By the Book

How the Scripture is alive... in us, and for us.

SJF • Easter 7b • Tobias S Haller BSG

In those days Peter stood up among the believers and said, “Friends, the scripture had to be fulfilled...

A few weeks ago you heard a Scripture reading from the book of Acts about the role of the Bible in the Christian life. I’m don’t know if Fr Farrell preached on that text the Sunday I was away, but I’m sure you recall the story of that Ethiopian who was reading Isaiah on his way back home, but couldn’t, on his own, understand what the prophet meant. The Holy Spirit put Philip in the right place at the right time to open the scripture for him, and to achieve God’s goal for him: his baptism.

Through wise teachers guided by the Holy Spirit, the scripture performs this task, the task for which it is intended and sufficient: to bring us to Christ. We might call this the proactive side of scripture. It is a map that leads us to the goal we seek, a lamp that lights our way through the dark wood of this world, the cookbook with the recipe for the food that nourishes us unto life. The scripture is our guide, our map, and our recipe. But we need to be careful how we do things “by the book” — and the story of Philip and the Ethiopian reveals that this is best not a solitary task. To understand the scriptures best we need each other, just as the Ethiopian needed Philip.

Taking the scripture in one’s own hand without a guide can be dangerous. You may have heard of the man who, whenever he needed to make a decision, would take his floppy Bible off the shelf, close his eyes, let the book fall open and then plant his finger on a passage — which he would then take as God’s guidance for him in his life. One day he was feeling a little low, and so he went through this exercise to see what God wanted him to do. Well, he lighted on — appropriate given our reading from Acts — was, “Judas went and hanged himself.” Somewhat taken aback he decided to try again. This time he landed in the gospel of Luke: “Go and do likewise.”

Doing things by chance — as in casting lots for a new apostle — is best done as a group, not on your own. One of the many things for which I am grateful is Deacon Bill’s ministry here among us in the Bible Study group that continues to meet week by week. It is in that group that the Spirit speaks, and I know those who have taken part in it are as grateful for it as I am. This is the best way to engage with the Scripture, as the Spirit brings light to the group — through each other as the body of believers. God be praised!

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Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles shows us another side of how the church makes use of the scripture, and this is what I’m calling the retroactive or reflective side. This is when we take up the scripture not so much to tell us what to do, but so as to tell us the true meaning of what we have done. In addition to being a map showing us where to go, it’s like one of those maps in a shopping mall, with that crucial highlighted spot, clearly marked, “You are here.” As well as a headlight down the road ahead of us, the Scripture is like a streetlight that illuminates where we are. More than a recipe to prepare a dish, it is also the cookbook we go to to find out what ingredient it was in that dish that someone else prepared for us, that we so enjoyed.

In the time prior to our reading from the passage from Acts, the Apostles have gone through a very difficult time. Their Lord was arrested and they were scattered; Peter denied he knew his Lord — and wept; they heard that Judas suffered a terrible fate; they received the good but hard to believe news that the Lord is risen, and finally they have seen him with their own eyes, and then watched as he was taken up into heaven. And for each of these things they have looked to the Scripture retroactively, reflectively — to understand that the things written there have been fulfilled. The Apostles have been, as our Lord himself gently chided them, slow of heart to believe all that had been promised in God’s word — until it happened. Once it happened, then, retroactively, they were able to take up the Scriptures and recognize those Scriptures that had been speaking to them all along but they didn’t understand. Suddenly the light goes on and they understand where they are.

So where do they go from here? They know where they are now: The number of the Apostles is short by one — yet Jesus had promised that the Apostles would sit on thrones to judge the Twelve Tribes of Israel on the last day. Suddenly Peter recognizes that this too has been addressed prophetically in the Psalms: Judas is the one whose homestead has been abandoned, and to which another will succeed as overseer. So the Apostles conduct the first episcopal election, illuminated by Scriptures that before that day none of them thought had a special meaning for them.

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So it is that the Scripture can not only tell us what to do, but show us the true meaning of what has been done: for us, for the world. It tells us where we are so that we can better be prepared to go where we are sent.

As part of my own discipline of Scripture reading, as part of the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, I have been reading the Scripture, especially the Psalms, every day for about forty years now. You may have noticed in the Book of Common Prayer how the Psalms are divided up with headings that begin with, “First Day: Morning Prayer” and so on through all 150 right up to “Thirtieth Day: Evening Prayer.” That was a way of reading the Psalms over the course of a month that goes back to the very first Book of Common Prayer. Archbishop Cranmer came up with it back in the 1540s. It is far easier way to follow than the complicated systems that the monks had used for many centuries, with the Psalms spread out all over the course of a week. (As Archbishop Cranmer observed, it would take you longer to find what page to use than to read what was there once you found it!) And so he came up with this idea of a monthly system of reading the Psalms, spread out over thirty days. On the first day of each month, and on each day (repeating the 30th in months with 31 days!)

I read the Psalms — together with tens of thousands of others, who have been reading the Psalms this way since 1549.

I commend you do the same, and I think you will find, as I do, that reading these ancient poems — three thousand years old — reading them through, day by day, through the course of a month will illuminate your life as they have illuminated my life. I know by this that the Scripture is a alive: it is constantly renewed in ways I might never understand until some situation or circumstance in my life is suddenly illuminated by one of those Psalms.

I will close with a personal example that happened in a particularly striking way. On 9/11, Saint Paul’s Chapel, the Episcopal church that’s just two blocks from the World Trade Center, survived the devastation with minimal damage. It became in the weeks and months following a refuge of hope and restoration. It was a place where food was distributed, and those doing the horrible work down in the pit of destruction would come up for rest and counseling — to help them deal with the horrors they handled literally day by day emerging from the dust and the rubble. The clergy of New York and New Jersey were called upon to assist as counselors.

My first shift at Saint Paul’s was on the morning on the 16th of October, and I decided to wait to read Morning Prayer until I got to the church. As I came up out of subway and headed down the street towards the St Paul’s Chapel, I was shocked. What I had seen on TV had not prepared me. The whole neighborhood was transformed. The smell of damp concrete was in the air, heavy and thick, masking the scent of corruption and chlorine. Everything was dusted with gray powder. There were piles of rubble swept off the sidewalk in the doorways

of still unopened shops. Then looking ahead down the street, just two short blocks away, just behind St Paul’s Chapel, was the twisted wreckage of one of those two proud towers. Only about two stories were left, a stump rising from the rubble at its base; no longer the gleaming silver columns side-by-side, but only a twisted, rusted remnant the color of dried blood. I passed through the gate in the Chapel’s wrought-iron fence, covered with the images of those still missing, still hoped for, though by that point with hope fading as fast as the photographs; the flowers, dying, were taped to the wrought iron of that fence and that gate, the candles flickering in the cool, damp breeze that carried the odor of the dust to which one day all of us will return.

Inside the church it was dark and quiet. People were sleeping in most of the pews, bundled in blankets. They sought a little rest before heading back into the pit for another shift looking for the bodies, and the parts of bodies, of the victims of this horror. I found a quiet spot, and sat down, and took a red prayer book from the rack and opened it to the Psalms appointed for Morning Prayer on the 16th day. And this is what I read:

O God, the heathen have come into your inheritance;
they have profaned your holy temple;
and have made Jerusalem a heap of rubble.

They have given the bodies of your servants
as food for the birds of the air,
and the flesh of your faithful ones
to the beasts of the field.

They have shed their blood like water
on every side of Jerusalem,
and there was no one to bury them.

Were those words written for me that day? Well, of course not; but yes, they were. God spoke to me that morning. These were words I needed to hear and see. Not to make a foolish equivalence of who the “heathen” might be, and who the servants, and what Jerusalem, but to bind me up in solidarity with all the suffering that has ever been suffered upon this warring earth, all the ancient world of wrong and anger and unrighteousness and injustice; the guilty rage and its innocent victims; and to let me know that I was not alone, either in my grief or in my service that I might do that day, or any other day, to comfort the seekers after the dead. The light went on for me to tell me where I was — words from the Psalmist of 3,000 years ago, resounding down the halls of time into my present through my past, to give me hope for the future.

This is what the Scripture can do for us, my friends. It tells us who, and whose we are; it will comfort us in our terrors, and encourage us in our fears, and strengthen us in our weakness — if we will open those pages and let them do their healing work, in the solitude of personal devotion, but even more when we gather in God’s name. The Scripture not only saves but helps us to make sense of a world gone senseless, to show us that love prevails when all else fails, and that God who created and redeemed us will also send us his Holy Spirit to comfort and to guide. Even so, Lord Jesus, send your Spirit to your people — by your word, and as you promised — that they may know you and themselves, and serve you in this life until they come to rest with you for ever in the new Jerusalem above.+

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Withholding the Water

The waters of baptism reach the Gentiles as Peter learns a lesson.

Easter 6b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”

One of the major issues facing the world today involves changes to weather patterns, known collectively as “climate change.” To a large extent this is about water — too much water in some places, where either the rains have increased or the sea level is rising; and too little water in other places, where the drought seems to be unending. So the problem isn’t with water itself, but with where the water is — or isn’t. There has been a good deal of discussion concerning water in the state of California. Much of that state is very dry even in the wettest of seasons, and when there are several years of drought — as has been true for the last four years — the amount of water available can fall far short of what is needed. The snow in the mountains that used to pile up many feet high — and feed the valleys below as it melted — has been measured in inches instead of feet. And so the valley thirsts.

Many in Los Angeles have been upset to have to withhold water from their lawns so that the people growing fruit and nuts in the central valley can water their orchards — and much is made of the fact that it takes a gallon of water to grow a single almond! The problem is that agriculture is a major contributor to the economic health of the whole state of California — and the produce from California is served in the salad bowls of much of the rest of the country — so the effect of this drought will be felt far and wide.

In short, this issue of water is something that touches everyone. Water is essential to life — not just drinking water, without which one cannot survive for more than a few days — but the water that grows the plants that nourish us: water which is with us literally from soup to nuts.

In our reading from Acts this morning, we hear of another life-giving aspect of water — the water of Baptism. And what might seem strange to our ears is the fact that Peter even suggests not baptizing the Gentiles to whom he has been sent in response to a vision from God. Isn’t baptizing the very thing the church is meant to do?

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Well, this is one of the many things about which the leaders of the early church had to be enlightened and instructed bit by bit. It was a lesson they had to learn. As I said a few weeks ago in one of my sermons, God informs and educates the church, through many means, bit by bit, story by story, in poetry and prose, by vision and revelation, and by the experience of the faithful. What we see in our reading from Acts is one step in that process of enlightenment — as baptism is extended to the Gentiles.

As I’ve reminded us in the past, all of us here are Gentiles by birth, and so the idea that there might have been a time when the water of baptism was withheld from us seems odd. This gives me an opportunity to remind us all once again of the essential Jewishness of Jesus and the earliest church. Jesus was a Jew, and so were all of the apostles. And baptism — a ritual by which water is used in a symbolic way as a cleansing from sin — was and is a particularly Jewish ritual. Now, of course, Jews are not the only people in the world who have given a symbolic meaning to washing with water as a way to cleanse from sin. We are reminded of this forcibly every year in Holy Week as the Gentile Pontius Pilate washes his hands as a way of cleansing himself of any responsibility in the death of Jesus. But for Jews of the time of Jesus, this ritual washing was a central part of the observance of the Law of Moses, which spells out numerous circumstances in which washing with water is required, as a means to restore them to the status of being ritually “clean.”

I remember a couple of years ago, there was a TV special about the Dead Sea community that lived outside of Jerusalem — a Jewish community of just before the time of Jesus. And their concern — being in the desert — was to have enough water so that they could carry out the rituals of what is called the mikvah: the cleansing tank where you would walk down steps into a pool of water and then up the steps on the opposite side. The archaeologists have excavated all of the water-works that were used in that ancient and now abandoned city. Water was central to the understanding of their rituals and their laws.

And for many Jews of the time of Jesus, there would be no point in a Gentile doing these exercises of washing — going down the steps into the pool and then up the other side would mean nothing for a Gentile — Gentiles are unclean by nature; you can wash and scrub and rinse and spin-dry, and from a Levitical standpoint a Gentile will be just as unclean after as before. What’s the old saying? “Beauty is skin deep, but ugly goes to the bone!” Well, from the standpoint of the Jews of Jesus’ time, Gentiles were sin, not just skin deep, but right to the bone. So washing them would make no difference. And this way of seeing things would have been as true of Peter as of any other Jewish man of his time.

Except that Jesus had given Peter some of that “information” I referred to — a lesson, — a revelation that came to him in a dream, also recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. Peter was taking a nap before lunch and in a vision saw

a great sheet lowered from the sky, full of all kinds of animals, clean and unclean, and a heavenly voice had commanded him to kill and eat the unclean with the clean. When he protested that he had always “kept kosher” a voice from heaven chided him by saying, “Don’t call unclean what God has cleansed!” And to strike the message home, this dream was repeated three times. Didn’t I remind us a few weeks ago that God is a patient teacher who will repeat the lesson as often as is needed? Well, Peter needed three “reps” to get the point of this one. And he finally realized it wasn’t about what he was going to have for lunch, but about the mission on which he would soon be sent, to visit a household of Gentiles who had found God’s favor.

Now, these Gentiles — the Roman Cornelius and his household — had also been alerted by a vision, and had been promised that salvation would be coming to their household. Yet they know, as Peter acknowledges, that Jews want to have nothing to do with Gentiles. But Peter also says that he has understood this vision from God to mean — not that he should feel free to eat a ham and cheese sandwich — but that he was no longer to consider any human being as unclean by nature. God is not concerned with food, but with people.

