In the Name of Love

God is Love. That's it.

Proper 17a 2014 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Let love be genuine… hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Have you ever faced a task beyond your ability? Have you ever been given a job that made you feel totally inadequate, one you couldn’t get out of no matter how hard you tried? Well, if you have — welcome to the Moses Club. Our Old Testament reading this morning gives us the beginning of the call and ministry of Moses — and you can see him wriggling with those same feelings of inadequacy that we do, feelings that would follow him throughout his long career as shepherd to the wearisome flock of Israel.

But what this scripture also shows us is that God has an answer for those feelings of inadequacy, those moments — or years! — of weakness and incapacity like Moses; those times of getting it just completely wrong like Peter in our Gospel today: the realization that you can’t do it alone, but you also don’t have to do it alone. Sometimes all you have to do is get out of the way and let God be God!

Now, most of us are well aware of how almost nothing we do is truly done by ourselves alone: that we all depend upon each other for virtually every aspect of our lives. As the old saying goes, If you see a turtle on the top of a fence-post, you know he didn’t get there by himself!

It is in part the joy of Christian community, as Saint Paul encourages the Romans: its members support each other with genuine love, with mutual affection, with zeal and ardent spirit serving God in each other, outdoing each other in showing honor to each other. But a big part of the good news is that it isn’t just each other we depend on — ultimately all of us and each of us depend on God, who helps and supports all of us. He does it by his presence with us, his teaching to guide us, his patience to give us time to complete the work, and the nourishment to bear the fruit God desires. And all of this is because of the love of God.

“Let love be genuine,” Saint Paul said to the Romans. We catch a glimpse of the most genuine love there is in today’s reading from the book of Exodus, when Moses encounters God in that bush that burns but is not consumed: the love of God that is an eternal flame that does not consume the inexhaustible being of God.

Love is eternal because it is reborn in every instant. Love — God’s love — is always now. This is especially true when you compare love to the other two theological virtues, as they are called, faith and hope. remember what St Paul said? “...these three, faith hope and love; but the greatest of these is love.” Faith looks to the past, and gives thanks for all that God has done. Hope looks to the future and trusts that God will provide. But love lives in the present, if it lives at all.

After all, it is no good telling someone you loved them once, or that you’ll love them some day — who wants to hear that? And even hearing someone say, “I have always loved you” or “I will always love you” wouldn’t mean anything unless the one saying it loves you now. Love, true love, is eternal because it is alive in every moment. Love is a fire that burns, but does not consume.

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Moses confronted that love that day he was keeping his father-in-law’s sheep, living as a stranger in a strange land. The God of love chose to reveal himself to Moses for one reason: he had heard the cry of his people in Egypt, and would deliver them, because he loved them, because they were his. The eternal love of God became, in that particular time and place, (as it always does in every time and place) the present love of God in action. The God of faith that was past, the faith of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, their faith in God; the God of the hope for the future, that God would visit his people and take them and deliver them out of Egypt; the eternal and everlasting love of God would be revealed on that mountain — as God reveals himself as the God who is love, burning but not consuming: the one who was, and who is, and who is to come — is always Love. As Saint John would affirm many centuries later, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”

Some theologians have focused on this story of the burning bush, and the Name that God tells Moses to call him by, as a way of emphasizing God as pure Being, He Who Is, or “Being itself.” I would like to suggest that Saint John’s description is more apt — rather than get involved in the debate about the nature of being, simply declare that God is love. And that when we love we are most like God.

When Moses complains to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” God responds, “I will be with you.” In other words, God is assuring Moses that he isn’t going this alone. God will be with him. And as a sign of his presence, God — after a little bit of needling from Moses — tells Moses his name, which is I AM , or in Hebrew Ehyeh.

Now Hebrew, unlike English, doesn’t have tenses, at least not in the way English does. (I hope you’ll pardon this Hebrew grammar lesson, because it is important if we are to understand God’s Name; because it doesn’t translate very easily into English, and I can hardly think of anything more important, given this reading!) Instead of past, present and future, Hebrew verbs have only two forms called perfect and imperfect: the perfect describes an action that is completed and finished. It’s the “been there and done that” of language. The imperfect, on the other hand, describes an action either that was repeated or continuous in the past, or something that is happening now that hasn’t yet finished, or that is going to happen in the future. It might seem odd to think of God referring to himself using the imperfect. After all, we always think of God as perfect! But the difference in language is that perfect is dead — it’s the past, it’s done; it’s finished. What God is saying to Moses is that he is without end — there is always more to God. We can plumb the depths and think we’ve understood God, but we’ve only touched the surface, the outer edges of God’s being. God is without end; never finished.

This imperfect form of the language is what God uses when he says I AM WHO I AM: in Hebrew, Ehyeh asher ehyeh. This not only means “I am who I am,” but, “I have always been what I have always been,” and “I will be what I will be” or “I am now what I have always been and will be.” All of this is summed up in this name: and what a wonderful way to know the name of the eternal that has always been, is now, and ever shall be.

This is God’s Name, and it assures us of the kind of presence we can rely on in our weakness or our inadequacy. Not just someone who “is there for you” but someone who has always been there for you and always will be there — for you, and with you now: whose very name means Eternal Being Present. Truly, our help is in the Name of the Lord: the eternally present helper.

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My brother in Christ Thomas Bushnell made a fine observation about this not too long ago, in relation to what I said about those three virtues of faith, hope, and love. He pointed out that while we are called to have all three — faith, hope and love — there is a reason for love being the greatest, and being an attribute of God’s own Being. We have faith, but God does not need to have faith — God is the object of our faith. We have hope, but God doesn’t need hope; God knows what is to come better than we do! Faith and hope belong to us relate us to God, because we have faith in God and hope for God’s plans for us; but love is the means by which we reflect God’s own being, as mirrors or likenesses of God, made in God’s image; and this responding love joins us to God; for God not only has love, the love we have for God, the genuine love that we have for each other and for God, joins us to God. For God not only has love, but as Saint John says, God is Love; and whoever loves abides in God, and God abides in them.

