I One With Thee: a sermon for Year B, Proper 15

Preached on Sunday, August 19, 2012 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Scripture readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here. 

I can remember very well the very first Eucharist I ever attended. For the sixth grade, I was transferred from public school to St. John’s, a Roman Catholic parochial grade school. The new school was very strange. I had to wear a uniform, which included at tie, rather than my usual blue jeans and Ked’s tennis shoes. And we went to church at school. A lot. 

At St. John’s, every student went to mass twice a week. On Mondays, the 8th and 1st grades went, on Tuesdays, the 7th and 2nd grades, on Wednesdays the 6th and 3rd grades, on Thursdays, the 5th and 4th grades, and on Fridays, all eight grades attended en masse.

Though Communion services in my Southern Baptist church were held periodically throughout the year, usually on Sunday nights, I had never attended one. Probably because, as far as my family was concerned, Sunday night was for the Wonderful World of Disney and Bonanza, not more church.

On that first Wednesday at St. John’s, Father St. Charles invited us up to surround the altar during the Eucharistic prayer. There was another non-catholic student who had entered the school that year (that’s what they called us, ‘non-catholic’, not Baptists or Methodists and never, ever Protestants); she was a little girl in the third grade, a Baptist like me, whose name I can’t remember, but whose face I can still plainly see in my mind’s eye. She had red hair, and was going to be spending some time in the orthodontist’s chair in the not too distant future. I knew she was a flummoxed as I was as we gathered around the freestanding altar as Father Saint Charles began the prayer of consecration.

Before much was said, I noticed that the little red haired girl had moved up to the corner of the altar on which a candle burned – and she was trying to blow it out. Like me and the rest of our co-religionists, candles were things that appeared on birthday cakes, not altars, never altars. So, in her unsophisticated, third-grade way, she thought she ought to blow it out, I guess. Being a much more sophisticated sixth grader, I knew this was unwise. Though I didn’t, at that age, know what an inquisition was, I think I sensed what these Roman Catholics were capable of. I knew that if that little red haired girl blew out the altar candle, it was not going to be good for the ‘non-catholics’ at St. John’s, myself included. I caught her eye, and gave her a stern look and a shake of my head and mouthed the words, “Quit it!” She screwed up her mouth in frustration, but she yielded to her older, wiser fellow non-catholic’s will and stopped blowing at the candle.

I could then concentrate on what was going on on the altar. There was a gold cup and a gold plate with small white wafers on it. The gold of the vessels seemed to match the thick gold band on Father Saint Charles hairy knuckle, which I wondered about since I knew he wasn’t married, couldn’t be married like Brother Owens, my Baptist preacher, was. Father Saint Charles lifted the plate of wafers at one point, and bells rang, and he lifted the cup at another point, and the bells rang again. The words he spoke were English by this point, but they were a rather elevated, fancier English than the plainer, purposely less elevated language that Brother Owens used when he preached. “Do this for the remembrance of me…” Bells and candles and gold plates and white wafers… These were all very strange and interesting and impressive to my sixth grade self.

The rite of Holy Eucharist, Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper arises in the earliest days of Christianity. In some of the earliest Christian literature, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, contains a description of the last Passover meal, and the special emphasis it was given by Jesus. Matthew, Mark and Luke all narrate this scene using the almost identical language and terms. “This is my body… this is my blood… take and eat… do this for the remembrance of me…”

Interestingly, John’s gospel contains no Last Supper. What it does contain, in typical Johannine style, is a discourse. John’s chapter 6, from which our gospel reading is taken this morning, is an extended discourse on Jesus as the true son of God, as the Word made flesh who comes to feed us with his body and blood, so that we might join him in eternal life. After the feeding of the multitudes which begins the chapter, a series of discussions ensues about bread from heaven, about Jesus’s coming into the world, and about his body and blood, and its meaning for those who eat and drink of it. 

For those of us who participate in the Eucharist every Sunday, the basic idea behind it has become rather ordinary. But if you were me in the sixth grade, or the Galilean crowd listening to Jesus in the first century, they would have been maybe exciting and alluring, but also disturbing, unsettling and certainly unprecedented. And as we will see in our gospel reading next week, for some, they proved unbelievable. 

Though John’s gospel contains no Last Supper, no first Eucharist, this sixth chapter of John, takes the same shape and form as our Sunday Eucharist.  Jesus tells us to hear his declarations and to believe in him, then he tells us to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood. Similarly, this morning, we will hear the word of God in our Scripture readings, we will declare our belief in the recitation of the ancient creed, we will bless wine and break bread, and share it with one another. 

Throughout John’s Gospel, Jesus makes his relationship to the Father quite clear, quite explicit. Jesus is the one sent from the Father; he is the bread come down from heaven. Jesus makes clear his relationship to us in our gospel passage this morning. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me… so whoever eats me will live because of me.” (6:56-57)

The word menein in Greek, which we translate here as "abides" appears dozens of times in the John’s gospel, more than in any of the other gospels. And it indicates a central point of John’s gospel. There is a mutual indwelling between Jesus and the Father, and that indwelling is shared by Jesus with his disciples, with all who eat of his body and drink of his blood. This is the Word made flesh becoming one with all flesh, all who eat and drink, all who share the body and blood. We are what we eat, and what we eat is the body of Christ himself. Nowhere in all of Scripture is the relationship between God and the children of God, the creator and the creation, the Son of God and those who follow him, described with greater intimacy.

