Sermon Archive of The Most Rev



Sermon Archive of The Most Rev. Mark HaverlandMetropolitan, Anglican Catholic Church(listed in chronological order as a single document until I get industrious) HYPERLINK \l "H0_15" H0-15Epiphany VI, February 13, 2000. H3-23Lent I. March 9, 2003.H3-39Easter II. May 4, 2003. HYPERLINK \l "H3_53" H3-86Trinity II, St. Peter's Day. June 29, 2003.H3-59Trinity XI. August 31, 2003. H3-61St. Bartholomew's Day. August 24, 2003.H3-65Trinity XVII. October 12, 2003. HYPERLINK \l "H3_05" H3-05Christmas Eve. December 24, 2003H4-21Quinquagesima. February 15, 2004.H4-64Trinity XVI. September 26, 2004.H5-28Palm Sunday. March 20, 2005. H7-49Trinity I. June 10, 2007.HYPERLINK \l "H8_40"H8-40A little while and ye shall not see me, April 13, 2008.H8-61St. Bartholomew's Day. August 24, 2008.H11-71Trinity XXI/Christ the King. November 13, 2011. H12-66Trinity XVIII. October 7, 2012.H15-33Good Friday. April 3, 2015.H15-40Easter III. April 26, 2015.H15-50Trinity II. June 14, 2015.H16-65Trinity XVII. September 18, 2016.H17-01Advent I, December 3, 2017. H17-50Trinity II. June 25, 2017.H17-55Trinity VII. July 30, 2017.H17-62Trinity XIV. September 17, 2017.H17-63Trinity XV. September 24, 2017.H17-64Trinity XVI. October 1, 2017.H17-68Trinity XX/Christ the King. October 29, 2017. H17-70Trinity XXII. November 12, 2017. H18-26Lent IV. March 11, 2018. H18-28Palm Sunday. March 25, 2018. H18-35Easter. April 2, 2018. HYPERLINK \l "H18_39"H18-39Easter II. April 16, 2018.H18-42Easter V. Rogation. May 8, 2018.H18-48Trinity Sunday. May 27, 2018.H18-52Trinity IV. St. John Baptist. June 24, 2018. H18-56Trinity VIII. July 23, 2018. H18-58Trinity X. August 5, 2018.H18-59Trinity XI. August 12, 2018. H18-64Trinity XVI. September 16, 2018. H18-65Trinity XVII. September 23, 2018. H18-72Trinity XXIV. November 11, 2018. H18-05Christmas. December 25, 2018 (orig. 1993).H19-21Quinquagesima. March 4, 2019..H19-27Passion Sunday. April 7, 2019. H19-43Ascensiontide. May 30, 2019. H19-45Pentecost/Whitsunday, June 14, 2019.H19-52Trinity IV. July 14, 2019. H19-53Trinity V. July 21, 2019.HYPERLINK \l "H19_54"H19-54Trinity VI. July 28, 2019.HYPERLINK \l "H19_60"H19-60Trinity XII. September 8. , 2019.HYPERLINK \l "H19_68"H19-68Trinity XX. November 3, 2019.HYPERLINK \l "H19_03"H19-03Advent III. December 15, 2019. HYPERLINK \l "H19_09" H19-09Christmas I. December 29, 2019.H20-79Presentation/Purification. February 2, 2020. H20-26Lent IV. March 23, 2020. H20-27Passion Sunday. March 29, 2020.H20-33Good Friday. Saint Francis. April 3, 2020. H20-39Second Sunday after Easter Day. April 26, 2020.H20-01Advent I.? November 29, 2020. H20-08Feast of St. John the Divine, December 27, 2020. H21-28Palm Sunday. March 28, 2021.H21-54Feast of Saint James. July 25, 2021. HYPERLINK \l "H21_99" H21-99Self-Effacement and the Liturgy, November 18, 2021.HYPERLINK \l "H21_03"H21-03Advent III. December 18, 2021.HYPERLINK \l "H22_24"H22-24Lent II. March 15, 2022. H0-15Epiphany VI. February 13, 2000. St. Stephen’s, AthensThe Epistle: I St. John 3: 1 - 8. The Gospel St. Matthew 24: 23 - 31.St. Matthew xxiv, verse 27 - For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.The Fathers of the Church interpret the 24th chapter of St. Matthew, from which our gospel lesson today is taken, on two levels. First, many of the things we find written there were fulfilled literally and historically in first century Palestine. In the year 66 during a Jewish revolution against Roman rule over Palestine, the Romans laid siege to the city of Jerusalem. The siege lasted four years and produced incredible sufferings. It ended in A.D. 70 when Roman armies took the city and exterminated or deported most of its population. The city was virtually destroyed. Only a scattered population remained until Jerusalem was refounded as a Gentile city called Aelia Capitolina in 135 by Hadrian after a later Jewish revolt. At that time pagan temples were erected to replace the Jewish temple. Some of the things in this chapter are treated by the Church Fathers as prophecies of the historical events relating to this period of the Jewish wars. For instance, St. John Chrysostom writes, ‘In the preceding verses [our Lord] had spoken in a veiled manner of the end of Jerusalem; here He goes on to speak of it openly, to lead them to believe in the coming destruction....’ (On Matt. Homily 76) However, this lesson also looks forward to events that have not yet come to pass even from our perspective and in our own day. So, again, St. John Chrysostom writes,'Having finished with what concerned Jerusalem, the Lord passes on to what concerns His own Coming and speaks of the signs that will accompany it, and this not only for their guidance, but for ours also, and for all who come after us.' (On Matt. Homily 77)And what is it that we learn from what our Lord says here about his own Second Coming? First, we learn that no teaching about the Second Coming, no supposed sign or wonder, no prophecy or opinion whatsoever, should in any way alter the faith and morals taught to us by the Church. ‘Believe it not....Behold, I have told you before,’ our Lord says. The faith of the Church was once delivered to the saints and is now maintained in the Creeds and in the teachings of the Councils and Fathers and in the consensus of Christians throughout all history. If the world is ending, or if the world is not ending, in no way alters what we believe and how we should live. Our faith should be serene and unshaken by such concerns. The first fact about the Second Coming that our Lord speaks of in this lesson is that it will be used as an occasion to bring in false and misleading teaching, to bring in heresy. And we all know that even in our own day false teaching on this subject causes foolish and gullible people to quit their jobs and to go sit on a hill top and to worry needlessly. Believe it not, says our Lord. Be skeptical and cautious in such matters. Do not let what others say disturb you.Secondly, we also learn from this lesson that the Second Coming will be absolutely clear and unmistakable. If we wonder about it, then it hasn’t occurred: ‘For as the lightening cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.’ Chrysostom again, commenting on this passage, writes, '[A]s lightening needs no one to announce or to herald it, but is seen in an instant... even to those who sit in their houses, so shall the Coming of the Son of man be visible everywhere at once, because of the splendor of His glory.' (PL 23, col. 179)And, again, St. Hilary writes, ‘He shall neither be hidden in any place nor accessible only to a few, but...He shall be present everywhere and to the sight of all men.’ So, save your money; don’t buy the book. Our Lord’s Second Coming requires no explanation or announcement. If someone needs a sermon or a radio broadcast or a book to explain why the Second Coming is imminent, again, believe him not. It requires no announcement. It will be utterly public knowledge.Thirdly and finally, we learn from all that Scripture tells us about the Second Coming, that its timing is not only unknowable until it occurs, but also in truth is irrelevant. Our Lord’s constant refrain is to watch, to be careful, to be like servants waiting for their master’s return, like guests waiting for the wedding party to arrive. Christians are called to watchful expectation. We should live every day as if it were our last day. We should prepare for every holy communion as it were to be our viaticum, our death-bed communion. If we knew the exact timing of the Second Coming, that should affect our lives not one slightest iota. The duties that I have today would not be altered. The Creed that I believe would not be changed. The faith, hope, and love to which we are called would not become something else. We should always live carefully and watchfully, prepared equally for my going that we call death and for Christ’s coming which we call the Parousia or the Second Coming. I do not know when I will die. I do not know when Christ will come. It is neither necessary nor desirable that I know these things. I need only know that they will occur and that I therefore should always be preparing myself for the inevitable day. This is, again, what Scripture and the Fathers teach us. St. Augustine writes,'...[T]he...approach of the Lord...comes daily nearer; but of how near it was said, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons (Acts i.7). Consider when it was the Apostle said, For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is passed and the day is at hand (Rom. xiii. 11,12); and see how many years have since passed: yet what he said was not false. How much more must we say the Lord’s coming is nigh; we who have come so much closer to the end?' (Epistle 199.22)Every day it is nearer, as our death is every day nearer. But it is not for us to know the times or the seasons for either. Believe them not who claim to know such things.Our Lord will come again and our lives will be judged. That is really all we need to know and believe about the Second Coming. Its timing does not alter our faith or duty. The matter will be perfectly clear when it occurs. And in the mean time our task is to prepare always to meet our Judge when he calls for us. This is what the gospel says. This is what the Fathers teach. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H3-05Christmas Eve. December 24, 2003. Saint Stephen's, Athens, GeorgiaSaint Luke ii, verse 7 - And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.The word 'firstborn' in my text is a technical Biblical term, . The term does not necessarily mean that there are subsequent sons or children, though in large ancient Jewish households there normally would have been others after the first. Rather the 'firstborn' son primarily means the son who by right carries on the name of his father and who inherits a double portion of the father's estate, whatever other children or heirs there may be. The main meaning of 'firstborn' is not biological but legal and moral. In Exodus God calls the Israelites as a nation his 'firstborn', saying to Moses, '...thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, my firstborn.' (iv.22) All the peoples of the world were created by God and are his sons and daughters, but Israel is his firstborn, the child who inherits most and is favored, and through whom all other the other nations of the world are to be blessed. Even if the mother of the firstborn son displeases the father, the father is not to disinherit the firstborn: fathers shall 'acknowledge the...firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath' (Deuteronomy xxi.17). So even if Israel strays and becomes a prodigal, foolish son, as Israel did in fact stray, still he is acknowledged by God the Father and endowed with a double portion.Before Christ was acknowledged as the Lord of Christians, he was a son of Israel, and therefore to understand Christmas we must understand what our gospel today means in Jewish terms. Note please that in my text Jesus is called Mary's firstborn son. Jewish descent is reckoned through the mother, so our Lord is a son of Israel because of our Lady his mother. But further, as Mary's 'firstborn son' our Lord inherits a double portion of Mary's estate. The angel of the Lord brought tidings unto her and said, 'Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.' (i.28) Though Mary tells us that she is of 'low estate' (Luke i.48), yet precisely because God favors her humble obedience she is the most blessed of women. A double portion of her estate, of the estate of the most blessed of women, is surely a more than human blessing. Mary is a descendant of King David, so her son's portion by right is the throne of David, and such a portion the angel promised: '[T]he Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David' (i.32). But a double portion means that the throne of Christ is more than the earthly throne of David. He is to inherit more than the kingdom of David. He is to have also a heavenly throne, an eternal kingdom. This conclusion, which we know to be correct, is implied in the fact that Christ is Mary's firstborn son in the light of the Old Testament commandment that the firstborn son is to inherit a double portion.The paradox of Christmas is that the Child born this day had to come down from heaven for us men and for our salvation because of our first mother's sin, because we all are plagued by a double portion of sin and folly and death. The great victory becomes possible because of the original calamity. The leaven of malice spoils our race and all that we touch. But as we sing at the Easter Vigil, O felix culpa, oh blessed iniquity, that our sin should bring forth such a Saviour. God who wonderfully created our nature, yet more wonderfully renews it. God dignifies humanity by becoming one of us, by incarnation into our humanity, by assumption of humanity in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though Eve's sin made us the children of sin, the obedience of Mary, the new Eve, restores the balance, and her Son's birth reverses Satan's power and Satan's sway. Our salvation began with Mary's fiat, 'Be it unto me according to thy word.' This same salvation came to light with our Lord's birth on Christmas. Then this salvation came to fruition upon the Cross, when our Lord entrusted his unnamed beloved disciple, who stands for us all, into the status of his adopted brother when he said to his mother, 'Woman, behold thy son!' and to the disciple, 'Behold thy mother!' (St. John xix.26f.) Our Lord has a double portion of his mother's estate as descendant of David and handmaid of the Lord, and he has a double portion of his heavenly Father's blessings for mankind. By adopting his disciples as his brothers and sisters, all that is his by nature and birth he gives to us. By taking our nature upon him at Christmas and by dying and rising for us at Easter he opens for us the heavenly. All of this is ours, not because we are good or wise or noble, but because God loves us. We are the child who is given a Christmas gift long before he can earn or deserve anything - the child who is loved just because he is loved. God's love requires no more reason than a mother's love for her baby. It just is. Earth is united to heaven by a double arch. The first arch we remember today on Christmas, a feast of the Incarnation by which God came down from heaven. The second arch we celebrate in this liturgy, when the people of God gather before God's altar and rise up to heaven by the sacrament of our Incarnate Lord's Body and Blood. God came down to us. God lifts us up to himself. That is the meaning of Christmas and that is the fruit of the Christ-Mass.And so on this night of splendor and joy, when the light of God's love shone upon the world and our Saviour first revealed his sacred face, I wish you all happiness. Though there was no room for our Lord in the inn, make room for him now in your hearts by faith in your Christmas communion. There let him reign and be joyful that you too are the child of God and inheritor of the Kingdom of heaven.