Sunday, May 10, 2015

The Love People: a sermon for Year B, Easter 6

Preached on Sunday, May 10, 2015 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on the Upper East Side. The Scripture readings that today's sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

In our gospel today, Jesus gives his new commandment, the mandatum, the mandate, that we commemorate each year on Maundy Thursday. And not for the first time. This new commandment has appeared already in John’s gospel, in chapter 13 in the discussions following the Last Supper. Today’s version is from two chapters further on in John’s gospel -- not an unusual occurrence. Like a Socratic teacher or Greek philosopher, Jesus repeats himself quite a bit in John, especially when making a central point.



In Matthew, Mark and Luke, we hear Jesus say something similar. When questioned about the Law of Moses, particularly about which of the 613 commandments given in the law is the greatest commandment, Jesus responds that we are to love God, and love our neighbors as ourselves. But here, in John’s gospel, Jesus is saying something significantly different. What Jesus says is not in any way a comment on the previous commandments, but rather it is a new commandment.

Jesus’s new commandment is ‘new’ in two main ways; in whom we should love and how we should love.

We are to love others not because they belong to the same nation, not because they are our neighbors, but because they belong to Christ. We are to love all those who have been bound together in Christ, all those who have been caught up in the love of Christ.

And secondly, we are not to love to the level, or by the measure, of our own self-love. But rather, we are to love one another as Jesus has loved us. That love has a different measure, and that measure, as we’ve noted recently, the measure of the love of Jesus is the love borne by him on the cross. This is the love of Christ that the disciples knew themselves and saw in the sacrifice of Christ; and this kind of love is meant to be a testimony to the world.

This new commandment is new. It’s a new way of understanding ourselves in relation to one another and to our God. Jesus tells us that this love changes our status, changes our relationship to God. We are no longer servants of God, but friends of God. That’s a rare thing, that’s an almost wholly new thing. In Exodus, Moses is said to talk to God ‘face to face’ as if they were friends, the original Hebrew reads (33:11). And in Isaiah, at one point, God refers to Abraham as ‘my friend’ (41:8). To be the friend of the Almighty is something once reserved to the most revered patriarchs and prophets.

But Jesus says we are all of us his friends if we do as he says, if we love one another as he has loved us. We are his friends, then, if we are each other’s friends. We most often think of our friends are those whom we chose to be friends with; but Jesus notes that is it not we who choose, but it is he who has chosen us, to be his friends, and to be friends with one another. Our friendship then, is one chosen for us, commanded of us, by Jesus himself. Our relationships with each other come out of this commandment. Our love for one another is to come from Jesus, and is to measure up to his love for us.

This idea, this new commandment of Jesus, becomes quite central to our earliest understanding of ourselves as Christians.  This idea appears 13 times in our Scripture. Twice in John’s gospel, as we’ve said, but another 11 times in the earliest Christian Scriptures, the epistles of John, Paul and Peter. Those epistles, letters to and from branches of the early Christian communities, refer to and repeat the new commandment’s idea of love, because it is so central to the way of life that those early Christians were creating for themselves as Christians, as followers of Jesus.

This love that we bear one another, rooted in Christ, it was one of the essential things about being Christian in our earliest days; it was what set us apart. Sources tell us that the Roman world was quite taken by these early Christians and their love for one another. In those early days, Christians gathered together to share the agape meal, the love meal, in each others homes; and it was noted that all classes mixed together in those homes, around those tables. There were aristocrats and peasants, Roman elites and poor Jews, masters and slaves, all together, on an equal footing.

The early Christians were known for their charity to one another, and to those not of their faith or society. This next bit is a bit of a tough message for Mother's Day, but stick with me... Infanticide was universal in ancient Roman society. Babies would often be rejected if they were illegitimate, unhealthy or handicapped, the wrong sex, or too great a burden on the family. Female infants were particularly vulnerable. These children were often exposed to the elements, left to die, or left to be raised up into slavery by slave dealers; but the early Christians took in these abandoned children and raised them as their own, loving those whom others did not or could not love. [1]

And then there were the martyrs of early Christianity, women like Perpetua and Felicity and their companions, who died rather than betray their faith or their fellow Christians; something that, again, the ancient world found preposterous initially, and eventually admirable. It was said that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church, out of which a great church was born by those who were following the teaching of Jesus that there was no greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.



Our faith, and the church that preserves it, comes from these people and the love they bore one another. We were known for this great love, that we were willing to put into practice in all aspects of our lives, and even in our deaths. And this remarkable reputation for loving one another so impressed the ancient world, that hundreds and then thousands and then tens of thousands were drawn to it. Our epistle reading says, “Whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.” And so it did.

But what are we known for now? If you ask those who only know us from CNN and the Internet, they’d tell you that we’re the marriage police, busy outlawing practically every human relationship except the most conventional. They’d tell you that we’re the most judgmental of sects, we’re the condemnation nation. Nowadays, we’re more often thought of as the hate people, not the love people.

How did we get to be the hate people, rather than the love people? Well, that’s easy to understand. Because hate is easy, and love… love is hard. It’s as hard as the wood of the cross, where was hung the world’s salvation, from whence the greatest love we can ever know.

Love one another, as I have loved you. This is my commandment. Maybe if we work at it, work at it hard, we might regain our past reputation, as the people who love, as the people who love one another no matter what, the people who fight for love, and who love those whom the world shuns. Wouldn’t that be something, to be better known for the love we bear, than the condemnation that is so often heard from our quarters. What fruit would we bear then, and such fruit as that could last at least another two millennia, maybe even unto the end of the ages. +Amen.


© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

[1] Orphan Care in the Early Church - A Heritage to Recapture by Joanie Gruber, MSW; presented at the NACSW Convention, October, 2011, Pittsburgh, PA.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

The Truly Good Shepherd: a sermon for Year B, Easter 4

Preached on Sunday, April 26, 2015 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on the Upper East Side. The Scripture readings that today's sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

For the first two hundred years of our faith, the first two centuries of Christianity, the cross was rarely used as the symbol of our sect. The historians surmise that the cross was too shameful a thing to be associated with our fledging faith.

It was, after all, an instrument of torture and death. And as we were saying last week, death on a cross was particularly offensive to observant Jews in the ancient world, as it would be to almost everyone today. So, it is rare indeed to find artistic representations of the cross, and especially, images of Christ on the cross, in our very earliest art and architecture.