A few years back, a popular historian wrote a book about medieval history called A World Lit Only By Fire. The title alone makes one of the book’s main points. The world was a treacherous place, dangerous, and when night descended, even more dangerous. The nighttime was filled with dangerous animals, pitfalls, uncertainty, destruction, death, annihilation. It was out of this world that the prescriptions for altar candles arose. Two candles on the altar to symbolize that something special takes place here, something that is certain, something that is sacred, something that preserves and restores life, something worth seeing, something worth hallowing. The candles burn to indicate that here is sustenance for this treacherous life, sustenance even unto the life eternal, the body and blood of Christ himself. Offered to us so that we might ever abide in him and he in us, not only now, but forever.

So, come to the altar of God, draw near. And whatever you do, don’t blow out the candles! 

Rather, taste and see that the Lord is good. And "make a melody to the Lord in your hearts." (Eph 5:19) Sing again in your heart the words of our sequence hymn: “I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord; thou my great Father; thine own may I be; thou in me dwelling, and I one with thee…” (#488, The Hymnal 1982).

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

Living Bread: a sermon for Year B, Proper 14

Preached on Sunday, August 12, 2012 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The Scripture readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

It’s a bad few weeks for those on the Atkins Diet. Because in these past weeks, and for a few more, Jesus is going to be talking to us about bread. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried one of those low carb, no-bread-or-pasta diets like the Atkins Diet. But if you have, you know how ubiquitous bread really is. And even more so for us here in New York, where there are bakeries and cupcake shops everywhere. Fairway has its aromatic bread counter right in the heart of the store. You can’t avoid it. And then here in New York too, we have so many kinds of bread, there are bagels and bialys, naan, pita, croissants, brioche, muffins, tortillas, challah, babka, marble rye… You can even find my personal favorite, good ole homestyle cornbread, if you know where to look.

Bread is everywhere here in New York. And not just here. For everyone everywhere, bread plays some part in the culinary culture. Bread is a constant across countries and cuisines. Bread is ubiquitous. Bread is banal. And that banality is a part of the point that Jesus is making in today’s gospel from John.

We’re still in the middle of the ‘new Exodus’ metaphor that we spoke about a few weeks ago. Jesus is speaking to the people using images and words and ideas that they were familiar with, that we are familiar with, from the story of the redemption of Israel out of slavery in Egypt  and the preservation of the people of Israel during their desert sojourn.

Jesus says to the people. “I am…” and there’s that phrase again, ego eimi, ‘I am’ in Greek, the very name of God, revealed to Moses on Sinai. “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” The crowd Jesus is speaking to know about bread coming from heaven because they know their history and their Scripture. The bread that came down from heaven was the manna that God provided to feed the Israelites in the wilderness during the Exodus.

Leaving aside the ‘bread’ part of Jesus’s declaration for a moment, the people seize upon the fact that he has claimed to be ‘from heaven.’ They say, ‘Isn’t this Jesus, Mary and Joseph’s son. He’s not from heaven, he’s from Nazareth. This is the same ‘Joshua from the Block’ that we’ve always known, isn’t it?’ Just as the dietary staple he evokes, to the people, Jesus is as plain and ordinary, just as banal as brown bread. 

But not only is Jesus from the Father, as was that manna in the wilderness, he is even more.  For those who ate the manna from heaven died, but the bread Jesus is offering is living bread, bread that does more than alleviate hunger. Jesus is offering living bread that brings with it eternal life.

‘Living bread’ is a bit of an oxymoron here. In the community that Jesus was addressing, how bread was made, where it comes from, would have been part of almost everyone’s daily experience. They didn’t have Magnolia Bakery or Fairway’s bread counter in Galilee. Everyone knew that bread is far from living. It is made of wheat that is cut down, ‘killed’ as it were, then pulverized by a laborious process of grinding it down. Mixed with other ingredients it is baked, on hot stones as the angel does for Elijah in our first reading this morning, or baked in a scorchingly hot oven. Nothing lives through that process. Piping hot bread from the oven may be delicious, and it may provide us with the food we need to go on living, but it is not itself ‘living bread.’

But Jesus is not ordinary bread, is he? And the life he is offering is not the ordinary earthly life of survival that the Israelites were blessed with in the desert. Jesus is a new bread, a living bread, he is offering his own life, his own flesh, and through that fragrant offering and sacrifice (as our second reading from Ephesians calls it), we are being offered eternal life.

Someone as unexceptional as Mary and Joe’s kid from up the block. Something as banal as bread. Offered to the likes of you and me. Nobody special, nothing out of the ordinary…

And yet quite extraordinary when we reflect upon it. 