After all, as St Paul assures us in his Letter to the Corinthians, in that famous passage so often heard at both weddings and funerals (and what better places are there to be reminded of the power of God who is love!): Love believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love believes all things; it has faith. Love hopes all things — it includes both faith and hope — but love endures because it is embodied in the eternal nature of God, and it is through love that we are joined to one another and to God. That love of God is eternal — it burns forever, and never consumes the source of its flame.

When you feel week, when you feel inadequate, when you feel you’ve been given a task you can’t possibly even begin to undertake, trust in that love, my friends in Christ; the love that God shows to you and through each of you to each other. It will raise you up from being a member of the Moses Club to being an eternal life-long member of the communion of God: in whose name we pray, Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.+

Light and Peace

Light comes first, then peace...

SJF • Presentation 2013 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all the world to see; a light to enlighten the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.+

Today we celebrate the feast of the Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, also known as the Purification, and in the old days Candlemas. It gained that last name because it was the day on which the priest blessed all of the candles that would be used in the church through the rest of the year.

But what about “Purification”? That name is related to an ancient custom — but one that is still with us, though in an altered form. Luke’s Gospel alludes to the ancient law, though he doesn’t go into the details.

I should say, “laws,” because two important Old Testament laws are involved here, involving the mother and the child. First, the purification of the mother: Under the Law of Moses, after giving birth a woman is considered ritually unclean for 40 days if she bears a boy, twice as long if it’s a girl. Now, as I reminded us on the feast of the Baptism of Jesus, ritual “uncleanness” is not about sin, it’s about purity, and has its roots in early efforts at public health. In this case, it is quite logical that a mother should have a period of time to recover from the stress of childbirth, and to bond with her child.

Those of you with long memories will recall that this custom, in terms of the church, is still with us, though it has changed in terminology — much as the name of the feast day itself. Do any of you remember the service called “The Churching of Women” also called “The Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth” in the old Prayer Book? That’s what it was called up until 1979, when the church decided to let the fathers join the mothers to give thanks as well, and to give thanks for adoption as well as birth, so they changed the name of the service to “Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child.” It’s in the Book of Common Prayer, page 439. So in today’s Gospel, we read of a tradition with ancient roots going back to the time of the desert wandering, but one whose branches reach right into our church this morning.

But note that the text says, “their purification,” and the law that Luke quotes is not the law from Leviticus about women and childbirth, and how long they have to wait before they are allowed to come to the Temple. Instead this is the law from Exodus about what is to happen regarding each firstborn male child. According to Exodus every such child belongs to God, and is to be redeemed by his parents in order to live. A boy who asks his father why this should be is, according to the Law of Moses, to be told, “The Lord brought us out of Egypt from the house of slavery. When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn males of the land of Egypt, human and animal. And so I sacrifice to the Lord every firstborn male animal, breaking its neck, but my firstborn son I redeem.” Does that answer your question!? Talk about a Biblical head-trip for a firstborn son! And being a firstborn son I take this very seriously!

My point in spelling all this out is that there is a huge amount of “back-story” in this quiet little incident that Luke records for us. There are literally more than a thousand years leading up to this moment, even before Simeon and Anna open their mouths to raise the pitch on what would normally have been the simple duty of every Jewish family. This little ritual is deeply tied up with ancient traditions of blood, of sacrifice and redemption, of slavery and freedom, of life and death.

As to life — well, we are shown two very long lives responding to the arrival of this couple with their child. Simeon had waited a long time to see a promised light, a light commemorated on this day by the blessing of candles. He and the prophet Anna both had haunted the Temple for years, hoping and hoping as each child was brought in and presented, according to the laws, hoping... These were two long lives lived in hope, yet their hopes were raised and their hopes were dashed time and again, as they looked upon each child brought into the Temple, looking for a sign, but receiving no sign, and perhaps sadly shaking their heads and saying, “No; not this one.”

And yet still they hoped. For Simeon had received a promise, the promise that he would live to see the light of the Messiah with his own eyes. And Anna — well who knows what she knew, or what she had been promised; all we know is that she trusted and she witnessed to the light when it came.

As come it did. Think for a moment of the release that both of these elderly people felt upon the realization of this divine promise, this revelation of a divine light. Think of how you feel after a long deferred task has finally been accomplished. There is such poignancy in Simeon’s song, “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace”; such a sense of relief, like the feeling you get after you’ve done a particularly strenuous job that needed doing, perhaps for a long, long time. I’m sure we’ve all felt the kind of tired relief that comes after finally getting around to cleaning out that attic, or ripping up the old linoleum, or painting a room that has been crying out for it for years. You step back after having completed such a job, deeply tired, but also deeply, deeply satisfied. The work is done, and now you can rest.

This is the kind of peace that Simeon felt, though magnified many times over, as what he was waiting for (the revelation of the light of God) is ever so much more important than even the most important attic, floor, or room. This is the peace of completion, of culmination and rest. It reflects the peace and rest of God at the end of the sixth day of creation: All is complete, all is very good; it is sabbath-time; it is time to rest.

Such sabbath peace and sabbath rest are the opposite of lazy peace or rest. That is the kind of rest you get by avoiding the work: just letting the mishmash of odds and ends stay in the attic or basement, and periodically adding something more to the top of the pile; or making do with the scratched linoleum or getting an area rug to throw down on top of it; or just ignoring the peeling paint and mildew. That kind of lazy rest, that kind of lazy peace, is not the peace that follows light and knowledge and hard work; it is a false peace, the false rest of denial and darkness. True peace, true rest, always follows the light.

It has always been that way — and I mean always! In the beginning, God did not rest first, and then create the light as an afterthought, as if it were a night-light to sit on the bedside table for the sabbath. No, the light came first; the very first thing that God made was light, empowering and revealing the rest of creation itself, to light the way to that sabbath rest after that first week of time, after those six days of work were done, and the sabbath came. Light came first, then peace.

So too it was in the great form of blessing that God committed to his priests: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you... and give you peace. First light, then peace.