But what you do find, over and over again, in house churches, in the catacombs in Rome, in mosaics and floor tiles, in murals painted on walls and formed into statues, are representations of the Good Shepherd. It seems that in our earliest days, when we wanted to represent our faith, when we wanted to depict our Savior, we most often pictured him as the Good Shepherd. The image, like our images of the crucifixion, became somewhat standardized, and seemed to follow a common format, more or less. Most often, the Good Shepherd would be depicted as a youngish man, standing upright, with a lamb draped over his shoulders, grasping both for and hind legs, bearing the lost lamb home to the flock.

It’s not surprising that this image should permeate the early Christian consciousness. The Israelites were a pastoral people, and shepherds were everywhere in everyday life -- and in Scripture. Patriarchs and prophets like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Amos, and perhaps most famously, David were all shepherds. Interestingly, the Quran says that all the true prophets of God were first shepherds, as was Mohammed. For those who knew Jesus, heard him preach and teach, sheep and shepherds were a commonality of life, well known to all.

Sheep aren’t the easiest animals to keep. They prefer the rougher forage found on hillsides and mountainsides, more so than the tender grasses of lowland fields. They’re likely to get stuck in crags and fall into ravines in search of their favorite forage. And they’re hard on plant life, slicing off the plants they eat near the root -- so their grazing lands take longer to recover before another flock can graze them.

They are skittish, scared of predators, as the gospel today indicates. They’re easily scattered, whether in the search of food or safety, and the shepherd must go to great lengths, over rugged terrain, to gather them in, as all those Good Shepherd images imply.



So, suffice it to say, sheep are hard animals to manage. No wonder then, that the herder with less of an investment in the flock might abandon his charges when faced with difficulties. In fact, shepherds were somewhat notorious in Jesus’s day and since. For one thing, they spent a great deal of time away from other people, driving the sheep farther and farther away from civilizing influences in search of new grazing lands. Not a lot of opportunities to bathe or wash one’s clothes out on the mountainsides. No other company but equally rough-necked herders like yourself.

We can say, then, that herders of sheep have a rough life, and make a rough lot, uncouth perhaps if not uncivilized, with nothing but rapacious sheep, rough fellows and rugged terrain out of which to craft a life.

Not surprising then how insistent Jesus is in making clear that he’s not one of those unreliable ‘hired-hand’ shepherds. He is the Good Shepherd. He’s careful to make the distinction. He sets himself apart from the usual type of sheep herder.

So what makes a good shepherd? We might expect the Good Shepherd to take good care of the sheep, to be responsible, to do his job and do it well. But Jesus says there’s more to it than that. Jesus says that the Good Shepherd is one who lays down his life for the sheep. Gives up his own life for those hard to manage, wayward sheep.

That would have been an extraordinary sacrifice, a foolhardy one at the very least, for the average shepherd. But, of course, Jesus isn’t really talking about shepherds and sheep, not really. He’s talking about himself and he’s talking about us. He is our shepherd; and we are the sheep, we are the flock given him by the Father to tend.

And how like sheep we are… Desirous of the most hard to find, the most exotic, fodder, of course. Likely to take ourselves into real danger to sate our appetites, requiring rescue and redemption to restore us to the fold. Fearful and easily scattered when challenged, prone to flee anything that scares us; and needful of one to protect us and defend us, from the evil without, and from our own foolish ways. What shepherd would deign to lay down his very life for such a flock?

Jesus, the Good Shepherd… would and did… so that we might be saved from the repercussions of our worst behavior, freed from the consequences of the worst aspects of our nature. Saved from sin, and freed from death.

Amazing, isn’t it? Altogether astonishing when you consider it…

And what is asked of us in return, in recognition of having been granted such a good and giving shepherd to watch over us? What might we do to be sheep worthy of such a shepherd?

Two things, our second reading from John’s first Epistle tells us. First of all, we should recognize the love that God has for us, the love inherent in the act of self-sacrifice that Christ made for us on the cross. John says that we should know love by that act; that the cross of Christ should be for us the definition of love, the very meaning of love.

And secondly, that we should pattern our lives in light of this love, in a reflection of this love. That we should ourselves love, “not in word or speech alone, but in truth and action.” Becoming ready, if need be, to lay down our lives for each other, as Jesus gave his life for us.

Now, it’s unlikely that you or I will be faced with such a challenge. Very unlikely indeed that we will be asked to give up our lives for another of our number. But we should acknowledge and affirm that the truest love that we have known is exactly that kind of sacrificial love.

So, surely, when asked, when given the opportunity, we can act in ways that demonstrate that that is our understanding of love. We should show forth by our actions that we know love is not just a feeling, or sweet words we might say. Love is not just a state of being, an emotion.

Love is a verb. It is truth and action, John says. Love is what we do. We measure love by what we give, not what we receive. We know our love is true, when it truly reflects, to whatever degree we muster, the love shown to us by Christ on the cross.

Such a good shepherd have we, one that would give his own life for such troublesome sheep. That is what has been given us, that is the breadth and depth of God’s love for us. What else could we need or desire?

Other than to recognize that God is love, and then to go forth to love and serve one another, in whatever way we can, in whatever pale reflection we can make of the great love shown to us in our creation, preservation and our redemption by Jesus Christ, the truly Good Shepherd of the sheep. +Amen.


© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

Sunday, March 22, 2015

The Desire of Your Heart: a sermon for Year B, Lent 5


Preached on Sunday, May 17, 2015 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on the Upper East Side. The Scripture readings that today's sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

Someone stopped me on the street in front of the church and told me that I needed to be praying for the end of winter and the beginning of spring -- that I needed to be praying harder. I told them that I had given up on praying for an end to this winter, and had just given over to begging, and pleading with God to end this winter, and let spring come! 

And lo, it just may finally be here.  It feels like it a bit today. Lent is drawing to a close and soon we will celebrate the mysteries of Holy Week which culminate in the joy and hope of Easter when all is made new, and our faith is renewed yet again.