So the stage is set; and when the Holy Spirit ratifies God’s direction in all of this, descending on the gathered Gentiles even before Peter can finish his sermon, he knows that he is called to baptize them — not with the old baptism, the baptism that he had used for most of his life as a Jew, a washing from ritual uncleanness that would have to be repeated again and again the next time he became unclean by touching something he shouldn’t have touched, or doing something he shouldn’t have done. Not the old baptism, but the new baptism in the Name of Jesus, the baptism that Jesus had told them to do (as Matthew records in his Gospel), going to all nations (and the word we translate as “nations” is the word the Jews used for the Gentiles — the goyim — which means the all of us!) the commandment to go to all nations and to baptize them. Even though Jesus had told them this was their missionary task as apostles, it took that additional trio of lessons on the rooftop to get Peter to understand. It took the vision of the great sheet of animals let down from heaven — three times; it took the heavenly voice. Finally it took the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Gentiles as they listened to Peter preach — it took all these lessons to get Peter to understand God’s message that salvation is for all, for every human being who can become a child of God through this wonderful grace — flowing as freely as water itself; whether a tidal wave washing over a continent, or a bare trickle of life-giving water welling up from a spring in the middle of a desert.

This is the water that gives life, the water of baptism that doesn’t just cleanse from sin, but incorporates the believer into the Body of Christ. For it is not just the water alone — as John the Apostle attests — but the water and the blood. It is not the water alone, but the Spirit of truth who testifies to the power of God. God’s power and greatness are at work in unexpected places, among unexpected people, among those from whom the pious might be inclined to withhold their blessing, but among whom the Spirit has shown itself not only pleased to dwell, but to manifest the signs of God’s presence — so that, watered with the nourishing water of baptism, they may bear fruit, fruit that will last, to the everlasting glory of God, and in praise of God’s most holy Name.

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Second-Hand People

The disciples were an heirloom from the Father to Jesus, vessels precious containing the word...

SJF • Easter 7a • Tobias Haller BSG
Jesus said, “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.”

One of the peculiarities of John’s Gospel is that his account of the Last Supper contains no mention of the Holy Eucharist. Rather, John is the only evangelist to record the startling act of humility, when Jesus rose from the table and washed the disciples’ feet. But John’s account is also unusual because it is so much longer than that of the other evangelists. As Deacon Cusano reminded us last week, John’s Gospel retelling of the Last Supper includes four and half chapters of teaching and prayer. In this long discourse, Jesus reveals why he came to be among us. These chapters have a timeless quality, as they appear to describe the future, but they also reflect the eternal. It is as if Jesus is both looking forward to his Passion but also looking back upon that Passion, and even upon struggles of the early church, by which the church would come to share in his sufferings. It is as though he is looking back from a time long after his Resurrection — from an eternal perspective, from a God’s-eye-view.

There are even moments, as in today’s portion, in which Jesus refers to himself in the third person — as if he were talking about someone else: “This is eternal life,” he says, “that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

On top of that, there is an almost hypnotic quality to the language in these chapters — the repetition of phrases, their inversion and weaving together, in a wonderful vision of the interconnectedness of the Father and the Son, knit together in the Spirit, folding the disciples into the unity of God himself: “all mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.... so that they may be one, as we are one.” It is as if all of time and space, humanity and divinity, were displayed on a great silken tapestry being shaken out before us, held up on display, then folded and refolded, tucking all of history, all of the cosmos, into a small space, four and a half chapters in the middle of the Gospel according to Saint John.

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One of the things Jesus makes clear in this reflective and prayerful meditation is that the disciples were not his originally. As he says, they belonged to the Father, and were in the world. I noted in my sermon a few weeks ago, that it was God who chose those who would become followers of Jesus, those God deemed precious. And God committed these chosen disciples to his Son. Jesus had them second-hand.

Anyone who comes from a large family knows about second-hand and hand-me-downs. Actually, since my younger brother outgrew me and soon was bigger and taller than me, I actually experienced a few cases of hand-me-ups! But they were still second-hand.

Usually such second-hand hand-me-downs are forced by economy and practicality. When you don’t have much money, getting some more wear out of someone else’s clothes can help a family pinch a penny until Abraham Lincoln weeps. And I can readily admit that in my early days living in New York City as a struggling artist, I made more than one trip to Goodwill both for clothing and for furniture — and I wasn’t making a donation! I also was savvy enough to take advantage of the Thursday evening “set your unwanted furniture out on the street for collection” that still turns New York City streets into a kind of free-for-all flea market where one person’s refuse becomes another’s living room furniture! I’ve still got a floor lamp over at the rectory that I rescued from the clutches of the sanitation department over forty years ago.

But there is another kind of second-hand that is far more important and valuable than even the greatest curb-side flea-market discovery: and that is the precious inheritance that a father or a mother passes on to their children. I’m sure most of us here have some kind of heirloom from a parent or a grandparent, an uncle or an aunt — perhaps not some valuable by worldly standards, but important to us. In my office downstairs I have on the wall a porcelain plate with Raphael’s “Madonna and Child” on it. It belonged to my mother, and she gave it to me as an inheritance. It probably is not worth much by the standards of AntiquesRoadshow, but it means a great deal to me.

Most of you probably have some such item, perhaps also not worth much in the worldly marketplace, even if you would never think of parting with it. That’s because its value to you as a family treasure is so much more important than its value may be as a worldly treasure. (I do wonder, sometimes, when someone on Antiques Roadshow learns that the treasured vase that momma left them isn’t carnival glass, but a Tiffany worth tens of thousands of dollars, as you can see the wheels beginning to click behind their eyes, calculating the value of this keepsake versus its possible value of cash on the barrelhead, and how much longer it is going to stay on momma’s dresser. Because it’s no longer a vase; it’s a vahse!”)

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But, vases and vahses aside, God’s gift is much more precious than any heirloom, valued for sentiment or even for its cash value. What the Father gives to Jesus is precious — precious to God and so infinitely precious; for the Father gives Jesus the disciples, chosen out of that worldly world to be the beginning of a new family, the human family, the family we call the Church. They are the heirloom vessels, chosen to be the means by which the family of God will grow, through the preaching of the Gospel. The Father presents them to Jesus his Son, and from that moment on they belong to Jesus, and he puts them to immediate use, filling these vessels with the Word — which also comes second hand; as he said in our Gospel today, God gave the word to him, and he passes the word on to the disciples. As he said to the Father, “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.”

These disciples, though second-hand, are second-hand from God: they are heirlooms of the precious kind, and they are given for a purpose. They are not just pretty pictures to hang on a wall, attractive furnishings to brighten up the corner of a room. No, my friends, they are chosen and precious vessels — vessels designed by the Creator, who presented them to his Son, to bear his message — to carry that word, that saving word, his saving message, the words God gave to him, that he committed unto them — to the rest of a waiting world.

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We are poised today, on this Seventh Sunday of Easter, between the observances of the Ascension of Jesus and that of Pentecost, next Sunday. After the Ascension, the apostles, those chosen vessels, were dumfounded; they stood there looking up into heaven with open mouths like so many vases or urns. We hear their names recited out again, names to be repeated to the end of time, these chosen eleven, and then the angel gives them the charge to go back to Jerusalem, and wait for the Spirit. There they will await the fulfillment of their purpose, the fulfillment of what they were designed for, what they were meant for, what they were chosen for. For on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit will come upon them, and fill those chosen vessels. The fire of God will fire that ceramic and make it strong enough to bear the days that are to come, the days of stress, the days of trouble, the days of persecution. God will give them the power to testify and proclaim, God will fill them to the brim with many languages so that they can bear the saving message to the world’s four quarters, to all of the people of the world, and enlarge the family of God, sharing with them in a precious inheritance.

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And you know what? We are second-hand people too. Because we received the message from those who got it first hand, from those apostles and evangelists who stood staring up on a hillside looking after Jesus as he ascended into heaven; but then returned to Jerusalem to await the coming Spirit; who, when the Spirit came, were filled with power to spread the word abroad.

We second-hand Christians, members of Christ’s family, have received the most precious inheritance imaginable — the word of salvation itself — we aren’t just vases, we are vahses, we are full of the Spirit and the message of salvation.

And you know what? We’re not going to take it to Antiques Road Show. We’re not putting it up on eBay. We’ve got a better way to share the gift, through the power of the Spirit. We too, with the disciples, can proclaim the way to eternal life of which Jesus spoke that night in the upper room: that all the world may know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom God has sent.

So let us not, at the end of our worship today, simply stand staring with open mouths, even though we’ve all been singing. Let us go forth, having been filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, to do the work God has given us to do, to the glory of his Name, that all may be one in him, even as God is One: God the Father Almighty, his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who with the Holy Spirit, is worthy of all honor and glory for ever and ever.+

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Better Than A Babel-Fish

We are not building a proud tower to assault heaven or to make a name for ourselves. Rather we rely on the presence of our advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom God has poured into our hearts in a spirit of adoption so that we may call out as children call out to their father or their mother, to call out in the name of the Lord our God, who is our Father in heaven.

Pentecost C • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.

Some years ago the late Douglas Adams wrote a satirical novel called, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It went through many different incarnations as a radio show, as a British TV series, and even as a live-action Walt Disney movie starring Martin Freeman as the main character, Arthur Dent. He would later go on to another kind of adventure, as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. The Hitchhikers Guide is in the guise of science fiction, but it is actually a satire, in which the author gets to poke fun at all sorts of institutions, sacred and secular.

Right from the start, the author satirizes political bureaucracy: the planet Earth is about to be destroyed by a galactic construction authority in order to create a hyperspace bypass, at the same time that Arthur Dent’s house is about to be bulldozed by a highway construction authority to put in a traffic bypass — and in both cases the officious officials announce, when protest is made, that planning permission, with public notice, has been on file in the galactic headquarters and town planning office respectively, so no one has any reason to complain.

Well the novel would be very short indeed if Arthur Dent did not escape the destruction of his house and the planet Earth. He manages this with the help of an alien who has been living on Earth for some time, and who has chosen, while on Earth, to go by the name Ford Prefect. (The joke is likely lost on Americans for whom it might have been better to name him Ford Fairlane!) Ford, in any case, helps Arthur to hitch a ride on the spaceship belonging to the planet-destroying construction company. And the first thing he tells Arthur he must do, if they are continue their travels, is insert a small fish in his ear. When Arthur protests, Ford explains that it is a strange species called the Babel-Fish, an alien species that lives on your brain waves and which, when inserted into your ear, takes up residence in your head and allows you to understand any language you hear, and the everyone in the universe wears them — because that’s how they can communicate with each other. And so Arthur is off on a series of highly improbable adventures, but able to communicate freely with any and all of the strange creatures he meets.

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In this morning’s reading from Genesis we heard the tale of the original Babel, which is not about gaining the ability to understand languages, but losing the ability. Like a number of the other accounts in the book of Genesis, this passage serves to answer a question about why things are the way they are, much like Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. I don’t know if any of you remember them, but when I was growing up that was a favorite children’s book; the one story that sticks in my mind is, “How the Leopard Got Its Spots.” Genesis offers us, in a more serious mode, ancient answers to timeless questions such as, “Why do people get sick and die?” “Why do people get married?” “Who invented music?” and “Why don’t snakes have legs?” In this case, the question is, “How did all of the many languages on the earth come to be?”

And the answer to this last question is that this is God’s response to the presumption of mortals who set out to make a name for themselves and build a tower with its top in the heavens. To show just how presumptuous they are, they name their city Babel — which in Hebrew means “the gate of God,” but which after the confusion of their languages comes down to us with its other meaning ever since recognizable as “babble.”

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Why, you might well ask yourself, should we be concerned either with Babel or Babel-Fish, on this day of Pentecost, the last day of the Easter season, the day that celebrates the birthday of the church, and on which we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit in flames as of fire lighting upon the heads of the apostles? And of course it is because of what the Holy Spirit enables those apostles to do: suddenly to begin to proclaim the saving word of God in many languages — so that people who have come to Jerusalem from all over the known world can hear them proclaiming salvation through Christ in their own languages.

Pentecost undoes Babel — you might well say that it rewinds the tape (but who rewinds tape any more! So let’s say, it clicks the “back” button or the “undo” button). God looked at what the people were up to in those ancient days — in their pride and their desire, not to honor God’s name, but to make a name for themselves. God rightly and simply frustrated their plans by disrupting their ability to communicate with each other. Fast-forward some several thousand years to Jerusalem, where the apostles are gathered not as a prideful or self-asserting bunch, but in humble obedience to that final command that their Lord and Master Jesus has given them: to go to Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. There they gather, and there the Spirit comes, giving them the ability not only to speak with eloquence, but in languages that none of them has ever learned, so that all of those outside in the city, from where-ever they come in the know world, can hear that powerful message of salvation — in their own languages, spoken right to their hearts.

And as I said a few weeks ago, God doesn’t just undo — God does something new. God doesn’t just press the undo button, he doesn’t just press the back button, he opens a new document, and starts a whole new story of salvation: ours.

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Thus the scattering of humanity because of pride is reversed and undone by this obedience — and the possibility to unite humanity in humility is made manifest, and the new story begins. The people of Babel had gotten too big for their britches, thinking that it was up to them to make a name for themselves, and even giving the work of their own hands the blasphemous name, “the gate of God,” because they wrongly thought their tower reached to the heavens (though in reality it was probably not much taller than the municipal parking garage across the street! When you live in a world where most buildings are one or two storeys tall, something six storeys tall may seem miraculous to you — but it wasn’t; wasn’t a gate of God — just human pride.) Such is not the Spirit of God, but the spirit of human ambition, human pride.

But the Spirit of God works differently, and comes to those who know that they are children of God. In fact, by coming to them, it makes them children of God, children by adoption. Because God has adopted us, because Jesus our brother has interceded for us, the Spirit empowers us to call God our Abba, our Father, as he taught us to pray. This is how the new story begins — our story — with that one word, Abba, Father.

