That We All May Be One

I wonder, do think Jesus ever had to “learn” anything? We’re not told in the Gospels that he ever went to school (although he may well have). There is that instance in Luke’s Gospel when he is 12 years old in the Temple, “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions; and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:46-47). One reference in Mark when some people said: “Where did this man get all this? What is the wisdom given to him…is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary…?” (Mark 6:2f) The implication being that Jesus was not known to be a theologically trained scholar or rabbi, but a relatively unlettered man who nonetheless demonstrated great wisdom. Ever known anyone like that? I certainly have. But I don’t think any of these instances require us to believe that Jesus was born with all the wisdom and knowledge he would ever need from the moment of his birth! A bright, interested, precocious young boy in the Temple does not require us to believe that he was teaching the scribes anything they didn’t already know, but simply that he was smart and attentive and articulate. The wonder that some felt that an “ordinary” person could impart words of wisdom does not mean that Jesus acquired all that wisdom without the need to learn just as we do. The Church’s teaching is not only that Jesus was the Son of God, but that he was God Incarnate – God in the flesh – and as such even he suffered some of the limitations of the flesh. I think today’s Gospel reading from Mark may well be an account of such a “teachable moment” in Jesus’ life. He’s confronted by a Gentile woman who asks healing for her daughter. All Jesus’ life he had been instructed to be wary of, and perhaps even to loathe, Gentiles. He’d heard that they were unclean, and that even touching them in certain circumstances would have made him ritually unclean. He had wrestled with his own calling and, at least initially, had come to believe that he was primarily sent to renew the house of Israel. If there were implications for the Gentiles, and for the rest of the world, so be it; but first he had to minister to his fellow Jews. Small wonder then that his initial response to this woman (as harsh as it may sound to us in our day) was “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” (Mark 7) But the woman “answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs!” And, apparently impressed with her combination of humility and courage, Jesus replied, ‘For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter!’” (Pause) Well, I supposed you can read this whole story as a kind of set-up, something scripted by Jesus, or even Mark the Evangelist to make a point. But I think it has the ring of history about it, and that Jesus really did learn something – in his humanity – about the faithfulness and worthiness even of Gentiles! (Pause) There’s another factor that makes it appealing to me to assume that even Jesus had to learn. And that is, that the very the process of education and growth is somehow divine! One of our Collects several weeks ago read, “Almighty God, you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life…” Among many other things, Jesus was intended to be a moral example for us who are his followers. He prayed, so we should pray. He forgave, so we should forgive. He loved, so we should love. Why not, “he learned, so we should learn?” God knows, we have a lot to learn! And the Bible has been trying to teach us for thousands of years now! The Book of Proverbs is full of homespun wisdom. Today, we’re told that “The rich and poor have this in common: the Lord is the maker of them all…those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor. Do not rob the poor because they are poor…for the Lord pleads their cause…” (Proverbs 22) And the Apostle James brings it home to how we treat one another right here in this congregation, “My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say “Have a seat here, please.” “While to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there’ or ‘Sit at my feet’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves…Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters…you do well if your really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’.” (James 2) The “royal law!” I’m not sure we’ve heard it referred to that way in Scripture before, but we certainly know this commandment et as “the second (after loving God) which is like unto it; You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Perhaps Jesus learned that lesson anew in a little town north of Galilee in Syria and he went on from there to bring hearing to the deaf and speech to the mute. May we learn that lesson right here at Trinity Cathedral in Davenport. And may our ears too always be open to the cries of the poor and the voices of the voiceless!

Two Sundays ago we concluded our series of Gospel Readings from the 6^th chapter of John, the long discourse on Jesus as “the Bread of Life.” I’ve never understood how any Christian, or Christian community, can read that chapter and have anything less than a very high view of the Eucharist…and of the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist!

 I mean onr Sunday the text read: “Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” And the next Sunday he says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.  Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.” (selections from John 6:51-58). You can’t have a much higher view of the Eucharist than that!

 Of course, it’s never been easy to believe! Even some of Jesus’ first disciples said, in response to all this, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it? But Jesus…said to them, ‘Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?”

 I think what Jesus is saying is that all of this really depends on who you think he is! If the claim of the early Church, the New Testament, and the Creeds is really true…if Jesus really is “…the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God…” if Jesus really is (in ways quite beyond our ability fully to understand) “God Incarnate,” then the rest of this stuff is easy to believe! It’s the “small stuff” compared to the Incarnation!