In our Old Testament reading this morning, the prophet Jeremiah tells us of a time to come, a time of hope, a time of a new covenant. This new covenant will not be a covenant that is written in stone, on tablets brought down from Mt. Sinai as was the last covenant. It will not be a covenant of laws recorded on scrolls and policed by priests and Pharisees. This will be a covenant that is written on our very hearts. Imagine that for a moment. Written on our hearts, so that God’s law, God’s will for us pulsed within us with every beat of our hearts. Jeremiah’s new covenant in our hearts will mean that no longer will we have to admonish one another to “know the Lord,” because we will already know the Lord. With God’s law written on our hearts we will always know God and know God’s will for us -- from the inside out.

We find something, or rather someone, new in our gospel reading this morning as well. Philip and Andrew come to Jesus with a message, a request. The conjunction of Philip and Andrew and Jesus is worth noting in itself. Philip and Andrew were among the first disciples called by Jesus and more significantly; they brought others to Jesus to become disciples. Andrew brought his brother Simon Peter, and Philip brought Nathanial. We might think of Philip and Andrew as disciple head-hunters; they identify and recruit likely candidates for ministry. And that’s exactly what they’re up to in our reading from John today.

In today’s gospel, Philip and Andrew bring two Greeks to Jesus. These foreigners, likely visitors to Jerusalem for the Passover, want to see Jesus, to meet him, to find out what he’s all about. The Greeks want to know the Lord. An important event for the Greeks, I’m sure. But far from the most prodigious event in John’s Gospel. It’s just a sentence or two in our reading. A seemingly innocuous event, a small, perhaps insignificant moment really. Just Philip and Andrew saying, “Hey, Jesus. Couple guys here from out of town who want to meet you. Maybe take a selfie with you…” No big deal. 

But somehow this occurrence kicks something into gear. The Greeks arrive seeking to know Jesus, and then Jesus declares, “The hour has come!” Just like that. 

And true to form, the first knowledge Jesus imparts to the Greeks comes in the form of a parable. He recounts the parable of the single grain of wheat. A parable that evokes an all too common concern in the agrarian society of the Roman Empire, where crop failure and famine were not unknown. Wheat was a vitally important staple, ground into flour to make bread, the staff of life, as it, of course, still is today. A grain of wheat isn’t much wheat, it’s a small, perhaps insignificant thing. But it has such potential. It encapsulates so much hope. 

For as everyone would have known, a single grain of wheat is also a seed. And unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single, solitary grain. But if it dies, then it will come to bear much fruit, so Jesus says. A seed sown in the soil does not literally die but it does germinate; it becomes something more than just a single seed. A new plant begins to take form, and to burst forth from the buried seed. The seed ceases to be a seed; it ceases to be one thing in order to bear fruit as a new thing. This is death and resurrection, this is redemption, and new life, this is hope realized. 

Jesus goes on speaking to the newcomers. And he tells them that those who love their life will lose it, but those who hate their life will gain eternal life. This one statement of Jesus is one of his best-attested statements, it appears throughout every gospel in one form or another. We heard the Markan version of this saying just three weeks ago, on the second Sunday in Lent. It is a central truth. And the Greek word translated “life” here is psyche which also has overtones of “soul” or “self” so that the saying is not so much about physical life and death as it is about the vital energy of personhood being diminished by self-centeredness but then expanded by self-offering. 

So, in order to grow, in order to live, we must reject our self-centered selves, and find a new way of being that encompasses so much more than just what we have known. 

But where lies that new way? In which direction are we to go? Do we travel from Greece to Jerusalem? Will we find what we’re seeking there? What is God’s will for us? How do we find it? 

Years ago, I had a nun as a neighbor. Sister Arlene Flaherty was a Roman Catholic Dominican religious, and she lived down the hall from us in Jersey City. Now, Not many of us have nuns living down the hall from us. Typically, they are gathered in convents and monasteries, to live in community, such is there vocation. But Arlene had a particular job in her order. She was head of the collected Dominican communities’ advocacy efforts for peace and justice. She played a very public role, and traveled extensively, to war-torn places of the world to witness the suffering of God’s people and then to place like Geneva to give testimony to that suffering on behalf of the Domincan orders throughout the world. All that coming and going would have been very disruptive to a convent, so Arlene lived in the world, so she could come and go as she needed to. 

Arlene loved our dog Molly and often dog-sat for us, and sometimes, just had Molly over for an afternoon’s visit when she wasn’t traveling. She stopped to talk with me once when Molly and I were out for a walk. She asked how my discernment for the priesthood was going. She caught me just at that point when the process itself had barely begun, but when all the steps that lie ahead of me had been carefully enunciated. Approval by as discernment committee, psychological testing, approval by the canon for ministry, meetings with committee members, approval by the commission for ministry, meeting with the bishop, approval from the bishop, seminary, ordination exams. More psychological testing. repeat approvals by the commission and the canon and the bishop… 

I confessed to Arlene as she petted Molly, “I don’t know how I’m get through it all. What if I don’t’ make it? What if I trip over one of these gates? Now that I have admitted that I feel called to the priesthood, now that I’m willing to admit to myself and declare to others that I want this so badly.

Arlene stopped petting Molly and stood up and looked me in the eye. She said to me, “Pay attention to what you want, Mark. The desire in your heart is God’s will for you. You’ll make it through, if you stay in that desire; and if everything you do is rooted in that desire.”

Just as Jeremiah promised, God’s law, God’s will for us, is written there ion our hearts. It can bring us from Greece all the way to the Jerusalem in search of greater knowledge of the Lord. More than that, it can get you through seminary -- a far more arduous journey, I can assure you. 

The beginning of this morning’s service is really the proper conclusion to my sermon, so if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’d like to pray again the words of our collect for this Fifth Sunday in Lent. 

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. +Amen.

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Things Passing Away, Things to Come: a sermon for Year B, Epiphany 3

Preached on Sunday, January 25, 2015 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on the Upper East Side. The Scripture readings that today's sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

I don’t want to speak too long today, because it’s Annual Meeting day. We’ve got some work to do, some vestry members to elect, and we’ve got some fellowship to share, which is, in many respects, the purpose and best part of the Annual Meeting.

But today’s readings offer some interesting comments and parallels with what we are all about today, our present and our future, about  the call of God to ministry; and about some of the hardships that ministry sometimes entails.


Our first reading this morning is from Jonah, and it’s not the famous whale story that Jonah is duly famous for. It’s about God calling Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh, and to pronounce God’s condemnation upon the inhabitants of that sinful city. The upshot is that the people of Nineveh hear God’s warning from Jonah, and they heed it. And then God changes his mind about the punishment that he has planned for Nineveh. God changes his mind… Later this morning, you are going to hear some reports that will challenge you to, perhaps, change your mind about what you think about this parish, and what you will do for it in the future.

