Witness Protection Plan

April 27, 2014 by Saint James Church Fordham

God offers a protection plan for those who witness in the power of the Spirit...

SJF • Easter 2a 2014 • Tobias S Haller BSG
These are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Happy Easter! I say that because Easter is not just a single day, but a whole season, and we are now on the Second Sunday of that Easter Season. This season is a time to celebrate something that is too good just to commemorate with a single day — the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is something to celebrate for a whole 50 days, right up to Pentecost. And beyond! For I hope I don’t surprise you further by reminding you that every Sunday is a “little Easter,” a celebration of the resurrection. Even the Sundays that fall during Lent are called “Sundays in Lent” but not “of Lent” — that’s a little liturgical footnote.

Eastertide — those fifty days — is a special season that speaks to us eloquently, because it coincides with the awakening of the world to springtime glory. I often wonder what it must feel like to be celebrating Easter in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is the beginning of fall — that must give it a different feeling. But here we are lucky enough to have Easter coincide with all of those beautiful flowers coming up outside; some of which we owe to our dear friend Monica. After the winter we had, believe me, spring is most welcome. As is Easter.

This is also a time to hear passages of Scripture that describe the birthday of the church and its very beginnings, that emergence of the body of the faithful believers in Jesus as they shared with each other in their experiences of the Risen Lord. The seed that had been planted by Jesus himself began to blossom and to bear fruit, in those days after his resurrection. For the church this was new life in a new world: the world’s spring.

Primary among these believers is Saint Peter. In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear the first part of Peter’s very first sermon — the one that he preached on the day of Pentecost — and we also hear a brief passage from his First Letter. We will hear more from this sermon next week, and more from that letter over the coming weeks of this Easter season. And I want to spend some time today and in the coming weeks exploring the teaching Peter develops about what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be the church in this world’s springtime.

Peter’s sermon to the crowds on Pentecost was more than a sermon, of course. It was testimony, and that is the element I want to highlight today. Like any religious Jew of his day, Peter knew his Scriptures well, and also like any pious believer then or since, he always tried to bring his own experience into relation with Scripture, to place his own experience into the history of salvation to which the Scriptures bear witness.

So Peter does some scriptural exegesis — which is just a fancy word for exploring and explaining what Scripture means. He quotes from the Psalms of David, Psalms that point to eternal life, and the promise that God’s Holy One would not suffer corruption. And Peter has the guts to say to the gathered assembly, “Well guess what, folks. David died! Not only that, but he suffered corruption — he was put in a tomb, and his tomb is right down the street and you can go and see it if you want. So David wasn’t talking about himself, but about one of his descendants. It is this Messiah that David is talking about when he says that he “will not be abandoned to Hades or experience corruption.” Then Peter pulls this historic analysis — all well in and of itself — right into the present: He tells the people there, “It has happened, right here in Jerusalem and not so long ago: this descendant of David, this Jesus — the man in whose crucifixion you all played a part by getting the Romans to execute him — God has raised him from the dead, and of that we are all witnesses!”

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Now, recall the situation. Just fifty-two days earlier, this same Peter was huddled by the fire outside the court where Jesus was on trial. When people recognized him and accused him of being one of the disciples, he denied it three times before the rooster crowed; and it all ended in tears. Peter, too, you see, had played his own part in the crucifixion of Jesus. Yet here — now, fifty-two days later — is this same man now boldly proclaiming to the whole community not only that they are guilty of complicity in a terrible crime — the execution of an innocent man — but that this man was and is the Messiah, whom God has raised from the dead, and that he and the other apostles are eyewitnesses to this raising. The former coward and traitor has been transformed by his own personal experience and the coming of God’s Spirit into one willing to testify to the truth, even at the risk of his own life — for remember who he is talking to: he knows that those who had worked to bring down Jesus may well still be there among that crowd, and they might do to Peter and his colleagues the same things, to bring them down — as indeed some of them would soon do — and we’ll be hearing more about that in the coming weeks!