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. H3-23Lent I. March 9, 2003. St. Stephen's, Athens; St. Nicholas's, Cleveland, Ga.Saint Matthew iv, verse 11 - Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.The story of Christ's fasting in the wilderness before the outset of his public ministry is told to us by the first three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Saint Matthew's version, which we read today, changes Saint Mark's in several ways, two which I would like to point out here. First, Matthew explicitly tells us that our Lord 'fasted', whereas Mark merely tells us that he was tempted in the wilderness. Secondly, Matthew alone tells us that Jesus was in the wilderness 'forty days and forty nights'. Both the fact of his fast and the reference to forty days and forty nights connect this fact to two basic stories from the Old Testament. In Exodus xxxiv.28 we are told that Moses was on Mount Sinai 'with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water.' There we see the fast, forty days and forty nights, and a location in the wilderness. Likewise in I Kings xix.8 we find that at a critical moment in Israel's history the great prophet Elijah began a fast of 'forty days and forty nights' and went then unto 'the mount of God' where he met God in a still small voice and was given instructions for his own future and that of his nation. Again there we see the wilderness, fasting, and forty days and forty nights.Matthew, you see, is taking the basic story from Saint Mark and is shaping it to show us how our Lord is beginning again the story of Israel. The same idea will appear again often in the gospels, as when at his Transfiguration our Lord is seen upon the mountain top speaking with Moses and Elijah, the representatives of the Law and the Prophets. Matthew shows that our Lord came to renew the basic themes of Israel's history so as to complete and perfect that which in the first version so often ended in failure and defeat. But before we personally come to the great victory, which we hear in the story of Easter, we first must wander through the fast of the forty days of Lent, as Israel wandered in the temptations of the wilderness for forty years and as Moses and Elijah and Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights. We continue to live the story of the Bible, now through the Church's year and sacraments and disciplines. It is therefore most appropriate that today, on the first Sunday in Lent, we read the story of our Lord's fasting and temptation in the wilderness at the beginning of our Lenten fast.Three temptations in Matthew's account hearken back to the original Exodus. The first temptation relates most directly to the situation of Christ's fast: we are told, 'he was hungry' (iv:2). Satan asks Christ to make bread from stones, and so implies that our Lord should distrust the God who provided his people manna in the wilderness and who brought forth for them water from a stone. This temptation plays on the frequent occasions in the Exodus when Israel sinned in a desire for food and in a lack of trust that God would provide it. In response to the renewal of this old temptation, our Lord asserts that to obedience to God and God's word is more important than even physical necessities, and he does so by quoting Moses himself: '[M]an does not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.' (Deut. vii.3) Furthermore Christ is not a showman who works wonders for his own benefit. He works miracles for the sake of others, not for himself. Today he will not make himself food. Later he will not come down from the cross (xxvii.40). Please notice that our Lord does not say that bread does not matter. In fact 'not...by bread alone' implies that bread is indeed needed. The temptation lies not in the desire to eat but rather in our tendency to distrust the Father who has promised his love and who long ago sent bread from heaven for his people. Distrust of God is sin.The second temptation, to jump off the temple, is a temptation to violate the laws of nature established by God, merely so as to test, tempt, and prove God by forcing his hand. Satan tempts by using the words of Scripture in Psalm xci (in LXX). Jesus responds with Deuteronomy vi.16: 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord they God.' If the first temptation was an attempt to confuse priorities by putting food before trust in God, this is an attempt to do things in our time rather than in God's time. Jesus eventually will allow himself to be sacrificed and to die at the hands of others. And eventually angels will minister to him both at the end of his fast (11) and after his resurrection (xxviii.2-7). But events must unfold in God's time, not because we choose to force them in our time. God's answer to prayer is often, 'Wait!' And we so often are as impatient as we are distrustful. The third temptation is an invitation to idolatry in imitation of Israel's worship of the golden calf during the Exodus. In return for worship, Satan offers worldly domination: 'the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them' (v. 8). Some take this offer to mean that worldly power is Satan's to bestow as he pleases. But Satan is the father of lies, so it is in fact not clear that the world is as entirely in his gift as he implies. In any case, Christ rejects the temptation to idolatry with more words from the Exodus: 'Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.' (Deut. vi.13) By asserting the sole divinity of God, our Lord banishes Satan. If God is truly our God, then all other things will fall into their proper place, including the satisfaction of hunger and the ministering angels (verse 11) which Satan deceptively offered in the wrong way and at the wrong time. If we seek first the reign of God, then all those other things will be added unto us. If we seek not the reign of God in our hearts, then everything else will go wrong. Badly wrong.We tend to view Lent as an interruption in our lives, and in a sense it is since Easter is the most fundamental fact for Christians. Joy and victory in the end will be everything. But the end is not yet, and Lent is the way to Easter, and the shortcuts we would like to try only lead further into the wilderness. It is by slow and steady pilgrimage through Lent and life that we come to our proper end. It is by dealing well with the temptations of the devil that God becomes our answer and our crown. At the end of his fast the devil left our Lord and angels came and ministered to him. The ministering angels with their comforts are waiting for us as well. Let us keep a good and devout Lent with our eyes fixed on the joys of Easter and heaven.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H3-39Easter II. May 4, 2003. Saint Stephen's, Athens; Saint Nicholas's, Cleveland.Saint John x, verse 11 - I am the good shepherd.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.The scholar who probably more than anyone shaped one of the unfortunate modern language liturgies was a man named Massey Shepherd. Shepherd argued, among other things, against the use in prayers of metaphors involving light and darkness. His thought was that in a day of electric light bulbs, spiritual metaphors of light and darkness were no longer meaningful to modern people. Nobody fears the dark when he can flip a switch to create light. I guess Shepherd never was a child afraid of the dark, never stubbed his toe in the dark, never encountered a dark alley, and never drove out of a long, long tunnel into bright sunshine. Light and dark, of course, are realities that modern Americans still easily understand, though a few days in rural Haiti or camping certainly help to reinforced their meaning. Still there is a point to the idea that Biblical images and metaphors, which are often rooted in ancient, rural, and tribal societies sometimes require explanation and translation for people in a modern, urbanized, and individualistic society. Many Americans, perhaps most, have never seen or eaten a goat, and millions have probably never touched a sheep, much less lived in close proximity to them. When the images and metaphors are Biblical, however, it is our duty to consider them carefully and learn their meanings rather than to ditch them as hard to understand. And so it is with the Good Shepherd. Most of all we learn the meaning of Biblical images and figures by learning from elsewhere in the Bible.In 1993 I visited the beautiful Byzantine church of Saint Saviour in Chora in Istanbul. The mosaics of this ancient building are mostly intact, and one ceiling painting is an electrifying mosaic of the Resurrection. The scene is a common icon in Orthodox art. Our Lord is striding forward dynamically in a brilliant, white robe. He holds in each hand a passive wrist of Adam and Eve, whom he is drawing forth from their tombs. Under the scene lies Satan, bound and chained, with the metal work of hell's gates scattered all around. Standing by Eve's tomb is a young man in white holding a shepherd's crook. At first you might think that the young man is a depiction of our Lord himself in another guise, as the Good Shepherd. And in part he is. But then you realize that he also is Abel, Eve's son, who, as we learn in Genesis iv.2, was 'a keeper of sheep'. That is the King James' Version translation. The Hebrew says literally, 'Abel was a feeder of sheep.' The son stands by his mother's tomb with the sign of his profession in his hand.Consider what the icon teaches us. First, Abel is by a tomb because death has some power over Abel. The original sin of our first parents, his parents, brought death upon us all. We all shall have a tomb or its equivalent because of original and personal sin. In the case of Abel we read explicitly of his death in Genesis iv. He is, you will recall, the victim of the first murder, by Cain, his brother, and God says of that murder to Cain, 'the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.' (Genesis iv.10) Eve's sin led to death for her son, for sin grew into more sin, and that sin and death called from the earth to God for action.But, secondly, Abel is standing by the tomb. We all come to a tomb, but the tomb does not hold us. Abel shall rise, as his parents rise. Death is not the final thing. There are four last things - death, judgement, heaven, and hell - and death is only the first and the least of the four. The resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come are far greater than death. That Abel stands teaches us that life is more ultimate than death.Thirdly, Abel, who is presented as a shepherd, is in fact a foreshadowing of our Lord who says, 'I am the good shepherd.' Abel is, in the literal Hebrew, 'a feeder of sheep', and our Lord says of himself as the good shepherd that he shall lead his sheep 'in and out [to] find pasture' - that is, to feed (St. John x.9). Likewise as Abel was the victim of a murder at the hands of his brother, so our Lord was murdered by his brethren. As Abel's sacrifice was acceptable to God, so our Lord's sacrifice was pleasing to his Father. In the icon our Risen Lord and his prototype, Abel, are both dressed in white and both stand, for both are good shepherds, though the figure of our Lord is larger and most central, since he is the fulfilment of the mere foreshadowing which was Abel.Finally however, in one matter our Lord and Abel differ. The blood of innocent Abel cried unto God from the ground calling for vengeance upon his guilty brother. But not so with the blood of our Lord. In this respect he is closer to the Old Testament figure of Joseph than of Abel. For innocent Joseph's suffering led him to say the following to his brothers:‘[Y]e thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you [ahhh - there is the good shepherd feeding again - and remember that Joseph's brethren are employed in Egypt as shepherds; I will nourish you...], and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.’ (l.20f.)Where Abel's blood cried forth for vengeance against his brother, not so with Joseph, whose sufferings were meant by God for good for his brothers. So too with our Lord, of whom, Hebrews says, that his 'blood of sprinkling...speaketh better things than that of Abel.' (xii.24) That is, our Lord's blood was shed, not to increase our guilt, but rather in atonement for our sins and as a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for every wrong ever done by anyone in any place.Abel was a feeder of sheep. Joseph nourished his shepherd brethren and comforted them and spake kindly unto them. Our Lord, more excellently still, gives us angel's Food, the Bread of heaven, his own and very Body and Blood, to nourish us. His Blood shed forth upon the cross calls not for vengeance upon us, but rather comforts and speaks kindly to us. Our Lord is the Good Shepherd, the new and greater Abel, the true and blessed Joseph. On Easter he burst forth from the spicéd tomb to draw forth from all tombs in all ages the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve and to lead us up the heavenly way. Let us now be fed and nourished by him and this great Sacrament revere.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. H3-86St. Peter's Day. June 29, 2003; by ++Mark D. Haverland, Ph. D.St. Matthew xvi, verse 16 - Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Consider for a moment what I just said. I don't mean my text. I mean the way I begin every sermon: 'In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.' As with most formulas, this one quickly becomes routine and taken for granted. But if we step back and ponder it for a moment, what an immense claim it makes. The preacher claims to speak in the name of God, in the name of the Blessed and Glorious Trinity. For the preacher these should even be frightening words: I am presuming to speak in God's name; some people may even listen as if I were speaking in God's name. I had better be careful. Even careless or slapdash, much less erroneous or self-centered, words in this context are a kind of blasphemy. What is spoken in the name of God should be full of truth and care.That which is done in the name of someone is done with the authority and power of that person. In melodramas the good guy says, 'Stop in the name of the law!' That is, the good guy claims to act with the authority and power of the law supporting him. In many places in our country criminal prosecutions begin in the name of the people of whatever the jurisdiction. In England virtually every official act is performed in the name of the Queen, the symbol of the nation's authority, power, and will. It is true that these formulas, invoking the name of the people or the queen or the law also quickly become routine and ignored; however, behind them lie both a claim and a reality of power. Try telling the road workers that you don't accept the name of the people of Georgia and don't want that road built. Good luck. Try telling the Crown prosecutor in England that you are a republican who doesn't recognize the authority of kings or queens. Good luck.If this is true on the earthly level, much more on the divine. The name of God is a powerful thing. The heart of the Old Testament begins when God tells his name to Moses in Exodus iii. Sermons begin in the name of God. Today a child here was made a 'member of Christ and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven' in baptism precisely while being given a name. And Owen was so named and baptized in the greater Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Similarly in my text today we see that Simon Bar-jona, a Jewish fisherman, was also given a new name, by which all ages will honor him, because he first gave an itinerant rabbi his proper and true name: 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.' Later St. Paul writes the Ephesians, '...I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named...' (iii.14f.). God's family is the Church, and every Christian, whether in the Church Triumphant, Expectant, or still Militant in this world, enters the Church by being named of God in baptism. Again, sometimes the naming becomes routine, a mere formula that appears to have been emptied of power, words that are said because that is the thing to do. Baptism can become a rite which families have performed thoughtlessly or as a mere social occasion - a chance for a party or presents or for honoring someone as a godparent. But remember that baptism is not merely the granting of a human name. Baptism is an invocation of the all-mighty and all-prevailing name of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Baptism, even when thoughtlessly sought, really and truly remits and dissolves the guilt and penalty of original sin and of all prior actual sin. Likewise, baptism objectively incorporates the baptized into the Church, and thereby baptism opens to us the door for further grace. By baptism the gates of heaven open wide for those who will manfully fight the Christian warfare until their lives' end. Our Lord really changed Saint Peter when he gave him a new name, and Peter was forever different. Peter did not necessarily know or desire the changes in question. In fact later our Lord says to Peter,“Verily, verily I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.” (S. John xxi.18)- a prophecy that for all the world sounds like a description of life in a nursing home. But what our Lord here really means is that once Peter recognized Christ's true identity and called him by his true and proper name, Peter gave himself up into the will of God. From henceforth Peter would live and die, not as Peter would have it, but rather as God would have him do. When God's name is invoked, you and I lose control, thank God. The words even of a bad sermon in God's name may be used by God in ways the preacher cannot imagine. The giving of Christ his name by Peter led to a new identity beyond his wildest imaginings. That poor fisherman could not have begun to dream of ten thousand churches called by his new name throughout the world, including the great cathedral on one of Rome's seven hills. When Owen was named today something happened the end of which only God knows. God will carry him wither Owen knows not and whither you and I know not. But that which we have done in God's name will not be without fruit in this world and the next. Thank God.And so to sum all up, I say, God bless Owen Cotterell, and God bless us all.