This is the year in which the Vestry will call a new rector to lead this parish. Many of you have been waiting for that day with great anticipation, but our psalm verses today offers a different view. “For God alone, my soul in silence waits. God alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold, my refuge,” our psalm verses say. God along is my salvation, it’s good to remember that on the eve of a new rectorship. Often, I think, we can place that expectation on a new rector. Hoping she will be our salvation, and fill the coffers with new pledges and fill the Sunday school with shiny faces and fill the pews with new congregants.


Paul tells the people of Corinth that the present form of this world is passing away. And that is true for us. My time among you is coming to a close, and a new rector will be with you in my stead -- no one can say when, exactly, but we know it will be soon. No one likes to here that, that change is coming that the present world is passing away. But it is ever thus, everyday, what is old passes away and what is new comes. It’s the rhythm of life, it is the order of God universe. Present things are not what we cling to, nor should they be, as our psalm verse says, not things, but God is our stronghold, our rock, and our salvation. Not priests, or old practices, or present times. God who was and is and is to come is the only thing that endures, and it is to God we cling to every day of our ever changing lives.

And in our reading from Mark, there is a pivot point in the story of Jesus. John is arrested, and soon will be executed. And Jesus goes to Galilee. In this passage in Matthew, it says that Jesus withdraws to Galilee -- with good reason, preachers and prophets are being arrested and killed in Judea and Jerusalem. It’s a good time to reassess and take stock of the threat, and to prepare for what’s next. But notice that as John’s ministry comes to an end (tragically), rather than withdraw permanently from the field because of the loss of a leader, Jesus steps up to the plate to take the mantle of prophecy and preaching upon himself. He calls together Peter and Andrew and James and John. He calls on some fellow believers to follow him as he prepares to preach the gospel of good news, of repentance and mercy to the people of Israel.

That’s a great image of the change that Holy Trinity is undergoing even now as the present times pass away and new ones come. As I’ve said to you, interim pastors ore often compared to John the Baptist in that we prepare the way for the one who is to come. And my time is drawing to a close -- I hope to be well and truly gone before my arrest and beheading. 

But someone is preparing to come, someone is being prepared to come among you, even now. And when he or she gets here, he’s going to call upon you, just like Jesus calls upon Simon and Andrew and James and John. It’s important for you to get ready for that call -- and like the people of Nineveh to hear and heed that call. Because the success of your next rector depends on you, and who you prove to be, what sort of leaders will rise up among you, and what sort of followers you will be when you heed the call to help make the next rectorship successful. Your next rector will need ready hands, and faithful hearts to support his or her work among you. He won’t be your salvation. She is not going to face the future for you, but with you. And the steadfast love of God with be what sustains you all into the glorious future God has planned for you.

Get ready. Hear and heed God’s call. Prepare yourselves for the time ahead, for your best days are ahead of you, and your God is already there, with bountiful and steadfast love to help bring about all the glorious things you will be. +Amen. 


© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Stop Helping, Start Serving: a sermon for Year A, Proper 7, Pentecost 2

Preached on Sunday, June 22, 2014 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The Scripture readings that today's sermon are based on can be found by clicking here. 

As some of you know, a few of our folks were confirmed last Saturday at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Confirmation is one of the rites and sacraments of the church that has shifted and changed over our 2,000 year history. In our earliest centuries, when most of those who came to the church were adults, confirmation was something that happened at baptism. Later, when it became the custom to baptize children, confirmation began to separate from baptism, and to come later as one matured; and confirmation became a separate, adult affirmation of the vows and promises made on our behalf at baptism.

But when is one an adult, when is one ready to make such an assertion? Is it at age 13, or 18 or 21? Can any of us say that we are really spiritually mature at any point in our lives? So when, then, should we be confirmed, when can we make adult affirmations of our faith?


In classic Anglican fashion, our prayer book and our practice has come up with a compromise, one that, again in classic Anglican fashion, manages to be an encompassing compromise, a ‘both/and’, rather than an ‘either/or’, solution. At baptism, the vows of the Baptismal Covenant are made on our behalf by parents and Godparents. At confirmation, be it at 13 or 30, we renew those vows. And then, throughout the year, on special days like Easter, and the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, we renew those vows. So that over time, as we mature physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, we remember and remake our baptismal vows. And over all our lives, we seek to live into those vows at every age, as we journey through the learnings of our lives. 

When we hear our lectionary readings today, one of those vows comes to mind. “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” to which we answer, “I will, with God’s help.” (BCP, 305)


In the epistle reading today, Paul tells the Romans, “All of us… have been baptized into Christ Jesus… We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Rom 6:3-5) This is the essential reality of what it means to be Christian. Through baptism, we are conjoined with the humanity and the divinity of our brother Jesus. We share in his very real, very human, death and thereby we share in his gloriously divine resurrection.


But if we do, then so do others. Our baptismal vow challenges us to seek and serve Christ in others. The death and the resurrection that are within us are within others as well. 


In our gospel today, Jesus says, “"Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” (Mat 10: 32-33)


So, what is it then, to deny Christ in our own context, to deny the Christ in others, rather than to seek and serve Christ in others? What is it to deny? What is denial? 


In recent times, we’ve heard a lot about denial in our culture. We seem to be living in a time that has discovered the human propensity to deny the truth of our own lives, and the truth of the lives of others. Psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors and social workers have helped us learn that trauma often leads to denial; because denial is a very useful, very successful mechanism for coping with trauma.

Those who have suffered horrible abuse often block conscious knowledge of that abuse. They cover it up, to themselves, and do their best to get on with their lives. Of course, the truth will always out in some way, in some form. Those in denial of their trauma often choose behaviors that are compulsive, and inordinate to the actual life situations they are in. Mental health professionals have learned to look for these compulsive behaviors; and then look for a large wall of denial between the behaviors and the trauma that has given birth to the behaviors. 

Victims of physical abuse often ‘forget’ the abuse they’ve endured, and tragically, often become abusers themselves. Treatment of these individuals involves a slow chipping away of the denial, and a recovery of the initial trauma they suffered. It is often an awful, awful day, when physical abusers finally acknowledge that the abuse they have perpetrated stems from the abuse they themselves have suffered. Imagine the horror of coming to know that you yourself have become the very monster that once terrorized you. But this awful day, this personal Calvary, is necessary if healing and recovery are to have even the slightest chance. 