Only that one word, Abba, Father, is necessary. We need not build a tower to the skies. We need not speak in many languages, either by miracle or by careful study; we need not speak in tongues as some wrongly think is needful for any who are touched by the Spirit of God. We need not make a name for ourselves, because God has given us a name as his children. We need not understand all other languages, or have the ability to interpret them. One word only is necessary, Abba, Father.

With this word we proclaim both our humility and our relationship to God and with God. We are not building a proud tower to assault heaven or to make a name for ourselves. Rather we rely on the presence of our advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom God has poured into our hearts in a spirit of adoption so that we may call out as children call out to their father or their mother, to call out in the name of the Lord our God, who is our Father in heaven. It is God’s name, not ours, that is important.

This is the start of the new story, the church’s story, that tells us how we became children of God. This one word, Abba, Father, overthrows the towers of pride, and establishes our trust in our relationship with God our Father in heaven. May we who have received this spirit of adoption, persevere in it all our days, to the glory of God our Father, and Christ our Brother, through the Holy Spirit, our advocate and guide.

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New Things

Sometimes things are made new by being repeated...

Easter 5c • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”

I have been reminding us over the last few weeks that Easter is not just a day but a season of fifty days running from Easter day itself through the feast of Pentecost. Every season of the church year has a particular focus or emphasis — in part based on some specific event, but also reminding us of how that event is continually alive in the life of the church and has effect upon our daily lives. That’s why we repeat these themes throughout the year.

The theme of Advent is expectation, and we live in that continued expectation of the day of the Lord’s coming, both personal and corporate. Christmastide brings us the good news of the birth of Christ, and calls us to find a way to let Christ be born in us anew each day. Epiphany describes the ways in which God is made manifest — and continues to be manifest in the lives and works of the members of Christ’s body, the church. The season of Lent calls us to examine our hearts, inspiring us — by the story of Christ’s own suffering — to discipline ourselves in obedience to his call. And of course Easter, the season we now celebrate, brings us to the resurrection and throughout the season of Easter we are given continued assurances of the new life springing forth from the grave.

In today’s readings we are specifically reminded of newness — of novel and unheard-of things as well as of renovation, renewal of all things, in particular as promised by the one whom John saw seated on the throne in his heavenly vision: “See, I am making all things new.”

The Son of God can make all things new because he is both the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, or as we would say the A through Z (since Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet). As the Psalmist would say, “All times are in your hand.”

God is the source of all that is new, of all novelty, all restoration, all renovation and renewal. And he gives this new life to any and all who thirst for it.

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We get a glimpse of thirsty people receiving something they don’t even know they need in that reading from the Acts of the Apostles — or rather, we hear Peter’s account of what happens when he tries to explain himself to the Jewish Christian believers who are scandalized by the fact that he actually went into a Gentile home, a Roman home, and even sat at table with Gentiles — people unclean by definition. Peter explains that he had been prepared to respond to this invitation from Cornelius, the Roman soldier, by a heavenly vision that came to him. He sees what sounds to me like a trampoline being let down from heaven and full of all kinds of animals, many of them classified as unclean. That would mean that they are forbidden by Jewish dietary law, and since all of the first Christians are Jewish, from Christian tables as well, as Peter reminds the heavenly voice when it commands him to kill and eat; even being so bold as to say to the voice from heaven, “By no means!” Peter protests, but the voice continues to remind him that what God has made clean he ought not call profane. As with Jesus’s instructions to Peter on the beach from a few weeks back — you recall, the ones about feeding the lambs and sheep, and about whether he really loved him — Peter gets another triple lesson. (Maybe Peter is just one of those people who needs to be told things three times before he gets it!) But as he says, the vision is repeated two more times together with the instruction not to call profane what God has declared clean. And so Peter finally gets to understand this, just as he finally got to understand — with those repeated statements about feeding the lambs, feeding the sheep — that Jesus wasn’t talking about him being a shepherd of literal sheep, but about people, the people he would serve. And so too with this vision he finally comes to understand that is not about food but about people — God is about to do a new thing, and no people are to be called unclean or profane; God is about to open salvation to the Gentiles, which is indeed exactly what happens.

Now this was a new thing that some would never quite accept — they had been taught and believed that only God’s chosen people merited salvation, and that the Gentiles were a people unclean by definition and as much to be avoided as Gentile food. But Peter, and later Paul, would both demonstrate how ancient prophecies that salvation would come even to the Gentiles — those people “who in darkness walked” — that those ancient prophecies had been fulfilled in Jesus, and in this particular incident God set a seal upon it through the descent of the Holy Spirit. Peter witnessed the Holy Spirit descend upon these Gentiles, this Roman soldier Cornelius and his family and his household, the same Holy Spirit that came upon the apostles and the other Jewish believers at Pentecost; and it happened before Peter could even finish his sermon; even before he could finish telling them the good news, the Holy Spirit came down upon Cornelius and all in his house. God, it seems, is more eager to save, that we can ask or imagine.

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Finally, in the gospel today, we step back before Good Friday and Easter to the Last Supper. Judas has already left the table to go about his sinister business of betrayal, feet have been washed, and as we know from the other Gospels, bread has been broken and the cup of the new covenant in his blood has been shared. And in this still and reflective moment Jesus pronounces that, “Now” is the moment of his glorification; and he gives the disciples a new commandment.

So what is this new commandment? He does not hesitate to deliver it, but states it immediately, “That you should love one another.” Perhaps he pauses for a moment, as no doubt the disciples are a little startled — not that they should be commanded to love one another, but that this commandment should be given as something new. Had not God always commanded that his people are to love God, and to love their neighbors as themselves? Are these commandments not the same as the ones that go all the way back to Moses.

We can well imagine the disciples wondering at what Jesus means by calling this commandment “new.” Would you not have been as much surprised? So what does he mean?

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It is plain that the commandment to love one another is not new in the sense of never having been given before. But that is not the only meaning of the word new. Sometimes a thing is new because it is a re-issue of something that is old.

We hear in that passage from Revelation this morning of a kind of renovation, in the description of the new Jerusalem. Jerusalem has been reborn, has been made new, and is descending from heaven like a bride adorned for her husband. The old, faithless city has been redeemed and made new. I must say that when I hear that passage I am reminded of an old joke by James Thurber, one of his famous cartoons, in which the caption was, “She’s always living in the past. Now she wants to get a divorce in the Virgin Islands.” But with God all things are possible. The faithless city Jerusalem is made new, is restored to her status of innocence, and clothed afresh with her bridal gown to welcome her husband, Christ himself. With God, newness can always come, even when things have fallen so very low.

As I say, sometimes it is not a new thing itself, but something that has been made new, something restored, or in the case of the book, republished. Even the resurrection itself partakes of this quality of old being made new. For it was the body that suffered and died that rose from the grave, given new life, still bearing the marks of the spear and the nails.

I am reminded — thinking of books — of the epitaph that Benjamin Franklin wrote for himself when he was young (although I’m sad to say this is not the one that actually appears on his grave). His youthful idea of what his epitaph should be reads:

The body of B. Franklin, Printer, like the Cover of an old Book — its Contents torn out and stripped of its Lettering and Gilding — lies here, food for worms. But the Work shall not be lost; for it will — as he believed — appear once more in a new and more elegant Edition revised and corrected by the Author.

(A little long for a tombstone!) That is the sense in which this new commandment is new —it is a command newly issued. And don’t we need to be reminded of that commandment to love one another over and over again. It needs to be made new every day, repeated so that we can take it into our hearts. It needs to be repeated just as Peter needed to be told three times to care for the flock and later to be told not to call profane what God has declared clean.

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But there is another and deeper sense in which this is indeed a new commandment, in the sense of not having been given before — for Jesus adds, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” So the commandment is not only repeated, but transposed to a higher key, with a more sublime example in the love that Jesus himself shows by giving himself up for them, the greatest love that anyone can show, to lay down his life for his friends. And so the commandment is no longer simply “love your neighbor as yourself,” but “love your neighbor as Jesus loves your neighbor” — loves your neighbor, and you, to the point of sacrificing himself on the cross for you, for your neighbor, and for the whole world. In this great love Jesus gives himself completely and utterly to suffering and death for universal salvation, to the end that all who believe might be saved.

This is not only new, it is earthshaking. It is revolutionary. It is nothing less than the work of God, in which we are invited to participate as the second edition of the people of God, not replacing the first edition, God’s chosen people, but supplementing it, as God has opened salvation to us Gentiles, in a new chapter beginning with that ancient Christmastide and coming to its fulfillment in the never-ending Eastertide in which all of humanity is invited to join, Jew and Gentile. In our obedience to this new commandment, may God our Lord and Savior be glorified and praised; henceforth and to the end of the ages.

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Promise, Hope and Guidance

What has Pentecost to do with Kris Kringle, besides the red suit? A sermon for Pentecost 2012

SJF • Pentecost b • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jesus said, When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

I realize it is a bit out of season, but as I read the lessons for this Feast of Pentecost, the feast celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, for some reason or other, I thought of one of my favorite movies — “Miracle on 34th Street.” I don’t think it is just because of the red of Santa Claus’s outfit matching the red so many of us are wearing here, on this feast of the descent of the Holy Spirit; rather it is the theme of promise, hope and guidance that ring through both the film and our Scripture passages this morning — far as we are from both Thanksgiving Day and Christmas!

For those very few who have never seen the film, I apologize in advance for any spoilers this sermon might contain — but I trust if you’ve not seen it you will not find it spoiled by hearing any details. After all, I watch it every year and it is just as much a joy as it was the first time I remember seeing it, when I was in fourth grade and they showed it at my school as part of a Christmas celebration — back in the days when public schools had Christmas celebrations!

In any case, late in the film, Susan (the skeptical little girl with the modern mother) finally comes to believe in Santa Claus. Her faith is not quite perfect, however, and she decides to put Santa Claus to the test. As Christmas approaches she hands him a real estate ad and tells him that that is what she wants for Christmas. Naturally the old man says, “You mean you want a dollhouse like this.” To which she replies, “No, I want a real house like that, and if you can’t get it for me then I’ll know you aren’t Santa Claus but just a nice old man with a white beard.” The old man protests, “But children wish for things all the time that they couldn’t possibly use — like a real airplane — but that doesn’t mean Santa Claus isn’t Santa Claus.” And as the child looks ever more skeptical, old Kris Kringle says, “But I’ll do what I can.” And in the end — spoiler alert — he does manage to provide the house for the little girl, and her mother and prospective stepfather — the attorney who proved that the old man was Santa Claus indeed.

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The reason I cite this sentimental story lies in the fact that it contains those same three elements of promise, hope and guidance that run through our Scripture readings.

Kris Kringle promises that he will do what he can to get the little girl the house she so much wants. And of course she wants it not so much because it is a house, and they are living in an apartment now — even with a swing in the back yard — but because of what it means for the new family of which she hopes to be a part.

And, of course, that is where the hope comes in — in this case a hope closely allied with faith. For as her skeptical impulses reappear when she doubts that the old man can deliver on his promise, it is her mother — also a convert to accepting the old man for who he is — who tells the confused child that, “Faith is believing even when common sense tells you not to.”

Finally, the old man doesn’t provide the house by buying it himself. His own financial resources are very limited, and he spent the biggest money he ever came into — when Macy’s and Gimbels gave him a joint bonus — to buy an X-ray machine for his doctor friend. But what he can do he does — which is to guide this new family to find the house, trusting that the little girl will keep her eyes open and see it on the road as they drive by the housing development out on Long Island to which he has given them directions. And just to be sure the adults realize that the magic of Santa Claus is involved, he leaves his trusty cane behind, resting by the fireplace as a sign of having done his work.

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“Faith is believing even when common sense tells you not to.” Certainly common sense should have told the apostles that dead people don’t come back to life, and that whatever promises Jesus may have made to them prior to his crucifixion, they were very unlikely to be fulfilled. They were, after all — look at them — a motley collection of low-level civil servants and small-time businessmen and laborers at best. None of them was educated past whatever rudiments of learning they might have picked up in their village synagogue. Their faith and hope had been rekindled by the resurrection — but still, after the ascension, when Jesus was gone for good and all, taken from their sight, there was a gap of several days before anything remarkable happened. As I noted last week, they even began to get a little insecure and decided to jump the gun and choose a successor to Judas, even though Jesus had given them no such instructions.

And yet, somehow, their faith still continued; their faith and their hope — which hopes not for what it sees, as Saint Paul puts it, but for that for which it waits in patience; perhaps, as Susan’s mother said, even when common sense tells you not to. And so the promised Spirit came at last — came to revive that dwindling spark of faith and hope into a vibrant flame, in fulfillment of the promise.

But what did that Spirit provide? It did not shower them with riches or give them the power to turn straw into gold — but it gave them the trust to pool all of their resources and contribute to the needs of the saints, so that there was not a needy person among them.

Nor did the Spirit give them high office or make them kings and princes of earthly realms — recall that’s what Satan promised he would do for Jesus; but the Spirit does not need Satan’s tricks. Instead the Spirit gave them the courage and strength to speak — indeed to confront those very kings and princes of the earthly realms with the truth of the gospel, and the sword not of Caesar but of that same Spirit who empowered them to work.

In short, the Spirit helped them in their weakness by giving them guidance, guidance to use their gifts and talents in the service of the church and of God. The Spirit ledthem, but did not force them, into the truth of God. The Spirit led them as a companion on the way, guiding them through the rough patches that would come — not solving all their problems for them, but like a good teacher showing them the way to solve the problems for themselves, with all the power the Spirit would awaken and stir to life in them. The Spirit would — as the name suggests — inspire them to do great things.

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The church still lives with the call to have faith, and to hope, even when common sense tells you not to. For we have received the same promise that the apostles received, the promises handed on from them to us, down through the ages. Even though we have, as Saint Paul says, the fruits of the Spirit, we still live in that not-yet time, the unfulfilled promise-time, as we wait for our final adoption, the redemption of our bodies. But in this waiting time, the Spirit is with us to comfort and to aid us in the work God gives us in the meantime, that in-between time, which is to spread the word of that promise, and show by our acts of love and service that living in that promise makes a difference even in the here and now.