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. H3-59Trinity XI. August 31, 2003. St. Stephen's, Athens; St. Nicholas's, ClevelandSaint Luke xviii, verse 9 - And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Our gospel lesson today, the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, is one of several famous parables which are found only in Saint Luke's gospel. This parable is spoken by our Lord by way of criticizing certain people. It is a parable spoken against: against, first, 'certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous'; and against, secondly, certain which 'despised others'. Our Lord uses the parable to teach against an incorrect attitude about ourselves and an equally incorrect and related attitude about others. The criticism is focused on a Pharisee in the parable, but of course it is meant to teach you and me about ourselves.So, first, there is the problem of those 'which trusted in themselves that they were righteous'. If religion and faith were exactly the same thing, then the Pharisee would be faithful, would be righteous, and would not be criticized, because he is exceedingly religious. The Pharisee is at the temple to pray, no doubt at 9 a.m. or 3 p.m., the appointed hours for daily temple prayers. The Pharisee avoids gross immorality and violations of the Ten Commandments: he is not a thief or a extortioner or an adulterer. In fact the Pharisee is a exemplary churchman. He fasts twice a week, again no doubt at the appointed Jewish times on Mondays and Thursdays. He is a tither. The Pharisee is an upright, careful, religious man. I've always said, give me a church full of Pharisees, and I'll give you a church free of debt and growing by leaps and bounds.But religiousness and faith are not identical. We hope that they overlap considerably, but it certainly is possible to be very religious and yet completely alienated from God. The Pharisee's first problem is a false self-confidence, a mistaken self-reliance, that distances him from real faith. He trusts in himself that he is righteous. The verb translated here as 'trust' here means rely on, have confidence, be certain, be sure. The Pharisees is deeply confident of his own goodness. He is relying on himself. He is, religiously-speaking, a self-made man, and so God cannot break in to his heart. In contrast listen to Saint Paul in the first chapter of II Corinthians: We were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God... (i.8f.). Here Paul uses the same word as in my text, 'trust'. Paul is glad for his afflictions, because they bring home the fact that he and we, unlike the Pharisee of the parable, 'should not trust in ourselves, but in God'. Again, in the Psalms we read, 'O put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man' (Ps. cxlvi.3). 'Any child of man' includes myself. I cannot rely on or have confidence in my own spiritual strength. The Pharisee think he can. But he does not keep God's law perfectly and without fault. Therefore he is a lawbreaker and a sinner. Therefore he cannot rest upon his own righteousness, because he is not perfectly righteous. If the Pharisees may not have committed some sins that the publican has committed, yet he certainly has trusted in a child of man, in himself, against God's command and warning. He is leaning on a weak reed, himself, and that in itself is a sin.So there is the Pharisee's first fault: he goes about to establish his own righteousness, and so is blinded to his real spiritual neediness. He needs a Saviour, but he does not know it.The Pharisee's second fault is that he 'despised others'. The one thing that really seems to make our Lord angry is hardheartedness that despises or hurts other people. Our Lord is tender towards sinners and forgiving of their sins. Our Lord is hard on those who are not forgiving. In our day this attitude of our Lord's is easily mistaken for indifference towards sin. Our Lord is not indifferent towards sin. Our Lord does not tell the woman taken in adultery to have a nice day. He tells her to go and sin no more. Nevertheless, it is those who would stone the woman who appear to be the real villains of that story. Our Lord does not approve the Prodigal Son: on the contrary he speaks of the prodigal's wastefulness and folly. Nevertheless it is the hardhearted older brother who is most in danger in that parable. The publican here may well be guilty of extorting excess taxes from poor people or other sins. Publicans weren't very nice. Our Lord does not approve the publican's sins. But it is the Pharisee's blindness to his own sin that enables him to despise others, and that is a more dangerous sin than any of the publican's. If we know ourselves then we should look upon the sins of others, not with approval, but with compassion; not with indifference, but with a consciousness of our own sins. A refusal to feel such compassion is, again, one of the few things that seems really to anger Jesus.We are, as Archbishop John-Charles says, seldom so shocked as by those sins to which we ourselves are never tempted. The Pharisee is shocked by the publican. But the Pharisee is blind to his own pride, self-satisfaction, and willingness to do without God's grace and mercy. That and his despite towards others are his great sins. The publican's prayer should be our model: he 'would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.' Again, Saint John tells us, 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' (I John i.8) Sometimes Christians become discouraged because they see no spiritual progress in themselves. They say, I seem to be doing the same old things. I don't see any spiritual progress in my life. To that a sensitive spiritual director might well respond that we grow spiritually we become more and more sensitive to our sins. The Christian most conscious of his sins is not the worst Christian but the best. A growing consciousness of spiritual failures may indicate spiritual growth as much as or more than it indicates spiritual stagnation. The spiritual life should be more a matter of internalizing the publican's prayer, 'God be merciful to me a sinner,' than a matter of achieving the Pharisee's catalogue of good deeds and self-satisfactions. So, beware of spiritual self-justification. Beware of despising others. Do not trust in yourself that you are righteous. And above all pray always this prayer: 'God be merciful to me a sinner.' For the humility of the publican is worth more than the good deeds of the Pharisee. A broken and contrite heart our God will not despise.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H3-61St. Bartholomew's Day. August 24, 2003Sermon for Saint Bartholomew by ++ M. D. Haverland, PhD, August 24, 2003.August 24 2003 St. Bartholomew's Day 2003Author: The Rt. Rev. Mark HaverlandS. Bartholomew. August 24, 2003. Saint Luke's, Augusta. Saint Luke xxii, verse 26 -- But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. We know little about Saint Bartholomew, whose feast we celebrate today on August 24th. He is mentioned in the lists of the twelve apostles in the first three gospels and in Acts, but not in Saint John's gospel. However, his name, Bar-Tolmai, is a patronymic or surname, meaning son of Tolmai', so he probably also had a given or first name. For this reason he often is identified with Nathanael in Saint John's gospel. In that case his name would be Nathanael Bartholomew: Nathanael, son of Tolmai'. Much later legend tell us that Bartholomew eventually went to India, where he took a Hebrew copy of Saint Matthew's gospel. Again, later legend tells us that he was eventually martyred by being flayed alive in Albanopolis in Armenia. But in fact, as I have said, we know little about Bartholomew. So our lessons today are not devoted to Bartholomew personally or directly, but rather they address the general topics of the apostolic office and of Christian leadership. My text, from the gospel for this feast, speaks to these matters. The lesson itself from Saint Luke consists of a saying by Jesus that he speaks during the Last Supper: The hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him' (xxii.14). We have our ideal pictures of this scene, fixed in our minds - though with some historical inaccuracy - by later artists. But our scene of calm and harmony in fact is broken by the controversy that opens our lesson: And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest.' (24) Unfortunately the Last Supper was not the first occasion when such a dispute broke out. You may turn in your Prayer Books a few pages before today's gospel to the feast of Saint James on July 25th, and there you will read that the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons' came to Jesus to ask him that her sons may sit the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom' (St. Matthew xx.21). James and John want to be accounted the greatest'. You see self-seeking and jockeying for position, far from being an unusual interruption in the Church of God, in fact were present even in our Lord's own lifetime. Contentious vestrymen and bishops are, if you will, continuing in the apostolic tradition in this respect as well, we hope, as in other more admirable ways. Why should this surprise us? We are all far gone from original righteousness and inclined to sin. Sin and pride and self-seeking are always with us. What matters more than the fact of sin, even of sin in the Church, even of sin among the apostles, is the response our Lord makes to its manifestation. God matters more than we, and what God does about sin matters more than does sin itself. Our Lord already has taught on the subject of apostolic self-seeking in Saint Luke's gospel. Back in chapter ix, when the apostles were reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest' (ix.46), our Lord took a child, and set him by him, and said unto them' that he that is least among you all, the same shall be great.' (ix.47f.) The apostles have already forgotten this teaching by the Last Supper. Most preaching, you see, is a matter of repeating what we've already heard and of encouraging us to believe what we already know. And most preaching is quickly forgotten or ignored. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. This is the teaching of our Saviour. Christian leadership means service. No one in Christendom has prouder titles than the Bishop of Rome. The last of his long string of proud and mighty titles is servus servorum Dei: Servant of the servants of God'. No one, least of all the Pope, supposes that the popes have always lived up to that title of service and humility, but at least the ideal is stated. While the tendency of our old Adam is to promote and to assert self, this sinful tendency is contrary to divine command: he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.' This saying is made in the midst of a supper. [H]e sat down, and the twelve apostles with him.' There likely were servants present, so when our Lord asks, [W]hether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth', the question was immediately illustrated for those who first heard it. Likewise the promise that our Lord attaches to his obedient followers involves the table: That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom' (xxii.30). We come to sit at God's table in his kingdom by serving others in this world. This lesson about service and humility is directly counter to the world's teaching. We live in a day of assertiveness training, which is to say, of deliberate rudeness. We are taught by all the world around us that life is about finding myself. But that is not Christ's teaching. He tells us that life is not about finding myself, but about losing myself in service and humility: Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.' (Luke xvii.33) We live in an age when married couples have the insane notion that marriage is about making myself happy, when of course marriage is about serving: serving one's spouse and then together serving one's children and friends and society. And so with all relationships. The stronger a spouse or person is, the greater the duty to serve: he that is greatest among you, let him be...as he that doth serve.' It is only when the corn of wheat falls to the ground and dies that it can spring forth into abundant growth. The Prayer Book puts this difficult lesson perfectly, as it so often does. In the Collect for Peace at Morning Prayer we address God whose service is perfect freedom'. Those few words run counter to everything everything that our society tells us. To the world these words are a direct contradiction: to serve is freedom. The world says that to serve is slavery. Yet God's service is perfect freedom. Self-will does not liberate us; it enslaves us. Self-assertion does not gain us a throne in God's kingdom; it casts us into outer darkness. Service does not limit me; it ennobles and frees me. Inordinate love of self does not increase me, but loses me the greatest of God's gifts. The only things we have in the end are the things we give away. The only life we gain is the life we pour out for others. And that we might see the truth of God's teaching, God lived it out for us as one of us. It is our Lord's own service to us his ministry of teaching and healing, his life of compassion, his patient passion, his humble death upon a cross, his forgiveness even of his executioners it is this service that brings his victory, his mighty Resurrection and glorious Ascension, and his everlasting Session at the right hand of the Father. He that is greatest among us was indeed He who served, who served us to the end, and who serves us still at his table. And to that Table now we come. We fail in service, we falter in love, our wills push and assert and jostle. Yet still we come and kneel and take and eat. Let us pray today, as we perform this Divine Service, at which our Lord is both Priest and Victim, Lord and Servant, that he may teach us to love and to serve as he would have us to do, that we may come to his everlasting kingdom. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H3-65Trinity XVII. October 12, 2003. St. Stephen's, Athens; St. Nicholas's, Cleveland, GAEphesians iv, verse 3 - ...endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Prayer may be briefly defined as conversation or talking with God. Prayer is a human activity, and the most perfect prayer therefore is that of the only perfect man, our Saviour Jesus Christ. The deepest kind of conversation has as its purpose to unite the people who are talking together so that they come to understand one another and to share in personal comm-union, union of heart and mind. What prayer seeks, Holy Communion provides and fulfils - namely personal union between God and us. Communion means 'union with'. This unity itself is achieved most perfectly in every devout reception of the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion. In Holy Communion Christians, from the individual believer to the two billions of believers around the world, may all unite with our Lord's own self, so that he may dwell in them - in us - and we in him. In Holy Communion our Lord in his human and divine natures is available to you and me most perfectly and fully. Holy Communion is the fulfilment of prayer because it gives what prayer seeks: the establishment of unity between God and man. Holy Communion is the highest kind of prayer, the prayer that most fully enables us to understand and participate in God's mind and will.Of course we know that there are many other kinds of prayer. Since Holy Communion is the highest kind of prayer and its fulfilment, all other kinds of prayer are best understood in relation to it. Think of all the kinds of prayer as concentric circles, all of which are centered on our Lord's Presence in Holy Communion. The various kinds of prayer are waves rippling out from the altar rail and the simple, single act of Holy Communion. Or to use another image, Holy Communion is the jewel, but the jewel is held and shown to us in a rich setting which is the full range of kinds of prayer.Why do we need other kinds of prayer, if Holy Communion by itself is the perfection of prayer? Perhaps the act of Holy Communion is too mysterious, too full and rich, for us to comprehend it fully by itself. Perhaps the gem is too blinding in itself. Perhaps our eyes and attention wander to much for us to see the gem itself very clearly when it stands alone. In any case we need to see the gem held in place in its proper setting. And that proper setting is the full range of prayer.Closest to the jewel is sacramental prayer, the prayer of the Eucharist, the Divine Liturgy, the Service of the Lord's Supper, the Mass, whatever you prefer to call it. Holy Communion proper, the act of receiving our Lord's sacramental Body and Blood, takes place within the context of the full service. This full liturgy is the bracket that holds the gem of our Lord's Body and Blood. We receive Holy Communion of course, but not without hearing God's Word, confessing our sins, making our supplications and intercessions, and offering our thanksgiving and praises. Few of us are fit to receive Holy Communion except in the prayerful and contemplative and quiet setting provided by the fulness of the whole Eucharistic liturgy. Around this bracket is the rest of the formal prayer life of the Church. In our own tradition the most important parts of that prayer life apart from the Eucharist are the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer. In these Daily Offices we read through the Psalms monthly and the better part of the Bible annually, and we do so in the context of worship. The Daily Offices give to our daily lives a structure, rhythm, and habit of prayer. Such daily turning to God in prayer and daily listening to God in Scripture builds up around the Eucharistic a prayerful setting. Morning and Evening Prayer attune us to sacred things so that we may worthily and fitly approach our Lord's holy mysteries. That is why