People who grow up in the chaos of alcoholic homes are often, to greater and lesser degrees, unconscious that the drinking they saw was in any way problematic. Their adaptive behavior is often to become extremely controlling, seeking to control everyone and everything around them, as a way to stem the chaos of their lives, chaos that they have been trained to respond to in just this way. Treatment of these individuals often involves “setting a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother” (Mat 10: 35) as the denial of the alcoholism in the family is supplanted with a freeing truth. Only then can the long process of letting go of control, letting go of manipulative, domineering behavior begin. 


Often those of us who have encountered trauma in others, trauma that leads to dysfunctional behavior, are drawn into the denial and dysfunction system, and we become caretakers and enablers of the traumatized, and fellow deniers ourselves. The untreated trauma of others traumatizes us, and we become compulsive in our caretaking. We help and help and help. And we deny and deny and deny that there’s anything wrong with our unrelenting help. Some of us will even claim that our compulsive helping is, in fact, Christian. 


It is not. 


Helping someone avoid the truth of his or her dysfunction is not Christian. 


What it is is a denial of the Christ that is in that person. It is a denial of the potential for resurrection that is in that person. In helping and enabling -- cleaning up the messes of others, helping them cover up their dysfunction, preventing them from suffering the consequences of their dysfunction -- we deny them their Calvary, painful as those personal Calvarys are, and thereby, we deny them their Easter. Again, to use Paul’s words from this morning’s epistle, their old selves are never allowed to die, to be crucified, and so they are denied the newness of life that comes only after that death. 


But it can feel so good to be a helper! We give advice that is really attempted manipulation. We help compulsively, even when our help isn’t sought. Unconsciously we remain vigilant, always on the lookout for another trauma victim to take on, to take into our lives, so that our self-definition as a helper can be supported and maintained. We become deeply enmeshed with these trauma victims, often they are our family members or co-workers or friends -- and we love them, as we should. Of course we do.


But to love, really love, with a truly Christian love is “to seek and serve Christ in all people” by allowing those we love to go to Calvary, and there to suffer, and to allow their old selves to die. So that, within them can come the resurrection of new life that comes only after Calvary. Or to put it more simply, as Alanon, the 12-step program for those affected by the trauma of others, advises, “Do someone you love a favor. Leave them alone.” Or as a Southern aphorism puts it, “Leave her lie where the Lord flung her!” 

So, stop helping. Rather, start serving. 


Seek and serve Christ in all people. The Christ that dies and lives again. The Christ who understands the necessity of death in the working out of the divine plan of salvation; the salvation of the world, and the salvation of every single person in the world. 


And maybe, just maybe, if we learn to seek and serve Christ in all people; if we allow others to go to Calvary, sure that it will lead to the garden on Easter morn; then just maybe we’ll come to serve the Christ that is in us, and go to our own Calvarys, confident in the knowledge that when we let our old selves die, we make room for the newness of life that comes in and through the death and resurrection of Christ, that Christ that is in us, with us always, until the end of the age. Amen+

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Lead Us Not Into Penn Station: sermon for Year A, Easter 4

Preached on Sunday, May 11th at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The Scripture readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here. 

My home state of Tennessee is quite narrow, and very long. It’s as much as a 10-hour drive across it from the Mississippi River in the west to the Great Smokey Mountains in the east. If you were to traverse the whole state from the west to the east, along it’s southern edge, near where I’m from, you’d begin in the flat fields of West Tennessee -- that rich, dark alluvial soil of the upper Mississippi Delta. Cotton was long king in those fields; very productive farm land that Tennessee Williams dubbed the ‘richest acres this side of the Valley Nile.’ 


As you leave those flat fields and continue heading east, toward the Tennessee River and the mountains beyond, the land begins to rise and fall a bit, and undulate ever so slightly, and gentle rolling hills rise out of the ground. Those little hills are harder to plant; they’re no good for cotton, erosion being so much worse there than on the flat plains. Best to let the little hills run to woodland, and collect up enough flatter parts in and around those hills and turn it into pasture for livestock, as my father has done on his farm.

He’s retired from farming now, but I know my father still loves the little rolling, wooded hills of his farm just a few miles west of the Tennessee River. And his cows never seemed to mind them either, crossing them readily, cutting though the woods as they go in search of another bit of pasture to graze on. And the heifers seemed to appreciate the privacy of those wooded hills because that’s where they often retired to in order to birth their calves.    

A significant part of my father’s working day involved driving from one pasture to another ‘checking on my cows,’ as he calls it. He’d load a sack of feed into the back of his second-best pick-up truck; an old, beat-up baby blue model that has bounced over many a rut in a dirt road.  Once the feed is loaded, dogs and people pile into the cab of the truck and we’d drive sometimes a mile or two over gravel roads to get to one or the other of his pastures.  After the gate to a portion of pastures is safely closed behind us, my father blows the horn of the pick-up three times. Now, after years of driving over rutted gravel roads, the horn on his second-best pick-up truck is woefully out of tune -- a wire has come loose from one of the claxons, I think. It gives off a very distinctive sound, more of a bleat, rather than a honk.  But in a few minutes of that out-of-tune bleat, from over the hills and trotting through the woods, come my father’s cows.  

My father would then take out his pocketknife and open the sack of feed. He tilts the sack over his shoulder and spreads the feed in a line -- about 20 feet long or so -- on the ground.  The cows all gather along this makeshift manger on the ground, and begin to feed. My dad would then walk through the group of heifers and calves, counting, checking ears and eyes for infection. He notes the progress of those heifers that will bear calves in a few weeks or a month or two. And he looks to the health of the nursing mothers, and the development of their young, carefully tallying up the cows and calves, making sure each calf is in the care of a heifer, and that no one is missing. As he does so, the cows move gently aside to allow him to pass through their number. Some nuzzle his gloved hand, and he’ll scratch their suede-like foreheads were new horns sometimes sprout. 
His cows were always shy of me, keeping well away, never allowing me to come within reach. They, of course, know my dad’s dog, and they are surprisingly tolerant of my dogs, sensing, I guess, that these fellow creatures mean them no harm. They’re not so sure of me, nor of any other human animal besides my dad. They are mistrustful of a stranger; they do not know my voice or my smell. But they know and trust my dad. They know his voice, and the off-pitch bleat of his truck horn. They are nervous of me, but under his hand they are calm, they are well tended and cared for, they are at peace.  