For the church is still here, in the here and now, and the church itself is the sign that God’s promise will be fulfilled — for surely the church would have disappeared long ago were it just a human undertaking, if it were not for the power of God, sustaining it, and God’s Holy Spirit dwelling with it — with us. The church itself is a sign of God’s living, loving promise, like Kris Kringle’s cane left by the fireplace, tellingly resembling a shepherd’s crook, the symbol of care and guidance, and a promise fulfilled: I will not leave you comfortless.

Let us continue, my friends, to trust that promise, my friends, to live in hope and under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, that we too may fulfill that highest calling: to be saints of God, for the sake of his love, and for the good of all the Church.+

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Not Watered Down

water on its own can do little other than removing stains -- to have power it must be raised to new heights by the sun, or moved by the wind of the Spirit -- a sermon for 1 Epiphany 2012

SJF • Baptism of Jesus • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGJohn said, I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

Today is the feast of the baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ, always observed on the first Sunday after the Epiphany. We observe the baptism of Jesus in this way, at the beginning of the year, to start things off — for although Jesus Christ began his life on earth at Christmas, his ministry begins with his baptism as he emerges into our gospel history from that period of obscurity — that time from his childhood through young adulthood — about which we have no record apart from Saint Luke’s short account of the Holy Family’s trip to the Temple when Jesus was about 12 years of age.

But it is with the baptism of Jesus that his public ministry begins, and the first Sunday in the season after the Epiphany — which means, “showing forth” — appropriately commemorates this first public “showing forth” of Jesus.

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Baptism is clearly a time of beginning — a time of starting things off. And you might well say, what better way to start things off than with that short Scripture reading from the Old Testament: the opening words of the book Genesis, the very beginning of absolutely everything.

However, the reason the liturgists who assembled these readings chose the passage from Genesis is not that it is about beginnings. Rather it is the mention of the Holy Spirit — which I’m sorry to say the translation we use unfortunately chooses to designate as “a wind from God.” But this is the spirit of God. What the translators obscured, however, the liturgists sought to clarify and highlight, by coupling this reading from Genesis with the passages from Acts and the Gospel of Mark, which are explicit in highlighting the importance of the Holy Spirit.

And what those two readings demonstrate is that water alone is not enough. John’s baptism was a baptism with water. John was continuing and expanding on the Jewish custom of ritual bathing by which one would figuratively wash away impurity with water. Every Jewish town had a bathing pool — a mikvah — for precisely this purpose. I saw a TV program about the Dead Sea Scrolls community at Qumran a few weeks ago, and the archaeologists excavating that site pointed out that the people in that community — who lived out in the Judean desert — were very careful and concerned and spent to have well-constructed aqueducts, conduits and cisterns to bring water to those ritual bathing pools and an ample supply of water — water used solely for this ritual bathing, even in the middle of a hot, dry desert. They expended a considerable amount of their resources in constructing and maintaining this impractical but ritually vital construction. So we can tell that this ritual bathing was an important feature of their religious life.

John the baptizer — also a voice in the desert — called on people to come to the River Jordan to wash themselves. This was not just a washing from the ritual impurities that would occasion the more-or-less routine trip and dip in the municipal or village bathing pool — but a washing from the deeper and more troublesome faults and wrongs that cling to the human heart: John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance.

But as John himself confessed, his baptism was still only a baptism with water — even if it was the cold and chilly water of that historic Jordan, rather than a domesticated bathing pool. Water is water, but the one who would baptize with fire and with the Holy Spirit was yet to come.

The point in all this, and the reason for including that passage from Genesis along with the one from the Acts of the Apostles, is to show that water by itself is not enough. Water, as we know from that other account in Genesis — the story of the flood — water can destroy a world. But water by itself cannot make a world. Water by itself will just, as we know from our grade-school science class, or from a leaking roof, water on its own will seek its lowest level. It’s true that ingenious human beings have found ways to harness the power of falling or downward-flowing water, with mills and dams and dynamos. But the water itself, once it has reached its lowest point, cannot do anything of itself. It will just lay there in a pool or a puddle.

What is needed is that wind from God — that Holy Spirit of God — to move over the face of the waters and stir them up with waves of energy. And, as we also know from our science class, what is also needed is the heat and light of the sun, shining on the waters and changing the water — evaporating it — into vapor that rises and rises and rises up on high until it condenses into clouds, and falls again as rain to water the mountains and fill the streams that can pour down once more, once again full of power and energy it was given by being raised up, to go through those cascades down to the sea, in the meantime driving the mills and dynamos. But the water itself doesn’t have the power, it only gains the power by being raised up by the heat and light of the sun shining on it, to the point where it can flow down once again. It is the spirit of God, not the water, that is the creative force in Genesis, bringing light and life to the world. And it is the Son — that’s S-O-N — who is the active principle in creation, the one through whom all things were made.

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And it is that same spirit and that same Son of God who makes the baptism in his name — the name of Jesus — different from the baptism of John. John’s baptism was about removing old stains of sin — and water can be a pretty good stain remover! But there is more to Christian baptism than simply washing away one’s sins — even Original Sin — more, not less, since it includes that washing-away as well.

But Christian baptism also imparts light and heat: Sonship in Christ and the fire of the Holy Spirit to the one who is baptized. The Spirit of this re-creation is the same Spirit that moved over the waters at the beginning of the first creation, and the Son of God is he through whom all things were made. Christian baptism does not merely wash away the old; it imparts the new — the new life in Christ. It renders those who are baptized new citizens of a different land than the one of their birth; and it admits those baptized into a new family — the family of God’s household, the church. This is what the Son and the Spirit do as only they can do: giving life, a new life that is not simply watered down, but built up, renewed, restored, revived.

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We will very shortly welcome three new members into this household through this wonderful sacrament of baptism into the Son by water and the Holy Spirit. I do not expect them to speak in tongues or prophesy as happened in that account from Acts. They may make a little noise - and that’s alright: it is a joyful sound. But I do know that they will have been well and truly baptized and anointed and marked as Christ’s own forever. And I hope that you in the congregation will speak out loud and strong when at the end of the baptism we come to that part of the liturgy where we welcome the newly baptized. Welcome them as if they were your own long-lost children who had wandered far from home but have found their way back by seeking the light of Christ. Welcome them with the open arms and hearty greeting you would give to a hero returning home from a foreign war. For in this baptism these young children become our brothers and sisters, in this baptism they have returned to the home that God has prepared for them from before the beginning of the world — from before the time the Spirit first hovered over those waters and the light was separated from the darkness. This is the power of God working through the church and its sacraments, committed to the care of the church by its Lord, Jesus Christ. He is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit, and it is by that Spirit that we are — all of us — children of the Most High.+

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Peace - Spirit - Mission

SJF • Pentecost A • Tobias S Haller BSG
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Let me begin with one last, ‘Happy Easter!’ — because today, the feast of Pentecost, is the last day of Easter season, the fiftieth day that adds one to the seven times seven of days since Easter Day. This is the day that puts the exclamation point at the end of our Alleluia! For this is the day on which God’s Holy Spirit was poured out upon the disciples to empower them for the great mission of the church. This is the day that transformed a withdrawn group of believers into a force that would change the world as much as they themselves had been changed.

We heard the account of what happened on that day in our first reading this morning: the signs and wonders of tongues untied in a torrent of praise to God in as many languages as they could possibly give praise. We heard of the bewilderment of that crowd of pilgrims in Jerusalem, and their amazement, as their ears were opened as effectively as were the mouths of the apostles, so that they could receive the good news.

This morning, however, I’d like to back up a bit from the Pentecost event itself, and focus on the prelude we find in John’s Gospel. In this incident, Jesus Christ lays the foundation for what is to come. In this encounter, he gives the preview of coming attractions for the feature that is rated PG: Praise God!

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John sets the scene: it’s Sunday evening, the first day of the week — and we know how important first days of the week, Sundays, are in the history of God’s work in the world! The fearful disciples are locked behind closed doors. Suddenly, Jesus is among them. And he first thing he says is, “Peace be with you” — the standard way of saying “Hello” in the Middle East for thousands of years. Whether you say ‘Shalom aleichem’ or ‘As-salaam alaikum’ this is how you greet people in the Holy Land: ‘Peace be with you.’ Isn’t it ironic that ‘Peace be with you’ should be the norm in a part of the world that hasn’t known more than a few years of peace at a time for thousands of years! But then again, maybe it makes even more sense, the same kind of sense that led Jesus to speak those words to the frightened disciples — as if to say, “Don’t be afraid... Yes we live in terrible times; there is a lot to fear, but I am here to bring you peace. I am on your side; your friend not your foe. Peace be with you!”

So it is that God speaks to us today through the church. Even in the midst of turmoil and struggle, still the church is the place of God’s peace; which is not simply the absence of conflict but the presence of God’s overarching rule and justice. God’s peace — that is what Jesus speaks to the disciples, and speaks to us today and every day: Peace be with you; not peace as the world gives, but as God gives.

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Next Jesus shows them his hands and his side: to certify by these tokens who it is that stands before them. And though we might think it odd of him to show his wounds as a sign of peace, surely this is proper: for these are the very wounds, the ones which could not prevail against him. The nails and the spear did not bring about his eternal death, only that time of a few short days, and then through the power of Almighty God he overcame death and the grave, and the wounds are now trophies of his victory over death, as if to say, ‘Even these couldn’t keep me down.’

So it is that the church, which is the wounded body of Christ, is still here. Our church, Saint James, is a physical symbol of this: we may have some bad patches in our ceiling up there around the roof-line, and cracks in some of our windows, but the power of death cannot prevail against us, it cannot keep us down. In the power of God we will prevail and remain to witness to his grace and loving-kindness to us and to all who believe.

We know that as people we have suffered as well, and yet been restored. We have been tested and tried, but have never, though, been forsaken by the one whose promises are sure. So there is cause to rejoice, as the disciples do when Jesus comes among them, certified by the very wounds by which the powers of this world afflicted him, yet standing there among them, alive.

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And breathing! For then comes the crucial moment, the moment when Jesus breathes upon the disciples. In this he foreshadows the coming of the Holy Spirit that will equip them to carry out his command: ‘As the Father has sent me, so I now send you.’ Remember: this is, as I said, the first day of the week — and Jesus, as he breathes upon the disciples, is pouring out that same Spirit of God that hovered over the waters on that first Sunday, the first day of creation. For this is the new creation, the creation not of the world but of the church that will be sent on its mission to the world. Jesus is preparing them for the great sending, the great mission of the church, the reason the church exists as his body on earth, to be sent to do the work of God just as he himself had been sent to do God’s work.

And for this work the Spirit is essential. There can be no mission of God without the Spirit of God: if you take the Spirit out of the church it will cease to be the church. Without the breath of God filling the church, it is like a balloon without any air in it, just a little scrap of rubber than lays there.

Sad to say, the church has sometimes been more like that scrap of rubber just laying there than a Spirit-filled ambassador of God. As I mentioned a few weeks back, among great disasters of the so-called missionary era of the nineteenth century was that the Gospel of God’s love was transmitted through a church that was not only intolerant but prideful, and sometimes hateful. The European missionaries too often made the mistake of thinking that anything European was superior to anything they found wherever they went. Here in America native children were beaten and punished for speaking the language of their parents; artifacts were destroyed and cultures ravaged. Yes, people became Christians, but many of them, too many of them, came to understand the church not as a place of love and charity, but as a place of strictness and judgment, of narrowness, a place not of peace, but of wrath. That message was delivered in so many places in the world: that the way to be a good Christian is to be intolerant and judgmental of anyone who thinks or speaks or acts differently. And we live with the results of that missionary message to this day.

How different from the missionary effort begun on Pentecost. The apostles did not tell those to whom they spoke, ‘You must speak our language if you are to be saved’ — on the contrary it was they who were filled with the power of the Spirit so that they spoke all those different languages themselves, so that the word might be spread to all hearers.

There is an urgent need to recover that missionary message by which England itself was brought into the Christian fold. When Saint Gregory the Great sent the monk Augustine to Canterbury, he gave him specific instructions to respect the people of England who, even though they were pagans, were created in God’s image. What’s more, Gregory told him not to destroy the pagan temples and shrines, but to use them as places for Christian worship, so that the people who were accustomed to worshiping their gods in those places might be gradually become accustomed to worshiping the true God.

The church is challenged today to exercise its mission in this way. Not imposing its view upon an unwilling world, but welcoming that world to the great feast. The church’s message is proclaimed most clearly by means of the church’s own being and substance, in the life the church as it lives in its many members, each equipped with spiritual gifts through the one Spirit of God. By this, Jesus assures us, the world will know that we are his disciples, if we have love for one another. How we act is as important as what we say, whatever language we may speak; perhaps even more so: the church is the message of love for the world, the world that God loved so much that he gave his only son not to condemn it, and it is by showing that love to the world that we lead the world to God, who is Love. The church is called and empowered to deliver and to be a message of tolerance, grace, hope and restoration in the midst of a world filled with intolerance, fear, division and despair.

The church itself is called to be a sign of God’s presence; it is the Body of Christ, wounded and yet risen and alive. It is filled with the breath of God’s Spirit to sing and to shout out the good news to the ends of the earth, and above all to proclaim God’s peace to the nations of the world.