Extraordinary that we – sinners most of us, flawed, fallible human flesh – should be sealed with the Holy Spirit of God in baptism and marked for the day of redemption. Just home folks like you and me should be called children of God the Father and drawn to his son, Jesus, fed upon with his very flesh and promised that we will be raised up by the Son of God on the last day.

Not so banal at all, is it? 

Friends, I declare to you this morning, such is the love that God bears for you, such is the banquet that your God has prepared for you, such is your destiny: to be loved and fed by the living bread, and to raised by him on the last day. 

The Scripture scholars say many things about the Gospel of John, but most of them agree, that the essential message of John is this: The Eternal Word that is God was made flesh and dwelt among us. And that flesh becomes for us living bread that like the manna from heaven, is bread from heaven for us, which saves us and preserves us unto eternal life. 

So, come to the table of the Lord, and feed upon the God who loves you, who offers his flesh as food for you. Bring your tattered yet still loving hearts, bring your doubts straining towards belief, bring your hunger for consolation and your concern for those who are hungry, and be fed by the God who loves you.

For the God who created us, the God we worship has come down from heaven, and joined us in the flesh as Jesus, our brother. And the Son of God himself has offered himself as sacrifice and sustenance for us. He has given himself to us as bread, and the bread that he gives for the life of the world is his flesh. So come, eat of his flesh, drink of his blood, taste and see that the Lord is good -- and happy, so happy are we who are called by God to the feast of living bread. +Amen.

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

Expectation and Revelation: a sermon for Year B, Proper 12

Preached on Sunday, July 29, 2012 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

Today for your money, you get not one miracle, but two – and two rather famous ones at that. All four gospels contain the miracle of the feeding of the multitudes, some more than once. (Matthew 14:13-21, Matthew 15:32-39, Mark 6:31-44, Mark 8:1-9, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15) Three of the four gospels contain Jesus walking on the water, and that miracle always occurs just after the feeding of the multitudes. (Matthew 14:22-33, Mark 6:45-52 and John 6:16-21)

The two miracles are closely linked and our new lectionary preserves that link in our gospel reading from John this morning. These miracles are important ones, they have a real meaning and significance for us. They had a very definite significance to the early church, in the first few centuries after Jesus, Christians looked at these miracles and ordered their common life in deference to them.
       
And they had a significance for the people who witnessed them first hand, those very first followers of Jesus who retold these stories until the evangelists wrote them down in the versions that come down to us today, a significance that might be different than our own, but one that we might do well to try and recapture.

The miracle of the feeding of the multitudes is a very important, redolent event in the life of Jesus. As we’ve noted, it appears in all four of the canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and as we have it today in John. Details among the gospel accounts disagree, as we know they often do. And Matthew and Mark each tell not one but two stories of the feeding of large crowds of people on bread and fish.


So the overwhelming importance of the story to the early followers of Jesus and to the evangelists is clear from the many versions they circulated and wrote down. For the early church, this miracle meal has a direct correlation to the Eucharistic meal that became so much a part of their life together as first in houses, then public buildings and then great basilicas they gathered to celebrate the Eucharist, making it the central ritual of our common life.

That ritual has in turn been handed to us, and we will soon share it once more around this altar this Sunday morning. John’s version of the story emphasizes the connection to the Eucharist for in his version, it is Jesus who feeds the crowds himself, not his disciples.

One liturgical scholar has noted that our Sunday morning celebrations might ought to include fish along with our bread and wine. Now fish first thing on a Sunday morning is not everyone’s cup of tea. But then again, ‘cup of tea’ reminds me of our British friends who have been known to enjoy kippers with a cup of tea of a morning. Or here on the Upper West Side of Manhattan we might could do a bit of lox from Zabar’s on a bagel with a schmear… Actually this isn’t sounding too bad at all, come to think of it.

But the point is made, the miraculous meal – food that is blessed, broken and shared with the people – is a clear prefiguration of the meal at the last supper, the meal we commemorate in the Eucharist. For us today, we often see this story as a reminder that, as followers of Jesus, we are to be mindful of the hunger around us and around the world, and we are to seek to feed the hungry. This is especially redolent when we read this story in the other gospels where Jesus explicitly commands the disciples to feed the crowds.

But for those who were there, those who were among the first to share the stories that John’s would gather into his gospel, another correlation, another significance would have been apparent.

John notes that the timing of this miracle is near to the time of the annual Passover, the commemoration of the  deliverance from slavery of the people of Israel. And those people of God ate of divine food too. They were fed, miraculously, by manna in the desert, by bread from heaven itself.

And the most integral part of the story of the Exodus, an event that is mentioned more than 80 times in the Bible, is the delivery of the people of Israel at the Red Sea. Not surprising then that evangelists are prone to link these two miracles, the feeding of the many, the walking on the water. For they are, taken together, a mini-Exodus. Proof that the God of Israel, who feeds the people, and delivers them over and through the treacherous waters, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses, is somehow present in the person of Jesus.