And so too it was with Simeon and Anna. It was in beholding the light of the Messiah, shining through that small child in Mary’s arms, that they knew they finally could rest; peace had come because the light had shone — light, then peace.

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So it is and so it has always been. Yet how often do we and the world seek the peace instead of the light? How often in giving thanks for the birth of a child do we forget and turn away from the long history of struggle that led to that child’s birth, keeping it in the shadows instead of bringing it to light.

Beloved ones, we dare not seek for God’s peace in the darkness of ignorance, in the darkness of concealment, but only in the light of his truth, light that reveals the long history that brings each moment to our lives. We will never find God’s sabbath peace if we turn our back on God’s light. For the light of God shines to be the glory of God’s people, to be the light to enlighten the nations, a light shining back over a thousand years to the Passover, to the Red Sea, the costly deliverance of a people whom God redeemed at the cost of many a firstborn Egyptian son. This is the light that reveals the truth of Messiah, God’s chosen one, God’s son, his firstborn, the one whose coming — so long in coming — reveals our innermost thoughts, lighting us up, lighting up our fears, our hopes, our dreams, our dreads. He is the one who is set to reveal us, to be the fall and the rise of many.

He is the light of the world, and he is our peace, a costly light, a costly peace. The light he brings, brings peace because it lights up all that past history of woe — of the slavery of the people in Egypt, of the death of those Egyptian firstborn and of the slaughter at the Red Sea — the cost of deliverance was mighty, and God insisted that forever more that cost would be, as Shakespeare says, rememberèd.And so God casts that light even upon and through his own beloved Son — this firstborn redeemed in this little ritual as Mary and Joseph and Anna and Simeon stand by, the redeemer of the world, who is the one who brings salvation and peace, who as the only-begotten son of God will also give life — his own life — as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, washing us in his innocent blood.

Without God’s light we stumble in restless darkness, terrified of the unknown, while lulling ourselves with the false assurance of putting our heads under the covers to save ourselves from the monsters. But with God, and walking in the light of Christ, looking upon his face — whether the face of a month-and-a-week-old child in his mother’s arms, or the wounded face crowned with thorns and battered and bruised by human hatred, or the shining face of the Risen Christ on Easter morning — looking upon the face of the only-begotten Son of God, we behold God’s light, in whom we find our sabbath rest, our completion, our culmination, our peace. To him who is the light and peace of the world, be all honor and glory, henceforth and for evermore.+

What Lies Ahead

There will be water in the desert...

Lent5c 2013 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Thus says the Lord, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

As is clear from our gospel reading this morning, our Lenten season is drawing to a close. Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. The gospel passage is set six days before Passover, and Jesus is in the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, this unusual family of a brother and two sisters — all the more unusual because the brother had been dead, and behold, he is alive.

But before we come to this domestic scene with Jesus taking part in what begins as a simple family dinner in the home of some of his closest friends — before that our ears are tuned to expect something quite astonishing because of the other Scriptures we heard. They all relate to looking forward — so what is it we have to look forward to?

Isaiah portrays the Lord giving a direct commandment: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing!” And the new thing he describes is making a way in the wilderness, water bursting forth in the desert.

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Let me take this opportunity to tell you a bit of a personal story. I had more or less lost my faith by the time I was in high school. Don’t be too shocked — this often happens with young people; some of you may have had this experience yourselves. In my case, although I had been baptized an Episcopalian, I had been an infant at the time and was too young to remember it, and from about the age of five on I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church. This was in those days before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council — back when things were taught without being explained, when the worship was in Latin and we were taught to say the words but not what they meant, and the incense smelled like burning tennis shoes and it always made me sick to my stomach, already stressed because these were the days when you were required to fast from the night before. I’m afraid that the teaching — based on the principle “what we say is true because we say it” — wasn’t geared to my inquisitive and doubt-filled mind; and questions were not encouraged. So I drifted away from the church by the time I got to high school.

But a few years later, early in college, I actually picked up a Bible and read the Gospels, and realized what I had been missing. Also about that time — and I do believe this is the grace of God at work — I encountered an Englishwoman, Doreen Griffin (God rest her soul!), through my work at the local educational television station, where she was one of the people coordinating the “talent” performing in the educational TV programs they produced. Doreen was also a very active Anglican, an Episcopalian involved in her local congregation that was part of the emerging Episcopal charismatic movement — a part of the church blessed with. the visible signs of the Spirit’s presence. Now, mind, these were Episcopalians, so it didn’t mean being slain in the spirit or rolling on the floor in an ecstasy, or handling snakes. But it did mean being open to manifestations of the presence of God, evidence of the presence of God.

To make a long story short, I attended one of these charismatic meetings, and joined the circle sitting in silent prayer; and at one point I felt as if there was a strong wind blowing from the center of the circle, blowing into my face and I spoke, not really entirely sure why I did so, and I said, “There will be water in the desert.” That was it. When the prayer session ended the other members of the group told me that this was a prophecy. O.K., maybe it was; whatever it was, I have ever since found that phrase has been very close to my heart — and to which I have returned again and again in times of trial and disappointment. And here it is in our reading from Isaiah today.

It is a word of hope that does not deny the reality of trouble. There is, after all, the desert — the dry and unproductive, and dangerous and deadly environment: you might say, where I had been for those few years without God when I was between the church of my childhood and that of my early adulthood. A desert, yes, but one where there is hope — hope, that with the power of God, water will well up even in this unexpected and unpromising place, precisely where it is most needed. Water, in the desert.

Today’s psalm sums up this mixture of fear and promise, of hurt and hope. The fortunes of Zion, which had fallen very low, are restored; and those who went out weeping carrying the seed, come with joy shouldering their sheaves. I’ve spoken before about how this psalm portrays people risking planting the last of their seed in the hope that it will bring in a harvest — every farmer has to follow that advice to look forward to what is ahead, and to hope that the springs of water will come to nourish the crop. One who has no hope will never plant — but one who never plants will never reap a harvest.