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So there are two parts to this phenomenon: Peter’s actual experience of being a witness to something, and then the action of testifying to that experience. Has anyone here ever served as a witness in a trial or a hearing? (I won’t ask for a show of hands, but if you did you’ll know what I mean, that there are two parts to the experience. Not only have you had personal experience of some event, but you are willing to testify to that event. It means having and sharing first-hand knowledge, being able to deliver your testimony. It isn’t enough to have hearsay — somebody told me this happened — no, it means being able to say, “I was there, and I saw what happened.” And it isn’t enough just to have seen what happened — you have to be willing to be sworn in and to testify to your memories of what you saw. You have to tell your story — a story that happened.

Peter lacked the courage to testify that he knew Jesus on the night that Jesus was betrayed, but in between that and the testimony we heard this morning, two great events took place: Jesus was raised from the dead, and the Spirit descended on the apostles. These two events changed Peter and made him willing to take a risk he had been unwilling to take just weeks before.

For there is a risk in offering testimony. As I said, Peter, in that sermon was testifying to the same people who, as he said, got the Romans to crucify Jesus. Sometimes the risk is so great that people who testify, in a modern setting, have to be offered special protection; sometimes even a whole new identity, a whole new life in a different place. They call it a “witness protection plan.” God had such a plan for Peter, and it too had two parts. First came his own personal experience of the risen Christ, the Easter experience of a new life raised from the dead. But even more powerful was the descent of the Holy Spirit that came on him and the other apostles on the feast of Pentecost — which is when he spoke the words of this bold first sermon to the people. These two events gave Peter a new identity, and equipped him with what Paul would later call “the armor of God” but which Peter refers to as “protection” — a depth of trust and conviction that converted him from fear to faith. And they gave him a new life in a new place — the church that was born on the day of Pentecost, as we’ll hear again in a few weeks. He could boldly preach Christ and him crucified, but also risen from the dead, and he did so in the witness protection plan of God’s Holy Spirit.

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In addition to our sermon from Peter, today’s gospel passage gives us another story of a witness, the patron saint of witnesses: Doubting Thomas. Thomas is a skeptic — perhaps by nature. John reminds us that Thomas had a nickname; he was called “the Twin.” Now, we don’t know if he was an actual twin, or if he just looked so much like someone that they called him that. But he had probably had to argue many times with people who tell him, “But I saw you at the shop yesterday,” when what they saw was his brother or someone who looked like him. Even people who aren’t twins suffer from mistaken identity often enough — perhaps our twins can testify; have you ever been mistaken for someone else? or each other? I’m sure you have; I know I have! Or have you ever mistaken someone else for someone else; gone up to someone on the street and started to say “hello” and they look at you like, “Who are you?” And then you realize, “Sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

So Thomas probably had that kind of experience for much of his life. And when you’ve lived with that long enough you can become very skeptical about the eyewitness reports you hear about others. You’ve been there; you know how wrong people can be.

So when the other disciples assure Thomas that they have seen the Lord, he is not persuaded by their testimony. His first thought is that they’ve seen someone who looks like Jesus. Even their eyewitness testimony is not enough to convince him. He won’t accept their word: he needs to see for himself.

So, when Thomas finally does see for himself, he is practically speechless; he is only able to say a few words — how many times have you repeated them yourselves as you knelt at this altar to receive Christ present in the Eucharist — that simple phrase, “My Lord and my God!”

And Jesus does not rebuke him: he merely reminds him that being an eyewitness is not possible for everyone. It is the task of faith to believe those who are witnesses to the truth. We are challenged to test everything, yes, but to we are also called, as Jesus tells Thomas, to give credence when we see the greatest good; to believe not only the testimony, but the good faith of those who testify, who, in their lives and in their works as well as in their words show forth the fruits of God’s Holy Spirit at work in them. That is putting the power of faith to work: not just seeing, but believing, and testifying and bearing witness in one’s life, so that others may see and believe in the power of God, and have the courage to have faith.

