That We All May Be One

The season of Advent is, perhaps above all else, a season of hope and expectation. On the simplest level, of course, we look forward to the celebration of Christ’s First Coming at the Christ-Mass (Christmas). We also have the hope and the expectation that this same Christ will come into our lives daily (in Word and Prayer and Sacrament) and in all the ways he shows up in our lives on an everyday basis. And finally we hope for, and expect, one day his Final Coming at the End of time to set things right again once and for all – that his Kingdom truly will “come on earth as it is in heaven!”

These themes are seen all the way through our Lessons from Holy Scripture this morning. Isaiah looks forward to God’s Reign finally being established when he cries, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence.” (Isaiah 64:1). And the prophet’s yearning for this future action is not some kind of “Pollyanna optimism” but is firmly based on the fact that God has acted in Israel’s past. He writes, “When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.” (64:3).

The people of Israel had seen God’s mighty acts before – not least in their liberation from slavery in Egypt centuries earlier and his manifestation on Mount Sinai in the giving of the Law. So, even though they are facing Exile once again at the hand of the Babylonians and the people are worried, Isaiah wants to give them the hope and the expectation that they have not been deserted.

“There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand…Now consider, we are all your people.” (64:7-9)

The Psalmist sings the same message in today’s Psalm 80: “Restore us, O God of hosts; show us the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.”  They are suffering now, but because their God is the same God who “led Joseph like a flock” (1) in the past, they can have hope for the future: “And so will we never turn away from you; give us life, that we may call upon your Name.” (17)

Our Lord Jesus Christ preached that same message of hope and expectation hundreds of years after Isaiah and the Psalmist. The people of Israel had indeed been restored to their land after the Exile by then, but had fallen on hard times once again. Now, they are being oppressed by Rome and their land occupied once again by foreign troops, but Jesus says,

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Mark 13:28-31)

They had certainly not passed away by the time St. Paul wrote his first letter to the  Christians in Corinth 25 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, “I give thanks to my God always for your because…you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (I Corinthians 1:4-8 passim)

How could all these prophets and mystics and apostles have had such hope and expectation and confidence in God’s coming Kingdom even in the midst of adversity and suffering? Because they had experienced God’s sovereignty in their history, and in their own lives. Isaiah not only knew the history of his people and how God had rescued them, been their hope and strength in the past, he had had a deep encounter with that God in his own personal life – a “vision” of the very throne-room of God where he heard God say, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And Isaiah had said, “Here I am, send me!”

King David, who was likely the author of some of the Psalms if not all of them, knew what it was like to be rescued and redeemed, not only in wartime and battle but from his own personal sins and shortcomings as well. He was a deeply flawed servant of God, but a servant nonetheless! Jesus had encountered his heavenly Father in the waters of the Jordan River at his Baptism, on the Mount of Transfiguration, and in countless other ways during his brief, three-year public ministry. And Paul had been knocked off his horse on the road to Damascus, discovering how wrong he had been in persecuting the followers of the Messiah whose faithful servant he would soon become!

Beloved, we live in frustrating and confusing times as well. The world is changing so fast we can scarcely keep up with it. Many of the things we have always thought and believed are being brought into question or are at least up for discussion. In these tough economic times, the “American dream” we used to rely on – that we would do better than our parents and our children do better than us – seems questionable at best. We despair of leaders – in the Arab world, in our own country or even in our church – who can converse with one another civilly, put their own agendas aside, and come together and find consensus for the common good. Reading the newspaper these days can be an exercise in frustration!

But, especially in days like these, it is absolutely essential that we grasp and hold on to that “theology of hope” held out to us by our forebears in the Faith. The reason we want you to learn the history of your Faith through Bible study and theological refection, the reason we want you to seek encounters with the Living God through worship and prayer; the reason we want you to look around you and find signs of God’s activity and presence in the world about you is precisely so that you can be hopeful people! Not just “optimistic” people who think things should get “better and better every day in every way,” but truly people of hope.

We want you to hope in the God who has surely acted in the past. Hope in the God who is mightily at work in the present if we only have eyes to see. And, most of all, hope in the God of the future. Which is why we say every day in Morning Prayer, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.”