My sisters and brothers in Christ, we are that church: let us be that church, let us be that message, that mission. Let us rejoice in the presence of God with us, and spread the word to all whom we encounter: Shalom aleichem! As-salaam alaikum! Peace be with you! Alleluia, He is risen! Now and unto the end of the ages, through Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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Witness Protection Plan

Dare we think that Jesus' prayer his disciples would be protected in the Divine Name was unanswered? A sermon for Easter 7a 2011

SJF • Easter 7a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jesus prayer to his Father, “Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

If you’ve watched any films or TV shows about modern crime dramas, you will be familiar with what is called the “witness protection plan.” It is no surprise that witnesses willing to testify against crime, particularly organized crime, put themselves and their families in danger by their willingness to come forward. Although the crime-boss may be in jail awaiting trial, there are plenty of henchmen out and about willing to see to it that the testimony is not delivered. And the vendetta may not stop with the conviction: even after the criminal is found guilty and sentenced, and put safely away in prison, the powerful urge for revenge against one who “turned state’s evidence” or merely told the truth will put the life of the witness in permanent danger of revenge.

So it is that police and state and federal investigators have taken special care of such witnesses — whether they are criminals who have turned on their former colleagues in crime, or virtuous citizens merely doing their duty in spite of the danger. The authorities have developed witness protection plans to safeguard the lives and livelihoods of these witnesses, both before and after they have given their testimony. Some such plans give the witnesses and their families whole new identities, a fresh start with a new name in a new city or a new state, far from the vengeful tentacles of organized crime, or the retribution of a fallen criminal.

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Last Thursday was Ascension Day, and this morning we heard Luke’s account of the events of that day from the opening chapter of his record of the Acts of the Apostles. Since Jesus is about to depart into heaven, the passage begins with the apostles’ understandable question about whether or not it is now the time for the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel. And Jesus tells them that it is not for them to know the time for such things. (And I note in passing that since we are all still here, and the Rapture didn’t happen on the Saturday before last, it was not for Rev. Harold Camping to know the time for such things either! Of course, now he says it will be in December; but in the inimitable words of our former President, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, well, you just can’t fool me twice!)

Jesus does tell his followers two things: first, they will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them, and secondly, they will be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

I spoke last week about just how far the Apostles carried that message, as witnesses of Christ. What I didn’t mention was the fact that this cost most of them their lives in that process. In this church’s large stained-glass rose window, there on the west end behind you, the outer circle shows 12 roundels with the emblems of the 12 Apostles — and in seven out of ten the emblems reveal the means by which the Apostles died! In case you ever wondered why we have a stained-glass window portraying clubs, saws, spears, hatchets or knives, that’s why.

Clearly, the Apostles were witnesses in need of a witness protection plan! And you might at first be tempted to observe that whatever it was, it didn’t provide much protection! Not only the Apostles, but many of the Christians who heard and heeded their preaching and accepted their testimony, suffered persecution in those early days of the church’s life, and the persecution have continued still, even to this day. Peter himself, represented in our window at about four o’clock with a set of crossed keys, ended his life crucified upside-down. He wrote to the believers in his care concerning the“fiery ordeal that is taking place among you,” to assure them that there is nothing strange in this. Jesus had already warned that those who spread the Gospel would not always be welcomed with open arms, and that persecution lay before them. Peter acknowledged this, this sharing in Christ’s sufferings, persecution experienced not only by those to whom he wrote, but, as he assured them, the common experience of their brothers and sisters in all the world who were undergoing the same kinds of suffering.

Such was the fate of many who witnessed to the Gospel. So what happened to that witness protection plan? What happened to the prayer that Jesus offered to his Father, “Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” Dare we think that Jesus’ prayer would go unanswered. Dare we think that God would abandon his faithful witnesses to the prowling devil seeking someone to devour?

God forbid we should think such a thing! Nor should we think such a thing if we rightly remember that Jesus never promised his disciples, as the old song says, “a rose garden.” Their life in ministry would you not be a bed of roses, but a path of suffering and martyrdom. They would be reviled and tested and suffer, just as their leader, Christ himself, was reviled and tested and suffered. As Peter puts it, “If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the spirit of God, is resting on you.”

It was not from temporal suffering that Jesus prayed to protect his witnesses — on the contrary their proclamation as witnesses would definitely bring them temporal pain and suffering. That wasn’t a threat, it was a promise! What Jesus prayed to protect his witnesses from was not temporal suffering but eternal death. His prayer was to protect them from the evil one who destroys both body and soul in hell, to protect them from the devil, who Peter told them “prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour” —
— and it is the armor of faith that would protect them from the devouring power of eternal death and hell.

The Spirit of God, whose descent upon the Apostles we will celebrate next Sunday on Pentecost, was a witness protection plan that would save them, not from suffering but to eternal life: to the unity of God himself, the Son with the Father, that they might be one as God is one. And it’s a good reminder for us that at the center of that rose window is the symbol of God the One-in-Three. This witness protection plan would change them, not just in their names, but in their very selves — and they would be given new lives in a new country where they would be free finally and at last from sufferings, all the sufferings they had undergone, and most importantly from the ultimate suffering of eternal death.

This is the protection, that all of God’s faithful witnesses are promised. As we witness to the work of God in us, as we do the work that God has committed to our care, we will not always find favor with the world — in fact we will rarely find favor with the world! We will be thought mad for not heaping up wealth for our own pleasure and comfort; we will be thought mad for sharing with the poor and the needy, for giving food to the hungry, and for bearing with the abuse of those for whom power is the only sign of their worth. Truly they have received their reward.

But our hope is for a better and more lasting reward, a better and more eternal salvation, in the unity of the Son with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Those who remain faithful in their witness to the Gospel will be protected through the fiery ordeal of this world, and then restored, supported, strengthened and established as God’s own for ever. To God the Father be the glory, in the power of the Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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The Two Ways

SJF • Proper 8c 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
A man said to Jesus, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”+

I’m sure that many of you here are familiar with the Narnia series — children’s stories by CS Lewis, beginning with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. That first volume, and the second, Prince Caspian, have been made into movies — and you may have seen one or both of them. For those who haven’t, let me just say that Lewis was trying to address some of the major themes of Christianity in his imaginative portrayal of another world — and, in a way that would appeal to the imagination of children, a fantasy world of talking animals, magic and mystery.

I can attest how important these stories have been to many people over the years — including myself. They played a part in my adult return to the Christian faith when, as a teenager, I was working as a counselor at the Episcopal Mission Society summer camp, and shared these stories with the children under my care — most of them orphans or children in foster care, living in situations very far removed from the polite English world of CS Lewis or the fantasy world of Narnia! Yet they just couldn’t get enough of these stories — nor could I! They spoke truth, and truth we heard. When I returned home from that summer, I looked up the local Episcopal parish and became an active member.

In the last volume of the Narnia stories, Lewis chose to end with his own version of Revelation — a description of the last days of Narnia in a great Last Battle. And as the battle between the forces of good and evil rage through that fantasy world, one group tries to play the part of neutrality — the Dwarfs. They don’t want to get involved on either side. They do nothing to help the forces of good, to hinder the forces of evil, or vice versa. As they say, “The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.” And so they refuse to take sides in the Last Battle — off to one side in a circle by themselves.

And after the battle is over and the forces of good have triumphed and the forces of evil have been conquered and dispatched, the Dwarfs are still sitting there — off in a circle to one side. They have become blind. They literally can no longer see what has happened — that the battle is over and the world itself is about to end, folded up into a glorious new life — not unlike the biblical images in Revelation! But the Dwarfs have missed out on it all, and don’t even know it. They think they are stuck in a damp, lightless stable, when they are in fact sitting in a beautiful sunlit flowery meadow. As the new creation dawns, they sit in their circle, arms folded across their chests and chanting, “The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs!”

The children try to rouse them from their blindness, holding flowers in front of them, but they cry out, “What do you mean by shoving filthy stable-litter in my face!” Even when the great Lion Aslan — who represents Christ in Lewis’s fantasy world — goes over to the Dwarfs and gives them a low growl of warning, they all say, “It’s just someone trying to frighten us with a noise-making machine! They won’t take us in.” As the old saying goes, they have made their bed and they’re going to lie in it. Or as Aslan himself observes, “Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison. They are so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”

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I mention all of this because in our readings today we see similar failures to respond to a call to action, people failing to see the good that is set before them, and engaging in all sorts of delaying tactics. Elijah calls Elisha but Elisha wants to say goodbye to his parents before he follows on the way. Jesus gets a whole litany of excuses from various people, as to the things they need to do before they can follow him — and he gives them a stern rebuke.

More importantly Saint Paul lays two choices before the Galatians when he talks about the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. There is a long tradition in Judaism and early Christianity called, “The Two Ways” — the way of evildoers and the way of the righteous. And which way you take will shape your life.

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I think it was Yogi Berra who said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” The point is, you have to choose — it’s one way or the other. The problem is that sometimes people don’t want to commit; they don’t want to take sides — it may not be quite so clear as the contrast Paul makes between the flesh and the spirit; I mean, he make it obvious about which way is the way of righteousness!

But sometimes, even the best intentioned people can be more like the Dwarfs in Lewis’s fable, or like the would-be disciples who delay in or withdraw from following Jesus because they decided they have other, more important things to do. Sometimes people think that rather than making a choice to reject what is wrong and do what is right, it is acceptable to do nothing, to abdicate responsibility and stand in watchful waiting to see how things go.

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And the church can be just as guilty of this kind of inaction as anyone else — being made of fallible people sometimes the church as a whole fails to live up to the challenge Jesus presents us. Paul’s letter to the Galatians reminds me of one such instance in our own history. The passage we heard begins with a call not to submit to a yoke of slavery This reminds me of a sorry aspect of our own church’s history — not this parish, but the whole Episcopal Church. By the 1850s the Episcopal Church was well-settled in just about every part of the United States, North and South, East and West. And of course, because of this, the church was faced with becoming embroiled in the controversy dividing the nation — slavery. The nation was occupied with the question: shall slavery be allowed to continue or shall it be stopped; and if stopped, how.

The church decided to play it safe. To avoid allowing this important issue to become a source of division, the Episcopal Church officially decided not to take a position on the question of slavery — the church would neither approve nor condemn what was called “the peculiar institution.” The Presiding Bishop of the Church, John Henry Hopkins of Vermont, even wrote a book defending the biblical foundations of slavery. He argued that as long as slaves were treated well there was nothing to prevent Christians from holding slaves, and that going to war about it was a far greater sin than the continuation of a venerable biblical institution — after all, he pointed out, Abraham had held slaves, and he was a model of biblical righteousness. That a bishop from the far North could make such an appeal warmed hearts of his Southern confrères.

And so, during the very years when this congregation was forming, while other Christian churches split along north-south lines, the Episcopal Church was able to remain a single body — at least until war actually broke out, and with the creation of the Confederate States of America, all of their bishops and deputies withdrew from participation in the Episcopal Church of the United States — after all, from their perspective they were part of a different country. One of the southern bishops was even a Confederate general, and died in battle.

The irony is that some people will point at this history with pride — the Episcopal Church didn’t divide, except for those few years during the actual war, and came back together afterward — unlike the Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists. But somehow, I think in failing to stand for something we missed a great opportunity. By accepting slavery — for others, since few slaves were themselves Episcopalians — we colluded in injustice, and at a crucial moment remained silent; like the Dwarfs who were only for the Dwarfs, we were only interested in the preservation of our ecclesiastical union — a union that was in fact divided when the war broke out, even though the Northern bishops refused to recognize it, and continued the roll call of the names of the absent southern bishops whenever the House of Bishops met — knowing full well they were not there.

Is there virtue in such obliviousness? Such living in denial and embracing fantasy? Such collusion in injustice? Do you think so?

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For to be truly righteous it is not enough just not to do bad things — it is not enough just not to take the way of the works of the flesh, those obvious failings. It is not enough to say to Jesus, I will follow you when it becomes convenient for me to do so. No, my friends, we are called to choose — and to choose rightly; not just to avoid the way of the flesh but to get on our feet and walk in the way of the spirit — to follow Jesus. We are called to live by the Spirit, and, guided by the Spirit, to join Jesus in the proclamation of the kingdom of God. To follow him will mean to do the works of God and bear the fruit of the Spirit in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And these are the things God calls us to do, calls us to follow. Where he leads us, will we follow? Will we?+

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Work of the Spirit

SJF • Pentecost C 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.+

Today is the feast of Pentecost, marking the fiftieth day from Easter, commemorating that day on which the promised Spirit came down from heaven, blew through the windows, and landed square on the heads of the apostles setting them on fire. The Spirit found them gathered in one place, like a pile of tinder or a stack of kindling wood, not yet started on the ministry, not yet set on fire for the task that Jesus had called on them to do. The only thing they’d done since Jesus ascended into heaven was to choose a successor for Judas — and then they sat around waiting for God to show them what to do. They didn’t have to wait long, for God’s Holy Spirit came upon them like fire, and inspired them to action from inaction to courage and boldness from fear — and to work! A fire was lit that day that has not been put out since.

Just as what happened on the first Easter wasn’t merely something spectacular for that one particular Sunday morning, but marked the turning point for the history of the whole world, as Jesus our Lord was raised from the dead — so too what happened on Pentecost fifty days after Jesus was raised from the dead wasn’t just a spectacular pyrotechnic display for a single day. No, it was the beginning of something; what happened on Pentecost was a new beginning, so new that people call Pentecost the “birthday of the church.” For it was on this day that the disciples were converted from being followers into being leaders. They got “all fired up” and started into action!

And it is that conversion, that “firing up” I want to talk with you about today, for it is a conversion and an “ignition” to which we all are called and in which we are all empowered, if we will accept the call of God and the power of God to work in us as it worked in the apostles long ago, to convert us from simply following Christ to taking the lead and spreading the word, to build up the church for which Christ died.

For the work of the church is not just my job alone, even though I have been given a particular office and ministry — about which I spoke a few weeks ago. Nor is it only our organist Mr. Baker’s job or the choir’s job, or Br James’ or Mr Greene’s or Mr Korlai’s, or the acolytes — though some of them literally do carry fire around in the torches and the thurible — or the members of the Bishop’s Committee or the Men or Women of St James, or the members of the other parish groups. Rather the work of the church is everyone’s job, and everyone has a role to play in the spread of the Gospel, to carry that torch that was lit so long ago, and to build up of God’s kingdom. Nobody is off the hook; everyone is part of God’s inspired workforce for the work of the Holy Spirit; everyone.