in this parish one of the Offices is always said half an hour before the Eucharist of the day.But the Daily Offices and sacramental worship both are formal, structured prayer. Our prayer lives also need a personal dimension. The next circle, moving out from Holy Communion, the Eucharist, and the formal prayer life of the Church, is the personal prayer life of Christians. Such personal, private prayer helps make our Church prayers real and alive for us. The formal thanksgivings of the Church are wonderful. But we all have many blessings for which we should personally give thanks. The General Confessions of the Church are powerful, but sometimes are all too General. We also need private examination of conscience, personal consideration of our personal sins, and particular confession of those particular sins whether to God direct or to God with the advice, counsel, and absolution of a priest. The prayers for All Sorts and Conditions of Men and for the Whole State of Christ's Church help us to structure our prayers of supplication and intercession by reminding us of the great categories of human need. But we also need to pray more particularly for our own private needs, for our own friends and family, for our parish and fellow parishioners, for current community and national needs, and for all that our Lord summarizes as our daily bread. In all of these kinds of personal prayer our private prayers flow into the public, formal prayer of the Church and support and extend the Church's prayer. If the formal prayers of the Church are the great waves flowing out from the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion, then private prayers are the rivulets and channels that convey the water into every nook and cranny of daily life.Finally and most generally, there is the kind of prayer that Saint Paul commands when he tells the Thessalonians to 'pray without ceasing' (I Thes. v.17). The whole of our prayer life, whether formal or private, should flow from a general attitude of attention to God, and general turning of our hearts and wills to God. We may not think consciously of God every moment, but our whole life should be directed towards obeying his will, serving his children, and enjoying his blessings. This general turn of our hearts, this general attitude towards life, attunes us to God so that all the other kinds of prayer will naturally well up in us. Prayer becomes second nature to us when we live in the unity of God's Spirit and the bond of peace. The bond of peace is a heart so directed towards God that it is united to all others who are similarly directed. When the spirit that dwell in us is God's Spirit, then the mutual indwelling of God in us and we in God and of we in one another is so strong that Holy Communion then becomes an inward reality. Then our prayer is perfect and heaven has already begun to flourish with us and the bond of peace is complete.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H4-21Quinquagesima. February 15, 2004. Saint Stephen's, Athens, GAI Corinthians xiii, verse 8 - Charity never faileth....In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Our theme today is love, which is one of the most abused words in our language. Our epistle is about love; about love, we might say, in theory. It defines and describes love. Our gospel then is about love in action. In the gospel our Lord foretells his greatest work of love and the victory that it will achieve: 'the Son of man shall be...put...to death: and the third day he shall rise again.' Then our Lord shows that this love is effective in our world by healing the blind man, 'Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee. And immediately he received his sight...'. I say that the word 'love' is abused, and so it is. Ten or 15 years ago a person who had committed a rather horrible and harmful adultery said to me, 'I believe in love.' To which I did not have the wit, or perhaps the courage, or perhaps either the wit or the courage, to reply, 'But does Love believe in you?' Since for Christians Love is a Who more than an it, that reply of hindsight would have been pertinent. It still is. Whatever we think we mean by love, and whatever we think of what we do in the name of love, there is a Lover who judges us and without whose good will our supposed loves are no such thing. What do we mean by love? Part of the difficulty is that while Greek has three or four words for 'love', we have one main modern English word which does duty for many different emotions and affections and things. That is one good reason for avoiding the modern Biblical translations which use 'love' throughout I Corinthians xiii where the King James Version uses 'charity'. 'Charity' is better because it is a rare word in this sense, and so it forces us to think. Usually when we hear 'love' we think we know what is being spoken of. We have immediate and assumed ideas. But the strange, old-fashioned word, 'charity', forces us to wonder; and wisdom begins with wonder. So let me begin by distinguishing desire and charity. The distinction is important, at least if we would understand what Saint Paul means by 'charity'. The two ideas are not necessarily separate, but they may nonetheless be distinguished. Desire means to will something good for myself. I desire to eat the candy bar, to see Paris, to meet the Pope, to hear Mozart, and to avoid cholera. Love in the sense of charity means to will good for someone else. Love wills that little children be happy, that my father live long, that my parishioners succeed in their jobs and their marriages, and that the parish flourish. Love might forego the candy bar or accept cholera for the sake of someone else. Desire turns inward. Charity moves outward. Now when things are in their proper order, love and desire go together. Love fulfils proper desire. A husband properly should desire his wife, because she makes him happy; and he should love her in the sense of wishing for her all the good in the world, even if that good comes at great cost to himself. In Saint Paul's use 'charity' includes a kind of proper desire, which desires something or someone because what I desire is in truth good. We love God and we desire God, because God is good and because God fulfils us and alone can finally give us lasting happiness. God made the world, and he made it so that he is both the highest good and the greatest pleasure. Or as I often say, God made us with a God-shaped hole in our hearts, which only he can fill. Or again, as Saint Augustine says, our hearts are restless until they rest in God.So let's go back to believing in love. If we understand love in Paul's sense, then while adultery may be full of desire, it is void of love. For how can we plausibly claim to desire good for someone whose soul we are lacerating with sin and disordered desire? We can't always help what we desire. But love - willing good for the other - means controlling what we do for her sake or for his sake. Adultery, and in lesser degrees the lesser sexual sins, are offences against chastity. But more seriously they are offences against charity, against love. They harm the object of desire, as well as the one who desires.But 'charity never faileth'. Charity does not harm the beloved, but is seeks good for all. If the epistle defines love, I began by saying that the gospel shows us love in action. God not only tells us what love is, he also shows us. He shows us above all by the Lord's Passion and Cross, which this week become the central object of our meditation as Lent begins. We turn with our Lord to 'go up to Jerusalem' where 'all things that [were] written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished'. There we will see God pouring out his love for love of us, to save us. Love seeks the good of the other. The Passion and Cross show us such other-love to the uttermost. They show God giving himself utterly and totally for us men and for our salvation. They show God saving us, not by an act of omnipotent will, but by entering completely into our situation and there suffering painfully unto death. That is charity complete, charity going as far as it possibly can.Such 'charity never faileth'. The love we see in Passiontide and on Good Friday is successful love. It is love that did not fail and will never fail. When our earthly lives are over, when our world is dead and our sun is cold, the burning love of God and his creatures for one another will continue in unending splendor and satisfaction. Then all of the disordered desires of our inconstant lives here and now will be burned away, and all of the true loves of this world will appear as facets of the central Love which brought our world into being and which then renewed it by the Incarnation. 'Charity never faileth'. We hear these word today on the edge of Lent's beginning. At the other end of Lent, on Easter, we shall see this truth burst forth from the tomb, vindicated and sure. In between let us turn to the Cross in prayer and fasting and almsgiving. Let us keep a good and holy Lent, and so come to the joyful Eastertide of Charity.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. H4-64Trinity XVI. September 26, 2004. Saint Stephen's, Athens, GAEphesians iii, verse 14 - ...the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.... In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Our gospel lesson is the story of the raising of the dead son of a widow from the city of Nain. This story sits in the middle of a religious stream which flows from the Old Testament, through the New, and into the broad life of the Church. It flows from the stories of Elijah and Elisha, both of whom similarly resuscitate the dead and only son of a woman. Of course the story anticipates the resurrection of Jesus himself, who likewise died and rose and was the only son of a widow woman. And then later still this story was taken up by the Church and assigned as the gospel lesson for the feast of the Conversion of Saint Augustine of Hippo - another son of a widow. Augustine, dead in sin, was raised by Christ to new life and restored to his rejoicing mother.The use of this story for the feast of Saint Augustine reminds us that we Christians need to read ourselves into many of the parables and stories of the gospels. The stories are about you and me. This story is about death and resurrection, and these are events that concern us all closely. We are growing into the gospel stories, and we are growing into the death and life, the dying and resurrection, that the gospels tell us about.With that fact in mind, consider the phrase from our epistle today which I have chosen as my text. I say 'phrase' because the bulk of the lesson is one of those seemingly endless run-on sentences to which Saint Paul is addicted. In English the sentence contains more than 100 words. Greek is a little more concise, but I still count 86 Greek words. Anyway, in the phrase I have chosen Saint Paul speaks of 'the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named'. Now what is this 'family' of which Paul speaks: 'the whole family in heaven and earth'? We might think that the term means something like 'creation', or 'all that is in heaven and earth'. One commentator that I've read, though, suggests that this interpretation would be wrong. This Bible, he says, has no doctrine of the Fatherhood of God except in that through Christ we can become God's adopted sons and daughters. That assertion set me looking, and sure enough in the Old Testament I was not able to find a reference to God as 'the Father' or 'our Father'. If I missed one or more such reference, then at least they must be very rare. It is only in the New Testament, after Jesus teaches us to pray to 'our Father', that we find frequent references to God as Father. So the idea that all creation is God's 'family', that 'the whole family in heaven and earth' is all people or all creatures, is not very likely.Now you look at this epistle closely you will notice that it is Trinitarian. It refers to all the Persons of the Trinity. It speaks of 'the Father' and of 'our Lord Jesus Christ' and of 'his Spirit' who strengthens us. That is, we are speaking here of God as he revealed himself to us in Christ and as he is understood and confessed by Christ's people. In other words, the 'family' here is the Church, the body of Christ which confesses the Father of Christ, and confesses Jesus who reveals the Father, and confesses the Holy Spirit who strengthens us and makes Christ to dwell in our hearts and allows us to dwell in him. This interpretation is strengthened by the word 'family'. The 'Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named', means that the family consists of those who bear the Father's name. This idea is clearer in the Greek, because the word 'family' is formed from the word for 'Father'. The 'Father' is the 'Patér'; the 'family' is the 'patriá' (as also in Latin). The 'family' is the 'thing of the Father', just as in most of our families we all bear the name of our forefathers.You and I live after the coming of Christ. We live in the Christian dispensation. We simply take for granted that God is our Father, because we simply take for granted that God has sent his only-begotten Son to us, and through that Son has offered us a place in his household as his adopted sons and daughters of grace. But what we take for granted is in fact an achievement, something that is not assumed by most of the world or by most religions. God is not simply the absolute and utterly transcendent God of the Quran. Rather he is Abba, Father. We are not simply his servants and his slaves, but his children and the brothers and sisters of his Incarnate Son. We do not live in terror of the spiritual world, as do many pre-Christian pagans, but know that that world is governed by our Father's providence. We do not live in nihilistic despair, as do many poor neo-pagans who imagine themselves to be post-Christian, but rather we know that the world is full of hope and is suffused with the glory and beauty of God. We have a family, the Church, and a Father in heaven.Our task as Christians is to grow into this status which has already been anticipated by our baptism. And there is the connection between the gospel and epistle. As the raising of the son of the widow of Nain is a story that anticipates our own share in Christ's resurrection, so by grace God calls us to grow in every respect into the image and likeness of Christ. We take up our cross and follow him, by way of joining in the family and growing more Christ-like. We perform acts of self-giving love and service, because that's how family members behave and that is how our Lord and brother behaved. We die to self, and one day will die to this life indeed, because that is a family inheritance and burden, which even Christ our brother accepted as part of our family's life. And finally, one day, we will rise to life eternal, because our head has lead the way there. And so we bow our knees to 'the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named', and rejoice that we too bear the privileged name: sons and daughters of God and children of the Holy Catholic Church.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H5-28Palm Sunday. March 20, 2005. Saint Stephen's, Athens.Saint John ii, verse 25 -- for he knew what was in man.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. The liturgy today is quite long and to a great degree Palm Sunday preaches itself. Lex ordandi statuit legem credendi: Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday, also tells us why the how we pray determines what we believe. But I do have at least a brief sermon for you today. Saint John, just after he tells of our crowd were so enthusiastic:The people therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus out of his grave, and raised him from the dead, bare record. For this cause the people also met him, for that they heard that he had done this miracle. (xii.17f.)In other words, the crowd is interested in bread and circuses, as crowds always are. They have come to cheer the wonderworking, life-resuscitating man their friends have told them about. No doubt they also wish to see a similar miracle for themselves. Much earlier in his gospel John gave us a glimpse of a parallel situation:[W]hen [Jesus] was in Jerusalem at the Passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man. (ii.23-5)There is an ominous note, most suitable for this day when have heard the Passion read. 