God has been with us in the past. God is with us today. And God has promised to be with us always — even to the end of the ages!

All Saints’ Sunday, 2011.Last Tuesday, November 1^st, the Church celebrated All Saints’ Day. This is the day in the church calendar when we remember the outstanding heroes and heroines of our Christian faith – the Blessed Virgin Mary, the apostles and martyrs and saints right down through the ages like Francis and Clare, Benedict and Julian of Norwich, Teresa and Augustine, and all those who made lasting contributions to our history and development, and to the spread of the Gospel throughout the world.

On Wednesday, Nov. 2, we celebrated All Souls’ Day. This is the day when the Church commemorates those so–called “lesser saints.” Perhaps our ancestors and forebears who may not have made a name for themselves worthy of Church history books, but who nonetheless made their own contributions.  I think of my grandfather who read Psalm 91 every day my father was overseas in WW II, piloting his B-24 on bombing runs over Germany and flying gasoline to Field Marshall Montgomery in Northern Africa. I think of the Sunday school teachers and youth group leaders and clergy of my youth who made such lasting impressions, and who formed me in my Christian faith.

Today, on what we call All Saints Sunday, we gather all that up and remember that, in the New Testament, the word “saint,” (hagios in the Greek) refers to “all the baptized,” Christians just like you and me. When St. Paul writes to the “saints” in Rome and Corinth and Philippi he’s not writing to necessarily holy people (as the texts of those Epistles make clear!). He’s writing to people like you and me, baptized members of the Body of Christ, who are striving to be faithful, but all of whom had the same struggles, successes and failures and fears as we do.

Just last year The Episcopal Church – through our Church Publishing Company – provided a new resource to expand our knowledge and remembrance of some of these manifold saints of God. Entitled “Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints,” its Preface contains the following words. “ (This book) marks a further stage in the recovery within the Episcopal Church of the liturgical commemoration of the saints.”

“The first English Book of Common Prayer (1549) retained a small number of the many feasts contained in the calendar of the (Roman Catholic)…Missal. All but one of these were major Holy Days directly related to the New Testament; no post-Biblical saints were included. The 1662 Prayer Book, which Anglicans living in the American colonies used in the decades preceding independence, listed the names of sixty-seven saints in its Calendar, but made no provision for their liturgical commemoration.”

“The first American Book of Common Prayer (1789) listed no minor Holy Days…in its
Calendar and this continued to be the case in the 1892 and 1928 Prayer Books. Only in 1964 did things change. In that year General Convention approved the inclusion in the Calendar of more than a hundred saints’ days with liturgical (Prayers and Readings) to facilitate their commemoration in the Church’s worship.” (“HW, HM” pages ix-x). This resource was published under the name “Lesser Feasts and Fasts.”

“In 2003 General Convention called for a wide-ranging revision of (that resource)…”to reflect our increasing awareness of the ministry of all the people of God and of the cultural diversity of the Episcopal Church, of the wider Anglican Communion, of our ecumenical partners, and of our lively experiences of sainthood in local communities. Several years of extensive study and consultation led to the submission (and subsequent publication of) “Holy Women, Holy Men”… (page x)

We use that new resource here at Trinity Cathedral for our midweek services and on special occasions and I have found it to be very helpful. Previous commemorations of saints in our English Prayer Books have been overwhelmingly white, male, clergy and monastics, and – in fact – heavily weighted toward commemorating bishops (who we all know are seldom so saintly!) This new book includes such persons, of course, as well as the giants we know from the New Testament and early Church history.

But we also find in these pages prophetic witnesses like Frederick Douglass from the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Amelia Jenks Bloomer who started her work for women’s equality right here in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The Lutheran Johann Sebastian Bach is found within the pages of this book as is Florence Li Tim-Oi, the first woman priest in the Anglican Communion and Roman Catholic luminaries like Pope John XXIII.