This is how the power of God’s witness protection plan works for us. It gives us a different kind of courage — but through the same Spirit that gave courage to Peter. This is the courage to believe that of which we are not eyewitnesses — the resurrection of Christ — yet hold fast to the testimony of those who are witnesses — and to allow that experience of God to work in our lives.

We are not eyewitnesses to the resurrection — but we do have the testimony of those first eyewitnesses, passed down to other believers, and then on to the next generation of those who believe, and who receive the courage of faith through the Spirit, to act on their own belief to do the work God gives them — gives us — to do. And the power of this testimony, handed down through the ages, can still change the world. Our own “witness protection plan” is not based on having seen, but having believed, as Jesus promised Thomas would be the case. This gives us our new identity and our new dwelling place — as members of the church, Christ’s body on earth, and with that new identity, “Christian.” This testimony is as fresh as the day it was first delivered, blooming up out of the soil of cowardice and fear into the light of faith. It comes alive, alive like the springtime, like Easter itself in its continued rebirth, every time that testimony is offered, every time you speak a word of faith to someone who does not yet believe, you help that seed to blossom into life. It is the power of God at work for good in the world that God created, the world God redeemed, and the world God fills with his Holy Spirit.

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This is the promise and the fulfillment of Easter: the season of resurrection, of new beginnings and new possibilities, when life comes to the dead, cowards become courageous, doubters become believers, and even those who have not seen dare to speak out, dare to stand firm and to stand forth against all that works against the human spirit or God’s Spirit, to testify that they are saved and redeemed by the blood of Christ: witnesses protected by God!

This is our faith; this is our testimony; this is our courageous proclamation in the Spirit; this is our story, this is our song! beloved sisters and brothers in Christ. We may not have seen him rise, but we know he lives.

Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Light and Peace

February 02, 2014 by Saint James Church Fordham

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.+

Hurry Up and Wait

November 17, 2013 by Saint James Church Fordham

How the wounded heart can sing when God gives it word and wisdom...!

Proper 28c 2013 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; … but for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise.

Today’s Scripture passages give us stern warnings about violent days ahead, from Malachi for the people of Israel, and from Jesus for the faithful disciples. But while Malachi urgently prophecies that the day is coming soon, Jesus warns against jumping to conclusions. Jesus speaks of wars and insurrections, of disasters and plagues and famines, not as signs of the end-times, but as things that happen all the time.

And isn’t that the case! It has been estimated that in all of human history there has only been one short spell of about forty years when there hasn’t been a war going on somewhere on this good green earth of ours. Of course, war comes in all shapes and sizes — there are hot wars, with bombs falling and guns blazing; and there are cold wars, where weapons are not used except as rattled sabers to threaten mutually assured destruction, or the major powers act out their conflicts through surrogates — getting smaller countries to do the fighting with each other, backed by the major powers and the arms dealers.

And as anyone who has ever served in the military can tell you, there is also a great deal of inaction. Even the hottest war is often marked by long stretches of inactivity, punctuated by violent action. In World War II this gave rise to the expression, “Hurry up and wait.” In fact, there was one stretch early in that war, from late 1939 to early 1940, when the Western front was so quiet that people spoke of “the phony war,” or — making a pun the on the German Blitzkrieg (lightning war) — they called it a Sitzkrieg (sitting war). Of course, at that time in Eastern Europe, in Poland, the war was ravaging the countryside; it was Blitzkrieg pure and simple, and no one living in Poland had any doubt that war in its most terrible form, had arrived.

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So, in spite of the urgency of Malachi, Jesus seems to offer exactly the advice that mirrors the experience of many soldiers: hurry up and wait. When we turn to the Second Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, it looks like Paul is once again having to have it both ways. Someone, once again, has misunderstood what kind of waiting Paul intended. As I noted last week, Paul seems to have a particular communication problem with the folks in Thessalonica, and he finds it necessary to refine or walk back or redefine something he has said before. Here he says, “We hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work.” It appears that some decided that since Paul has told them that the day of the Lord will be coming any day — as he said in his First Letter — if that was the case then early retirement might be in order. Why work and save for tomorrow when tomorrow may be the end of all things?