 When the terrified disciples out on the sea of Galilee see Jesus walking across the waters, he assures them, “It is I…” Ego eimi in Greek, the same response Moses was given on Mt. Sinai. In addition to Exodus, the book of Job and Genesis talk of God as one who walks upon the water, one who makes a path in the sea. Most often when we hear the story of walking on water, we look upon it as a story of comfort and a reassurance that though the seas of our lives can be stormy, and the world around us can make us feel cast adrift, if not in bodily danger, Jesus is there, calming the seas, undeterred by the waves.


But for those first hearing and reading these stories, Jesus would be seen as one who might be a mighty prophet like Moses, or even a warrior king like David. If this Jesus really was descended from the God of the Exodus    then surely he had come to deliver his people once again from captivity to the Romans, just as their ancestors had been delivered from bondage in Egypt.

But Jesus proved to be a different kind of prophet, and a different kind of kingand a different kind of savior of his people. Jesus was indeed the one to come, a messiah. But a messiah that triumphed in ways that were unexpected, and maybe not entirely to the liking of those who so desperately awaited his coming, that seems to have been the case then and it often seems to be the case now. God just doesn’t always do what we expect or wish for.

+++++++++++++++++++

We often wonder why there is hunger and want in the world, in our own neighborhood. Why the sea and storms can be so devastating? Why doesn’t God cure these ills, prevent these disasters?

The God of our expectations, the God of our desires, is not the God we have.

We don’t have a God that fills every belly. Rather, we have a God that feeds us with spiritual food, miracle food, that sustains us and, at the same time, makes us mindful of the needs of those who are, like us, members of the very Body of Christ.

We have a God whose body and blood fills us and steels us for the work of feeding those in need. We don’t have a God that decrees an end to all storms, rather we have a God that quiets the storms that come, and assures us that we can weather them, with the sustaining help of faith. You know, the story of Jesus walking on the water is not a miracle story per se. The theologians call this sort of occurrence a theophany, a revelation of God.


In the Bible, theophanies are often heralded by the assurance, “Be not afraid” and the divine moniker, “I AM.”

+++++++++++++++

I’ve known you all for four years now. I’ve come to know many of your stories and your struggles. I’ve shared some of them with you. I know that, like the disciples in the boat out on the Sea of Galilee, you too know that when the seas are rough, and when you’re most afraid, that is indeed when Jesus is near, is most present in your lives.

Like many, many generations of faithful people, you know that the God we have does not prevent the vicissitudes of life, but rather sustains us for them, helps us weather them, feeds us with food for the journeys we travel and the battles we fight.

So you have taught me to believe, during this time I have shared with you. Like those disciples in the boat, those people fed on the hillside, we share with one another the story of how God is revealed to us, in times of trouble and in the times when God sustains us with just the strength we need, just the right nourishment for the task put before us. We do not expect an end to the world’s troubles, rather it has been revealed to us that we are to be supported and sustained as we seek to address the world’s troubles.

We do not expect calm seas, rather we have been shown that we can steer through them, with the faith and assurance of God’s son always nearby. So much better then, to have the God of revelation rather than the God of our expectation.

Not a magic God that takes away the hunger and fear and trouble of the world. But a caring God that feeds us, sustains us, companions us through the strife. 

So wonderful to share such a glorious God in the troubles and struggles we share with one another.

So joyful to share this living God on a Sunday morning,in a meal of bread and wine around this altar, and maybe with a little lox at Coffee Hour among God’s good people. 

So glorious to be able to proclaim the glory of God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God, in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever.  Amen+

 © The Rev. Mark R. Collins

The Losing Side: a sermon for Year B, Proper 10

Preached on Sunday, July 15, 2012 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

Today’s gospel tells a story that is familiar to many of us. The story is all about a dance by the daughter of Herodias – her name never appears in the gospels, but the Jewish historian Josephus tells us she was known as Salomé, ironically, her name is derived from the Hebrew word for peace, Shalom.

Salomé has been the subject of many works of art – paintings, poems, operas, plays and films. Everyone from Theda Bara to Rita Hayworth has played her. More recently, she has appeared on television. Just a few weeks ago, Salome made an appearance on HBO’s supernatural vampire drama True Blood. That’s right, the dancing daughter of Herodias is, in this version, a 2,000 year-old vampire. When she is questioned about her past, particularly the Biblical stories about her, vampire Salomé says, "They made me a convenient villian, a symbol for dangerous female sexuality. But I was just a girl – with a severely dysfunctional family." 

To say the least.

But let’s leave behind the more salacious aspects of our gospel reading today, and talk instead about why Mark may have included this story at this point in his gospel and what Mark may be trying to communicate to us with this story.

A few weeks ago, our gospel reading from Mark featured a textual technique called intercalation. In the reading that included the healings of Jairus’s daughter and the woman with a hemorrhage, we noted how Mark began the story of Jairus, then interrupted it with the story of the woman with the hemorrhage, before concluding the story of Jairus. Mark does this when he wants us to read two stories together, when he wants one story to inform our hearing of the other story, when the two stories together make a point that is best understood not from the viewpoint of one or the other, but from a point of view somewhere within the tension between the two stories.