Saint Paul gives this an even more personal spin; similar to the way in which I shared some of my story, Paul talks about his experiences with religion — though unlike me, who only drifted away from the church for a time in my youth, Paul in his youth actively persecuted the church in his zeal for his own religious upbringing. But since he has come to know Christ, he has tossed all of that behind him; he treats it as so much rubbish. All of his accomplishments, all the credit he scored with the leaders of his former sect, all of his learning, and even his ancestry— it has all become so much rubbish, and “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” he “presses on toward the goal of the prize of the heavenly call of God.” Paul has tasted of the water that wells up in the wilderness and he knows that nothing else will ever satisfy his thirst for God.

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So, by the time we arrive at the dinner scene in Bethany, we are prepared to see a new thing that will spring forth, to see water in the desert. And the one who sets the new thing in motion is Mary. You will remember from other incidents in this household that she was deeply devoted to Jesus and sat at his feet to listen to him while her sister Martha was busy preparing dinner. And we find her once again at the feet of her Lord, this time not sitting and listening, but anointing his feet with perfume — valued at 300 denarii as the money-minded thief Judas is very quick to calculate. Jesus is equally quick to rebuke this mercenary impulse — after all he knows this is not intended for the poor but for the protester’s purse — and this gives a hint of what this action means: that Mary has been keeping this perfume for the day of his burial.

Into the joy of this dinner held in Jesus’ honor, Mary provokes and Jesus affirms that his death and burial is only a few days away. As the hippies used to say, “Bummer.” But we would be wrong to see this as a reverse of what we’ve been talking about: water in the desert. This is not a desert coming into the water. This is not a buzz-kill, a discovery of something unpleasant floating in the punch bowl — no, this is still good news. This is water in the desert.

It’s just that the desert looks like a dinner party.

But look around that table. There is Martha, serving — is she still casting dirty looks at her sister Mary for not helping her with the work? And there is Judas, complaining out of the desert of his hard, scheming heart that his chance to make a quick buck has been spoiled. And there is Jesus, reminding them that his death is approaching, and that poverty and need will always exist. So much for the desert of want.

Then where is the water of hope?

Well, there is Lazarus — a man who was literally dead not too long before, but who is now alive, and if that doesn’t give you hope I don’t know what will. And there is Mary, willing to pour out that perfume in the hope of a better hope, like the people planting the seed knowing that the rains will come and the harvest thereafter. And of course, there is Jesus: who reminds them of his death and burial, but for we who know the other side of the story, the other side from Easter, know that he will be raised from the dead.

Jesus sets his face towards Calvary in the knowledge that his resurrection lies beyond it — over the hill — as I reminded us not long ago, no cross, no crown! The water will spring forth in the desert — but the desert is there. Resurrection will come, but not before death on the cross and burial in the tomb in the garden, where his body will be anointed again with perfume; laid to rest before he rises.

Jesus reminds us, “You always have the poor with you” — and I think it fair to understand this as meaning there will always be deserts; there will always be need, and disappointment, and loss. But through it all there will also be hope — the Lord will give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to those chosen, to the people God has formed so that they may declare the praise of the Lord, God blessèd forever, and mighty to save, who brings water in the desert, and new life from the grave.+

Old and New

Good night to 2012... hello to 2013: all with God.

New Year’s Eve • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

There are many ways in which I could greet you this evening. I could, for example, begin with the obvious, “Happy new year,” even though the actual beginning of the new year, the start of New Year’s day at midnight, is still just about a half an hour or so away. Perhaps it would be better if I used the term familiar in the West Indies, and said, “Happy old year’s night.” For we are still in the old year — as I said, still half-an-hour to go.

However, this being a church and all, I could also observe the official feast day and wish you a happy Eve of the Feast of the Holy Name — or to use the term from the old calendar, the Eve of the Feast of the Circumcision; since on the eighth day after his birth every male child of the Jewish people was circumcised and given his name, including Jesus. And even though I’m not very good at math, I can tell it’s been eight days since the 25th of December.

I could also, of course, continue by saying simply, “Merry Christmas,” since Christmas is not just a day but a season 12 days long — why, there is even a song about it; though given the fact that as I said I’m not very good at arithmetic I tend to get lost amongst all those maids a-milking, and Lords a-leaping, even if I can keep track of those five golden rings and the other things you can count on one hand.

But what I’d like to think about in this meditation on this evening, this end of the year, harks back to those first terms I mentioned, Old Year’s Night and New Year’s Day. For this is a night of the old and the new. It is a time for looking back as well as a time for looking forward. Although you don’t see them as often as you used to, there was a long tradition — and I’m sure many of you remember it — of portraying the old year as a wizened old man with a long white beard carrying a scythe — kind of an Old Father Time figure — and portraying the new year as a baby with a banner strategically wrapped around him proclaiming his number — in this case 2013.

So let’s contemplate that old guy for a minute or two — certainly a year such as we have lived through is worth a minute or two of contemplation. What a year this has been! The old man with a scythe has been through a lot — and he’s just about as described by the morose author of Ecclesiastes, who described old age in household terms: the guards of the house trembling, the strong men bent, and the women who grind have ceased working because they are few — and in case you’re haven’t got the imagery, that’s the arms, and the legs and the teeth — and it won’t be long before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken, and the wheel is broken, and the dust returns to the earth as it was.

Bad enough, I suppose, as a portrayal of old age, but I think if we were to portray this past year as an old man, he wouldn’t just be old and bent over and leaning on his scythe; he would likely have broken a couple of limbs, have a concussion — and even more tragically several gunshot wounds.

It almost seems like these last two months have been trying to make up for lost time in terms of disaster and tragedy. That horrific storm, one of the worst ever to hit this region, was followed by a human storm, a rain of bullets striking down over two dozen innocent people, most of them children — a horror as senseless and seemingly as arbitrary as the unleashed forces of nature that brought about that horrible combination of a hurricane and a nor’easter.

However you look at it, this has been one hell of a year. I’m sure I’m not the only one who will be happy to turn over the page on the calendar and say, “Enough.” I want to be encouraged — and I want to encourage you — as I look forward to a new year. And there is cause for encouragement — even after such tragedies, hope is still a reality; even the ironic hope of saying, “Well, it couldn’t get any worse!” But there is hope indeed, real hope, such hope is only really makes sense when things are going bad. For there is that baby.