Look what God says through the prophet Joel. There is no minimum age requirement, no , nor no early retirement neither — God’s spirit is poured out on all flesh, on old and young. There is no class or educational requirement — God’s spirit is poured out even on the humblest servant. And there is no sex discrimination either — and if there are even in this day and age people in parts of this world who think women shouldn’t serve the church, think how revolutionary it must have been when Joel spoke those words a thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ! God’s Spirit comes to sons and daughters — and not just the daughters of the best families — but even female slaves are given God’s spirit to proclaim salvation. God is no respecter of persons! God lifts up the lowly and puts down the mighty. God was an equal opportunity employer long before Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, and God still has a job for everyone to do — everyone! — and will pour the Spirit lavishly upon them all, to equip them for that work. There is no job shortage, no being made redundant, no layoffs, no down-sizings, no golden parachute, no laying off or laying back — there is no unemployment in the kingdom of God: all are servants of the Lamb.

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You know, when people who are out of work, are looking for work, they go to the “help wanted” ads in the papers, or in these latter days, they search the Internet. Well, Saint Paul provides us with a kind of help-wanted ad for the work of the church in his First Letter to the Corinthians. Look at all these job opportunities! People gifted to speak words of wisdom, and words of knowledge; people with the gift to bring a healing touch; people with the astonishing gifts of working unthought of things, or the ability to speak the truth so clearly that people will be convicted in their hearts and souls — we call them prophets; those with the gift to look into the heart and discern the Spirit at work, and those who can speak or interpret the language of human beings or the language of heaven. And the only job requirement for all of these tasks is the presence of the Spirit, God’s Holy Spirit, that living flame and spark of divinity who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

There are many, many gifts given to God’s people for God’s work. Note in particular one item from Paul’s list I’m saving for last: those who have the gift of faith — because that covers all the rest of us who may not be healers or teachers or prophets or miracle workers. We all have the gift of faith, and we are promised that even if our faith is as small as a mustard seed, it can move mountains more effectively than the biggest rig from Caterpillar Tractors or a ton of dynamite. Even if it is a flame as small as a spark, we all know — as the apostle James said — how great a pile of lumber can be set alight by even a tiny flame, a tiny spark.

So, fellow workers all of us, if I can (on the next to last Sunday in May) borrow and modify a phrase more often heard on the first of May: “Workers of the church, unite!” Who dares stand idle on the fruited plain: the harvest is ripe, and we have all the job skills we need to do God’s work.

Can you carry a broom? There’s plenty of cleaning up to do. Can you tell a story? There are young ears eager to hear the story of your faith, of our faith — the church’s faith. Can you sing? Lift up your voices, people of God! Shake the rafters with a joyous noise! Can you give? Who does not have the strength to carry his own weight, to share the abundance he or she has to help this church recover and rebuild from the times of narrowness, the times of fear? Who dares to stand before the throne of God and say, “God, I’ve got enough for me but I don’t have enough for you.”

Can you pray? Don’t let’s forget that, for it is something we all can do, young or old, rich or poor — to pray, even if it is as simple prayer, “Jesus, Lord, save me!” Pray earnestly, in season and out of season, pray that the Spirit will continue to bless, to inspire, to set us alight with divine fire, and pour out God’s gifts upon us.

After all, today is our birthday, the church’s birthday, and God is giving us a whole pile of birthday presents; today and every day, and all we have to do is unwrap them and put them to use! God’s gracious gifts keep coming, even before we can ask. This is the promise and the power of God, and his promises are sure, and his power is great — not only to save but to preserve.

We are no longer merely followers of our Lord — we are commissioned as leaders to carry forth his mission, and to share in his work, to do our share of that work. So be brave, sisters and brothers of the faith. Be strong in the knowledge of God. Rejoice, rejoice believers, for the Lord our God is a mighty Lord. Glory to him, glory to him, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to him from generation to generation in the church, and in Christ Jesus our Lord! +

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Evil in High Places

SJF • Christmas 2 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.+

Merry Christmas! Christmas season isn’t over yet, remember; it’s 12 days long. Today is the 10th day of Christmas and the second Sunday after Christmas. So we can still say “Merry Christmas” for another two days! But just to round things out, let me say, Happy New Year.

Merry and Happy...hmmm. Our gospel today, however, is a sobering reminder that all is not well in the world. It introduces one of the great villains of world history: King Herod the Great. (Don’t confuse him with the other Herod, his son Herod Antipas, who would later rule over Galilee, and cause trouble both for John the Baptist and for Jesus some thirty years later. I suppose one might well observe “like father, like son.”)

This earlier Herod is a prototype of evil in high places: a stereotype of tyranny and wickedness in the place where justice and good should sit. We only hear the first part of the story in our Gospel this morning — but you can tell that something is up even if you didn’t know the rest of the story: that after the Wise Men don’t come back to Herod, he too knows that something is up, something is going on to threaten his position, that there’s a rival king out there somewhere, and he orders the massacre of all of the little boys up to the age of two in the town of Bethlehem — and the Holy Family only escapes in a flight to Egypt because of Joseph’s dream.

Herod is so bad that he became proverbial. The historical Herod merged with the legendary to produce the perfect villain. In the religious plays that the merchant guilds of England performed in the Middle Ages — for the benefit of the common people, few of whom could read or understand the Latin bible — the part of Herod was always played by the biggest ham actor. The man who could shout and scream and roll his eyes the most would get the part to play horrible Herod. This style of overacting became the rule for Herod to such an extent that a few hundred years later Shakespeare could joke that a really bad actor “out-Herod’s Herod!”

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But what I would like to suggest to you today is that the really scary villains aren’t the ones that scream and roll their eyes, and run up and down the stage stamping their feet. The ones who scare me are the ones who go about their villainy calm, cool, and collected.

If you watch the History Channel at all, no doubt you’ve seen films of Adolf Hitler — certainly one of the worst if not the worst villains of the last century. If you’ve seen him speaking at one of his party rallies , you’ve seen how he gestured and emoted like the ham actor he was — in fact, one of the reasons he was able to come to power was that the moderates in the German government didn’t take him seriously, and couldn’t understand how anyone else could either; they considered him a blustering buffoon; more fools they! And by no means wishing to diminish or downplay the evil or the villainy of Hitler, I just want to say that I always find films of his Soviet counterpart, Josef Stalin, even more disturbing. “Uncle Joe” as he was sometimes called, was a man as ruthless and murderous as Hitler. But when you see him speaking to the crowds in Red Square, he barely breaks a sweat. Instead of the silly posturing of the Fascist salute, Stalin gently waves like the Queen Mum. But he could send tens of thousands to their deaths in prison camps with just such a dismissive wave — and he did, time and time again.

And I tend to think that Herod was a bit more like Stalin than he was like Hitler. He’s a smooth villain, is Herod. He knows how to make nice, and be polite, how to cozy up to the wise men, and get them to act as his agents — until they too are warned in a dream not to buy what this smooth villain is selling.

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And isn’t this a warning to us? Avoiding evil and malicious people would be very easy if you could always tell who they were by obvious clues — if all the villains really wore black hats, or had pencil mustaches and favored cheap suits and loud neckties. The fact is, con men and crooks are successful precisely because they look just like the rest of us, or maybe even better than us — the con man has to get you to trust him, after all.

While not wanting to put him in the class of Hitler, Stalin, or Herod, Bernie Madoff would not have been able to make off with all that money if people hadn’t trusted him. Villains in high places, whether the merely financial evil of an embezzler or swindler, or the literally murderous evil of the manufacturer who spikes infant formula with poisonous chemicals to make it look more nutritious, they often get away with it precisely because they seem so courteous, solicitous, and upstanding. You know the old expression of “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” — well evil in high places often clothes itself very comfortably in the robes of state and privilege and propriety. And they fit like a glove.

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So what are we to do? Perhaps the dreams of Joseph and the Wise Men, warning them not to trust Herod were in part a result of some sixth sense that tells you something is wrong even when it seems all right on the surface. There’s a story of a woman who managed to escape the Bernie Madoff disaster because one day she passed him on the street and noticed his shoes weren’t shined — and she pulled out all her money from his care, and escaped the disaster. Perhaps that is how the Holy Spirit works some times — as Paul mentioned in Ephesians, opening the eyes of our hearts — to see those little things that the eyes of our head might not catch. So it is important to keep both sets of eyes wide open. More importantly, much more importantly, because we will still miss things, and still be fooled — no one escapes that all the time, as Lincoln observed: that you can fool most of the people some of the time — we can have trust, more importantly, that while there may well be evil in high places, as Saint Paul reminds us in our reading from Ephesians, we also have a friend in high places! The battle with the forces of evil is not ours alone, and that is good news! As Martin Luther said in his great hymn, “Did we in our own strength confide, our winning would be losing; Were not the right man on our side, the man of God’s own choosing!” We do not need to tremble in fear at the “Prince of darkness grim” or any of his third-rate imitators seated in high places of power and prestige.

For there is a word of power above all earthly powers, a living Word and wisdom in whom we are empowered to live, and who lives in us, and that is a big part of what Christmas means. He has endowed us with a glorious inheritance and has given us a spirit of wisdom and revelation, when we open the eyes of our hearts as we have come to know him, by his becoming one of us. This is Saint Paul’s message of hope and encouragement to the people of Ephesus, and it is a message of hope and encouragement to us as well.

We do need to keep our eyes open and to be, as Jesus himself warned us, as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves —
— there are crooks and villains aplenty in this world of ours; corruption loves its comfortable seat in the halls of power and some seated there are smooth and clever, able to deceive even the elect.

But only for a time — their doom is sure. Justice may be deferred but it will not be denied, and the villains in high places and on their lofty thrones — or in their posh boardrooms or their corner offices — will find their stolen power slipping away, slipping through their greedy fingers. The Holy Family will escape. Christ will spend that safe sojourn in Egypt, return to Galilee, and grow to manhood. And even when that other Herod, Herod Junior, joined with the priests and scribes and Pharisees, with the power of the Romans at their disposal, think they have finally succeeded, and defeated Jesus, and nailed him to the cross, they will be proved wrong. Mourning will be turned to joy, and Christ will rise again, never to die again.

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And so, good people, take courage. Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Have confidence that though evil and wickedness may seem for a time to run the show, the curtain will soon come down on their last performance. Christmas is the preview of that promise, and it reminds us that God has come among us to give us power to discern and avoid evil, and ultimately in and with his strength, to defeat it. This is the hope to which God has called us, that we may know what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe. So let us rejoice and be glad, and believe that Christmas promise, in and through Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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Three Things About God

SJF • Trinity Sunday 2009 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jesus said to Nicodemus, Are you a teacher of Israel yet you do not understand these things?+

Today is Trinity Sunday, our annual opportunity, on an almost-summer morning, to talk a bit about the nature of God — our Father and our Creator, but also Christ our Brother, and the Holy Spirit our advocate and guide. Today, in honor of the Trinity, I want to say three things about God, three things about the nature of God, about who God is, and what that means for us.

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The first thing I want to say is that God is One. This truth echoes forth from the first of the Ten Commandments, on through the most important Jewish prayer — the prayer that gives rise to all other prayer: Shema Yisrael Adonai Elohenu Adonai ehad — Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is One Lord. And what was true for Israel is also true for us. Among the earliest errors to plague the church was the mistaken belief that the God of the Old Testament, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, wasn’t the same God who became incarnate in Jesus Christ. You will still sometimes hear people talk about “the angry judgmental God of the Old Testament” and the “loving God of the Gospel” as if there were two Gods. Well, I’m sorry, but we don’t believe in two Gods. We believe in One God — who is sometimes angry because we don’t do all that we should, but who is always loving because we are — even when we misbehave — his children, through the Holy Spirit.

Later, another misguided effort was made to parcel out history to the Trinity as if the Trinity were divided into three gods. A monk named Joachim of Fiore thought it made sense to give God the Father authority over the Old Testament times, Jesus the Son rulership for the few years he was on earth, and up until the time when things would be turned over to God the Holy Spirit in a new age of universal peace and love, which Joachim predicted would start about the year 1260. An interesting idea — but boy, was he ever wrong!

These errors, and others like them, forget that God is One at the same time that God is Trinity. The Trinity is not three Gods, but three Persons in One God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the same God who became incarnate in Jesus Christ, and the same God who fills the church in the Holy Spirit. God is One. That is the first thing to remember about God.

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Now, in case you haven’t noticed, we are doing theology! How about that! We are all theologians, quite consciously at least one day a year, when Trinity Sunday invites us to look for a moment at the nature of God. For that’s what theology is, looking at God not so much for what God does but as who God is.

Theology was long ago described as “faith seeking understanding.” Note the order. Theology isn’t about understanding seeking faith — if you try to understand God before you trust and believe in God you will never get there. We are too young to understand God, but if we love God and trust God, loving and trusting as only a young child can, our faith and love seeking to understand, God will then pour the Holy Spirit into our hearts. And God will do this not to give us all truth — nobody has the corner on the truth market — but to lead us into all truth, as a loving parent leads a child to learn. God graciously leads us into the beginnings of the glimmers of understanding. as our hearts and minds are turned towards God. Even though we cannot comprehend God, we can at least turn towards God and allow our hearts to be warmed by the glow of his love.

This is what Moses did when he turned aside to see why the burning bush was not consumed. He did not know beforehand that he was turning towards the Holy One of Israel. All he knew was that he saw something marvelous, and like a curious child, he wanted to know more about it. The bush burned, and yet it was not consumed.

And this burning yet unburnt bush provides me with the second thing I want to say about God: God touches his creation, and makes himself known to us through that creation, but God is infinitely more than the creation. God is not just the Creator of Everything that Is, but the Source of Everything that can Possibly Be. God utterly infuses and saturates the whole of creation, and yet God was God before creation began, and God will still be God after this creation ceases to be, and the new creation is begun.