And so Paul has to get on their case and remind them that the kind of waiting Jesus spoke of — and that he himself had counseled — is not just sitting around on your assets, but continuing to work and above all to remain watchful, to be alert, to stay awake.

And so it is that the waiting to which Jesus and Paul call them, and us, is not a waiting of inactivity but a waiting of watchfulness and preparation — watchful waiting. To put it back in military terms, we are not called to be like a soldier on leave or on R&R, or a sailor asleep in a hammock; but rather we are called to be like a sentry on watch, or a sailor high in the crow’s nest with an eye on the horizon keeping his eye peeled for any sign of the enemy, or like a radar operator bent over the screen, watching, keeping his eyes glued for sign of any impending attack. This kind of watchful waiting can be even more stressful than the heat of battle — it is no easy or relaxing thing to be prepared for battle but to have to wait watchfully — to wait for the blast of the trumpet to advance, or the whistle-blow to go over the top, either to death, or to glory.

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There is also, in Jesus’ charge to his disciples, a commandment to discern and to trust. He charges the disciples to test the waters: “Beware that you are not led astray,” he warns. Not everyone who appears in his name in fact bears his authority; there are wolves dressed as sheep — and shepherds; and many even among the faithful have been misled by false prophets, out to feather their own nest at the expense of the flock.

But having tested all who purport to speak in his name, Jesus also counsels the disciples to trust in the power of the spirit to give them the strength to persevere and to offer their defense— as he promises they will need to offer a defense, when the time of struggle comes, and they are brought before synagogues or put in prison. This passage must have been a great comfort to Christians in the time of persecution that did come upon them — initially from some in the Jewish community who saw them as a threat to their own faith, and brought them before the synagogue. Such a one was Paul himself, who in his early days, as we heard in the readings last month, was a terror to the church, a murderer and a persecutor. Before long the early Christians would run afoul of the Romans as well, as indeed Paul managed to do, when they refused to worship the emperor as god.

In later days the pagans of Scandinavia ravaged Christian lands; and in our own time — as recently as just a month or so ago, extremists have bombed Christian churches in Pakistan and the Middle East.

So these words of Jesus were — are, and will continue to be — a great comfort to those suffering persecution for their faith. For with these warnings comes a promise that Jesus gives the faithful: that words and wisdom will be given to them to stand up to those who persecute them. And the history of the church even up to now shows this to be true. God did give to some of those early martyrs a word and a wisdom that has endured to this day; whose words are still read, whose wisdom still inspires — and perhaps more importantly, whose witness is still honored, whose memory still encourages.

This week will see the feast days of two such early martyrs to the faith, one of them was an English king, the other was a Roman noblewoman. Both stood firm for their Christian faith, and in their trust in God. Edmund was a ninth century king of what later would become part of England. The armies of the pagan Danes had invaded across the North Sea, pillaging and ransacking the countryside with much loss of English life. Edmund’s bishops — even those shepherds — counseled him to give up and to accept the Danish bargain to let him remain as their puppet, figurehead king on the condition that he forsake and outlaw the Christian faith — all to keep the peace. (These were the bishops, mind you.) Edmund refused to forsake the faith, was defeated in battle, tortured and beheaded. That might have been the end of it all, but his example lived on — and the shrine of Bury St. Edmunds stands to this day as a testimony to his unwillingness to give up, to give in. He kept the faith.