So, why is all this important? I believe it is to hold up before us, on a regular basis, specific examples of what our Lessons from Holy Scripture are describing today. The vision in Revelation of “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne of God, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” (Revelation 7:9)

The reminder from the Psalmist that “the angel of the Lord encompasses those who fear him, and he will deliver them.” (Psalm 34:7).  John’s challenge in the Epistle to “see what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” (I John 3:1). And Jesus’ compassionate reminder in the Beatitudes that the real saints are not always heroes and heroines, but those who are “poor in spirit…those who mourn…the meek…those who hunger and thirst for righteousness….the merciful…the pure in heart…the peacemakers…those who are persecuted.” (Matthew 5)

In other words – YOU! You are the saints of God, dear friends. And if you read the biographies of some of these names in “Holy Women, Holy Men,” you’ll find that their lives were not so different from yours in many ways. They weren’t all plaster saints! They toiled and sweated and failed sometimes…just like we do. They didn’t spend all their time in church and, in fact, most of what they are remembered for took place, in the world…outside the doors of their churches.

It is no accident that each Eucharist ends with a dismissal sentence and why we no longer linger to watch the candles being put out! You and I are on a mission. We can’t wait to rise from our knees and get back out into our families and jobs and neighborhoods to share our faith in Jesus Christ and to make a difference for him in this world! We’re on a mission…and we can’t wait!

On All Saints’ Sunday, we celebrate Holy Women and Holy Men! On All Saints Sunday, we celebrate YOU!

For the last several Sundays we’ve been making our way through the 22^nd chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew in our Sunday readings. We conclude that chapter today and, once again, it makes more sense if we put it into the context of the entire chapter. Matthew 22 begins with the Parable of the Wedding Banquet with the king deciding to go out into the streets and invite the riff-raff – good and bad people alike – to attend his son’s wedding reception since the original guests were too busy with their worldly pursuits to accept his invitation.

That story is about what Dean Alan Jones calls “God’s astonishingly bad taste!” I mean God doesn’t really seem to be very discriminating about those called to the Banquet. God loves everybody. Absolutely everybody! Astonishingly bad taste, really! This description of God in Jesus’ parable so angers the Pharisees (who were always so concerned about “who was in” and “who was out,” who was clean and who was unclean) that verse 15 says that they “plotted to entrap him in what he said.”

And that led to last Sunday’s wonderful Lesson about “rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s!” Jesus turns the trick question about taxes right back on the Pharisees and gets himself out of a potential “Catch 22.” One of my friends recently said about this parable that Jesus had learned a very important lesson in life that I commend to you — just because someone asks you a question doesn’t mean you have to answer it!

That brilliant tactic shuts the Pharisees up for a while. Verse 22 says, “When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.” Yes, I suppose they did – no doubt blushing with embarrassment at how he had outfoxed them! So, next in Matthew 22 the Pharisees’ archrivals the Sadducees take over. This was the group that really didn’t believe in the possibility of resurrection from the dead or in eternal life at all. So they try to trip Jesus up with a pretty far-fetched story of a hypothetical situation where a woman was married and then widowed seven times, and then she died. (No wonder, we might say – after seven husbands!)

But their silly question was, whose wife will she be in heaven since she’d been married seven times? Jesus’ answer here was dripping with sarcasm when he says, “You are wrong because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” In other words, he’s suggesting that one of the reasons the Sadducees didn’t really even believe in resurrection was because they had such a limited view of it!

If you try to picture heaven as just a celestial version of life here on earth, you’ll always be confused. Eternal life is about a whole new plane of existence, a complete transformation of our earthly existence. Arrangements like jobs and families and neighborhoods won’t have any meaning in heaven because everyone will be in communion, in “love and charity” with God and everyone else. It will be one community of love and acceptance for us all!

Well, that silences the Sadducee party for a while and the Pharisees take over again in today’s Gospel. This is sort of a “good cop, bad cop” sort of  interrogation! “If you’re so smart,” they seem to say, “then tell us which commandment in the law is the greatest.” Now it’s important to note that they probably weren’t just talking about which of the “Ten” Commandments was most important. The rabbis and scholars by Jesus’ day had identified some 613 “mitsvot”, or commandments, scattered throughout the Hebrew Bible which people were supposed to obey. No wonder many people had given up even trying to practice their religion or even to please God!

