beside him until not only his face begins to shine like the sun but until yours begins to shine with that same light as well. When the voice of God Almighty thunders in the cloud and declares, “This is my child, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” God is speaking those words to you, declaring that you, too, are God’s beloved child. Because you belong to Christ—to the one who beckons you up that mountain with him—God is handing you the very light of the world so that it might shine from within you and give light to others. But how will you ever stand there and receive it and embrace it and let it shine—all without dropping it and dashing it to pieces?</p><p>The truth is that it is easier to fall down into the dirt and hide our face until the light has passed us by. Following Jesus seems like a good idea until it is our turn to bear that light to others for Jesus’ sake. What happens if we’re not good enough or strong enough or holy enough to carry it? And there’s no hiding on that mountain top because Jesus is more than a wise teacher or a holy example worth following. He is the very Son of Man—the divine judge who comes in the glory of God to judge both the living and the dead. We cannot encounter the glory of Jesus Christ without hearing that thunderous voice that goes right through us, shaking us to our core. And yet it is Christ himself who makes us worthy to bear that light with a worthiness we can only behold in his resurrection.</p><p>“Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead,” Jesus says to them on their way back down the mountain. Why? Why wait until then? Because none of us is prepared to accept the glory that we have been given or the awesome responsibility that comes with it until we have seen God’s victory in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is our very weakness, our failings, our incapacity, our sin that God has defeated in the empty tomb. Because he is risen, we are worthy to receive that light. Because he is risen, we are able to bear that light to the world. Only because of the resurrection of Jesus are we prepared to journey up the mountain with him and let his light shine from within us.</p><p>Contemporary Christians tend to emphasize our role in the story of salvation—what are we supposed to believe and what works are we supposed to do? We hear this story, and we focus on Peter and ask ourselves what we would have done in his place. But the invitation God gives us in Jesus Christ is to allow Christ’s work and Christ’s faith to stand in the place of our own. If our sin is what took him to the cross, then it is God’s victory over that sin that shines forth from the empty tomb. Without the resurrection, we could never be worthy of the gift we have been given, but standing in the light of our own redemption, we know that there is nothing that could ever take it away.</p><div><br /></div>Evan D. Garnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05395940526434441825noreply@blogger.com0