The other martyr whose feast day falls this week is closer to home, though much further back in time, back to Rome of the third century — but there she is in a stained-glass window in our church. (And I put her picture on the back of the bulletin so you don’t have to crane your necks to turn around to see her!) Legend says that she was discovered as a Christian when burying her husband and brother-in-law, who had become Christians through her example. There she is: Saint Cecilia, honored throughout the world as the patron saint of music. The Romans wanted to make an example of her, an example of a different sort — getting her, as a leading citizen, a matron; they wanted to get her to forsake her faith publicly, thereby indicating to others that it was O.K. to worship the emperor. She refused to give in or give up, in spite of horrible tortures. And in case you are wondering why she is the patron saint of music, she fought back by singing — she sang, even while they tried to burn her alive, to steam her to death, to beat her to death. She kept singing the Psalms with all her heart, until finally a blow crushed out her life. And yet, as with Edmund, she is remembered to this day throughout the world as an example of endurance even in the midst of terrible suffering. And how the wounded heart can sing when God gives it word and wisdom to carry it through those terrible times!

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Terrible times, my friends, such as I pray we are not likely to see; we are not likely to suffer such persecution, such as they or our fellow-believers even today in Pakistan or Egypt — at most we are likely to suffer minor annoyances. Yet even so we can remain patient in the midst of those little annoyances — I mean, if we can’t even put up with the little annoyances, how in the world will we ever put up with the great ones. Maybe we can show our faith by our patience with those little things, because the great ones, if they come, will test even more sorely. If we can remain faithful, watching with our eyes and our hearts open to the coming of our Lord and God, we can receive those same words and wisdom that our Lord has promised he would give — who if he comes while we are alive, or comes after we have died, that for those who revere his Name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in his wings.+

Cloud of Witnesses

May 12, 2013 by Saint James Church Fordham

Testimony is natural, supernatural, human and divine, and bears witness to the transformation of the world...

Easter 7c • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
“It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches.”

I want to begin my sermon today with a question: Have any of you here this morning ever had to testify in a civil or criminal matter, either in court or by deposition? I won’t ask you for details, but I will volunteer that I have been in that position in a few civil cases, including that long, drawn-out lawsuit with the former day care operator who stopped paying her rent, in addition to other violations of the lease. The less said about that the better!

But if you have ever given testimony — or if you’ve seen it being done on TV or in the movies, or as a member of a jury, and whether fictional or for real — you know what it amounts to: affirming or swearing to something that you know to be true, usually as a witness or a party to an event or action of some kind.

Witnesses come in all shapes and sizes. I was struck a few weeks ago, after that terrible bombing in Boston, by the fact that some of the “witnesses” aren’t even aware that they are witnesses at the time at all. Much of the evidence that led to identifying the bombers came from cell-phone pictures or snapshots taken of the crowd, or from surveillance cameras and monitors, without any specific intention to photograph the particular bombers. It was only after the fact that the investigators went back to review those thousands of images to piece together the evidence that led to identifying the bombers, and sealed their fate.

I raise this issue testifying because this morning’s readings all address testimony of one sort or another. Some of it appears to be almost as unexpected as the cell-phone snapshots taken by the bystanders enjoying the Boston Marathon — before those terrible explosions went off. Some of the testimony is true as far as it goes, but entirely misses the point. And some of the testimony is important enough to be memorialized for thousands of years since the events themselves.

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First comes perhaps the strangest testimony of all, and the unusual reactions to it. This is the testimony of the demon who possessed the Philippian slave-girl. That young woman had long been held captive by a demon and by those who made use of the prophetic power it bestowed. That also rings a bell in current news, doesn’t it! But unlike the women held captive in Cleveland, this young Philippian was allowed out on the streets, though she bore her demon captor with her wherever she went. She followed Paul and the other disciples through the streets of that Roman colony calling out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” It’s always interested me that Saint Paul, rather than welcoming this free advertising, is annoyed by it, and he performs a quick exorcism casting out the demon, and setting the girl free from that possession, but also rendering her of no more use to her owners, since she can no longer be a sooth-sayer. This ought to remind us of those strange incidents in the Gospels where demons proclaim Jesus to be the Son of God, and Jesus tells them to be silent and casts them out. It seems that some testimony, even if true, is not welcome from certain witnesses! God does not need devils to bear witness to him.