But Jesus’ brilliant mind instantly culls through those 613 rules and lifts out two of them – one from the Ten Commandments about loving God (Deuteronomy 6:5) and one from the book of Leviticus (19:18) about loving neighbor. Rabbi Hillel (a contemporary of Jesus) had responded in somewhat the same way when he was asked the question. He said, “What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor; that is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary; go and learn it!”

By now, Jesus is getting a little irritated about being hassled like this and badgered with questions, not because anybody was particularly interested in the answers, but precisely in order to trip him up. So he decides to have a little fun with his inquisitors! He turns to an obscure Psalm (110)  which begins like this, “The LORD said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.” The traditional interpretation was that the first LORD refers to God and the second “Lord” refers to the Messiah. (In other words, the Lord God said to my Lord the Messiah, sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.)

But if, as the tradition had it, David was the author of this Psalm, and the Messiah was to be a descendent of David, how could he call his descendent his “Lord?” In Jewish law, the offspring could not be regarded as greater than the ancestor, so David could not possibly be calling one of his descendents, “Lord!”

Now it is absolutely clear to me that Jesus is just playing with his adversaries here. He actually is a descendent of David, according to the genealogy in the first chapter of this very Gospel according to Matthew!  And yet David was indeed calling him, the hoped-for Messiah, “Lord.” What Jesus is saying is, “Don’t try to trip me up by your facile quoting of Scripture out of context and with evil intention.” I can quote Scripture with the best of you – and it doesn’t mean a thing!

So…what does “mean a thing?” In fact, what does “mean everything?” According to Jesus, it is the “first and great commandment” and the “second which is like unto it.” Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Leave the rest of it to others. Leave the church fights and the theological disputations and the “proof texts” and the holier-than- thou attitudes to others. As for you – fall in love with God and love other people.

On those two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

The rest is commentary!

Proper 21A. Trinity Cathedral.

When you are trying to understand a passage of Scripture, it’s very important always to look at the context of that passage. We have some nine or ten verses from Matthew’s Gospel this morning and they begin like this: “When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things; and who gave you this authority?” (Matthew 21:23)

At first glance it may appear that they were questioning Jesus’ authority to teach. However, by this time Jesus was well accepted as a kind of itinerant rabbi and, in any case, it was always acceptable for a Jewish male to stand up in synagogue or Temple and comment on the Torah portion for the day. Besides, they don’t say, “by what authority are you teaching?”… They say, “by what authority are you doing these things!” They were concerned about what he was doing!

And what had he just done? Well, twelve verses earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, he had been greeted as the Son of David by crowds in the street, and he had pushed over the tables of the money-changers in the temple and driven them out for turning a house of prayer into a den of robbers!

That’s what the chief priests and the elders were upset about. Not so much about what Jesus was teaching, but about what he was doing. And what he was doing was challenging both the political and religious establishment of his day, and doing so in the heart of the political and religious capital city – Jerusalem.

According to a recent book by New Testament scholars John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, two processions entered Jerusalem on that first “Palm Sunday.” One was a peasant procession, the other an imperial procession. While Jesus and his followers were entering the city from the east, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor and his legions were entering the city from the west. Pilate’s entry into Jerusalem and its significance would have been well known in the Jewish homeland of the first century.

It was standard operating procedure for the Roman governors of Judea to be in Jerusalem for all the major Jewish festivals. This was not out of any respect for the religious devotion of their Jewish subjects. It was to reinforce the Roman garrison permanently stationed in Fortress Antonia in case there was trouble. And there usually was trouble, especially at Passover, a festival celebrating the liberation of the Jews from an earlier oppressor, the Egyptians.  There would be trouble on this Passover as well!

By staging a “counter procession” to Pilate’s, Jesus wanted to make a specific point. His purpose was to fulfill the prophecy made by Zechariah that the Messiah would come to Jerusalem in a very specific way – not like King David, in splendor on a white horse at the head of a procession of armed men, but “humble, and riding on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9). Moreover, Zechariah tells us what kind of king he would be:

“He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations.” This Messiah would not be a king of war, but a prince of peace.