'He knew what was in man.' He knew indeed. And we should know too, we who have just heard what man is capable of doing to a benefactor and healer, a teacher and guide, to say nothing of a Lord and Saviour. Christ is a man without illusions, who needed not that any should tell him of man's nature. He knew and knows.But we have illusions, so we need to hear, we need that someone should testify of man, what is in man. And so we listen to the Passion story again this year, to sweep away our illusions. This story is and needs to be part of our annual round. We begin this great and Holy Week with the story of the mighty acts of God by which we are saved. And the mighty acts of God, if we look at them without illusions, are responses to, and in despite of, comprehensive human failure. Consider that our Lord had twelve apostles. One was a traitor. One explicitly and thrice denied his master. All ran away, and only one returned to stand to the end with the women at the foot of the cross. One out of twelve is a pretty poor percentage, which allows us to testify this of man: he is weak or worse. If his closest followers failed the Lord, then the crowd, whose enthusiastic acclamations began our liturgical day today, were no better. When the wonderworker failed to amuse and amaze the crowd, they lost interest, and then were easily manipulated into their horrible cry: 'Crucify him! Crucify him!' Likewise Herod, who had desired of a long season to see Jesus, quickly lost interest when the Lord failed to work some wonder for Herod's entertainment. The high priests, who should have recognized the Lord whom they worshipped, didn't, and they led the effort to destroy him. And the Romans, who famously gave us law, permitted the best-known trial in history to end with a bad verdict, an unjust sentence, a judicial murder, and a judge who managed to be ineffectual, cynical, and self-defeating all at once. What the story reveals to be in man is a truly astounding capacity for failure and evil. Mankind is weak. And insofar as mankind is strong, we are strong to do evil. The good news of the gospel is that, as Saint Paul has it, where sin abounded, grace abounds more. The deeper and greater man's failure, the more absolute and free and gratuitous is the love of God revealed to us in the human death of Jesus. The greater the sin and wickedness revealed to be in man, the more astonishing and noble and good is the love of God which not only forgives us what is in us, but which even takes that evil and turns it into the very means of our redemption. We sought to do him harm, but he forgives and then through our evil deed and his gracious gift he transforms us into his children and friends. The cross is converted from an instrument of his death into the means of our salvation. What is in us by ourselves is death. What is in us through Christ's work is life. God knows what is in man. God knows what is in you and me. The good news is that God loves us anyway. Come taste and see that this is so.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H7-49Trinity I. June 10, 2007Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon on the First Sunday in Trinity at Saint Francis’, Gainesville, Georgia.?U.S.A.Saint John xvi, verse 22 -...your heart shall rejoice: and your joy no man taketh from you.?In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.?The theme of my text, of our epistle, and of our gospel today is the same:? love.? My text from Saint John’s first epistle reminds me of the story told about the end of Saint John’s life.? He lived to be a century old, and at the end of his life his sermons tended to reduce to one sentence:? ‘Little children, love one another.’? His people one day complained about this apparently simplistic repetition.? To which complaint John replied that if they really would love another, it was enough.? But as I am neither a century old nor Saint John you probably will expect a bit more from me.? So let’s say that John tells us in this lesson that love has its root in God.? We are only able to show love because we have received love – which is a truth we know even from our human experience.? Children who are loved properly grow up able to love others.? Those who did not receive love have trouble showing love, forming human attachments, or even imagining pain or suffering in others.? But God has loved us, and learning that fact enables us to show love in return.? And Saint John tells us that showing love requires practical goodness towards those with whom we come into contact day by day.? If we don’t show kindness, generosity, and patience towards those immediately around us, how can we love God whom we don’t even see??The gospel parable of Lazarus and the rich man has many meanings, but one of them is just the same.? The rich man fails in love, practical, real, worldly love, towards someone just outside his door.? That failure in practical love renders him unfit for heaven.? ‘Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God....’? And if we are loveless, then where is God in our lives??Now I hope you will bear with me for a moment while I put this theme of practical love into context.? The Church calendar has a distinct pattern at this time of year which I think helps us understand today’s theme.?Last Sunday was the feast of the Holy Trinity.? The three weeks before all pointed in that direction, because the three Sundays before Trinity are each devoted to one Person of the Trinity. Four Sundays ago on the Fifth Sunday after Easter, called Rogation Sunday, the theme of the gospel was prayer to God the Father: ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.’? It is to God the Father that we address most of our prayers.? A week later came Ascension Day and Ascension Sunday, which celebrate God the Son, who ‘came forth from the Father’ to show the Father to us and then returned to the Father to make intercession for us.? There is God the Son.? Two weeks ago was Pentecost, the great feast of God the Holy Ghost, who comes into the world from the bosom of the Father, through the Son, to continue God’s presence with us after the Ascension.? Rogation Sunday shows us the Father; Ascensiontide shows us the Son; Pentecost shows us the Holy Spirit.? This pattern embedded in the Church calendar was revealed to us by Christ himself.? Christ showed his disciples how to pray to his Father and then he died and rose again in obedient love for his Father.? He ascended to his Father in heaven, after which the promised gift of the Holy Spirit poured forth from the Father and the Son upon the apostles.? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are shown to us in Scripture.? After the individual Persons are revealed to us, each as Lord and God, whether in the gospel or in the Sundays of the Church year, then we come to Trinity Sunday, last week.? The three previous weeks point us towards the crown and culmination of the universe and of revelation.?Trinity Sunday is the conclusion of the first half of the Church year, as the mighty acts of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Ascentiontide, and Whitsunday are fulfilled in the feast of the Triunal God.? But then you and I have to go on in this world, for we are not yet in heaven or in the immediate Presence of God the Holy Trinity.? ?So immediately after Trinity Sunday the Church gives us two observances which usher in the second half of the Church year.? The first is Corpus Christi, the feast of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, which falls on the Thursday after Trinity and then is commemorated today.? As you and I go about our lives in this world, our chief support and comfort is the Body of Christ, the ‘medicine of immortality’, by which God dwells in us, and we in him.? As the long green season of Trinitytide begins, we are sustained by Holy Communion.? Corpus Christi, then, is the feast that begins our shift into the second half of the Church year.?Then we come to today and its theme of practical love.? God’s grace always comes first.? You and I must begin, continue, and end by reliance on God’s grace, poured forth into our hearts from the Father by the merits of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit bestowed normally by the sacraments.? But the Christian life, so rooted in grace and gift, nonetheless also requires our action and cooperation and effort.? God does not invite us to be passive blobs, who sit around and wait for him to bless us with gift upon gift.? No.? God requires us to use his gifts, to cooperate with his love and the grace of the Sacrament, and to turn from his altar towards the world with his gifts in our hands.? God calls us to show forth his love in the world.? God requires us to serve as his hands and feet to bind up the wounds of those with whom we come into contact, to feed hungry Lazarus, to teach those who do not know him, and to show them by our practical service and love what the love of God is like.? While we often fail – while we may feel that we fail more often than we succeed – still God requires us to use what he gives us and to do our best to serve those around us as our appropriate response of gratitude to him for his astonishing blessings.?So there is my basic idea about today in context.? Our theme is practical Christian love.? Practical love from us comes at the end of the process.? We begin with the Father and prayer, the Son and his merits, the Holy Spirit and his gifts.? These together show us the Holy Trinity.? We are fed with the life of God and the Body of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar.? And today we are shown the proper response we should make in the light of this unfolding revelation of God and the gifts from God that come to us.? The appropriate response is love towards one another.?When human love is divorced from God’s revelation and when it is not fed and nourished with the sacraments and graces of God, it becomes twisted.? Human love that does not begin with God quickly becomes sentimentality or obsession.? Good works apart from God twist quickly into wickedness.? The pattern of our calendar is the safe path.? We begin with God, with understanding and loving him as best we can in the unfolding Trinitarian revelation of Scripture and tradition.? Then we are fed and nourished by the sacramental system and the teaching of the Church.? It is only after we receive that we are properly equipped to begin to serve poor Lazarus and one another.? Again, we will often fail.? God does not require perfection, as God does not promise unbroken success or worldly happiness.? God asks us to try, to try to love one another, to show each other and ourselves that the love of God truly dwells in our hearts.? That kind of love is, as Saint John says, ‘of God’, and to God it will brings us back.?In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H8-40Easter III.? April 13, 2008.? Saint Francis’, Gainesville, GA?Saint John xvi, verse 16 - A little while and ye shall not see me: and again a little while, and ye shall see me: because I go to the Father.?In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.? ?In the Church year today we are now almost exactly half way between Easter and Ascension Day, and our collects and lessons show this fact.? Today’s collect and epistle still look back towards Easter with references to those who were newly baptized on Easter: ‘them that are admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion’.? Both the collect and epistle speaks of the moral renewal and wholesome living that baptized Christians are called to observe: ‘that they may eschew those things that are contrary to their profession’ as Christians, ‘and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same.’? It is ‘the will of God, that with well-doing’ - with Christian living - we ‘may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men’ (I St. Peter ii.) who are hostile to Christianity.? Such is the theme of the collect and epistle.? However, the gospel today begins to shift our focus from Easter and towards the season ahead.? The gospel looks forward, to Christ’s Ascension into heaven on the fortieth day after his Resurrection.? In the following weeks the gospel lessons will look more and more in the same direction, and then even further as they begin to anticipate the coming of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, on Pentecost.?The Venerable Bede reminds us that our Lord spoke the words of today’s lesson ‘on the night on which he was betrayed’. ?So when he says ‘a little while and ye shall not see me’, he quite literally means that there was only a little remaining ‘time of that same night and that of the following day, until the hour whey they would begin not to see him.’? (ACCS, NT, IVb, 211)? Our Lord as he speaks these words is about to be arrested, then crucified, and buried - and so will disappear for ‘a little while’ from the disciples’ sight.? But ‘again a little while’ and he will rise from the dead in preparation for his Ascension into heaven: ‘ye shall see me:? because I go to the Father.’? So on the literal level this text is all plain and simple enough.? Such is the meaning of these words in their original context.?Today’s context is in part that of the Church calendar, which I have already mentioned.? On this level the terms ‘a little while’ and ‘again’ refer to different periods of time.? When Christ ascends into heaven, his disciples no longer see will see him.? In just over forty days after speaking these words Christ would ascend above human time and space, at which point the disciples would not see him with their earthly eyes.? But ‘again a little while’, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, and they would be reunited to Christ through the power of prayer and the mysteries of the sacraments.? Christ has gone to his Father, but he is with us in our midst in word and prayer and sacrament.?Today I would like us to consider briefly the first verb in my text, namely ‘see’.? Our Lord speaks of the disciples seeing and not seeing him: ‘ye shall not see me’ and ‘ye shall see me’.? Most languages have many words for seeing.? In English we have ‘see’, ‘look’, ‘behold’, ‘stare’, ‘gaze’, ‘glance’ and others.? These different words all refer to the sight of the eyes, to perceiving or gaining some knowledge through vision.? But the intensity and kind of sight differs with the term.?The verb used in today’s lesson is θεωρ?ω, theoreo, from which we get such words as ‘theory’, ’theoretical’, ‘theorist’, and ‘theorem’.? In ancient Greek literature one of the earliest meanings for this word? is that of an official observer or witness to religious acts, as when a public deputy or official attended sacred games or sacrifices.? A ‘theorist’ was someone whose vision was a matter of importance, sacred importance.? We have a sense of this meaning in Saint Matthew’s gospel when we are told, as our Lord dies upon the cross and as the centurion proclaims ‘Truly this was the Son of God’, that ‘many women were there beholding afar off’ (xxvii.55).? So too says Saint Mark (xv.40), and Saint Luke also write that ‘the people stood beholding’ (xxiii.35).? These witnesses to the crucifixion are not merely looking.? They do not simply happen to glance at something.? They do not see something with indifference.? Rather their vision of Calvary is momentous.? The holy women and Saint John look upon that which is noteworthy and sacred.? Such a use of the word ‘theory’ is perfectly in accord with the ancient Greek meaning.? The witnesses of Calvary ‘behold’ Christ and that which he suffered, and they are our deputies at a most notable and sacred event, the sacrifice of God incarnate.? These are the greatest of theorists.? ?By the bye, when Pontius Pilate shows our Lord to the chief priests and the mob who demand his crucifixion, he says to them in the English Bible, ‘Behold the man!’ (John xix.5) and, again, ‘Behold your king’ (xix.14).? But this is a different, more commonplace Greek verb without the hovering sense of official, momentous, or sacred observation.? Those who condemn and reject Christ merely ‘see’ him.? They look without perceiving, they see without understanding, while those with ‘theory’ behold him with insight and love and awe.? ?Saint John’s gospel is very concerned to explain to its readers that it rests on the testimony of reliable witnesses.? The evangelist who authored the gospel is the beloved disciple ‘which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things’ (xxi.24) ‘that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God’ (xx.31).? The point of the gospel is to ‘show’ us Christ, to give us insight into the truth, so that we might be as the holy women at Calvary and the holy sepulchre, and not as the mob in Pilate’s praetorium.? The gospel invites us to behold Christ, to see him with eyes of faith and love, with insight into the sacred truth.?For us now this theory is a real and living possibility - in fact it is a necessity.? We may behold Christ, we may see him still.? We do not see him as the disciples saw him, in a literal and historical fashion.? But we may see him through the means of grace, which are all pathways to the living God.? We may gain insight into the truth of Christ through the word written, which is holy Scripture, particularly as Scripture is read in the context of worship.? We behold Christ also through prayer, as we address the Father through the merits of his Son and as we are enabled by the Holy Spirit who came upon us in our baptism and confirmation.? We behold Christ also in the prayers of meditation and contemplation.? And we behold Christ above all through the Blessed Sacrament, in which week by week and day by day the Light of God descends upon us from the realms of endless day to enlighten our understanding and to enkindle our affections and to unite us in mystery to Good Friday and Easter.? The sacrifice is presented before us still, and we still behold it in the name of the Church.? As confirmed Christians we are deputized to gaze upon the sacrament and to receive the benefits of the sacrifice and to join the Resurrected Lord in his eternal life..? ?Christ has departed from us in one sense and for a time.? In a thousand other ways we behold him still.? That is our theory, and by it we live.?In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.??H8-61St. Bartholomew Day. 24 August 2008Lessons: Page 249, BCPSaint Luke xxii, verse 27 - But I am among you as he that serveth.