The word for this marvelous quality of God is holiness. God is Holy: intimately connected to the universe, the source of its existence, and yet completely distinct from it. Perhaps it might help to think of how water permeates and fills a sponge, and yet is completely distinct from it. The water is still water, filling the sponge, saturating every pore — and without the water the sponge is just a hard, dry thing of no use to anyone!

So it is that God infuses the universe, filling it and making it useful and meaningful and fruitful. God is holy, deeply present while remaining completely distinct: the bush burns but is not consumed, and Moses, though called by God to approach, is warned to “come no closer” than is absolutely necessary.

God fills the universe and makes it work, but when at the end of time the universe is squeezed out like a used up sponge, God will still be God. God is Holy: that is the second truth about God to reflect on today.

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The third thing about God that our Scriptures teach us is that God, in addition to being One and being Holy, is also Loving. God loves us; indeed God loves us so much that he has given us his only Son, to the end that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but have everlasting life. Saint Paul tells us that God’s own Spirit speaks in our hearts and calls out “Abba! Father.” The Spirit speaking in our hearts lets us know that we are children of a loving God, who is the source of our being.

The problem is we don’t always appreciate how much God loves us. So Jesus tells the old sage Nicodemus that the only way to know God’s love is to be reborn, to be born from above, not through the flesh, but through water and the Spirit, God’s own gift to us. God loves us, and has shown us how to love him back. But again, it is not about understanding God first, but about loving God first, about being reborn, being a new creation, about becoming once again a child who can wonder and love and trust.

Our own lives as children and later as adults show us that love comes before understanding. Most of us have gone through that human transition, from loving our parents when we were little, and then as we grew into our teen years and began to try to understand the world, finding it very hard sometimes to understand our parents! And then, as we and they grew older, as the turmoils of adolescence cooled down and we became adults ourselves, we became aware once more of the love that was there all along.

The great American humorist Mark Twain noted this phenomenon when he said, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

That is part of what Jesus meant when he said that it is as a child that we come to God, that it is as one reborn that we come to know who it is that is the source of our life, that God is Love.

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Remember these three things our Scriptures teach us today: God is One, dwelling in light inaccessible from before time and forever. God is Holy, untouchable, beyond our reach, burning and yet not consuming, pervading but distinct from creation. And God is also Loving, generous, giving us a new birth through water and the spirit and making us children of God, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. May we ever thus be blessed by the God who is One, Holy and Loving, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.+

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The Spirit’s Doing

SJF Pentecost • B 2009 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.+

On Pentecost, fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead, and in fulfillment of the promise he had made, the apostles saw and felt the Spirit descend upon them in tongues of fire, and began to proclaim God’s saving deeds in many languages. But given the amount of woodwork in this church, if we were to see tongues of fire distributed and alighting anywhere we would likely sound a fire alarm! Clearly, when the Spirit comes to us — and I have no doubt of the Spirit’s presence, as I shall explain in a moment — when the Spirit comes to us it is in a less inflammatory fashion. We don’t see flames alighting on the tops of each other’s heads, we don’t find ourselves speaking languages we never learned to speak. How, then, do we know when the Spirit visits us?

We might begin by noting that even with such marvels as tongues of fire and the miraculous gift of languages there were still some folks who failed to see the Spirit at work on Pentecost in Jerusalem on that day so long ago. They attributed the disciples’ inspiration to hitting the bottle rather early in the morning, accusing them of being drunk and disorderly. Some, it seems, can not recognize the Spirit even when the Spirit is most obvious. So how, then, do we recognize the Spirit?

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The first sign of the Spirit’s presence with us is community, for the Spirit calls and summons us, drawing us together, or rather back together: re-membering us as members of the church so that we can remember God together.

There have been great souls who have been able to go it alone, great saints whose solitary encounter with God is the stuff of legend and sacred history. These are the spiritual athletes who encountered God flying solo, out in the wilderness, like Moses and Elijah, or the monks who dwelt in the Egyptian desert, some of them going so far as to live solitary lives on the tops of pillars, as far away from human society as they could get. But unlike such rare souls as the desert hermits, most of us will not find God in solitude on top of a pillar, but in community. If we are spiritual athletes, it is only as team players.

Moreover, the Holy Spirit appears to favor the public assembly over the private audience. “The disciples were all together in one place” when the Spirit came upon them. They were not pursuing their own personal holiness, but praying together — for and with each other — when the Spirit blew through the windows and set their souls on fire. It is in community — from the most intimate community of a loving couple, to the wide community of the church — that the Spirit comes to us, revealing Christ in our midst. Community, then, is the first sign of the Spirit.

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And the Spirit reveals Christ gathered with us too, revealed in our midst, revealed foremost as one who serves, who before his death washes the feet of his friends, and afterwards responds to their betrayal and lack of belief with words of peace, who offers them forgiveness so that they might be able to forgive in turn. This service and forgiveness find their natural home in community. For just as it takes two to tango, so it takes at least two to serve, two to forgive. Service and forgiveness flow from community as naturally as dance flows from the music, when you simply have got to move your feet to the persuasive beat.

So the ministry of hospitality, which combines service and mercy, and grows from community, is the second sign of the Spirit’s presence: as I have said many times before, “see how they love one another” is Christ’s identity badge for the church, a sure sign of the Spirit’s presence.

Hospitality takes many forms, in a parish coffee hour or visit to the shut-in; in an act as simple as an outstretched hand to help someone up these steps to the altar, or as formal as baptism. We offer a hospitable welcome to each newly baptized person, welcoming them “into the household of God” — a dwelling for the Spirit whose building-stones are ourselves — our selves, souls and bodies — as the church’s members.

Remember the children’s game: here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, and see all the little people. The outside of a church looks like a building, but when the doors are opened the living, human construction is revealed — as a community. So hospitality is the natural response of the gathered community we call the church, the second sign of the Spirit’s presence.

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And what the disciples did upon the Spirit’s arrival was to proclaim the story of salvation to each other in many languages, so that those outside the house were attracted by the sound, and were astonished to recognize their native tongues.

This proclamation is the third sign of the Spirit’s powerful presence. The children of Israel knew this, and they were always telling their story to each other. Their story sustained them through exile and captivity in Babylon; and through and beyond the destruction of the Second Temple, and even up to this day — as we are reminded of the bombing attempt at two synagogues right here in the Riverdale section of the Bronx — through and beyond the most terrible and single-minded efforts to exterminate them. The Jewish people have told and retold their story to each other, in synagogue and schul, down through the years, and the Christian church’s story is added to theirs; and each of us has a story, too, like footnotes and annotations expanding the history of salvation — so that the whole world could not contain the books that might be written.

As if the world even cared! “The world” that confronts us today, is a world where community is shattered, a world that doesn’t know how to serve, a world that has forgotten its own story. The world will not stop talking — or Twittering, or blogging — long enough to hear the gracious possibility offered to it.

Well, the world needs a wake up call. And the responsibility to give that call falls on us, the members of the church, the Body of Christ: to tell the story of salvation to the world. If we at Saint James Church faithfully proclaim that story, the world may stop its chatter for a moment and overhear: that’s how it worked on Pentecost, and it can again. People who have forgotten that they are God’s children, in the midst of this great but terrible city, might suddenly hear a voice speaking a language they haven’t heard for a long, long time, but which they recognize at once: a language from home, reminding them who, and whose, they are.

If we at Saint James Church then open our doors and our hearts and welcome them in, we will be magnified, and together we will offer glory to God such as never yet has rung from this corner of the Bronx.

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The Spirit reveals Jesus’ presence in the gathering of the community, in the hospitality they shared, and in the telling of the greatest story ever told. But the Spirit also reveals Jesus to us through a last sign unlike any other: in broken bread and a cup of wine. In the fourth sign of the Spirit’s presence, in the eucharistic feast, the one serving at the table reveals himself as the bridegroom, and the story takes a classic turn: like Richard the Lionheart casting off his pilgrim’s cloak, revealing the king’s bright red cross on his chest to an astonished Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men. And suddenly, everyone drops to their knees.

Suddenly, though the doors be locked, we realize who has been among us all this time, and we can hear his breathing. Suddenly the Holy Spirit descends upon us and upon these gifts and we remember and are re-membered into the Body of Christ.

Once one special Pentecost, that ancient Jewish harvest festival, the Spirit gathered the apostles together like a harvest of grain once scattered on the hillside. And together they welcomed, served, proclaimed, and feasted: in fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in prayer. We, their successors, can do no less. The Spirit has gathered us together. It is the Spirit’s doing, not our own. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, and the Holy Spirit our Pentecost has come to us. So come, let us welcome; come, let us serve; come, let us proclaim; and come, let us celebrate the feast. +

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A Mansion Prepared

Saint James Fordham • Advent 4b • Tobias Haller BSG

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself.

Well, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, isn’t it? A white Christmas. Of course, here in New York it’s been looking a lot like Christmas since Halloween. It used to be that Santa Claus had the decency to hold off until the end of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade — just like in the movie “A Miracle on 34th Street.” Nowadays if Santa showed up as late as Thanksgiving store-owners would accuse him of dragging his heels! Nowadays they start talking Christmas before Hallowe’en! How long before Santa Claus backs his sleigh into the Easter Bunny, I don’t know!

But the church does know, and knows better. We’ve got this time called Advent — an anticipation of Christmas, but also an anticipation of that great day when the Lord will come again in glory. For three Sundays we’ve heard news of that second coming: warnings about keeping awake and being alert, having our house in order, and preparing God’s way. The collect today continues the call for preparation, getting our house in order so that we might be “a mansion prepared.”

But on this the last Sunday before Christmas, we begin to turn our attention from the second coming back to the first coming. This Sunday in our gospel we travel back to that quiet little village in upstate Palestine, up in the lake country, up in Galilee— so far from Jerusalem that they called it “Galilee of the Gentiles.”

We travel back two thousand years to Nazareth, and find a young woman about to receive the surprise of her — and everybody else’s — life. An angel suddenly appears out of nowhere, and addresses her as if she were royalty. Mary at first is simply speechless. The angel reassures her, tells her not to be afraid, and tells her she is going to have a baby who will become great and will rule over the house of David.

Mary catches her breath, and calmly, and no doubt with some dignity informs the angel that such an event is unlikely, since she is an unmarried virgin. So the angel finally tells it all: she will be overshadowed by God’s Holy Spirit, and the child she will bear will be called Holy, as well, the Son of God. Before Mary can get in an objection, the angel tells her about her cousin Elizabeth. This woman, well past the years of childbearing, is soon going to have a baby, too; for nothing is impossible for God. Mary pauses for a moment, and then says those famous words, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word.”

Think for a moment what went through Mary’s mind before she answered the angel. Life was harder for an unwed mother two thousand years ago than it is today. She could have been cast out of the village, even been stoned to death, if Joseph had chosen that course of action. Elizabeth’s miracle was different — an old woman long said to be barren getting pregnant must have made for plenty of winks and nods and pats on the back for her equally old husband Zechariah.

But Mary’s situation was nothing to congratulate her or Joseph about. There wouldn’t be smiles — except sarcastic ones — along with clucking tongues, shaking heads and wagging fingers. Instead of congratulations there would be humiliation for Joseph and Mary both.

And yet, this is how God chose to enter this world. What is God telling us by choosing this embarrassing and scandalous Incarnation?

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The collect for today helps us answer that question. “Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself.” The thing we ask in this prayer is, Lord, help us to clean our house and get it in order for your arrival. That’s the Advent theme. We gather up the dusty old things we’ve moved from shelf to shelf but not used for years. We give away things we’ve outgrown, finally throw away things we’ve held on to “just in case” for so long that we’ve forgotten what the case was. Sometimes we have to part with something we’d like to keep, to make a difficult choice. Perhaps we’re moving to a smaller apartment, or making room for a new arrival.

It is this kind of difficult choice Mary had to make. God asked a very great thing of her. She wasn’t asked to accept a blessing that would bring her honor. She was asked to risk losing the one thing that gave her honor in her society — her good name — and because God asked her for it, she said, “Here am I, your servant.”

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Are we as willing to give up things when God asks us to? I’m not talking about bad habits — we ought to give those up in any case. I’m talking about good things that we hold on to, sometimes so tight that we can’t open our hands to receive the better things God has in store for us. It is risky to give up one’s good reputation to answer God’s call to seek righteousness. But sometimes that is what God calls us to do.

In “Miracle on 34th Street” you may recall that a young lawyer risks his reputation to do what’s right. He’s quits his job at a big law firm to defend an old man who thinks he’s Santa Claus. Something moves that young lawyer, something purifies his conscience not to do the safe thing, but the right thing.

People like that do exist outside of Hollywood. There are lawyers and doctors who give up six-figure salaries to open clinics and legal-aid offices. Ms. Campbell organizes a group of doctors and dentists to go down to Jamaica every year, to help in straitened circumstances. But it happens in the church, too. The Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana has just asked to be permitted to resign his post. In the process of working with people down in Louisiana in the recovery from Hurricane Katrina he has come to realize that is that kind of work he wants to do: helping people rebuild their lives; not spending his days behind a desk, paper-pushing and managing budgets.

I’m also reminded of four Roman Catholic bishops, some years ago in Colombia, who moved out of their episcopal palaces into the slums, into the barrios, to live with the people. They took off their fine ecclesiastical robes and put on guyabera shirts. The political bosses and crime-lords didn’t like the idea of poor people being inspired. For as Mary’s song assures us, when people become aware of their situation, — in what liberation theologians call concientización, a kind of “conscience raising” that is a particular form of purifying one’s conscience in an awareness of what is going on in the world — when poor people become educated to the truth of their situation, the mighty will be cast down from their seats, the poor and lowly will be lifted up. Such people are a danger to the status quo. and a film was made about those four bishops, called, “Such Men Are Dangerous” — two of them were assassinated; they took great risk, they were dangerous to themselves as well as to the establishment — as indeed we all can be when we are inspired by the Gospel to purify our consciences, and speak out against the abuses by the mighty.