What a contrast to that other procession! On one side of town, Pilate was entering Jerusalem in a display of imperial power – cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, the sounds of marching feet, implicitly claiming that the Romans were the rulers of the ancient world.  On the other side of town, Jesus and his rag-tag group of followers were trotting into town on foot and on a donkey with children and the poor claiming him as representing the true Ruler of the ancient (and modern!) world – the living and true God!

That’s what the chief priests and the elders of the people were “on” about in questioning Jesus’ authority. And that’s why Jesus turns the question back on them, wanting to know what they thought about that other bold prophet, John the Baptist. “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin,” he asks.

“Uh oh,” they gulped, “If we say he was from God, he’ll want to know why we didn’t listen to him. If we say he was only speaking on his own authority, we will have a riot on our hands. Those are John’s people out there – the poor, the lost, the least and the lonely.”

And that’s why Jesus told the story about the two sons – the one who said he wouldn’t work in the vineyard but did; and the one who said he would and didn’t.  For you see, dear friends, in the final analysis, it doesn’t really matter what you profess to believe. What matters is what you actually believe!

It doesn’t really matter what you say you’re going to do. What matters is what you do. And what you actually do in this life will ultimately depend on which procession you’re in – Pilate’s or Jesus’s?

St. Paul puts the challenge to us in today’s Epistle: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”

“Therefore God has highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:5-11).

Which procession are you in today – Pilate’s or Jesus’s.

In today’s Gospel we hear Jesus’ familiar instructions to his disciples to “deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him.” (Matthew 16:24) That challenge has been interpreted in a variety of ways across the centuries. The original readers of the Gospel probably knew that the disciples to whom Jesus was speaking had all suffered martyrdom for following him, and so they prepared themselves, if necessary, to give up their very lives for the sake of the Gospel if that became necessary – and it sometimes did…and does today.

Sometimes the command to “deny” oneself took on a pietistic and ascetic quality, leading Christians to engage in fasting and abstinence, giving up various kinds of food and drink or even denying themselves the joys of marriage and family life by living celibate lives or taking on the monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. In addition to these orthodox ways of practicing self-denial some believers adopted unhealthy, or even pathological, expressions – sometimes intentionally hurting themselves in order to share in the sufferings of Christ.

Well, this morning I’d like to suggest that our Second Lesson today tells us about all we need to know about living a life of self-denial and about taking up our crosses. These verses from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans (12:9-21) might be called “The Ten Commandments of Christian Discipleship.” Let’s take a look:

1. First, Paul writes, “Let (your) love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good.” Notice it does not say, “hate the one who is evil.” It says, “hate what is evil.”  Our very Baptismal Covenant instructs us to renounce “Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God…the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God…sinful desires that draw us from the love of God.” So we can reject and even hate those forces and powers and desires that get in the way of our relationship with God. But we are not free to hate people who may be oppressed by those forces or powers. We are to love them – with a love that is genuine – even while we hate what is evil.

2. “Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.” “Honor” – now that’s a word we don’t hear too often today. To honor another person means to show them respect. And another part of our Baptismal Covenant requires us to respect “the dignity of every human being.” We may not think that every person is worthy of our respect — and indeed their actions may not be . But every human being has a certain dignity simply by being created as a child of God. And, no matter how tarnished that Image of God may be, we are to look for it…and respect it….honor it…for that person too is a child of God!

3. “Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.” I must say: it is sometimes pretty frustrating to me to see how lacking in “zeal” and “enthusiasm” Episcopalians can be! Now I don’t expect a church full of “happy, clappy” Christians every Sunday, but when I look out sometimes when we are singing words like “All hail the power of Jesus’ Name, let angels prostrate fall.” or making some of the responses in the Liturgy it is hard for me to tell whether some of you believe those words or are excited by those concepts…or not!  Be ardent in spirit, Paul says…when you serve, and worship, the Lord.