 I mean Jesus’ wisdom, the miraculous signs he gave, the sacramental realities of Baptism and the Eucharist, they simply follow from the basic fact of who he really is! And the fact that God uses the “stuff” of this world to become known to us – flesh and blood, the laying on of hands and human touch, water, bread, wine, oil – all of it! It’s called the “sacramental principle” and it just means that God comes to us in real, material ways sometimes.

 This was not absolutely new in Jesus (although it reached its pinnacle there). In our Reading from the First Book of Kings today Solomon has completed his oversight of the building of the First Temple in Jerusalem and they take great care to have the priests, and other community leaders, bring the so-called “ark of the covenant” (that “tent” or container which they had carried with them all through the desert time with the Ten Commandments and other symbols in it)…they brought this ark of the covenant into the new Temple so that it could be enshrined there.

 And this portion of the Hebrew Bible says that, “the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the most holy place…and when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house…” (I Kings 8 passim)     

Now here is a people who refused to make any kind of “graven image” or even picture of God, who were horrified by anything that looked like the worship of idols or representation of God who nonetheless write in their sacred scriptures of enshrining this tent in the “holiest place of the Temple” and – in the doing – experience the Presence and the Glory of God filling that Holy Place!

 It was simply unavoidable! They had to record the experience! This formless, spiritual Reality – the name of whom they would not even pronounce out loud except one a year– this Hidden God nonetheless becomes present to them in some very visible and tangible ways!

 Well, we need that sometimes. And even though Jesus also says in the Gospel that “It is the spirit that give life; the flesh is useless,” he also says, “the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” It is in the joining of the Spirit and the “stuff” of this world that God comes to us in what I’ve called the Sacramental Principle.

 We say that sacraments are “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace.” When you come forward to receive Holy Communion in the Eucharist, you won’t be eating flesh and blood, you’ll be eating bread and wine. But that Bread and Wine will have been “consecrated” (prayed over, blessed) and because of that the Holy Spirit has acted and you will be receiving into your self, the Very Being and Life of Christ. Spirit and life! Spiritual food and drink!

 Why do we do this every Sunday? Because you and I need spiritual food for spiritual strength. The Epistle to the Ephesians says this morning, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness…” (Ephesians 6)

 Yes, that’s our struggle all right. Whether it’s against temptation and sin, against suspicion and fear, against poverty and disease, against hatred and violence, we need “the whole armor of God.” And, for catholic Christians like ourselves, part of that “armor” is the sacramental life. The sacramental system – baptism, Eucharist, confirmation, ordained ministers, confession, marriage, and healing. It’s all part of the package. The “whole armor of God.”

 And it’s why we need each other. And why we need the Church.

Sometimes “unity” comes in strange ways.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, at their recently completed Churchwide Assembly, took several significant steps with regard to the place of gay and lesbian Christians in their church.

First of all, they passed an extremely well-done social statement on human sexuality. Then, they passed  four resolutions concerning the implications of that social statement on the internal life of the ELCA. The effect of these was to open the door for the recognition of faithful, monogamous, relationships between members of the same gender and to permit those living in such relationships to serve as “rostered leaders” (including clergy) in the ELCA.

This will surely not advance cause of Christian unity directly anymore than similar decisions made by The Episcopal Church has. There will be defections from the ELCA, ecumenical relations especially with the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, as well as with the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (to the extent that the ELCA even had any ecumenical relationship with that smaller Lutheran body!), and there will be pain and distress from some — as well as joy and relief for others.

How then could this possibly foster church unity? Well, perhaps we are beginning to see new alignments and new partners across the Christian world. Some European Lutheran bodies have long been more inclusive of homosexual persons. A number of the Old Catholic churches in Europe (with which we are in full communion) have taken similar steps.  Ditto the United Church of Christ. And the Anglican Church in Canada is about to.

The United Methodist,  Presbyterian, and Moravian churches here in the U.S. may become emboldened to take steps forward in this direction.  Certainly they will have empathy for decisions made by their full communion partners in the ELCA since they are facing the same realities in their own churches.  

It is too soon to see what all this will mean in God’s time. The worst case scenario is that we will see a realignment of liberal Protestant churches driven more by cultural accommodation than by theological reflection and prayerful discernment (although the thoughtful ELCA social statement hardly signals that).