And I don’t mean the baby dressed with a banner marked 2013. I mean the baby born eight days ago — in the church’s eternal reckoning by its cycling calendar. That baby is new — and he makes all things new. He is the beginning and the end, he is the Alpha and the Omega, or as we would say, he is A to Z. Even though a child, he compasses it all, for he was before it all, and came to us in these latter days as a light shining into our darkness, coming into our darkness from the realm of light in which there is no shadow or darkness at all, for the glory of God is its light and its lamp is the Lamb. That Lamb, the Lamb of God — is Christ — he has come to us to bring us his own light, by which we all have the opportunity to walk.

Some no doubt will refuse to walk by that light in the coming year just as some refused to walk by that light in the year that is drawing to a close. People cannot be made to see when they refuse to see; and as the old saying goes, “There is none so blind as them that won’t see.” Many people will care for and nurture their unbelieving hearts as they turn away from the living God, hardened by the deceitfulness of sin that they think makes their life easier but in the end makes it harder in every sense of the word.

But they have an opportunity, just as we have the opportunity — as they do if they would only choose it — to open our eyes to his light and our ears to his voice, not to harden our hearts as in the day of rebellion, but to soften them — with our tears if need be, but soften them nonetheless and by any means necessary — and so become partners with Christ, cooperating with him in the gracious work of salvation, beginning with ourselves. This is work with which we are charged as God’s agents here on earth — his colleagues, his coworkers. We are called and commissioned to help spread the word, to spread the light, to shed the light, to let people know that however hard the past year has been, there is hope for those who believe.

We are, in short, ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. And we entreat all who hear on behalf of Christ to be reconciled with God. He came to us at our darkest hour — and surely this past year has been dark enough to qualify — as he always comes in the darkness before the dawn. He came into this sinful world so that we might become his righteousness. It is in his strength that we work, together with him, urging ourselves as well as others — for surely we all need encouragement when the going gets tough — but urging ourselves and others to accept the gracious gift of God that is presented to us each and every time we ask. The grace of God is the gift that keeps on giving — an inexhaustible fountain where the golden bowl is never broken, the pitcher is never cracked and the dust itself is breathed upon and given new life.

And when does this happen? Not just at the turning of the year, my friends. Not just at some zero hour fixed by the earthly calendar, whether of the sacred or secular. No, my friends, grace comes in every instant from God for whom it is always Now. When is the day of salvation? Not just on Christmas — even all 12 days of it — but every day is the day of salvation; every time is the acceptable time. Brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling, this is the acceptable time —
— the time to accept the grace of God that is given anew in every single instant.

We need these reminders — as God comes to us in these moments of prayer at the end of a terrible year; when God comes to be with us, to wipe the tears from our eyes and to whisper his promise that death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more; for these past things are over and done with.

Will there be more sorrows to come in the new year? Yes, I’m sorry to say there will. As long as we are in this mortal life we face the reality of mortal pain. We will grow older, fall ill, and come to an end of this mortal life one day or another.

But we will not be alone. In all these sorrows, as well as in all our joys, one will be with us holding us by the hand so long as our hands are open to receive his touch. Even out of the depths of sorrow the Psalmist cried out, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for him; in his word is my hope — my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.”

Beloved, morning is coming. And what is more, the Lord is already here — he has never left us. For though we celebrate in our human way these annual cycles as if God came and went — God the constant, the ever-present Savior, does not come or go — God has never abandoned us and never will. There is no place in time or space, in height or depth, in old or new, where God is not. His light is there if we open our eyes, his voice is speaking if we shush and still our souls, making them as quiet as a child upon its mother’s breast, and listen. And then all we need do is reach out and take his hand.+

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.

+ + +

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.+

A Man Like John

SJF • Advent 3b • Tobias Haller BSG

When the priests and Levites from Jerusalem asked him, “Who are you?” he confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.”+

As it comes round every year, we’re back to “Rejoice Sunday” again, regular as clockwork. And this year we really do get to hear some readings that sound like something to rejoice about! That reading from Isaiah is full of wonderful promises to Jerusalem — wonderful promises... You know, I can’t help but think, with all of the rhetoric of the not-so-long-ago presidential campaign echoing in my ears, how much this could sound like the exaggerated promises of a politician, if you wanted to hear them in that way: two chickens in every pot and two cars in every garage.

Look at the promises Isaiah relates — everybody will live to be over a hundred years old, and reap the rewards of their labor. They shall not plant and another reap; even the nature of wild animals shall be changed in God’s peaceable kingdom; the wolves and lambs will eat from the same trough, and lions will learn to do with hay.

Surely such promises only could come true in the kingdom of God, in the new Jerusalem. No earthly politician would dare to promise such peace and prosperity, such a complete reversal of things as we know it. I mean, what kind of politician would dare to say, “My friends, I’m going to make everyone wealthy!” Well, some might...

Even so, the promises seem very high, when we look at the economic situation of our world, the state of war and terrorism. It is so very easy to see how far we are from the promised new Jerusalem of which Isaiah speaks. And it would be tempting to turn to follow a prophet or politician who promised us everything, assured us that straw can be spun into gold, and that wealth will somehow miraculously trickle down — not from God, but from the wealthy, so that everyone will have their share. How tempting to think that universal health care will somehow just happen, that there will no longer be an infant who lives but a few days, or an old person who doesn’t live out a lifetime.

Those are the kinds of promises people want to hear, the kinds of promises they look for in a politician — or a prophet. And many will give in to the demand, and tell the people just what they want to hear.

+ + +

But not John the Baptist. John was different. The people wanted to fit him into their box. They were looking for the Messiah, and they wanted John to be the one. But John knew his limitations. He knew who he was, and who he wasn’t and what his task was: to prepare. He was sent by God to challenge the people, to shake them from complacency, and begin the process of reestablishing a just and humane society. He made no impossible demands, and he made no impossible promises: he just told people with a closet and pantry full of food and clothes that they should share with those who had none. He assured the people he was not the Messiah, but was the one sent with a message to prepare, and call the people to live, so far as they could, righteous and generous lives, for the good of all.