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I’ve spent all this time talking about my father when it is Mother’s Day today. Recently in the news, there have been some interesting studies done on mothers and children -- and their voices. We recognize the sound of our mothers’ voice from before birth. In the final trimester of pregnancy, fetal heart rates jump when recordings of the mothers’ voices are played, verses the sound of other voices. That recognition lasts too. In older children, when they are stressed or upset, it’s been found that just the sound of a mother’s voice can calm older children, lowering their heart rates and anxiety, as much as a hug. Just the sound of a mother’s voice, a few sound waves striking the eardrum, calms and sooths as much as a full-on, arms-all-around-you bear hug. It’s, of course, well known that mother’s have a preternatural ability to distinguish the sound of their own child’s voice, and can often discern what is causing their child’s distress from the particular sound of the cry they make. 

I saw a great Facebook post yesterday from a mother, who happens to be a friend of ours. Lindsay Lunuum is my fellow priest -- we were ordained together -- and as many of you know Lindsay was sponsored for ordination by this parish, Holy Trinity. Lindsay was saying bedtime prayers with her daughter Maggie the other night. Apparently, Maggie is learning the Lord’s Prayer, and Lindsay heard Maggie pray, “And lead us not into Penn Station.”  That is in my opinion a total mothering win. Say your prayers, avoid temptation, and if you can, avoid Penn Station too. I think little Maggie is completely prepared for life with those three pearls of wisdom under her belt.  

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In our gospel reading from John’s gospel this morning, Jesus refers to himself as, among other things, ‘the shepherd of the sheep’ and he describes the special bond between our shepherd-savior and we, his sheep. “The sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers." (John 10:3b-5) Like my dad’s cows, we are meant to recognize the voice, the call, of the one who loves us and saves us. 

Jesus gives us much credit, I believe, maybe too much. I wonder, do we really know God’s voice when we hear it? I don’t know that we always do. I’ve spoken to many a faithful Christian, good people who try to live good lives, who try to avoid temptation and Penn Station alike. And very often, these folks struggle to hear God’s voice, strain to hear the loving voice of God in times of trial and loss. These are people who long to hear God’s voice giving them direction in their lives; people who long to follow Jesus if only they could be sure that the voice they hear directing them is indeed God’s own voice, guiding their choices and their lives.   

But it’s hard to hear God’s voice. It’s rarely as clear and discernable as three bleats on an out-of-tune pick-up truck horn heard through the quiet wood and over the calm pasture.  

But there are lots of times and lots of cases when we hear each other’s voices, and the voices of those in our world, when we might also be hearing God’s call to us to follow him.   We may hear our shepherd’s voice in the stories we share at coffee hour, in the hymns we sing, or in the voices of our children praying for the will and the strength to avoid Penn Station. 

We may hear the shepherd’s voice in the cries of the Nigerian mothers whose daughters have been kidnapped, or the lament of those Syrians, Afghanis, Sudanese and so many others who long for the silence of peace to come down and drown out the ceaseless cacophony of violence in their lands; because he taught us about justice, mercy and peace. 

We may hear the shepherd’s voice in the shouts of joy that greet the minister’s voice as she says, “I now pronounce you husband and husband” or “wife and wife.” Or in the happy tears that come when the doctor says,” You’re cancer-free.” Or when after a time of idleness and worry, we hear the longed for confirmation, “Congratulations. You got the job;” because he preached to us about the oppressed and the lonely, and those who struggle. 

We may hear the shepherd’s voice in the sometimes cringing moments when our consciences remind us of a wrong done, a falsehood told, a promise not kept; and we remember that justice is an interpersonal value, as well as a political and a legal one; because he taught us to be at peace with one another. 

Jesus tells us we’ll know it. We’ll know when it’s his voice we hear, calling us by name, leading us through the gate and out into the world. We’ll know it’s our Savior’s voice when it calls us to act with mercy and forgiveness, when it calls us to work for justice and for peace; because that’s what he told us to do. We’ll know it’s the Good Shepherd’s voice when we are urged to face the truth about ourselves we’ve so long denied; because he taught us that the truth would set us free. We’ll hear his voice calling us to be reconciled with those with whom we are at enmity; because he told us to live in peace with each other. 

We’ll know it’s our shepherd’s voice when it calls us to live in love with one another; to forgive, to respect and to serve each other, and to celebrate the triumph of love over hate, and the victory of life lived more abundantly over the culture of consumption and materialism. 


Listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd to call you by name, and to lead you where he would have you go. He will not lead you into temptation, and only occasionally, only when necessary into Penn Station. Hear his voice, heed his call. And he will lead you to green pastures beside still waters that will restore your soul. And into the risen life in him, a life more abundant than you can even imagine. +Amen. 
© The Rev. Mark R. Collins



© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

Saturday, May 3, 2014

The Numinous Presence of the Living God: a sermon for Year A, Easter 3

Preached on Sunday, May 4, 2014 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The Scripture readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here. 

Philosophers, sociologists, psychologists and theologians have talked about and written about, and sometimes even experienced, events which they have described as ‘numinous.’ The numinous. The etymology of the word itself is interesting and gives us a clue to its meaning... Its Latin root numen, is taken from the verb nuere, which means to nod. In Greco-Roman times, a devotee would seek the guidance of a god by offering a prayer or incantation at the shrine of that god, and waiting to see if perhaps the statue of the god might be seen or suspected to nod as an indication of the path to take.

We’ve come to use the term numinous to mean an encounter with the divine, or
the supernatural. The American psychologist William James, author of Varieties of Religious Experience, referred to the numinous as “a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of … something there.” The Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung described numinous experiences as inexpressible, mysterious, sometimes terrifying -- and always pertaining, in some way, to the divine. Jung believed that our main task in this life was to discover and fulfill our individual potential. This individuation as he called it, is what lies at the mystical heart of all religions. The task of life, according to Jung, is to meet the self and thereby to meet the Divine.