4, “Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.” I think the key to this “4^th Commandment” is to persevere in prayer. Prayerful people are hopeful people…and prayerful people are more likely to be patient in times of trouble. Spend some time each day with your God in personal prayer and see if you do not gradually become more patient with others…and more hopeful.

5. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.” This is a call to share! Share your material resources with others. Open your hearts and your hands and your homes in hospitality to others. As far as our life at Trinity Cathedral is concerned, this means giving generously to support the life and work of this church, and look around for the visitor and the newcomer and the stranger and make an effort to welcome all who come here to become part of our parish family and our church fellowship!

6. “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” God knows, this may be the most difficult of all these “10 Commandments for Christian Discipleship,” but it is in some ways the most distinctively Christian. Non-violent resistance to oppression, praying for our enemies, even forgiving those who wish to harm us go back directly to Jesus’ life and teaching and find the clearest expression in his last hours on the Cross. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do” was his prayer for his persecutors even while they were driving the nails through his hands! If he could do that, can’t we at least try to ‘bless those who persecute us?”

7. “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Today, we would call this having “empathy.” Empathy means to try to identify with the thoughts and feelings and attitudes of another person. Try to “be where that other person is” if you want to be in relationship with them, and perhaps be of some assistance. Be sensitive to the needs and wants of others.

8. “Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.” This is the Christian virtue of humility. Pride was, and is, the original sin! If you can have an accurate reading of yourself and keep in mind that there is always someone smarter, more compassionate, or holier than you are, you’ll have no problem “associating with the lowly,” standing in solidarity with the poor and the marginalized which is also part of our Christian vocation.

9. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.” This goes back to that tough #7 about blessing those who persecute you. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was an Old Testament, not a New Testament, ethic. And it eventually leaves everyone toothless and blind! Someone has to stop retaliating for evil; someone has to absorb the pain and refuse to pass it on. Jesus has already done that to the ‘nth” degree! Can’t we try to imitate him in that?

10. And all this leads to Commandment #10 – “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” That is a very gentle ending to a very demanding list! “If it’s possible,” Paul says! He knows that we will not fulfill all these commands perfectly, but he desperately wants us to try! “If possible…so far as it depends on you…” We can’t be responsible for how another person acts. We can only be responsible for ourselves. We can’t control the other person’s behavior, but we can control ours! “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all!”

So,

Hate what is evil but hold fast to the good

Outdo one another in showing honor

Don’t lag in zeal

Persevere in prayer

Extend hospitality to strangers

Bless those who persecute you

Weep with those who weep

Don’t claim to be wiser than you are

Don’t repay evil for evil

Try to live peaceably with all…

Ten Commandments for Christian Discipleship…

Ten ways to deny yourself…

To take up your cross…

And to follow Jesus!

Proper 10A – Trinity Cathedral. I sometimes think we have too much Scripture read on Sunday mornings! That may seem like a strange thing for a pastor to say but, when you are confronted, week after week, with so much rich material from the Bible, and you hope to come up with a sermon which does justice to all of that (without preaching for 45 minutes or more!), it is a real challenge!

I could use a whole sermon, or even a sermon series, exploring the Genesis story of the twin brothers, Jacob and Esau, this morning. Besides being a great story of “sibling rivalry” it’s a fascinating example of ancient literature trying to understand the eternal struggle between the Jews (as descendants of Jacob) and the Arabs (descendants of Esau), the ramifications of which still continue today in the Middle East. Jews and Arabs still cannot figure out how to share the ancient land of Palestine. And the accounts of greed and deception on both sides described in today’s First Lesson continue up until today and are as fresh as tomorrow’s headlines.

But then, I really ought to spend some time dealing with the 8^th chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans which we had as our Second Reading today. At the very least, it needs to be said that, when Paul talks abut the conflict between the “flesh” and “the spirit,” he is not talking about some kind of split between our bodies and our minds – as though the body was evil and the mind, or spirit, good. The Greek word we translate for the “body” is “soma” (from which we get our word “psychosomatic.”)