And once, long ago, a young woman risked her reputation and her life to answer an angel’s greeting with the words, “Here am I; let it be to me according to your word.” So it is that God challenges us, to be willing, like Mary, to risk our reputations if it means we can serve him more effectively. God calls us to purify our conscience so that we can see what God wants of us.

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And God wants a lot. God wants us. Not just our service, not just our obedience, but us — our souls and bodies. God asked Mary not only to risk her reputation but to offer her self to become the means of Incarnation, to conceive in her womb a son who would be named Jesus.

And that is how our Collect ends. Why do we purify our consciences? Why do we put our house in order? Why do we risk our reputations to follow God, to do justice and work righteousness? So that “Christ at his coming may find in us a mansion prepared for himself...” A mansion!

Well, we know what Jesus found at his first coming — not a mansion. Not a hotel; not even a Holiday Inn, but a stable. But I’m getting ahead of myself — it’s not Christmas yet; we haven’t yet gotten to crowded Bethlehem, with no room at the inn. No, today’s Gospel tells us of something nine months earlier, that bright spring day when an angel walked in on Mary and changed her life — and our lives and the life of all the world — forever. Then God chose, and still God chooses no place so fitting to dwell as in a humble heart — a heart emptied of all the extra furniture of pride and reputation.

As God called Mary, God calls us to become his dwelling place; that we may, as our opening hymn said,“Fling wide the portals of our hearts.” God calls us to be people who show forth God because God dwells in us, in our hearts. God calls us every day, and enables us every day by the visitation of the Holy Spirit, to purify our consciences, to open our hearts, so that we may become Christ’s dwelling place.

Our closing hymn today will include a prayer, “Let my soul, like Mary, be thine earthly sanctuary.” God wants each of us to be his dwelling place, and a humble, loving heart, will always have room for God. You know, we can after all extend the Christmas season throughout the whole long year not so that the stores can stay open, but so that our hearts can stay open, every day.

May God’s grace come upon us abundantly as we anticipate Christ’s coming, in this time of thankful and humble gratitude for his having once come, so long ago to a city far away to a young woman ready to receive him. Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us, as he found in our sister Mary, a mansion prepared for himself. +

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The Scattered Word

SJF • Proper 10a • Tobias Haller BSG

Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path... other seeds fell on rocky ground... other seeds fell among thorns... other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain.

This Sunday we hear the first in a series of gospel lessons about seeds, parables in which Jesus uses agricultural imagery. Jesus, though a carpenter, must have been well familiar with the farming and gardening that went on in the lands in which he lived and traveled — as were the people of those lands. So he often made use of these images in his teaching.

Today’s parable shows someone sowing seed by the method that goes by the name “broadcasting” — and it may come as a surprise to hear that this term has been around a lot longer than radio or television. It consists of walking through the field and tossing the seed every which way, scattering and casting it abroad. You may have seen the logo of the book publisher Simon and Shuster, that shows a little man walking along with a sack of seed, his head tilted up, not even particularly looking where he’s going, just tossing the seed behind and around him. That’s the original “broadcasting.”

Jesus tells his disciples that the seed in his parable stands for the word, so it is not at all strange that a book publisher should use this same symbol as a logo. After all, a publisher’s business is to spread the word too, in the form of books — the written word printed on paper and distributed abroad. And this is true as surely as Jesus intended it to refer to the Word we know as the Gospel, the written word of God, the word of the kingdom scattered and spread to the four corners of the earth.

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Now, it may seem at first that broadcasting the seed is wasteful and extravagant. Why not just choose where the seed is to go, choose only the most fertile soil, prepare it, plow it and till it, and only plant the seed in the furrows. Well, to pick up our publishing analogy, you might just as well say, why publish a book? Why not find out just who wants to know what is in the book and send it directly to them. But, of course, that’s not a book — it’s a letter! That’s not publishing, but correspondence.

Publishing requires a wider reach, a greater spread, a more adventuresome approach. There is a risk of some loss in publishing just as there is in scattering your seed by broadcasting it. You may think you understand your audience, and do a lot of research about targeting a particular group for your publication, but once a book is printed and distributed, you never know for certain what will become of it. It might be a best-seller, or instead languish on the shelves only to be “remaindered” and sold at a huge discount so as not to be a total loss.

But on the plus side, you never know how many hands a book may pass through in its lifetime; one book can have many, many readers: the public library is a testimony to that fact. But the same is true of our own personal libraries. As you know, Father Forsyth, who in his retirement was a member of this parish, had served as a priest for well over half a century — and accumulated many books along the way. At his death, those books came to the rectory, where they still are. And every time I consult one of them when I’m working on a sermon or an essay, I’m reminded of Father Forsyth, because his name is written in neat little letters on the inside cover of each of them. So I benefit from them, and learn from them, as he did — and who knows how many others will do the same in the years and decades to come, and gain from what they read, and bring forth fruit, thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold?

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The thing about books is that the message they contain is for people who may not even know they need to hear it. And so it is with the Scripture itself, the written Word of God, that “book of books” we call the Bible. The message of salvation it conveys is most needed by the people who have yet to hear it, the people who don’t even know about it. Now, that doesn’t mean it will bear fruit in all of them — there are some who receive it eagerly but will not profit from it: like rocky soil where the seed can’t put down roots. Some may well receive the word, and have it taken from them by others, like birds who snatch up the seed from the path. Some may embrace the word but find that other cares and concerns stifle it out, like thorns that choke the seed.

But others, ah those others, who are like good soil, not only receive the word but do something with it, understanding it and bringing forth — what? Why, more seed! They bear fruit and multiply the seed and become broadcasters themselves, eager to share the Word they have understood and put into practice.

And this is what God desires, that the word that goes forth from his mouth shall not return to him empty, but accomplish that which God has purposed, and succeed in the thing for which God sent it. God, who broadcasts the Word, does so in order to maximize the opportunities for growth and productivity — and even unlikely soil gets the chance to be productive. Who knows, maybe that crack in the sidewalk holds enough soil to sprout at least a little. Who knows, maybe the rocky soil will give a bit when the rains come and water the earth, so that the seed might have a chance; or the thorns not be so tenacious and obstructive; or the birds might even find a tasty worm to add variety to their diet, and choose it instead of the seed!

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We are, of course, called to be the good soil — receptive to the word but also productive: to bring forth a harvest of the word, and to take up the task as sowers who continue to spread it. As our collect today puts it, we are called not only to know and understand what things we ought to do, but to pray to have the grace and power faithfully to accomplish them. We are, in short, to be fruitful and multiply the word of God.

And there is none so weak or small but may find service here. The word that a Christian proclaims need not be as eloquent as a sermon or a testimony. As the old song says, even those of us who cannot preach like Peter, or cannot preach like Paul, can still “tell the love of Jesus and say he died for all.” Even a young child, filled with the love of God and the Spirit of God, can cry out, “Abba! Father!” That Spirit is planted in our hearts through the grace and gift of God, and dwells within us, taking root and bringing forth fruit, as we — all of us adopted children — join our voices together and cry out to our Abba, our Father, our God.

And others, hearing that word, will take it in as well, as it takes root within them. The word shall go forth and shall not return empty, but accomplish that which God purposes, and succeed in the thing for which God sent it: the word of salvation, broadcast and published to the furthest extent of the world. So let us join in the task, dear friends, let us bring forth abundantly, and equipped with the word to spread, and the spirit to spread it, “publish glad tidings, tidings of peace, tidings of Jesus, redemption and release!”+

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Purposeful Spirit

St James Church • Pentecost A• Tobias Haller BSG
I will give them a new heart, and put a new spirit within them.

Given the options for the readings appointed today, I have chosen to omit the account of the descent of the Spirit from Acts. This passage describes the day on which the Spirit blew through the windows of the house where the apostles were huddled together, appearing as a flame on each, and giving them the gift of miraculous speech. I omit this reading today in part because the story is so familiar, but more importantly so that we can focus on the readings from Ezekiel, Corinthians, and the Gospel. For today I want us to reflect together not about the story of the Spirit’s descent, but its purpose; to focus not on the what, but the why.

Why did God’s Holy Spirit descend in tongues as of fire? Why, after all, does anyone light a fire? Well, might one do so for warmth, for light, as a signal, to clear a field of a rank overgrowth, or destroy a pile of refuse? Or to create a fire-break in a forest or field, to prevent a wild-fire from spreading? In short, what is the use of fire? If we can answer that question, we will gain a better understanding of God’s purpose in sending the Holy Spirit down to earth — a Spirit sent not as a showy display like a fireworks celebration, but sent with a purpose to do God’s work, not to entertain, but to empower.

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In his First Letter to the Church at Corinth, Paul catalogues the uses of the purposeful Spirit. And these uses reflect the fire of the Spirit at its most fruitful and productive. These are the gifts of the Spirit that nourish and build up the church itself, making it grow strong. This is like the fire that bakes the bread and cooks the food that nourishes us; the fire that warms our spiritual home, the church in which we gather; the flame that gives light, that drives away the darkness and gives us the knowledge of God’s presence, and serves as a light to our feet so we may follow in God’s way — — as it has from the days the children of Israel followed that pillar of fire in the nights of their Exodus. The Holy Spirit is called the “Comforter” and here we find the gifts that give comfort — which doesn’t mean “make cozy” but “make strong” — to fortify. The Spirit provides gifts that feed, that protect, that enlighten and encourage. And, as Saint Paul assures us, though there are varieties of gifts, the source is the same, the one Holy and purposeful Spirit of God.

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But what about the other side of fire? For in addition to its comforting ability to provide us food, warm shelter and light, fire can also be used to burn. Fire has two sides: it can build up but it can also tear down. This other side of fire — the destructive side — is reflected in the spiritual mandate described in our other readings. It is the power to find out evil and to expose it to the light and heat of God’s forgiving and yet all-consuming love. This fire burns up and removes all that is detestable, the prophet Ezekiel assures us. This fire is so powerful it can change our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, like the refiner’s fire that takes hard, lumpy and unpromising ore and melts out the precious, ductile gold. This is a fire turning us towards obedience and away from reckless wandering, calling us together like a great flaming lighthouse beacon, assembling us from all the places to which we have been scattered, turning our backs upon our foresworn foolish ways, so that we face the light — and the shadows of darkness lie behind us, and we gather together around the cleansing flame, to unite our transformed and refined hearts with a spirit to obey and love the Lord our God.

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This power is reflected in the gift Jesus gives to his disciples, as he breathes on them and opens their hearts to receive the soon-coming Spirit. In doing this he gives them the power to forgive sins.

The fact is, sin makes good kindling. It burns easily. And the important thing about the burning of sin is where you stand in relation to the fire! If you are caught up in your sins, if you try to hold on to them, you’ll be burned up with them; and we all know the name of the place where that fire burns, the place where soul and body are destroyed. If you’ve ever wondered why hell is so hot, it’s because all the dry wood of sin burning there so easily.

But Jesus offers us the better way, the way out of the destructive fire, so that the sins can be burnt up apart from us, burnt up like the discarded rubbish and trash they are, as we stand free and clear, able to see our past debts cancelled and forgiven, and reduced to ash, never again to harm us.

You know, there used to be a custom — it may still be done this way — that when churches took out loans so as to construct their buildings, when the loan was finally paid off they would have a mortgage-burning ceremony. The fire would consume the paid-off debt as if it never was. The fire of the Spirit can do the same with sin — Christ gave his church the power to do this, to cancel the sins of its members, and make them as if they never were, burnt up like a bill that has been paid off, or better yet, cancelled! We do often speak of a cancelled debt as having been “forgiven.” And surely Jesus calls us to remember this when we pray the prayer he taught us, as we ask God to forgive our debts even as we forgive the debts others owe to us. To forgive a debt doesn’t mean that it’s been paid off, after all — it means it has been set aside, the slate on which the debt was tallied wiped clean, the bills dropped into the fireplace, as the one to whom the debt was owed says, ‘Forget about it.’ That’s what forgiveness means.

This is good and great news, that there is a way to defeat sin, and Christ has committed it to his church. It is the flame of forgiveness that burns sin away, cleansing and purifying and giving life. The original Pentecost — not the one in Acts, but the one God commanded Moses to celebrate — came to be commemorated as the day on which God gave the law from Mount Sinai. But the Pentecost that we celebrate is not about the giving of the law but the giving of the Spirit: for the letter of the law kills, but the Spirit gives life. Some think the way to fight sin is to keep battering people with how bad they are, reminding them how sinful they are, beating them over the head with the law, like a creditor who keeps sending you past due notices. That is the way of the law.

But the way that Jesus shows us is the way of forgiveness, the way of setting sin aside. He takes all those bills and past due notices and drops them in the incinerator of forgiveness, the flame that burns urged on by the breath of our Lord, as he gently blows on that flame to burn up the debts of past sins. That is the way of the Spirit. And it is the way God means us to follow.

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These then are the powerful uses of the fiery Spirit, God’s great gift to the church. It is the beacon that calls us together, reassembling us from wherever we have wandered. It is the giver of the comforting gifts of nourishment, enlightenment, and protection, the gifts that build up the church. It is the fire that gives light to discern the way, to reveal our faults, and then consume them — to liberate us from their power, as we lay our sins upon the fire of God’s love and they are consumed and removed and forgiven forever —
— even as we set aside the sins of others against ourselves, allowing the flame of forgiveness to consume all we might otherwise hold against each other.

May we always respond to the beacon that summons us, rejoice in the light that renews us, be comforted with the warmth of the flame that enfolds us, and be freed from bondage of sin by the promised gift of the purposeful Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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