(adapted by W. Bullock)The apostles seem to me to fall into two groups. On the one hand we have those apostles who stand out in the New Testament as individuals. In some cases, mainly Saint Peter, we have enough stories and sayings and writings to allow us a good idea of his personality. Peter is impulsive and enthusiastic; he has a wife and mother-in-law; he is a fisherman; he has a big heart and is capable of being very foolish; and in the end he is humble enough to repent his sins and to let his sincere love for Christ win out over his weakness. So too we know about `Doubting Thomas' and have some ideas about the character of Andrew, James, and John. Those are the apostles we might call the individuals, the apostles with distinct, known characters. On the other hand, there are those apostles who do not stand out as individuals, but on the contrary are simply known as part of the group. About these apostles we do not have many revealing stories or long epistles or works attributed to their own pens or inspiration. Perhaps it ill-becomes your bishop to visit the parish of Saint Bartholomew's on Saint Bartholomew's day and tell you that this patron saint is not terribly memorable as an individual, but such really is the case. That does not mean Saint Bartholomew is unimportant or that there is nothing for me to say today. But it does suggest that the main significance of this saint does not lie in his individual personality but in something else. That said, there is one possible exception. The name `Bartholomew' is a Hebrew patronymic: Bartholomew is `Bar-Tolmai' or, literally, `the son of Tolmai'. This is probably something like a modern surname, Smith or Jones. Therefore, many people think that just as Saint Peter was originally `Simon Bar-Jonah', Simon the son of Jonah, so Bartholomew was someone with another, given name. Now the name Bartholomew occurs in the first three gospels and in Acts but not in Saint John's gospel. In Saint John, however, we have an apostle named Nathaniel, who in turn does not appear in the first three gospels or in Acts. Therefore it is quite possible that Bartholomew was `Nathaniel Bartholomew', Nathaniel the son of Tolmai. If this traditional identification of Nathaniel and Bartholomew is correct, then we do have one story about Saint Bartholomew in which he does stand out as an individual. That story comes in the first chapter of the Gospel of Saint John, where Philip tells Nathaniel that they have found the Messiah, Jesus from Nazareth. Nathaniel replies, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" (i.46) This rather skeptical comment is followed by a scene in which Jesus astounds Nathaniel by referring to some very private thing which was sufficient to persuade Nathaniel of Christ's identity. That scene from the aforementioned first chapter of Saint John is very interesting and might make a good sermon topic. However, that is not the story specified in the Prayer Book for today. The gospel for today, rather, is taken from the Last Supper and it only refers to Bartholomew as one of the group. This gospel and my text from it are about apostles and apostleship, not about Bartholomew individually considered. And that itself is significant. The apostles, like the clergy in the later Church, are not primarily significant as individuals. It is wonderful if you like your priest and your bishop. However, the real significance of your priest does not primarily concern him as an individual. Priests and deacons and bishops are primarily persons bearing an office, and their individual and personal qualities are quite secondary to that office. We may use the ministry of the parish priest or the diocesan bishop even if personally we don't care for him very much. The unworthiness of the minister hindereth not the effect of the sacrament. What matters is not the man but the office and the sacraments. So too the apostles in the first instance are not significant as individuals. As individuals they were weak and foolish. James and John want to get the best seats in heaven. Thomas doubts the Resurrection. Peter wants to walk on water, then gets frightened and sinks. And they all deny Christ and run away, with only Saint John left to stand at the foot of the cross with the faithful women. The apostles are pretty comprehensively failures. But the apostles nonetheless companied with the Son of God and witnessed his Resurrection, and that is the first and most important office of an apostle. An apostle is a witness of the Resurrection. Even Saint Paul, as one born out of time, counted himself an apostle only because he had a personal and direct experience of the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus. It was that encounter which made Paul a witness of the Resurrection and, therefore, an apostle. Likewise Saint Matthias, who was chosen to replace Judas, was chosen from among those who were present for the full length of Christ's ministry and who witnessed the Risen Lord. This first aspect of apostleship as witnesses is possessed by the apostles as a group, as a college. In this regard what matters most about Saint Bartholomew is that he stands firm with the others, confirming and affirming what they all saw: That Christ taught; Christ died; Christ rose; Christ ascended. This is the apostolic teaching. This is the core of the Apostles' Creed and faith. So, first Saint Bartholomew stands as one with the College of the Apostles as a witness to Christ. Secondly - and this is emphasized in today's gospel - he serves as a model for all Christian leaders, as do all of the apostles. As witnesses of the Resurrection, the apostolic office ended with the death of Saint John around the year 100. After the last apostle died, their witness continued in written form, in the New Testament accounts of Christ. But in other ways the apostolic ministry continued. It continued in the ministry of bishops, passing on the hierarchical structure of the Church from generation to generation through the sacrament of Ordination. And it continued in the kind of leadership described in today's lesson. The apostles were promised grand things - thrones in the Kingdom of God. But these glorious rewards only come to the apostles because they suffered with their Lord: "I am among you as he that serveth." The crown comes by way of the cross. Glory comes through suffering. Leadership is not leadership for self-promotion or glorification, but is leadership for service to others. Later legends tells us that all of the apostles scattered to the four corners of the earth and that all of them except Saint John died as martyrs. There is in fact little historical evidence for these travels, since the stories concerning them are relatively late. However, the stories are nonetheless fitting in that they illustrate the sense of the Church that apostleship brings imitation of Christ, service through suffering, and martyrdom. The servant is not above his master. As the Master, Christ, died for love of his flock, so the apostles were called to service even unto death. While we know little about Bartholomew as a person; while we cannot even be absolutely certain of his identification with Nathaniel: Nonetheless, we follow his witness to Christ, we believe his witness of the Resurrection, and we follow him in the Christian belief that the heart of the Christian life is service in love for others. This is the message of Saint Bartholomew, and this is why he reigns even now with Christ in heaven where he pours forth his prayers for us who honor him today on earth.H11-71Trinity XXI. November 13, 2011Saint John iv, verse 46 - There was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum....In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Our gospel lesson today is the story of the second miracle worked by Jesus in Saint John's Gospel. The first miracle in John, you will remember, was wrought by the Lord in Cana of Galilee when he changed water into wine at a wedding banquet. This second miracle is worked in the same place as that first miracle, as the sentence immediately before our lesson tells us: 'So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made water wine.' (46a) Saint John also looks back to the previous miracle at the very end of today's story, when be tells us, 'This is again the second miracle that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judea into Galilee.' (54) The miracle stories in John are a carefully chosen selection. There are only seven of them, and John deliberately arranges them for his own spiritual purposes.Now the main purpose of our Lord's miracles is always to show forth God's glory and thereby to bring men and women into a living relationship with him of faith and love. We see this purpose at work in the first miracle at Cana. We are told at the conclusion of that event that '[t]his beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.' (ii. 11). The 'miracles' or, as the Greek says literally, 'signs' have as their purpose to 'manifest forth [the] glory' or splendor of the Lord. The goal of this manifestation is to bring men and women to belief, to cause them to become 'disciples' or followers or, if you will, students of Christ. The miracle at the wedding feast had this proper effect in the disciples.What about the second miracle? The story begins with a man approaching the Lord on behalf of his son. The son was sick; the son, in fact, 'was at the point of death' (47). The father is called in our translation 'a nobleman'. In the Greek he is literally 'a king's man', basilikos. On the historical or literal level the man was probably an official under king Herod Antipas, the Herod who killed John the Baptist and later met with the Lord on the day of his trail by Pilate. But the official is not named. All we know about him really is that he is a concerned father, that he is 'a king's man', and that he responds in a particular way to the miracle or sign that he receives.So in this case let us go further than the not very important literal fact that the man is a royal official and consider the symbolic level. The father is a 'nobleman', 'a king's man', not so much because of his job as because of his character and his response to the Lord. John shows miracles involving a variety of people: a bride and groom, beggars, his own close friend, Lazarus, and here a loving father. The identity of the person really matters very little. The response of the person matters completely. God does not care very much who you are. He does not care about your race or your sex or your age or your health or your appearance or your education or your job or your wealth or your weight or your handwriting or your genealogy. Rather God cares about you and your response to him and his representatives on earth, who are the people around you.The man in the story is literally a basilikos, a king's man. But Saint Paul reminds the Christians of Corinth that there were among them 'not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble' (I Corinthians i.26). Today's nobleman is truly noble because of his response to the Lord. He was a servant of an earthly king, but it is much more important that he becomes a servant of the heavenly Lord, the King of glory, whose divine splendor shines forth through the miracles and teachings of his earthly life.The nobleman is noble, first, because he loves his son; loves him so much that he will not be rebuffed, will not stop imploring the Lord on his son's behalf: 'Sir, come down ere my child die.' (49) But of course there is nothing very unusual or particularly noble about loving one's children. Even the Gentiles do so, as the Lord observes elsewhere.Still, upon this initial, first, natural love, the nobleman builds, secondly, a more than natural faith and trust in the Lord. The man shows not the slightest doubt or hesitation about the Lord's ability to help: 'When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judea into Galilee, he went unto him, and besought him that he would come down, and heal his son...' (47). Do we ever pray with such absolute, simple faith? I don't think I do. But this man adds the nobility of total faith in God to his natural, paternal love.Thirdly, when the Lord pronounces the son healed, although the man is far from his son and their home, yet he believes the Lord's word implicitly and has a trust in its reliability that appears to be simple and immediate: 'And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way.' (50) Most of us would want to call home and check. Not this noble man. He simply believes and goes. As he goes, of course, he receives word that all is as the Lord said. But that word simply confirms what the nobleman already believes.And perhaps that is the real point. Miracles don't really add anything. They simply confirm what we already have been told and show what is already there to be seen. In a sense, as Father Cotterell often used to say, no miracle will suffice for those who do not believe, while no miracle is necessary for those who do believe. Still, the miracle shows forth or manifests what is often hidden from our poor eyes. The nobleman here is so noble because his faith is so much more than ours usually is. In fact his natural love, his perfect trust, and his subsequent confidence in the Lord are models of the noble Christian virtues: love, faith, and hope. The man has a love for his child that leads him closer to God; he hopes in God's power to heal and to save; and he has faith that Christ will perform the words which he has spoken. If not many Christians are wise, rich, and noble according to the flesh, nevertheless according to the spirit we all are called to a similar faith and hope and love which will make us noble and wise and rich indeed.And so the proper conclusion of the story is not the child's healing, but rather the fact that the sign brings to birth new disciples of the Lord: 'So the father knew...and himself believed, and his whole house' (53). The next miracle of the Lord in Saint John will be less clear in its effect. Signs are for us, not for God, and sometimes we fail to read them as we should or to respond as we ought. But here we see a noble man read God's signs well. He sees the hand of God at work, he believes, and so he is healed as truly as his son. The son's physical healing is merely a foretaste and sign of the healing unto life eternal which the whole household receives. So let us all believe and be faithful King's men.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H12-66Trinity XVIII. October 7, 2012. Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon Anglican Church of Our Saviour, Florence SC.I Corinthians i, verse 5...that in everything ye are enriched by him....In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.One way to look at our collect, epistle, and gospel today is to see in them a collection of religious possibilities, which we may arrange in an ascending order that moves upwards towards God himself. Some of these possibilities are better than others.On the lowest level is the worldliness represented by what our collect calls 'the world, the flesh, and the devil'. These are the things that we renounced for ourselves or through our godparents at our baptism: 'Dost thou renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the sinful desires of the flesh, so that thou wilt not follow, nor be led by them?' Answer. 'I renounce them all; and, by God's help, will endeavour not to follow, nor be led by them.' (BCP p. 277) Our Lord refers to these same things, which keep us from God, in the parable of the Sower, when he speaks of the seed of God's word being 'choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life' (St. Luke viii. 14). The world is human existence organized apart from God. Everything in the world, when it is turned away from God, becomes an impediment and obstacle to us. Good things, the 'riches and pleasures of this life', then will separate us from God. So too will bad things, the 'cares of this life'. The worst spiritual state is this kind of worldliness, that takes no thought for God and that proceeds on its way as if God does not exist.A little better, perhaps, is the religion of the Sadducees, whom, we are told at the beginning of our gospel, 'Jesus.. .put. . .to silence' (Matthew xxii.34). The Sadducees believed in God and in his outward worship in the temple. However, because the Sadducees did not believe in immortal life and in an ultimate resurrection and judgement, their religion was desiccated and fruitless. They were rather like the modern High Church liberals represented by such as Richard Holloway. The outward forms are maintained, but they are effectively cut off from having any significance for life. In the end, why bother with religion, whether or not God exists, if all life ends in death? Our Lord had no patience for such inconsistency, and he put it to silence.Moving upwards we come next to the Pharisees, with whom our Lord debates in the body of today's gospel. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead, in the life of the world to come, in judgement and heaven and hell. They emphasized belief and daily life over the external worship of the temple. In all of this they rejected both the religious indifference of woridlings and also the high and dry religion of the Sadducees. They longed for a living faith. And in all of this the Pharisees also agreed with Christ and his followers. The problem with the Pharisees rests in their rejection of Christ himself. 'What think ye of Christ?' our Lord asks them. And ultimately the question our Lord's whole life poses to the Pharisees is: 'What think ye of ME?' Because the Pharisees rejected our Lord's claim to be the divine Son of God, they turned their back on the source of the living faith for which they longed. The Sadducees had and wanted a dead faith. The Pharisees in contrast wanted a living faith; but the Pharisees would not accept the offer of such living faith when that offer came to them personally in Jesus Christ.So the next step upwards is Christianity, which not only sincerely seeks God, but which also actually receives him, through what our epistle calls 'the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ'. Judaism recognized the human need, but could not fill it. In Christ God gives to the world a grace, a gift, which is the only satisfaction of the deepest human needs and longings. God made us with a God-shaped hole in our hearts. Until God fills our hearts with himself, they are empty and unsatisfied and incomplete. The world does not make people happy and does not satisfy the desires of their hearts for long. Nor will religion fulfil those desires if it is a religion of cold outward practice, such as that of the Sadducees, or if it is a Pharisaical religion of observances cut off from the personal offer of grace in Jesus Christ, who is 'the way, the truth, and the life' (John xiv.6).The final step upwards, then, is Christian perfection. Paul speaks to the Corinthians of this perfection when he refers to them being 'confirmed...unto the end', 'blameless in the day of our Lord', 'in every thing...enriched by him'. Likewise in our epistle we pray for grace to withstand 'the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil' so that 'with pure hearts and minds' we may follow Christ. You see, every level of the religious ascent, from the crassest forms of worldliness, through the cool religion of the Sadducees, to the moralism of the Pharisees — each of these levels remains a constant possibility for each of us. We are Christians, but we also are worldlings and Sadducees and Pharisees and imperfect Christians. The goal of our Christian life must be to purify our hearts and to clarify our minds so that they will follow Christ more perfectly. Our goal should be to be 'in every thing enriched by' God, so that what God began in you at baptism may be 'confirmed in you'.'Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God', says the Beatitude (Matthew v.8). The vision of God, to see God, is the goal and purpose of human existence. This vision, this seeing of God, comes from a pure heart. That is, it comes from simplicity of intention, from singleness of devotion, from a concentration of attention and will upon God as our true happiness. If the world is defined as human existence organized apart from God, then purity of heart is human existence organized with God at our center. The confirmed Christian, enriched by God's grace, may live the same life as the worldling. He may be faced with the same cares and riches and pleasures and disasters and challenges and needs and sicknesses and tasks and advantages. There may be few observable differences between two men's outward lives. But 'where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.' (Matthew vi.21) If God is our treasure, the thing we value most, then our heart is purified and concentrated upon him, so that everything is changed. The cares of life become a burden to hand over to God. The riches and pleasures of life become gifts with which to serve God or gifts from God that produce thanksgiving in us. The disasters and challenges and needs and sicknesses of life become tasks through which we serve God. The advantages of life become tools for doing his will.Nothing may change, yet everything is changed when our faith is enriched and confirmed by God's grace. The 'first and great commandment' is to love God singly and purely: 'with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and with all thy mind'. Such love fulfils all the laws and makes us 'blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ', and this love is not our achievement but a 'grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ'. Let us pray earnestly for this gift, so that the gift of Christ that was begun in us by baptism may be 'confirmed...unto [its] end'. The end to which we move is that we may see God and follow him 'with pure hearts and minds'.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H15-33Good Friday. April 3, 2015Published in The Trinitarian May-June 2015; Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon on Good Friday at St. Stephen's Pro-Cathedral, Athens, Georgia, U.S.A.“First and Ending, Then a Beginning”Hebrews 10, verse 9: He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.In the epistle for Good Friday the author contrasts the two Testaments of the Bible and, in particular, he contrasts the sacrifices of the Law, or Torah, with the sacrifice of Christ. Good Friday is, of course, the story of Christ's sacrifice, his death as a self-sacrifice and offering to his Father. We may look at this matter from many angles. But today let us consider for a time the theme suggested by the epistle. Since sacrifice involves death, the complete dedication and giving of something, let us compare death in the first book of the Law with the death of Christ. In Greek the name of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, means "beginning" or "birth." Genesis contains, of course the story of the creation, beginning with God's creative act in the first verses. Genesis is the story of life, the story of fruitfulness, multiplication, abundance, flourishing, and beginnings. The story, however, is complicated by us, by men and women. Very near the beginning of human existence comes also the beginning of human sin, which Genesis shows us is destructive and deadly. In chapter 3, a little disobedience, a little twisting of words, and a bit of self-deception, blossoms into a murder in chapter 4. The vast genealogies and huge life spans in chapter 5 give way to the flood in Noah's day in chapters 6 and 7. The book of beginnings and of birth and of life is also the book of murder and endings and death.This double nature explains, I think, the very odd final verse of Genesis: "So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin.in Egypt" (50:26). The book of beginnings ends with a burial. The book of creation and life ends with a dead body in a coffin. And, we might add, the book that gives us the Jewish perspective on the world, ends with an Egyptian embalming. That is the end of the beginning. The world apart from Christ ends in death. The world apart from Christ ends with the Egyptian cult of the dead, in which embalming and mummification and fabulous tombs and elaborate rituals seek to deny the fundamental reality of human life apart from God: which is death. Life is being unto death. Genesis ends with a burial. The end of the beginning is death.The Good Friday story also has a death. Today also, if we extended the story a little beyond where the Good Friday Passion ends, we have an entombment. Compared to the Egyptians, the Jewish idea of care for the dead is extremely simple: burial within a day of death with a simple shroud after washing. If Genesis ends with Joseph in a coffin, the Passion ends with Jesus in a tomb belonging to another Joseph - Joseph of Arimathea. In both cases we have a death. Death is the universal fate of mankind, the payment due for sin: an unavoidable payment whether from our perspective it comes due early or late. So even for God-mademan there is death, in order to fulfil his life and to reveal the completeness of his humanity. Christ redeems nothing that he has not taken on himself, so his death and entombment show that he also has redeemed us from the penalty for sin and its fatal consequence. All is assumed by Christ, so all is redeemed by Christ.Today we have a death, as Genesis ended with a death. But the deaths are different. If Joseph's placement in an Egyptian coffin was the end of the beginning, then Christ's death is the beginning of the end. If Joseph's death shows that creation moves to the grave, then Christ's death reverses the process of Genesis. Under Christ the process moves the other way, from the grave to new creation, from death to restored life.Even in Genesis we have glimpses of Christ's work. In today's first lesson at Morning Prayer we see Isaac, given over for death by sacrifice, but then restored to life by God's unlooked-for action. Likewise, the Joseph of Genesis is lost to his father, is assumed dead, but then is restored to his father. And Joseph's restoration is not) ust a wonderful reunion of a father and son, but is God's way to deliver his whole hosen people from death by famine. Joseph, restored from presumed death, brings food and life to his whole family. The "law having a shadow of good things to come" (Hebrews 10.1) points us beyond the shadows of Isaac and Joseph to Christ and his life-giving cross.Today we see not the shadow of good things to come, but rather "the very image of the things." We move from Genesis to the gospel, from the shadows to the Life-giving Sun. We step from the cave of death back into the living world. It is true that today for a moment the sun of the world is in eclipse. Today, as well we should, we dwell for a moment on the bitter reality and pain of Christ's cross. Our purchase back from Satan is costly. Our sins must be paid for, and the cross of this day is the price paid by God himself for us. But beyond the bitterness and pain of this day, lies joy. Beyond Good Friday is Easter. Beyond the dark tomb and the shadows and the eclipse of this day, come the shining angels of Easter, the dazzling garments of the Risen Lord, the light of the dawn of the day that will never end: There is darkness on Good Friday, but it will quickly pass, for in this darkness God is working out his will and our salvation. Our Lord dies in public, but rises otherwise.All night had shout of men and cry Of woeful women filled his way; Until that noon of sombre sky On Friday, clamour and display Smote him; no solitude had he, No silence, since Gethsemane.Public was Death; but Power, but Might,But Life again, but Victory,Were hushed within the dead of night,The shuttered dark, the secrecy, And all alone, alone, alone,He rose again behind the stone."Easter," by Alice MeynellIn the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. H15-40Easter III. April 26, 2015Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon on the Third Sunday after Easter at Anglican Church of Our Saviour, Florence, South Carolina U.S.A.Saint John xvi, verse 22 -...your heart shall rejoice: and your joy no man taketh from you.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.The Church calendar has been called the greatest teaching tool ever invented. That is of course not a claim that is patient of proof, but it certainly is a claim for which there are many reasons and much evidence. I think that the instructiveness of the Church year and its patterns is particularly evident at this time of year. I would today like not so much to focus on the gospel for Easter III as to consider the day in the context of the Church calendar. I think this matter of context will help us understand the day better, and then fit it into the Sundays soon to follow.The gospel is the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. That salvation has at its center the events that we recall and reenact on Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter. Palm Sunday and Holy Week bring us the story of the Passion and crucifixion. Easter brings us the story of the Resurrection. These great days in turn lie in the middle of a series of six Sundays to which our tradition gives specific names: Mothering Sunday, Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday, Easter Day, Low Sunday, and Good Shepherd Sunday. These named days stretch from mid- Lent to Good Shepherd Sunday last week which is well into Eastertide. In my sermon last Sunday I suggested to another congregation that Good Shepherd Sunday is in a sense a natural and appropriate culmination of this period of the Church year. The goal of the Christian life is, in a sense, to become part of the flock of Christ, to come under the care of the Good Shepherd. It seems to me that Palm Sunday proves that Christ is good - that at the heart of our Lord's work is love. As we gaze at the cross, which Palm Sunday and Holy Week hold up steadfastly before our eyes, we see love at work. Palm Sunday shows us that the heaven is not cold or the world indifferent. On the contrary, at the center of the universe is a heart that burns with love for us and that proved that love upon a cross. Christ is good - so Palm Sunday shows us.But goodness alone may be impotent and helpless. Easter is needed in addition to Palm Sunday because Easter vindicates Christ's goodness and shows that his love for us is triumphant and mighty over death and sin. Easter shows us that Christ has the power of a Shepherd to protect and guard his flock and to bring us safely home. So together Palm Sunday and Easter show us that Christ is indeed the Good Shepherd, in whom love and power, goodness and strength, are united. The austerities of Lent and the glories of Easter, then, together point us towards Good Shepherd Sunday.Now if these six central Sundays of the Church year all move towards last week and the revelation of Christ as the Good Shepherd, then today we begin another series of six weeks, which point us to another central dogma of the Christian faith: the Trinity. If you read the gospels for today and the next four Sundays, you will find that they gradually turn our attention from Easter Day towards the Ascension, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday. In today's gospel our Lord begins to prepare his disciples for his departure from the world: 'A little while and ye shall not see me.. .because I go to the Father.' This refers, of course, to his Ascension. Next Sunday we begin to look even beyond the Ascension to the descent of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Church: 'when.. .the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth.' Christ is our Good Shepherd and he died and rose from the dead. But the end and purpose and goal of Christ's work is to bring us to heaven and into the life of God himself. And in pursuit of this ultimate goal the Church year moves us forward in these next six weeks through prophecies of the Ascension and the Coming of the Holy Ghost and anticipations of the revelation of God as Trinity.Consider if you will again the movement of these Sundays. On Easter V, Rogation Sunday, the major theme is prayer. Indeed 'Rogation' comes from the Latin verb rogare, to ask or pray. The theme of the gospel that day is prayer to God the Father: 'Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.' So there is God the Father. Then come Ascension Day and Ascension Sunday, which celebrate God the Son, who 'came forth from the Father' and then returned to the Father. There is God the Son. Then comes Pentecost, the great feast of God the Holy Ghost, who comes into the world from the bosom of the Father, through the Son, to continue God's presence with us after the Ascension. Rogation Sunday shows us the Father; Ascensiontide shows us the Son; Pentecost shows us the Holy Spirit. And then we conclude this series with its last Sunday, the feast of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity, which is the great pinnacle and crown of revelation, the end towards which the whole Church year moves and the hinge on which its seasons swing.I hope you are beginning to see that the majestic progress of the Church year, its lessons, and its seasons reveal to us the love and the power of Christ, and through that revelation move us towards the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. There is an inner coherence and purpose to this movement. For many years I found the Third and Fourth Sundays in Eastertide — this week and next – very difficult to understand. The gospels for these two Sundays seemed to me to anticipate Pentecost so much that I found it difficult to distinguish them. But I think now that I see a wisdom in the gradual movement or turn from the Resurrection towards the Spirit and the Trinity. The movement is stately and deliberate as is the vast movement of the Spirit in human history itself. Gradually the truth unfolds, as God's purposes in our world also unfold, often slowly, imperceptibly, and in ways both so vast and so subtle that we cannot easily explain or detect them. But God is at work indeed. The Spirit descends, shaping and moving our hearts and our wills and our world. The Lord is assimilating us into his flock under the care of the Good Shepherd, under the will of the Father, under the enlivening influence of the Spirit: all so that we may come to the final purpose of human life - which is to glorify and enjoy the Holy Trinity forever.And so indeed, as my text says, our hearts shall rejoice, our hearts do rejoice: for God is giving to u:s a joy which no man can take from us. God is watching over us, ruling our world, and leading us into his own eternal life.