But the Greek word Paul uses here for “sinful flesh” is the word “sarx.” And sarx refers to our broken, flawed, and fallen human nature. When we sin, it is not just our bodies which sin. We sin with our minds, with our hearts, and spirits – all of us! So, it’s not a question of our bodies being evil and our spirits being good (no matter how it may sound when you first read this part of Romans). The war is not between our bodies and our minds or spirits. The war is between our entire, fallen human nature (what WE want to do so many times) and God’s yearning for us (what God’s HOLY SPIRIT wants us to do).

That’s why Paul can finally say, “…you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit…” Certainly we are still in our bodies! But they are bodies now inhabited by God’s Holy Spirit – which is why Paul can say, “To set the mind on the flesh (on our old, self-centered nature) is death…but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” So many things to preach about…so little time!

I guess about the only consolation a preacher has can be found, as might be expected, in the Gospel today. The parable of the sower. It’s pretty clear that Jesus is not an agent of the extension service today, teaching farmers how to plant their seeds! “Broadcasting” seed is not a very productive method of farming – especially in the sandy, rocky soil of the Middle East. Lots of seed is wasted when you throw it around, not much caring where it falls.

But if, as Matthew suggests, the seed represents “the word of the kingdom,” then things begin to make a little more sense. And the description of the process is one that is borne out in every preacher’s experience! Sunday by Sunday we try to “break open the Word of God” for you as we stand in this pulpit. We don’t do it perfectly, but we try to reach every corner of this Cathedral church with at least a little of that life-giving seed.

Some of you will greet us at the door with “Wonderful sermon…I really needed that.” But then we may not see you again for two or three weeks… and whatever insight you may have gleaned from that particular sermon is just a faint glimmer by that time.

And then there are those of you who believe that one hour on Sunday morning is about all you need for your Christian formation. No daily prayer discipline, no Bible study, no participation in whatever adult education offerings we may be able to provide here. “No root”…is the way Jesus describes it. No rooted-ness, no deep grounding in the Faith. Just a nodding acquaintance with it for an hour or two on Sunday mornings.

And what about what Jesus calls “the cares of the world and the lure of wealth” as obstacles to really hearing and receiving God’s Word? All of us have cares in the world…and all of us expend a good portion of our energy earning the money we need to live and take care of our families. But if those ‘cares’ and those ‘monetary pursuits’ consume all our time and energy and keep us from spending time consciously seeking God and God’s will for our lives, then – no matter how effectively the Word is proclaimed – it will be choked…and “it will yield nothing.”

So, what the preacher has to rely on – when all is said and done – is that at least some of that seed, each week, does fall on good soil. Some of you make an effort to be here every week…you say your prayers…and maybe even take a look at the Lessons which will be preached on the next Sunday and which we list in our Announcement bulletins. You come with open hearts and open minds and don’t let yourselves get distracted by all that competes for your time and energy – family issues, over-committed schedules, worry about finances and security, whatever personal sins and shortcomings you may be struggling with.

No, you show up…like good soil…ready to receive and take in whatever poor morsel of seed we may be able to “broadcast” from this pulpit and this lectern. The “Word of the Kingdom,” Matthew calls it.

And, thank God: that is enough. Because you are the ones who hear the word, and understand it…you are the ones who indeed bear fruit and yield, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty. Fruit of the Spirit seen in your time, your talent, and your treasure – offered in God’s service.

You are the ones who sustain the ministry of this Cathedral parish.

You are the ones who help us, in some small way, cooperate with God in building the Kingdom.

You are the ones who make it worth it – Sunday by Sunday – to “broadcast the Word.”

Thank you.

When Susanne and I were living in New York, we didn’t always have Sunday responsibilities so we had the joy of worshipping together on Sunday mornings. To be honest, at first we found the large and very formal New York Episcopal churches not very friendly and hard to feel at home in. We also realized that it had been a long time since we were “visitors” in a congregation, seeking to find acceptance and welcome like every other newcomer to our church.

Finally, we tried St. Bartholomew’s, a large, historic parish located in midtown right next to the Waldorf-Astoria hotel! I knew St. Bart’s had been through hard times in the past, but had made a real turnaround since the arrival of their new rector, Bill Tully. A large part of that is their commitment to what Bill calls “radical hospitality” and a real welcome for the newcomer.