In Mark’s gospel, we hear that John the Baptist has been arrested in chapter 1, five chapters and some time before the events in today’s reading. And in Mark’s chronology, it is after that arrest that Jesus begins his public ministry. One scholar looks at Mark’s account and says that John the Baptist is Jesus’s ‘mentor’; an interesting way of describing their relationship. Jesus does, in a sense, take over from John after John is arrested by Herod, and he continues John’s homiletical emphasis on repentance. What we can clearly see in Mark’s treatment of John and Jesus is that they are inextricably linked. John initiates Jesus into ministry with baptism, and the end of John’s public ministry is the beginning of Jesus’s. 

Remember our gospel last week; we have been moving fairly sequentially through Mark’s gospel these last few Sundays. Remember that Jesus has been preaching and healing and then comes to Nazareth, where the doubts of the hometown crowd diminishes his power. He then sends the disciples out to heal and preach the gospel. Soon the disciples will return from their journeys to rejoin Jesus. But between the sending of the disciples and their return, Mark intercalates – inserts – the culmination of John the Baptist’s story. So we must hear this story of the demise of John in the context of the sending out of the disciples on mission.

And the story is, in brief, John has preached renewal and repentance to the people throughout Galilee. Like many a prophet before him, he has called for a return to righteousness. And like many a prophet before him, Nathan and King David & Queen Bathsheba, Elijah and King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, like Amos and King Jeroboam from our first reading this morning, John criticizes King Herod Antipas and Queen Herodias, for transgressing the laws of Israel. 

Prophets and their kings and queens often have hostile relationships in the Old Testament. Sometimes they resolve their differences, and the words of the prophets are honored. Other times, the enmity remains. Notice in our reading today the king enjoys hearing John’s preaching, but he doesn’t want anyone else hearing it, so he keeps John in prison. When he is more or less tricked into it, he has John killed, not without some regret.

So, in our gospel reading today we have a prophet who preaches truth to power in the most direct, irrevocable way – a prophet who then is put to death by that same power. 

Remind you of anyone? Of course it does. John’s demise is a prefiguration of the trial and death of Jesus. 

Imagine reading the gospel of Mark for the first time, having never heard of Jesus or John or any of the familiar stories we know so well. Mark begins with John preaching and baptizing the people, including Jesus. Then John is arrested, and Jesus begins his preaching and healing. Then Jesus sends others out to preach in his name, and to heal under his authority. Then John is put to death by the powers-that-be, when his preaching hits too close to home, and threatens the authority that these powers-that-be claim for themselves. Imagine reading all this for the first time, up to our passage from Mark’s gospel today. 

In such a case, what would you expect for the ‘main character’ of Mark’s gospel, Jesus of Nazareth? What might a first-time reader predict would befall another prophet who like John, takes on the more powerful powers-that-be? Yes, John’s execution is a little Calvary, and his fate prepares us for the fate that will befall Jesus. 

But let’s also notice the intercalation of this story into the sending forth and the return of the disciples. Or as one colleague of mine describes it, they begin as disciples, but are turned into apostles; for in sending his followers, his disciples into the world to preach peace and to heal the wounded, Christ makes them apostles, from the Greek apostolos, one who is sent out. Many of these apostles will continue going out to preach the good news and very many of them would meet the same fate as John and Jesus.

So, what do you think that means for you and me?

If we choose to heed God’s word, to go out into the world as apostles, to heal the sick, to comfort the lonely, to seek justice for the oppressed, to feed the hungry – when we do that, as God calls us to do, can we expect an easy go of it? Can we expect the unjust and powerful to heed our testimony, and to fall in line behind us? Can we expect approbation and accolades from those whose iniquities and injustices we protest? 

The 20^th century Anglican theologian C. S. Lewis once said, “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”

Our faith can be a comfort, that is true, and it can be a consolation in times of trouble. But while a comfort, it can also make us quite uncomfortable. It makes us question ourselves and our world. It causes us to look deeply into our behavior toward each other, especially our behavior towards those in need, those who suffer, who hunger and thirst. Our faith can make us all too mindful of our manifold sins and wickedness, as the old Prayer Book used to put it, and it can move us to do things like repent and make amends for our wrongs.

And there are things our faith does not do for us. It doesn’t spare us pain, though our faith can help us contextualize our pain, can help us to redeem it. Our faith doesn’t exclude us from loss, though it can be a consolation and comfort in times of loss.

It’s unfortunate that the coming into the world of the Incarnate God has become so closely associated with that character from the nursery, Santa Claus. Too bad, I say, because I think we are all too apt to confuse God with Santa. We think if we’re good little boys and girls, God will be like Santa and give us all that we would possibly wish for. But we know this is not the case. We can seek out God’s will for us; we can listen for God’s word in our day-to-day lives. But I don’t think it sounds like reindeer on the rooftop all that often. That’s not God in that tiny sleigh up there with all the goodies.