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I am old enough to remember another John, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, though I was in grade school the year he was elected, and in junior high the day he was assassinated. I still can see the face of Mr Stakem, my civics teacher, poking his head through the doorway into algebra class. I sat right along the wall, so all I could see was his head sticking into the room, and saying, “Mr Elliott, I’m sorry, but I have something very important to tell the class. The President has just been shot.” And then disappearing. And a half-hour later the announcement came over the PA system that the President was dead, and we were all sent home. Quite a day...

So I remember John Kennedy; and even as a youngster, I could see he was different from the other president I’d consciously known; though being very young I really didn’t know him very well — Dwight Eisenhower, known as “Ike.” Ike was an old man with a bald head, often in the hospital because of his heart problems; but John Kennedy was a young man with a full head of hair, strong and handsome and athletic. Ike and Mamie Eisenhower looked like folks from my neighborhood, like my great-aunts and uncles; but John and Jackie Kennedy looked like movie stars.

John Kennedy spoke differently, too. And I don’t just mean his accent — after all, though I grew up in Baltimore my Mom was Boston Irish, so I was used to hearing the sounds of “why doncha go pahk the cah.”

It wasn’t his accent, but his words themselves, not just how he spoke but what he said. As young as I was, I could hear the challenge and hope in his voice, together with his realism — not empty promises, but a call to responsibility. How powerful that challenge was: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” His voice echoed with others of his generation, the voices of Martin Luther King Jr and John’s brother Bobby. These were prophetic voices, like John the Baptist, not saying,
“I’m going to do it all for you” or “Don’t worry about anything, it will all take care of itself” or “If we just help the rich to stay rich some of the crumbs will fall from the table and everybody will get what they need.” No, these were voices that said, “I’m not your savior, but I’m here to challenge you to do the right thing. I’m here to tell you to get your act together and work with me to build a just society. I’m here to shake things up, and unworthy as I am, to challenge you to do all in your power to make the world a place prepared for God’s coming kingdom — to prepare the way of the Lord, to make his paths straight. I may not get there with you, but I have a dream today...”

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I don’t need to tell you that I heard a similar voice speak out in the campaign leading up to the election, and I’ve heard that same voice since. It is the voice of the man our nation chose, by a significant margin, to be our next President. He too could have offered the easy promises of wealth to the rich trickling down to us below; of health care provided universally but without cost. But he has taken a page from John’s book — John the Baptist and John Kennedy — to be straight with us, to challenge us, and call us to stand up to the challenge. It isn’t about him. It is not he upon whom we’ve pinned our hopes — except the hope that he will inspire us to do our best, not to ask what he can do for us, but what we can do for each other, working together, helping to turn our hopes into action to make this land, this world, a better place.

He is challenging us to “make straight the paths” of this land so that the poor and weak do not stumble. He is calling us to sacrifice and contribute to the good of all so that a fair and equitable health care system can be instituted, so that, God willing, no more shall there be an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live a lifetime. He is calling us to a world in which one does not plant while another harvests the crops, to a world in which the worker is compensated fairly, without regard to age or gender or race, and in which the laborers receive the fair return of their labor. He is calling us to a world in which those with much will indeed be challenged to share what they have — as John the Baptist did when he said that the one with two coats should share with the one who has none, and the one with plenty of food should do the same: and that’s not socialism; that’s the Gospel!

Barack Obama is no more the Messiah than was John the Baptist — but both of them call us to our better selves, to responsibility and willingness to bear each others’ burdens, so that all might benefit. We live in difficult times no less than did John the Baptist, times of war and want, of poverty and need, and of greed and selfishness. We cannot by our own efforts bring about the kingdom of God — but we can make straight his paths. We can prepare the way. We can all be men and women like John.

I give thanks to God, and pray for his continued blessing, upon our new President, who we hope at last can succeed in calling us to this high — and I dare say it — holy — endeavor. Let us work together with him, with our congress, with our fellows throughout the world, brothers and sisters, to hasten the day when justice, freedom, and peace, shall be the watchwords of our nation and our world. Let us make straight our Lord Messiah’s path, and rejoice at his coming, even our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.+

As those who have no hope


St James Fordham • Proper 27a • Tobias Haller BSG

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.+

Out in the hot, dry, Arizona desert, there are 27 dead people waiting for resurrection. They aren’t the inhabitants of a Christian cemetery, waiting as all the faithful departed do for the coming of that great day when the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible. No, these are 27 people who have had themselves put into a deep-freeze of liquid nitrogen in the hope that science will one day find a cure for whatever it was that ailed them, as well as a way to restore their frozen tissue without irreparable damage.

Such is their hope. And the cost? They’ve paid a pretty penny for this deep-freeze, $120,000 each — except for a few of them who decided to save a bit, and took the option, for a mere $50,000, to have had only their heads frozen. Talk about cut-rate pricing! If I want a brain freeze I can just drink a Mickey D milkshake too fast. I suppose these particular blockheads — I think it’s no insult to call them that now, is it? — I suppose they were the most optimistic among the “frozen people” since they expect science will be able to grow them new bodies or build them one like Robocop.

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Saint Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Now, the frozen people in Arizona clearly had hope before they died and were deposited into their giant Thermos flasks. They had the hope that they would one day be thawed, healed or repaired, and live again.

But what a foolish hope, and what a pointless promise. Even if they could be thawed, reanimated, and healed, how much longer do they imagine they could live after that? Bodies may live a long time, but they don’t preserve the vigor of youth. However well we care for our bodies, they weaken and fail. There’s a lesson in the fable of the man who was granted his wish of eternal life but forgot to add eternal youth and was cursed to become a dried up husk of a creature scuttling about the passageways of his great-great-grandchildren’s palace. Until, the legend tells us, the gods took pity on him and transformed him: and that’s where the grasshopper came from! A long life without the health to enjoy it is not a blessing, but a curse.