We then quickly see a change of scene and a real court-house testimony, as the owners of the slave-girl drag the apostles before the magistrate and offer their accusation: “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and they are advocating customs that are not lawful for us Romans to adopt or observe.” Now, as much as we might not like to admit it, this testimony is also true, as far as it goes. From the perspective of the pagans of that colony, these Christians are upsetting their world — as will be said in the next chapter of Acts, when Paul and his companions have moved on to Thessalonica, where they are accused of turning the whole world upside-down.

Finally, this chapter of Acts treats us to one last bit of testimony: after the earthquake that shakes the prison open, and loosens the chains of the prisoners, Paul and Silas proclaim the Gospel in its fulness, bringing salvation even to the jailer who had kept them locked up, and freeing him as well from his own bonds of ignorance. They were locked up because they had upset the people of the colony with their un-Roman ways; but they proclaimed something universal and powerful that is beyond Jew or Gentile: the salvation that comes through Christ. And here at last the entire household rejoices in being baptized and becoming believers in that which earlier they had earlier condemned and despised. Such is the power of testimony: it liberates from captivity of all sorts — from demons, from prison, from darkness and despair.

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But there is more, one more entirely faithful and truthful witness, one who is the Truth itself, one who bears witness not only to himself, but to his heavenly Father, as the Father also bears witness to him, for they are one: for whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father too. And this witness, this Jesus, commissions and sends other witnesses to testify to his coming, and to his mission. In John’s vision, the one who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, Jesus, testifies that he has sent his angel to John, with his testimony for the churches, that he is who he claims to be: the root and descendant of David, the bright morning star of salvation.

And in the Gospel Jesus prays for those who will witness to him, who will testify to him, and also for all of those who will come to believe in him through their word, through their testimony. Jesus makes himself and his heavenly Father known to his disciples, so that they can in turn make this saving truth known to the world, the world that needs to be turned upside-down, the world that as yet does not know the truth of this testimony. Jesus prays for those who will believe through the testimony of the Apostles.

And that, my friends, is us. We have not the privilege to be eyewitnesses to the events that happened some eighty generations ago. We rely on the word passed down to us by former witnesses in their testimony, by disciples who actually heard and saw the Lord, and who passed that word down through the generations to those who had no first hand experience of the Gospel events, and on and on to us. We are called do our part too, passing along the words of that old, old story, telling it to those who know the tale already, who know it best, but also to those who have never heard it. This is our testimony, a testimony not at first hand, but a testimony of what we have heard and of what we have believed, of the fulfillment of the words spoken through the prophets, handed down to us through all those generations. We have heard the story retold to those who know it best, and to all the rest of us who hear it for the first time.

It is a story told to the farthest reaches of the universe, to all creatures, natural and supernatural — from the angels above, sent by God to proclaim the word in visions, to the devils who know the truth in their pit of damnation, and who tremble in terror because of it. This is the testimony, and the one who testifies has told us, “Surely I am coming soon.” And let all the people say, Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!+

Why Believe

January 16, 2012 by Saint James Church Fordham

Belief comes by experience or testimony... and as a gift of God. A sermon for Epiphany 2b

SJF • Epiphany 2b • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jesus said, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these. Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

I’m going to ask a question of you that might seem odd coming from a priest to a congregation gathered in church for worship on a Sunday morning. And the question is, “Why do you believe?” I’m specifically thinking of why we believe in God — after all, right after this sermon I will invite us all to affirm our faith and the faith of the church in the words of the Nicene Creed, where we will sing a whole long list of things we say we believe about God.

But there is a larger question here: why do you believe anything? I think most of us would say, starting at the simplest and most personal level, that we believe the things that are evident to our senses — as the old saying goes, seeing is believing! There is an old story about an Anglican bishop who was confronted by someone who was from a church that believed only adults should be baptized. This Anabaptist challenged the bishop, “Do you believe in infant baptism?” To which the bishop responded, “Believe in it? Why, man, I’ve seen it!”