So, why follow in the footsteps of John and Jesus? Why the risk enmity with the world that they encountered?

We follow Jesus because we believe, not because we believe some good will come to us as a result. We follow Jesus because we long for justice to roll down like waters and peace like a mighty stream, not because we want justice only for ourselves, peace for our own kind alone. We live in the hope of Christ because the hope of Christ lives in us. And it is not a hope to be fulfilled by such worldly, transitory pleasures as praise and fame and wealth and power. It is a hope, that in God’s time, we will no longer need to speak truth to power, but will live in a realm of power that is founded upon truth, and in a place of peace that passes all understanding. 

So, fight the good fight, be God’s apostles to this broken world. Feed the hungry, and ask the powers-that-be why they are hungry in the first place. Fight for justice that extends beyond your own backyard. And be not discouraged when you fall behind or fail. Be not downcast when you find yourself at enmity with the world. Because when you find yourself on the outs, on the losing side against the powers-that-be, that’s when you’ll know; you’re on the right side of God. +Amen.

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

The Promise of Easter: a sermon for Year B, Easter 3

Preached on Sunday, April 22, 2012 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The lectionary readings that this sermon is based on can be found here.

It certainly seems like spring today. There’s no denying it. Our April showers are here, and a good thing; they’re badly needed. The temperatures are rising, the flowers are up and blooming. And the box of summer shorts is down from the top shelf of my closet .

But today, in our gospel reading from Luke, it might seem, not like springtime, not like Easter, but a bit like Halloween. We have in our reading today, as we do during Eastertide, an account of a post-resurrection appearance by Jesus to his disciples. 

Of course, the disciples are quite surprised and shocked to see the recently dead and buried Jesus in their midst. And they have a reaction similar to one we might have. They think they’re seeing a ghost. Our Halloween and horror movie ideas about what ghosts are, what they look and act like are very similar to what people in the first century would have thought. Ghosts are the spirits or the emanations of the dead, our superstitions tell us. They are ethereal, ephemeral, gossamer beings, translucent and transitory. 

But Jesus is quick to disabuse the disciples of this notion. “Look at my hands and feet,” he says, which bear the wounds of his crucifixion. He challenges them, “Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” No, this appearance of Jesus’s is not the stuff of a ghost story, or a campfire tale. 

Jesus makes the point, and it’s worth noting with care, that he is not a spirit, but a resurrected human being. This is a flesh and bone person who has risen from certain death. 

And not just any death, but a shameful one. A public execution at the hands of the Roman overlords of Israel, with the complicity of the religious elite. And the crime he has committed, at least as far as the religious authorities are concerned, is blasphemy, the threat of violence against the sacred Temple at Jerusalem. The marks that Jesus’s body bears can be none other than those of someone executed by crucifixion by the pagan occupiers of Palestine; pierced hands and feet, wounded by the nails driven into them.

There are so many things about crucifixion that would have been unclean and ungodly for first century Jews. The proscriptions in the law against coming in contact with blood, and crucifixion was a bloody, bloody death. The uncleanliness of the corpse. The taboos against nakedness were flagrantly violated by crucifixion, which took place in public, before men and women alike, and in most cases, the naked corpse was left exposed as a warning to others. 

This body that Jesus presents to the disciples is one that has been shamed, one that bears the marks of that shame on its hands and feet. Not some ghostly spirit from a Halloween haunting, but the actual body that has been tried, convicted, whipped, spat upon, ridiculed and executing in the most ignominious of ways. 

Yet this body, this human body steeped in the shame of blasphemy and crucifixion, has been raised from the dead. This human body, this once dead corpse, is among us, among the living, asking for something to eat.

+++++++++++++++++++++ 

Our bodies are made of dust, as Genesis tells us, they are solidly, heavily of this earthly realm. And educated Greco-Romans would have thought that the elemental materials of the earth and our bodies are the antithesis of what one might find in the afterlife, in the spiritual realms of the heavens. Jewish and Greco-Roman beliefs agreed that this fleshly existence must be quite different from whatever might lie in heaven or in the life to come. Surely those realms were places of ethereal spirits and diaphanous gods.

Quite a number of years ago, the singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote, “We are stardust, we are golden… We are billion year old carbon…” Her understanding of our fleshly make-up is informed by our scientific understanding of the universe, and it is not at odds with the early Christian and Greco-Roman understanding. A worldly thing, made of stardust and atoms, and billion year old carbon. Our bodies are small microcosms of the universe in flesh and bone.

And it is just this that is resurrected in Jesus. God has not abandoned the creation, he has not restricted it to a merely worldly existence. God has resurrected the body of Jesus, and we believe, will one day resurrect ours. And in so doing, God has sanctified all of creation. 

On this Earth Day, I remind you that in Genesis, at the end of each day of creation, God looked upon all that had been done and pronounced that it was good. And so, too, with the resurrection. This flesh and blood body of Christ, upon which the shame of the world had been cast, is raised, redeeming all of creation, all that God has pronounced good, along with it. 