You can find an account of a numinous experience in the Southern writer Flannery O’Connor’s short story Revelation. In it, an arrogant, judgmental, faultfinding woman named Ruby Turpin, has a vision, a numinous experience that is one of those that proves quite unsettling. After a day during which Ruby finds lots of confirmation that she and her class are so much more superior to the unwashed and uneducated poor of her town, which encompasses all the black folk, of course, and the white trash, as she calls them, Ruby gets her comeuppance. At sunset she witnesses a vision in which all those she absolutely despises and knows herself to be far superior to -- the poor, the simple folk, all black folks -- are being led gloriously into heaven across a crimson highway through a lavender light. And at the very last of this parade of the saints she sees her peers, in last place, and stripped of what they consider to be their virtues; on an equal plain with, even behind, all the unwashed humanity she detests. Ruby’s rather vacuous virtues -- race, class, social prowess, proper behavior -- are not reckoned to her as righteousness as she supposes, but in fact they are worthless in the face of God’s freely offered, freely given salvation.

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Our gospel reading this week contains another account of a numinous experience. Two people, called ‘disciples’ by the evangelist Luke, are journeying from Jerusalem after the astonishing few days of the Passover that they’ve just experienced. A fellow traveler joins them, and asks them what they are discussing. They give an almost perfect prĂ©cis of the highlights of the passion, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. And then they share their disappointment. They had hoped that this Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel. Then their fellow traveler challenges them, and recounts for them how, all that they have been told about their God has led to this very outcome. That, in fact, beginning with Moses, the words of Scripture and prophesy can be interpreted in such a way as to lead to just this result: not a great king, but a suffering, seemingly vanquished servant is, in fact, the messiah.


Then as the traveler is about to continue on his journey, the two disciples invite him to tarry a while with them -- and to share a meal. This strange and challenging traveler is invited in. Then as one does at table, the traveler takes bread, blesses and breaks it. Nothing special here; much as you do at the beginning of a meal. But this simple act proves both reminiscent and prescient. Because in that moment, that numinous moment, they experience the divine. It is Jesus that is with them, in the breaking of the bread, and since the beginning of their journey.

And notice; they come to this unutterably mysterious and joyous moment, only after having traveled the road, taken the journey to a place called Emmaus. They have been through an ordeal in Jerusalem. They have hoped and then lost that hope. Yet in the face of disappointment and loss, they remained open, open to a presence of a fellow traveler, welcoming to such a one, inviting him in to partake of a bit of simple roadside hospitality. Though let down, perhaps even heartbroken, yet still open to the possibilities inherent in every journey, any journey, the numinous breaks in upon them. And they come face to face with the glory of God in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In an instant, they find they are in the presence of none other than the living God.


And that is why, week after week, Sunday after Sunday, we revisit Emmaus. We join around this table just as they did. And we break the break just as they did. And we put ourselves in the presence of the living God, once again. Because here, God is present in our coming together and breaking bread.

Now not every Eucharist will prove to be as numinous as that supper at Emmaus. But the potential for that kind of experience is ever present, always possible; in this sacred rite, and, I believe, in every walk of life. The numinous experience of the living God is imminent in all of creation. Putting ourselves in the right place, in the right frame of mind, to avail ourselves of, to really welcome, the numinous experience of the living God is… well it takes work. Learning to set aside the really vacuous virtues that we, like Ruby Turpin, can be so proud of. The cultivation of a willingness to continue on our journeys after disappointment, even despair. The spiritual maturity to allow that the messiah we thought we were promised is not quite the messiah we are given. All these learnings and growings are part of what ready us to experience the numinous. The willingness to be wounded, to take the risks that will in some cases lead to hurt. It takes some of that too.


So, start out on the road to Emmaus. Begin your journey. Welcome those whom God might send to travel with you. Share your dreams and your disappointments with those who journey alongside you. Listen to what they might say, to how they might interpret your shared experiences. Listen to what they have to say about what you think you might already know. Be hospitable on the way. Give and accept the gift of time with one another, the gift of being in one another’s presence; for such presences are really the most valuable things we have to share with one another. 

And when it’s time to refresh and renew yourselves, break bread together. Share a meal, a glass of wine, a celebration, some pizza and beer and birthday cake after a long day of MayFair, for instance. And see what happens. And don’t be surprised if in the most mundane of moments, in the simplest act of sharing, the numinous, mysterious, surprising, fleeting, frightening, shattering presence of the living God doesn’t find you, doesn’t break into your life, and change it forever.  +Amen.



© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

Monday, March 10, 2014

Thy Kingdom Come: a sermon for Year A, Lent 1

Preached on Sunday, March 9th at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The Scripture readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

In our Advent and Christmastide Book Group, we read John Dominick Crossan’s The Greatest Prayer about the Lord’s Prayer and its origins, its sources and its meanings. If you read the inside cover of your service leaflet this morning, you’ll see that we’re using the Lukan version of the Lord’s Prayer during Lent this year, in part, due to what we learned in our book group.

In the book Crossan, deals extensively with the scene we see unfolding in our gospel reading this morning. It is, after all, the first Sunday in Lent, and our focus for these next 40 some days will be on sin and temptation and repentance. It makes sense, then, that as we begin to look at our own sinfulness and need for repentance, we look to the example Jesus sets for us in dealing with temptation.

Here’s a hint, he handles it a lot better than we can ever hope to.

Jesus is led into the wilderness by the Spirit. This journey occurs immediately following Jesus’s baptism in Matthew’s account. It’s as if Matthew is saying that trial and temptation are to be part of the life of faith for baptized Christians. It seems as if, for Matthew at least, this is part of the proving of our faith, its tempering and strengthening.



Jesus journeys in the wilderness for 40 days fasting, at the end of which he is famished. Sure enough, Satan appears and tempts Jesus to turn the stones into loaves of bread. Crossan points out that both stones and loaves are plural. Why so many loaves for just one person? A single loaf would be bread enough and then some for one man. It was an expectation in the time of Jesus that upon the dawn of the messianic age, that God would miraculously provide food for everyone, through the offices of the Messiah. As in the desert of Sinai, all Israel would be fed with bread from heaven.