So for most of us the first stage of belief is based on our personal experience; we believe what we see. I know that London is real because I’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt! But the fact of the matter is, I believed there was a London long before I got there and saw it with my own two eyes and walked its streets with my own two feet, and breathed its foggy air. And that brings me to the second reason for belief: testimony.

Much of what we know and believe, probably most of what we know and believe, is not based on our own personal experience — our senses — but on the experience of others reported to us. I spoke a few weeks ago about secondary sources in writing history, and this is precisely where they come in. We believe on the basis of the testimony of others. Unlike personal experience, which is by definition unique to each and every person, belief by testimony can be shared and multiplied. I can tell dozens of people that I have been to London, and talk to them about what I saw there, what the food and weather and the architecture are like, and if they accept my testimony they too will believe that there is a large and populous city on the River Thames, the seat of English government, full of incredible buildings and well supplied with fish and chips — and curry. And not only can I share my own testimony, but those who come to believe through me can share their new belief with others, and they with others still. In this way, many who have had no personal experience of London may come to feel well informed about it.

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So far, so good. It all seems free and clear. But what about people who believe things that are not true? Experience shows that experience can be fooled — the doors of human perception are not always open, and the windows are not always clean and clear. As we are only a few weeks from Christmas, I recall Ebenezer Scrooge’s argument with Jacob Marley’s ghost, right at the beginning of the story when the ghost challenged him to his face as to why he doubted his own senses:

“Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!” To which the Ghost responds, “Man of the worldly mind! Do you believe or not!?”

Our passage from the Old Testament this morning reveals some of the problems with the senses — and with our ability to make sense of them. The old priest Eli has grown blind — not just literally, but figuratively as well, as he has turned a blind eye to the blasphemous corruption and crime of his own two sons, who have corrupted the worship of the temple, stealing the people’s offerings for themselves. The whole nation seems to have lost its senses of hearing and sight, too, for the word of the Lord is rare and visions are not widespread. The corruption in the leaders has infected the people.

It takes a child — a child with fresh and open ears, young Samuel — properly to hear the voice of God gently calling him by name. And even though he does not at first — or even second — recognize who it is that is speaking to him, he eventually comes to know the Lord, and becomes a witness to the presence and power of God, so that the whole land, from Dan to Beer-sheba, comes to know and respect him as a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.

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Which brings me to the second problem with belief — it is one thing to trust your own senses, or not to trust them; but it is quite another thing to trust someone else’s senses, someone else’s testimony. The extent to which you believe someone else’s testimony is based on how much you trust them. Whether you believe will be based to a greater or lesser extent on the degree to which you trust their testimony, or their general trustworthiness.

When Philip tells Nathanael that he has found the Lord, Nathanael’s first response is one of doubt, not trust. Perhaps he’d had some bad experience with Philip; or perhaps he found it too hard to believe that the Messiah had actually come — especially from the unexpected direction of Nazareth; or maybe he was just a skeptical person by nature and didn’t trust anybody. Whatever the reason, doubting other people or their testimony can be a block to our believing what they say.

So, as Philip suggests, perhaps with a shrug or a smile, Come and see; if you don’t believe me, let it be your own senses that convert you, convince you, and bring you to belief. So it often comes back to personal experience. Just as Thomas said he would not believe in the risen Christ until he saw him with his own eyes, and even put his finger in the place where the nails had made the wounds, so too Philip offers Nathanael the only thing ultimately that you can offer to a doubtful skeptic: Come and see! And Nathanael goes, and he sees, and he believes. Big time.

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So why do we believe? Is it simply because you accept the testimony of those who walked with Christ, in those ancient days, and passed along their testimony in the form that eventually came to be published abroad in the Gospels we now have, those precious pages in that book? Do you believe because people whom you respect have told you of their experience of God at work in their own lives? Or do you believe because you have, in some way perhaps you cannot fully describe or even understand, heard the voice of God calling you gently by name, have felt the hand of God at work in your life, guiding you along right pathways for his Name’s sake? Very truly, I tell you, those who believe will see greater things than these. You will see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.+