On their website, you can find these words in a section called “What We Are For:” We are for “the dignity and worth of every person. An open-minded, passionate commitment to truth. The importance of everyone’s own spiritual journey. God’s friends wherever we find them. Seeking Christ in every person who comes through the door. The sacredness of life’s rites of passage. The value of community. The hard work necessary to make sure that all are welcomed. Telling the truth about life’s challenges. A “user friendly” church- experience. Children and families.”

The central sentence in that description caught my attention: “Seeking Christ in every person who comes through the door.”  That line comes from the 6th century Rule of St Benedict, a rule he wrote for his monks about how they were to live together in community and how they were to welcome the stranger and the sojourner into their midst. They were to welcome them as though they were welcoming Christ himself!

If that sounds familiar to you it may be because of the words Christ himself spoke in the Gospel of St. Matthew this morning. Addressing his disciples, Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” (10:40) He was, of course, preparing to send his disciples forth to preach and teach and heal in his name. He was about to transform them from “disciples” (learners) into “apostles” (ones who are sent).

And he wanted them to know that they were going out as his ambassadors. So that, whoever welcomed them, into their homes or synagogues or communities, was actually welcoming Jesus and his message as well. Decades later, St. Paul would describe the Church as “the Body of Christ” – meaning that the Church was to be the visible presence of Christ in the world (after his physical presence was no longer with them).

And, of course, the whole purpose of the Body of Christ (whether that was the earthly body of Jesus or the earthly mission of the Church) is – according to today’s Gospel — to “welcome the one who sent” him. Jesus was all about welcoming people, introducing them to God and to God’s Kingdom. He said, on more than one occasion, that when they looked at him, they were actually looking at what God is like. Jesus was the human face of God! And we are to be the human face of God today.

When those early Middle Eastern audiences heard and welcomed the apostles and their message, they were actually hearing and welcoming Jesus – which means that they were, at the same time, discovering the true and living God — Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier of all! Our task is exactly the same today – to welcome every newcomer and stranger who walks through our doors as though we were welcoming Christ himself. Because, when we do, we are actually welcoming God ever deeper into our lives and into our community.

We need to do a better job of welcoming at Trinity Cathedral. Like most congregations, I know that we consider ourselves to be warm and friendly. But that sometimes means that we are primarily “warm and friendly” to one another. While we have had special “greeters” here in the past and it is certainly part of the usher’s responsibility to extend a cordial welcome to newcomers, to see that they sign our guest book and to invite them to remain after church for a while, if they can, for coffee hour and a time of conversation, it is up to every single one of us to reach out and provide a welcoming atmosphere.

I have seen – and I’m sure you have too – occasions when the 8 o’clock or 10:30 coffee hours are buzzing with conversation and laughter and small groups sitting around tables while a newcomer or a new family stands around in the middle of the Great Hall, looking pretty lonely and pretty lost.

How do you think that would square with Jesus’ words that “whoever welcomes you welcomes me?” How would it square with St. Benedict’s injunction to “seek Christ in every person who comes through the door?” Or even the Church of St. Bartholomew’s commitment to “do the hard work necessary to make sure that all are welcomed?” Not very well, it seems to me.

So, in this time of transition at Trinity Cathedral, as we prepare to call a new Dean and enter into the next stage of our life and ministry in this historic cathedral parish, let’s all of us rededicate ourselves to being the kind of community which wants to reach out…and wants to grow. Hear again what one growing and vibrant Episcopal congregation says it is “for”

We are for “the dignity and worth of every person. An open-minded, passionate commitment to truth. The importance of everyone’s own spiritual journey. God’s friends wherever we find them. Seeking Christ in every person who comes through the door. The sacredness of life’s rites of passage. The value of community. The hard work necessary to make sure that all are welcomed. Telling the truth about life’s challenges. A “user-friendly” church- experience. Children and families.”

That’s what the people of St. Bart’s in New York are “for.” What are we “for?”