And even beyond that, even if these newly thawed-out bodies could be kept young forever, what does “forever” mean? After all, the world is going to end someday! And I don’t just mean in a biblical sense based on ancient prophecy, but in cold simple scientific fact. Some day our sun, and every sun that shines in every corner of the universe will either explode or cool down to a cinder. Some day billions of years in the distant future, science assures us, the whole universe will die in the cold embrace of entropy, as all energy drains away and even the atoms that make up everything in the physical universe collapse from sheer exhaustion and decay into the virtual nothingness of a cold, absolute zero. Those who hope for immortality in the physical world through science are cheated of eternal life by that very science: they may live a long, long time, but not for ever. Nothing physical lasts forever — all matter is corruptible, and all flesh is as the grass of the field — and flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven — and those whose hope for immortality is based simply on the survival of their physical bodies are doomed in their ignorance. Haven’t they ever seen a zombie movie — dead bodies walking, but falling apart even as they walk?

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Saint Paul counsels us, “We do not want you to be uninformed about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Our hope, hope for ourselves as well as all our beloved who have died before us, our hope does not rest upon the some-day maybe-if-we’re-lucky promises of science but on the eternal, absolute and make-no-mistake-about-it assurance of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. What does the old song say? “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness!” The one we hope in doesn’t wear a white lab-coat, but a crown of thorns, and Jesus Christ doesn’t just offer us opinions and options and possibilities but a sure and certain hope — and all other grounds are sinking sand.

Jesus Christ is our secure hope. Because he’s been there. Jesus descended to the dead and rose again the third day. He knows what it is like to feel life drain from him, with the blood he shed on Calvary. This was no near-death experience. Jesus didn’t just come near death. He died! He was buried, and lay in the tomb for a sabbath rest, until by God’s power he was raised from the dead.

Because we share in his death through Baptism, we will also share with him in his resurrection; which is not the reanimation of a corpse, but a whole new creation in the resurrection body, the body that is more than flesh, full of the eternal power of the Spirit, alive with the life that comes from above.

Saint Paul describes the scenario, and whether it happens next week, next year, in a hundred or a thousand or a billion years, this is how it will happen. The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, and the trumpet shall sound, and those who have died in Christ will rise, and those who are alive will join them, caught up into the mystery of the new life, transformed into his likeness without ever even having had to leave the old one behind.

“The Lord will descend with a cry of command.” And do you know what his command will be? Can you guess? Don’t you think it will be, “WAKE UP!” Christ will call to life all those who have died, and call those who live to new life in him. “Wake up!” will be the watchword, and the trumpet blast and the cry of his voice will be loud enough to wake the dead, literally! As was said to me recently, “On that great day there’s gonna be a whole lot of earth turned up at Woodlawn!”

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Our hope as Christians is not that we will simply be thawed out, simply be mended to walk about as reanimated corpses, but that we will be given new spiritual bodies, spiritual bodies that can live for eternity long after the merely physical universe decays into the thin gray neutrino soup that scientists foresee billions of years from now. Long after this universe has dissolved, what is eternal shall remain, God and his children, wakened at the sound of the trumpet, and at the call of his Son, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.

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Winston Churchill saw his nation through the terrible war years when he was at an age at which most people are happily retired. In addition to being a statesman and world leader and amateur oil-painter, he was also a devoted churchman and staunch believer in the promises of our faith. There is a persistent unverified rumor — which I have done nothing to discourage! — that his mother, Jennie Jerome, whose father used to live across the road now known as Jerome Avenue in his memory, was baptized here at Saint James Church!

Churchill’s faith and hope were reflected in the funeral service he planned for himself. It took place in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, which had stood throughout the Battle of Britain and the Blitz as a testimony to the church’s presence in a world gone mad, its great dome rising above London’s flames and smoke, defying Hitler’s bombers and rockets. Churchill, as befits a military man, arranged that as his funeral neared its end, a lone bugler high in the dome of the cathedra would begin to play the universal signal for day’s end, the tune we know as “Taps.” I’m sure that melody brought tears to many eyes that day, as it has in so many other places and times.

But old Sir Winston had a more profound message to convey in his funeral. Before the last notes of Taps had faded, another bugler at the opposite side of the dome began another tune, another melody with a very different message: the other bugler played “Reveille”!

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Our hope, and the hope of countless Christians who have gone before us, all the saints, prophets, apostles and martyrs, all our dear beloved friends and family in Christ, our hope is that at the end the last melody will not be Taps. It will be Reveille! Those who have fallen asleep will wake at the trumpet blast. Those who have died will rise. And, as Saint Paul wrote, those “who are left will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.”

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
O may I then in Him be found;
Dressed in His righteousness alone
Faultless to stand before His throne.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand —
All other ground is sinking sand. +

The Best-Laid Plans

Saint James Fordham • Proper 22a • Tobias Haller BSG
There was a householder who planted a vineyard.

A little girl, five years old, kneels in the middle of the kitchen floor, building a house of bright wooden blocks. It is a beautiful house. There are round, green pillars at the front door. Windows on each floor are framed by blocks of yellow and orange, and topped by bright red lintels. Just as she is about to place the finishing touch — the blue, notched chimney block — on the roof of the house, the door opens and her mother comes in with an armful of laundry. As the door closes, the floor shakes and the house collapses in ruins — no house now, just a pile of blocks: yellow, red, green and blue. The little girl jumps up, and in frustration kicks the blocks that go sliding across the floor. Then, looking at her mother, she bursts into tears.

We have all known disappointments in our lives — some minor, some deeply painful. From earliest childhood, when we first begin to have expectations, through the shattered dreams of adolescence, and the dashed hopes of adulthood, our best laid plans often don’t work out.

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Today we have heard two stories about vineyards — and about failed hopes. Isaiah sings a tragic song about crop failure. We need not look far to find parallels for this story, what with droughts and hard winters, to say nothing of the collapse of the virtual crop known as the stock market, or the changing climate. A modern day folk singer protesting farm foreclosures or ecological disaster is singing in the spirit of Isaiah; because the song is about more than vineyards; it is about plans going awry, and a world misused.