We are stardust, we are billion year old carbon, along with the rest of creation. And as our reading this morning from the First Epistle of John promises us, we will one day be like Jesus, resurrected in the flesh. No matter the hardship or the pain or the shame we have experienced. In fact, those things along with our bodies will be redeemed. 

Theologian Lyle Dabney puts it this way: 

(I)n raising our mortal body, God will redeem not just that body, the locus of our existence, but the entirety of our embodied life: the whole of our relationships, our experiences, our encounters, all that makes up our identity. (1)  

I invite you to let that sink in for a bit, think about that this week. Every shameful moment, every wrong turn, every indignity… Broken hearts and limbs... Disappointments, losses, aches and pains both physical and emotional, and spiritual hurts as well, redeemed, renewed, and taken unto the very presence of God; for just so are you loved by God, in all your humanness, all your fleshliness and all your fleshly failings. 

'See what love the Father has given us,' says John. So loved, that you and all that is in you is redeemed and made fit for the kingdom of heaven itself. Such is the implication of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Such is the promise of Easter.  

And when that idea has sunk in a bit, when you’ve had a chance to let the promise of Easter take root in your heart, then I know you’ll want to do as Christ asks us to do; to go forth from this place and proclaim in Christ’s name, that repentance and forgiveness of sins has come to all nations. 

Such is the truth in Christ Jesus. Such is the promise of Easter; forever and ever, world without end. +Amen.

(c) The Rev. Mark R. Collins

[1] D. Lyle Dabney, “’Justified by the Spirit’: Soteriological Reflections on the Resurrection,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 3/1 (2001) 61-62.

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

Preached on Sunday, March 25, 2012 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The lectionary readings that this sermon is based on can be found here. 

Spring is here, the calendar tells us. We seem to be getting a foretaste of our April Showers today, don’t we? But the pear trees on 69th Street are in bloom, and there’s a sense of hope of promise. Lent is drawing to a close and soon we will celebrate the mysteries of Holy Week which culminate in the joy of Easter. 

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 tablets on Mt. Sinai as was the last one. It will not be a covenant of laws recorded on scrolls and policed by priests. 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 him. With his law written on our hearts we will know him and his 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 bring in likely candidates for ministry, and that’s 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 portentous 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 see you.”

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.

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 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 it there? What is God’s will for us? How do we find it? 

Years ago, I once had a nun as a neighbor. Arlene was a Roman Catholic Dominican religious, and she lived down the hall from us in Jersey City. Now, you don’t find most Roman Catholic religious living down the hall from you. 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. 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, classes and grades and approval by the faculty. More psychological testing. more approval by the commission and the canon and the bishop… 

I confessed to Arlene as she petted Molly, “I don’t know how I’m going to handle 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, and now that I know in my heart that I want so badly to be a priest.”

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

Just as Jeremiah said, God’s law, God’s will for us is written there in 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, an even more arduous journey, it can get you through seminary. 

This morning’s beginning 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… +Amen.

(c) The Rev. Mark R. Collins 

'Twas Ever Thus, And Ever Shall Be : a sermon for Year B, Lent 2

Preached on Sunday, March 4, 2012 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary texts this sermon is based on can be found here.

The Letter to the Romans is, like so much of our earliest Christian scriptures, an attempt to settle a squabble. The earliest communities of Christians were libel to get into an argument. The Letters to the Corinthians, this letter to the Romans; they all address issues, conflicts, differences of opinion among the group of people who wanted to follow Christ. Given some of our recent history, we might say, “And ‘twas ever thus...”

The problem at Rome that Paul sought to address in his epistle was, more or less, a problem of identity, a problem of ethnicity and primacy. At Rome, a community of Christians had formed in the early years following Jesus’s resurrection and ascension. Rome, being the cosmopolitan place that it was, boasted a very diverse church. There were gentiles, of course, and given that this was the capital of the Roman Empire, probably many different groups of gentiles from many different places throughout the Empire. And then there were Jewish Christians in the church at Rome as well. Part of the many Jewish communities spread throughout the Roman empire; well known, persecuted at times by some, but often respected and revered for their ancient faith, and strong ethical traditions.

When gentile and Jewish Christians came together, there was often conflict. The Jewish Christians were, well, Jews, of course, just like Jesus was. They knew and understood the whole of salvation history. The covenant established with Abraham, the Exodus out of Egypt, the giving of the law – a law they adhered to in letter and spirit. They remembered the battles for a homeland in Palestine, the captivity in Babylon. They revered the greatness of King David and of his son Solomon. All of this rich, rich history was part of their understanding of themselves and part of their understanding of Jesus, whom they saw as the fulfillment of this history, the long hoped for messiah, the fulfillment of all the law and prophets. 