The best case scenario is that the Holy Spirit is once again shaking the Church by blowing winds of change. Like the acceptance of Gentiles in the New Testament, the 16th century Reformation, the establishment of The Episcopal Church on these shores free from control by the Church of England, liturgical renewal, women’s ordination, and other such developments.

All these are based on the centrality of baptism and the fact that “…as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There really is neither Jew nor Greek…slave nor free…male nor female; for you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:27-28)

That is a unity perhaps hard to see at present, but infinitely deeper than institutional uniformity.

Time will tell. And only God knows.

Proper 12B (2 Samuel 11:1-15; Psalm 14; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21)

 A couple of months ago when I was with you, we had a Gospel reading from Mark about Jesus in the boat with his disciples during a storm, and calming everything by saying, ‘Peace, Be still.”  I said then that the Church is often like that little boat, buffeted and tossed about by the storms of life – but that Jesus can always bring peace if we keep him at the center of the boat!

 Now, today again, after the Gospel reading about the Feeding of the 5,000, we have a similar story, as recounted by St. John, of Jesus calming his disciples during a rough sea by saying, “It is I; do not be afraid…and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.” It’s almost as if God is speaking to us about the need to find peace in the midst of our storms; storms you are still experiencing here at St. Paul’s, and storms The Episcopal Church continues to go through in the wake of our recently- completed General Convention!

 I don’t know what reports you may have heard about the Convention in Anaheim from which Susanne and I just returned last week. As usual, the press got most of it wrong in that we really did very little different with respect to the controversial issues around human sexuality and other things which continue to bring stress and strain on our church and on the whole Anglican Communion.

 The big, largely unreported news really was that we reaffirmed our commitment to addressing global poverty through the Millennium Development Goals, and launched some new initiatives on domestic poverty even while having to slash our own budget because of a $24 million deficit caused by the economic meltdown in this country and around the world. We’ll have to lay off 37 of our 150 staff people at the Church Center in New York, including my own Associate for ecumenical relations, and lose about 24% of our program budget in the process! 

 These are not easy times for any of us, but the Church should not expect to be spared from the kind of hard decisions businesses and other institutions are being asked to make.

The difference is – as I tried to say in one of my last sermons to you – is that we have Jesus in this boat with us…to bring peace, even in the midst of the storm.

 But we need to be in touch with that Jesus. We need to access the kind of power and grace he can give us if we expect to draw upon his strength and guidance in tough times like these. That’s why I’ve always loved these lines from Ephesians which we had as our Second Lesson today. It’s really a blueprint…or an outline…of what we need to do, and be aware of, to draw upon the grace of God we find in Jesus.

 The author begins by saying, “I bow my knees before the Father…” Well, of course, that’s just a descriptive way of saying that he is praying! And prayer is the key. We must be, in these times and always, a people of prayer! But what do we pray about? Well, the Lesson continues, “I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.”

 Well, there’s a lot there! We need to pray for each other that we may be strengthened by the Holy Spirit and that Christ may dwell within us. And what do we need to make that happen? We need to be “rooted and grounded in love.” As we pray for one another in this church – for those we agree with and those we disagree with, we need to love them! That’s the essential quality of life for Christians. We need to love on another!

 The next thing the author prays for is that we “may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

 That means, in the midst of our struggles, we need to see the big picture (the breadth and length and height and depth) of the Church’s mission. We have to keep “the main thing, the main thing,” keep our eye on the prize – which is to know the love of Christ and be filled with all the fullness of God.

 Our mission is to know Christ better, and to make Him known, in this little church, in this community, and in the Church and world beyond. That’s why we need to pray every day, to read the Scriptures every day, to come to church every Sunday and invite others to come with us, and not to be afraid to witness for Jesus Christ whenever and wherever we can.   

 We had a great Collect, or prayer, for this Sunday. “O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal.”

 That just means that, since God alone gives us strength and wholeness, if we trust that God, we will be protected (no matter what!)…and that even while we confront temporal, “earthly” things like budget deficits and church fights and small numbers, we’ll be able to pass through them (and triumph over them) in such a way that we don’t lose the important things – like healing…and love…and forgiveness…and eventual reconciliation. And, finally, the gift of eternal life!

 That life abundant Jesus promised us. That life abundant that only he can give; and only he can take away. I close with the final line from Ephesians this morning which sums it up better than I ever could:

 “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”