Isaiah’s beloved, for whom he sings this song, is a careful planner. The land is fertile; the ground is cultivated with care, the stones are cleared away. The property is fenced to keep out the foxes. The vines themselves are choice. In the middle of the property a wine vat is prepared, and a tower is built as a home for the workers. The vineyard owner, looking over the scene, smiles and savors in imagination the taste of the rich sweet wine.

But when harvest time comes, what does the vineyard yield? Wild bitter grapes, good for nothing. Like the little girl whose house of blocks collapsed — like many of us who suffer disappointments — the vineyard owner reacts with violence: tearing down the fence, breaking the walls, trampling the vines under foot, letting it go to wrack and ruin. The vineyard owner even makes it stop raining.

Wait a minute! How can the vineyard owner make it stop raining? Who has the power to do that? Suddenly, with this one phrase — “I will command the clouds” — Isaiah reveals that this song isn’t about agriculture, but about God and Israel and Judah. God is the owner who looks — not for grapes — but for justice and righteousness: justice as sweet and righteousness as fortifying as wine. Instead God finds the bitterness of strife and bloodshed, the stench of injustice.

This song isn’t about farming after all, or natural disasters like drought and hard winters. This is a song about sin: the human tendency to misuse even the best advantages for selfish ends. God delivered the tribes of Israel out of Egypt, and brought them to a fertile hill, a land of milk and honey. They were given the Law as a guardian and watchtower, to keep them on the paths of righteousness.

Instead, injustice and crime are the rule. Sinful humanity thinks of itself first, and in place of a pleasant harvest of righteousness and generosity, only grapes of wrath grow upon the stunted vines.

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Selfishness and greed are even more evident in the second vineyard story that Jesus tells. It starts in the same way, with a carefully planned vineyard. Then the owner leases the vineyard to tenants, and goes off to another country. When harvest comes, the owner sends servants to collect the share of the produce that constitutes the rent, but finds the workers have decided to keep the whole harvest for themselves. They beat and kill the servants, and then even murder the owner’s son when he is sent to set things right.

Selfishness and greed — but surely folly, too. What can these tenants be thinking? What could possibly lead them to believe they can keep the whole harvest for themselves, not even turning over the portion due as rent? How can they imagine that by killing the son they could gain the inheritance? What can possess them?

Well, what possesses anyone acting out of greed? Look around at the world and you will see. God gives us the good earth to live in — but we pollute it with waste, we deplete its resources, we warm it to a boil and then wonder where have all the glaciers gone. Look at the financial crisis: a mixture of greed and misplaced optimism, of thinking you can cut corners and not have to abide by any rules, and squeeze the fruit until it gives more juice than it contains, and even to wager on derivatives that gain when everyone else loses. No wonder we are in a pickle.

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God gives humanity the ability to choose between right and wrong — yet we often place our own needs, our own best laid plans before those of others. As a result, the physical and human worlds both are spoiled. We look “for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry!” Fallen humanity clutches the harvest to its breast, crying out like a five-year-old, “Mine! Mine!” and failing to see that what it holds is a harvest of dry and stinking weeds.

Greed and folly make the harvest turn sour. Like the manna of the wilderness, the harvest cannot be stored up, but must be used and shared day by day. If you try to keep it, to possess it as your very own, it will rot. God promised that the bread from heaven would be there daily, but the untrusting souls who tried to store it overnight ended up with rot.

St Paul wrote to the Christians of Philippi about such people: “Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” The greedy focus on their own plans without regard for others.

This is the attitude of the earthly minded. But the earth itself is good — it is God’s own creation, created it for our benefit. What turns the earth bad is our selfish misuse of it. When the earth becomes an end in itself — only good for what we can dig out of it, grow from it, or make of it — the earth itself will rebel — has rebelled — against us. If we go on trying to squeeze every last derivative penny from a stock market based not even on stock any more, but on futures, options and indexes — well, our future is bleak, our options few, and the index is the skin of our teeth. When we begin to think of the harvest as ours, rather than God’s, it will turn sour. If our best laid plans leave God, and God’s children — the whole of humanity — out of the picture, we are as foolish as those who worship their bellies, or who think that by killing servants or son, they will inherit the kingdom.

If, then, we are to lay our plans well, if we are to build on a firm foundation, then God must be at the heart of our best laid plans. The earth is available for our use and benefit, but it is the kingdom of heaven that should concern us ultimately. The market is there to trade in, the banks to invest in wisely and prudently — not in wild speculation but in sober judgment — but the place our dearest treasure should be stored is not here on earth, but with our Father above.

To do so, we must face for a time away from the earth, lifting our eyes toward heaven, and pressing “on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

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Seven hundred eighty-two years ago yesterday, a man died whose whole life focused on heaven, but who delighted in things of the earth. Few have so embraced the simplicity of Christ’s life, and few so relished the glories of God’s creation. Yet Saint Francis of Assisi understood the secret of moving amid his fellow creatures — men and women, the sun, moon and stars, the rivers and animals, especially the animals — while keeping his eyes fixed on Christ. He even knew the greatest secret of all, the secret the vineyard tenants did not know. They thought that killing the son would wreck the owner’s plan; that Christ’s death was the collapse and ruin of God’s best laid plans for the world.

But out of death came life. Christ’s death was not the failure of God’s plan, but its culmination. As Saint Francis knew, death is not the end. We joined our voices with his in our opening hymn, based on one of his poems: “Even you, most gentle death, waiting to hush our final breath... You lead back home the child of God, for Christ our Lord that way has trod. O praise him, Alleluia.”

As we pass — as we must — through that narrow door of death into the wide expanse of the kingdom of heaven, may we bear a rich harvest of fruit, the fruit of a life lived in generosity and fellowship with all of our brothers and sisters, ready to present it to the owner of the vineyard. The Lord will welcome us, as he has always planned, with open arms, the same arms he once spread out for us and for the whole world, upon the hard wood of the cross.+