Gentile Christians followed a different path to the faith. They came from what were seen as pagan cultures. Usually from an official state religion that featured a pantheon of gods, some good, others somewhat notorious, some dedicated to the hunt, others to war, still others to the harvest. From this rather diverse tradition, they had come to believe that there was, in fact, only one God, who was creator of all and God of all. A single, supreme God who had given a son; and in that was something they understood from the tales of their former gods. And this divine Son, who had been borne of a human mother, again, a familiar trope to former pagans, had done something completely new. He had died and risen again, and then ascended to heaven. And through belief in this miracle child of God, one could also be born again, after death, into the life eternal. 

Two such different groups, approaching the same object, drawn to belief in the same God and the same Son of God, but coming at it from such different histories, different points of view... well, we can see how the conflicts might have come about, how competition, even real acrimony might develop.

So Paul writes to the church at Rome to help them come to an understanding of each other. Paul tries to lead the different factions in church at Rome to respect each other’s differences and recognize that there was room for everyone in the salvation Jesus offers. Paul wants the Romans to accept and embrace the diversity they encounter in those drawn to the faith. I have to say it again, “And ‘twas ever thus,” isn’t it? We are still trying to get this particular point of Paul’s...

Paul knew, of course, that the Jewish Christians saw themselves as children of Abraham, so he uses Abraham’s history and identity, to support his argument that the new covenant established by Christ was consistent with the covenant established by God with Abraham. Both covenants were rooted in faith, in belief and in keeping faith with the one God who keeps faith with us. Paul tells the Romans that in addition to the traditional understanding of righteousness that comes through adherence to God’s law, there was a new understanding that wasn’t in the end, so new, but one that fits well with the tradition handed down by Abraham.

Tradition, Scripture, Reason. There’s the Apostle Paul at his most Anglican!

Quite similar to Paul’s problems with the Romans, Jesus is having a problem with Peter in our gospel reading today. Like the Romans, Peter has an understanding of himself and, he thinks, of Jesus. Peter is a faithful Jew, and Jesus, he has just proclaimed in his Great Confession, is the messiah. Jesus of Nazareth, Peter proclaims, is the long predicted, long awaited one to come to Israel.

There were a great many messianic expectations in the air in Jesus’s time. And, as if often the case, the issues and challenges being faced by the people tended to color somewhat the ideas and expectations they had of God and of God’s messiah. The people of Israel were deeply troubled by the Roman occupation, to put it mildly. And they harkened back to a time when they were independent and powerful and their religion was the established religion of the state, rather than Roman paganism. They longed for a return to that power and they craved a leader who would come and reassert their prestige and primacy. They wanted some ‘old time religion’ being orchestrated from the seat of political power. Let me say it yet again, “And ‘twas ever thus.” 

So when Jesus tells his disciples that the Son of Man is to suffer, and be rejected, and die, Peter’s just not having it. That’s not his conception of what the messiah is supposed to be. Peter wants a messiah who is to ascend the seat of power, not suffer. Peter wants a messiah who is to rule and reign, not be rejected. Peter wants a messiah who is to live gloriously, not die ignominiously.

But Jesus offers another way. Jesus is one who has come to serve and to suffer, not to reign supreme. Jesus has come not to escape death, but to succumb to it, as we must do, but also to transcend death, and to mark the way toward an eternal life that death itself cannot kill.

To the Romans, and to the disciples, Jesus and his apostle Paul make clear; there is another way. With God, there is another way. That way is a way of inclusion, a way of harmony, a challenge to come together in Christ, for Christ, by way of a shared faith, with those we might rather reject, those who might reject us. 

With God, there is another way. And it is not the way of nations and states, and power and prestige, wealth and well-being. Such things are ephemeral, they pass away as they must. But God’s way is eternal. God’s way is the way of life. And not a life that escapes death, but one that transcends and transforms even death itself.

God’s way is the way of the cross. Rather than take up the honors this world offers, we are to take up the cross. Rather than to ascend the seat of power, we are to serve the powerless. Rather than to live gloriously, we are to give glory to God, and give our lives in God’s service and to gain lives eternal through the grace of God.

Yesterday, our own Sarah Kooperkamp, was ordained to the transitional diaconate, a step on the road to her eventually becoming a priest. Some of you were there at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine yesterday and you heard our Assisting Bishop Bruce Caldwell preach an excellent sermon. Bishop Caldwell told of being in Belfast in the north of Ireland during some of the worst of The Troubles. Tensions were so high in Belfast at the time, a wall had been erected between the Roman Catholic and Protestant sections of the town, in an attempt to keep the peace. Well, some Christian peace activists decided to try another way. The got someone to open a door in the wall that had been welded shut. Taking up the cross of Christ, they processed through that door in the wall, and joined the people on the other side in a prayer for peace.

That, my friends, is taking up the cross. That is following Jesus. The way of the world is to build a wall; but the way of Christ, is the way of the cross, and the cross breaches the wall. The cross transcends it; and we find ourselves taking another way, we find ourselves sharing the peace of Christ with those the world says should be our enemies. 

There is another way with God. A way of unity in diversity, a way of peace, a way that transcends all sorts of walls, even death itself. There is another way with God. 

And ‘twas ever thus... and ever shall be, world without end. +Amen.