And it’s worth noting the parallels between the trials of Jesus and Israel in the wilderness. 40 days for Jesus, 40 years for Israel. Both become hungry on the journey, so hungry, in fact that the faith of the nation of Israel wavered until God delivered the manna from heaven. Not so Jesus’s faith. He needs no miracle to reinforce it. And he notes, quoting for Deuteronomy, that it is God’s Word that feeds us, that is essential for our lives, not bread alone.
From this private temptation, we move to a very public one. Satan tells Jesus to throw himself from the pinnacle of the Temple, because, it is written, God’s angels will rescue him and preserve him. But Matthew and Jesus both know that the way in which Jesus’s life will unfold is not the way of grandiose demonstrations of his authority, sure to marvel the whole nation. Nor is it to prove his authority through acts of folly.

Jesus’s way is the way of the cross, of humble suffering, even unto death. Of small miracles that feed not a nation, but a few thousand who have given their ear to an itinerant rabbi and carpenter. Small miracles like the healing of the mother-in-law of his disciple, the raising of Lazarus, the brother of his friends Mary and Martha.

Jesus saves on a personal level, not a national one, or even a global one, as we shall see. He heals by touch, by contact with those who suffer. And though those who witness these interventions are often brought to faith, that’s not the point. Rather, they are caring, loving, person-to-person acts of mercy for those who suffer. Little moments of grace. These are not billboards or ad campaigns or membership drives, they are plates of food for the hungry on Saturday nights, and warm beds for homeless men, and companionship for the lonely. 


Since tempting Jesus with the acclaim of a nation doesn’t seem to work, Satan offers Jesus the whole world. Notice here how there is no dispute over who is, to quote Leonardo DiCaprio, ‘the King of the World’. The kingdoms of the world are in Satan’s gift, his to administer, it seems, and he tempts Jesus with all the power and glory that, in Jesus’s time, was enjoyed by only one earthly person, the Roman emperor. But Jesus refuses it, and sends Satan away.

Following these temptations, Jesus will call his disciples; teach them about the justice of the kingdom of Heaven in Matthew’s extended Sermon on the Mount. Then he will teach them how to pray, telling them to pray that God’s kingdom may come, and God’s will be done on earth, as it already is in heaven.

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In the Lukan version of the Lord’s Prayer that we’re using in our liturgy this Lent, we say, “save us from the time of trial”, rather than “lead us not into temptation.” I must say, I don’t much like the idea of a God who leads us into temptation. But in Matthew’s gospel this morning, that’s exactly what the Spirit of God does to Jesus, leads him into the desert to be tempted. But even so, it is Jesus himself who teaches us to pray that such will not be the case of us, that we will be spared temptation and the time of trial.

But I don’t think that we can. We are in this world and subject to the temptations that this worldly kingdom so readily offers. I took a break from writing this sermon yesterday, to read the NY Times. We’re Weekender subscribers in our house -- that’s the cheapest way to get the online version of the Times, by the way, so we get some of Sunday’s sections a day early. In this Sunday’s Times, there’s a special section with Sherlock Holmes on the cover. And by Sherlock Holmes, I mean, of course, Benedict Cumberbatch. It’s the semi-annual men’s fashion magazine, and I glanced through it while ‘working on my sermon’. There are articles and ads that feature shirts that cost hundreds of dollars, pants that cost thousands of dollars, and in one feature, a watch that costs more than $50,000. I would imagine if you kitted yourself up for Spring upon the advice of the NY Times you’d need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more. Such are the temptations of the world we live in.

Yesterday, as some of you know, was International Women’s Day. I remember another International Women’s Day 10 years ago, when some colleagues and I were visiting refugee relief programs in Sierra Leone. In a refugee resettlement area near Koidu, Sierra Leone, International Women’s Day was celebrated with a ‘march-past’, a British locution left over from colonial days meaning a parade. The devastating regional war fomented by Liberian despot Charles Taylor had not long been ended, and there was a great effort afoot to rebuild civil society.

(Folks, I want to give you a bit of warning... This next part is a bit hard to hear.)

As is often the case in wars -- in every time and place, not just recently in Africa -- gender-based violence exploded during the conflict. The march-past on this International Women’s Day was focused on combating gender-based violence.


The lead banner urged both men and women to work together to create a peaceful society in Sierra Leone that revoked the license to rape, abuse, and exploit that had been granted, it seemed, during the days of chaos and violence just ended.

In such an atmosphere, young women, girls really, often became pregnant against their will at too young an age to successfully bear their infants. And in such a place, they had no other choice than to carry these pregnancies to term. Often these girls were injured in childbirth. The injury they were most prone to was a tear in the barrier between the utero and urinary tracts, resulting in great pain, and an inability to control their bladders. Other women, who had been particularly brutally raped during the conflict suffered similar injuries, with the same painful result.

If you suffer from such a condition, and you live in a one-room or two-room mud hut with an extended family, it’s not long before you are shunned and expelled. I’m proud to say that the organization I worked for then, the International Rescue Committee, undertook a program to help these women. A minor surgery costing around $150, including transportation to a hospital in the capital Freetown, solved the problem, and allowed these women to live completely normal lives without further urinary, sexual or reproductive issues. It was good work to be engaged in.

The reason this particular part of Sierra Leone had been a target of Taylor and others is because it is rich in diamonds. The kind of diamonds you might find in a $50,000 watch. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the cost of the watch in the Times fashion section today could have provided the surgery I described for more than 300 women, and there were many more than 300 in need of it.

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The temptations of this world are myriad. And as I warned you, Jesus does a better job at resisting them than do you or me. I most certainly am guilty of enjoying more than my fair share of bread, and well, just about any carb. And who among us wouldn’t mind the angels rescuing us from our follies. Some of us might even aspire to the kind of power and glory that comes to emperors and rulers.

But we follow Jesus. And Jesus rejects the temptations of this world. Jesus rejects the kingdoms of the world. He rejects the throne of an emperor for the cross of a savior. He rejects the kingdom of $50,000 watches and women and girls as the spoils of war; probably because he understands the ways in which the two are linked.

We can’t hope to be as resistant to worldly temptations as Jesus is, but we can try. We might try to carry out a simple kindness or two, or seize an opportunity to practice small mercies and person-to-person graces, in imitation of him. Or we might have contact with, or just give an ear, to the voices of those who suffer. We won’t save the world as Jesus did; we probably won’t even change it. But perhaps those who see our good works might give glory to our Father in heaven. Perhaps someone somewhere might come to faith or a deeper faith through our imitation of Christ, pale as it must be. Perhaps that someone might even be ourselves.

Thy Kingdom come, they will be done. +Amen.