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H15-50Trinity II. June 14, 2015. Archbishop Haverland forwarded the following sermon to Anglican Church of Our Saviour, Florence, South Carolina U.S.A.St. Luke chapter xiv, verse 16 - A certain man made a great supper, and bade many....In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Today’s gospel lesson is the parable of the Great Supper. In this parable a man prepares a great dinner party. He first invites the most obvious guests, who, however, all make excuses not to come. If we understand the social customs of the day, the guests appear in a particularly rude light. The guests were invited early on. Later, just before the time of the dinner, the host sends a servant to escort those invited to the dinner. The servant probably carries a torch to light the way. It is only at this point, at the last moment, when the escort has already come to accompany them to the dinner, that the guests make their excuses. Because of this particularly rude behavior, the host now has a dinner ready and no guests. So he invites two further groups. First, he sends his servant to bring in a much less socially desirable set of guests. We might call these guests the urban poor: they come from ‘the street and lanes of the city’ and include ‘the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind’. But there still is room for more guests, so the servant is sent out again, this time to go further afield. He goes beyond the city gates to bring in guests from the ‘highways and hedges’ – that is, from the country lanes and the hedges that bordered the vineyards. The basic meaning of this parable is clear in St. Luke’s gospel and is spelled out even more clearly in St. Matthew’s version. The Great Supper is the feast of salvation, the banquet of the Messiah, the victory celebration of God. The city is Israel. The first, obvious guests are the leaders of Israel: the priests and scribes, the rulers and merchants, the devout and prosperous people of the temple and synagogues. These are Christ’s critics and opponents. He almost always addresses such parables against such people. They are God’s chosen people and the ones first invited to the feast of salvation, yet they refuse to come. They have long been invited: the Law and the Prophets were addressed to them to prepare them for this feast. But when the escort comes to bring them at the chosen hour to the banquet, they make excuses. Their refusal is a profound failure.The second group of guests also comes from within the walls of the city. These people, therefore, like the first group, are Jews. But they are the common people of Israel: the simple people, the poor, the unremarkable folk rather than the leaders. These people respond more positively to Christ. The third group comes from outside the walls of the city entirely, whose invitation to a party in town is utterly unlooked for. These people are the Gentiles, whose invitation and inclusion marks the missionary pattern of the early Church. The parable, then, points to the actual situation of Jesus and his first followers. Since Christ was rejected by the leaders of Israel, the earliest Christians were mostly Jews of the poorer sort. Then in the next stage the gospel was preached to Gentiles and to the wider world, beyond the city gates of Judaism.Now it is almost irresistible for clergymen to turn this parable into a message about church-attendance. And I suppose this is a part of its meaning for us now, but more fundamentally it goes far beyond that matter. So, what does it mean? We should note that the excuses made by the first group of guests are all good. Two of the men have made major purchases that require their attention; one has married. These are not trivial matters, nor are they at all bad. The problem is not that the excuses concern bad things, but rather that they reveal bad priorities. The host of salvation’s supper is, of course, God. God should come first, and other things should be arranged so as to let God stay first. Naturally clergymen will relate this to church attendance. But I will not harangue you about that. Alternative meanings, however, are even less comfortable. Let us say that the basic meaning of the parable is about our priorities in general, and not just when it comes to attending church or doing other things of a Sunday morning. Church attendance is something fairly simple and discrete, so that if the parable were just about that, our duty would be easily stated and easily fulfilled. But in fact the main meaning is far wider, our duty is much greater, and the demand made upon us by our Lord’s teaching is more encompassing.The real question of the parable is this: Is God the first thing in my life, or do I put other good things ahead of him? The parable mentions a piece of land, yokes of oxen, and marriage as things that might skew our priorities. Consider the three. The piece of land represents property and possessions: the equivalents in our day might be land, money, investments, houses – the things into which we sink our wealth. The five yoke of oxen represent a way of making a living, namely by farming: the equivalent of this in our day is our job – the way we obtain our income and support ourselves. The new wife does not require modern translation: the demands of marriage and family are not all that different today from what they have always been. So in the parable we have four rival concerns. The first is the supper of salvation. The other three we might call our family life, our wealth and possessions, and our job. These are such important things; things that go to the heart of what and who most of us are. And these are good things, or at least can and should be good things. But it is precisely these good and important things that can turn us away from God and his salvation and his feast. It is so easy to turn good things into idols, which take God’s place in our hearts and in our scale of priorities. What we do with our time on Sunday morning is one aspect of this all, but only a small aspect. Far more important is what we do with the rest of our time; and what we do with our talents and our treasure. Of course if we turn away from God, he will find other guests for his dinner. This parable, and almost all such parables in the gospels, are primarily spoken by Christ against his enemies, to point up their failure in responding to him. But if the most obvious people fail, God will invite the less obvious. If the good people turn away, God will call the bad people. If the cradle Christians are indifferent, then God will convert the atheists. We need to apply the criticism implicit in this parable to ourselves. How am I evading God’s call? What kind of excuses do I make for doing what I want, as opposed to what God demands? What do I put ahead of God in my life? How many ways can I invent to say “no” to God? Whom will God call to fulfil the tasks I have refused? These questions, and the parables that put them in such a pointed fashion, enraged the chief priests and Pharisees. They certainly are not comfortable questions to ask ourselves. But there they are.The good news is that we are invited to the Great Supper of salvation. The great danger is that some who are invited shall not taste of his supper. God’s table is regularly set before us in the Sacrament of the Altar. To taste of this banquet is a start. To feed on Christ in our hearts and to obey him in our daily lives is the finish, to which, pray God, we may all attain. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. H16-65Trinity XVII. September 18, 2016.Archbishop Haverland forwarded the following sermon to Anglican Church of Our Saviour, Florence, South Carolina U.S.A.St. Luke xiv, verse 1 – It came to pass, as Jesus went into the house of one of the chief of the Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Today's gospel lesson occurs when our Lord goes into a house on the sabbath day 'to eat bread'. Normally in the gospels when our Lord is eating bread we have an anticipation of the Eucharist; and this connection is even greater when the meal, as in today's lesson, takes place on a sabbath. For the sabbath itself is foreshadowing of the Eucharist, and the Eucharist is the Christian sabbath meal. This lesson takes place in chapter 14 of St. Luke's gospel, which scholars call the Lukan Symposium, because its first 24 verses contain stories and parables involving banquets. The stories begin with today's lesson, in which our Lord is the guest at a dinner. The setting for the chapter is a dinner. At this dinner our Lord tells parables involving dinners and, as we are reminded that dinner is going on, talks about dinners. The symposium ends with a parable invitations to a great banquet, the messianic banquet, the banquet of heaven. But today we concentrate of the first of the dinners, the literal meal to which a Pharisee invites our Lord as a dinner guest on the sabbath.When eating bread goes well in the Bible wonderful things tend to happen: multitudes are fed by manna, loaves and fishes are multiplied to feed five thousand, outcasts are made welcome. And indeed in today's story a miracle occurs: a man is healed at the sabbath meal. We begin with a meal and bread and a miracle. So far, so good, right? There should be rejoicing because of the healing. However, at this particular meal something goes terribly wrong. Instead of harmony and rejoicing in connection with the healing, we find controversy, discord, and condemnation. Instead of recognition of Christ flowing from his healing miracle, we find him challenged and rejected by 'the lawyers and the Pharisees'. In my text we are told that 'they watched him': and this is clearly a suspicious, hostile watching. It is the close observation of people looking for something to be offended by.This pattern is familiar enough in the gospels. Our Lord was constantly embroiled in controversies with the Pharisees concerning the sabbath. They were defending religion as they knew it, as they believed it should be. Our Lord challenged their religious ideas as superficial traditions that undermined the moral and religious heart of the Old Testament. For our Lord, love and pity for the suffering overcome the law against working on the sabbath. Why should one human being suffer one day longer than is necessary? Certainly it is not God's will to be honored by a sabbath observance that would prevent the healing of a sick man.In any case, this meal does not turn out well. The miracle is resented. Rejoicing turns to controversy. Fellow guests become antagonists. I've been at dinners like that. It is not pleasant.We find this sort of thing periodically in the gospels. Our Lord makes an offer by word or deed. If the offer is rejected, then an opportunity is lost. In St. Mark x we have one of the saddest stories in the gospels. A young man comes to talk with Christ, and tells him that he has obeyed the commandments from his childhood. We are told,Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, ...[S]ell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions. (x.2 if.)This young man is, apart from St. John, the only person whom I can recall in the gospels whom we are told directly that our Lord loved. Here he is offered a place as a disciple of Christ, perhaps even a place as one of the Apostles. But despite Christ's love, despite the high honor of the offer given to him, he passes it by. He is sad, but he says, 'No'. He 'went away grieved', but still he went away.Today's lesson is similar. The banquet is ready, Christ is present, bread is broken on a sabbath day of God, a sick child of Abraham is healed. But instead of joy in the Bridegroom, joy in the banquet of the Messiah, joy in a healing — instead of these we see the root of bitterness. Anger and division and debate replace what should be joy. An opportunity is passed by. An offer is rejected. The lawyers and Pharisees maintain their understanding of the sabbath in the face of the Lord of the sabbath. The foretaste of the Messiah's banquet is set up against the Messiah himself. And so a chance is wasted. The King of glory passes on his way, but his fellow guests refuse to follow in his retinue.From this unhappy lesson our Lord proceeds to a teaching on humility. In keeping with the chapter and its stories about meals, this teaching takes the form of a story about a banquet. A haughty guest who chooses the best seat for himself is put down by the host. The humble guest, who modestly goes to the most inconspicuous seat, is exalted by the host: 'Friend, go up higher.' 'For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.'The lawyers and Pharisees are so wrapped up in their ideas of what God wants, that they cannot see God himself when he comes to their table. They choose the best seats for themselves because for them the meal is about themselves, about their place in the seating plan. For them the meal is an opportunity to see and be seen, to be exalted and admired by their fellow guests. In contrast the humble man is concerned about the host. He does not imagine that anyone is there to see him. He does not think about his place at the table, because he knows that the meal is really about someone else, the host. The humble man gets things right.The poor sick man whom Christ heals of the dropsy surely understands who the true host is of the dinner. But the proud Pharisee host neither recognizes his Lord, nor accepts the miracle, nor rejoices in the blessing given to the sick man. Because humility does not mind what happens to itself, it has eyes to see the other: and if the other is Jesus Christ, that is a very important thing. But the proud man can only see himself and how everything relates to him: so the proud man does not recognize Christ in the person of his guest.When Christ came to the proud Pharisees' dinner, we are told, 'they watched him'. They watched him, but they did not see him. They watched him in order that they might be offended, but they did not see who he really was. But the humble man, who hardly dares look at Christ or to think about God, he is much more open to God in truth.We learn from this that humility is the best preparation for God. We should learn to put aside our preferences for the sake of God's will. We should learn to trust God and to accept his care, for that will bring us better things than we either desire or deserve. God's banquet is always before us. The question is always how we respond to the invitation: with humility and love or with pride and self-regard? The choice is ours, even at this very moment at this very banquet.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H17-01Advent I. December 3, 2017. Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon on Good Friday at St. Stephen's Pro-Cathedral, Athens, Georgia, U.S.A.St. Matthew xx, verses 32-3 – What will ye that I shall do unto you? They say unto him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened….In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.Our epistle today from Saint Paul, and the collect which we read throughout Advent, are filled with contrasts.? They contrast ‘works of darkness’ with ‘the armour of light’; ‘this mortal life’ with ‘the life immortal’; ‘great humility’ with ‘glorious majesty’; ‘now’ with ‘the last day’; ‘time to wake’ with ‘sleep’; ‘walk honestly’ with ‘rioting and drunkenness’.? If we take all of these contrasts together, the basic point is a call to wakefulness, alertness, and careful preparation.Some of these pairs do not refer to good and evil, but simply to this world as opposed to the world to come.? This mortal life, here and now, we have choices to make, and those choices refer to the other group of pairs:? darkness or light; good or evil; honesty and humility and virtue or selfishness and sin and pride.? The decisions are mostly minor and occur every day.? Each little decision is a pebble, a little thing, but a little thing that when multiplied hundreds and thousands of times makes a building, a wall, a substantial structure.? If we are not careful, the product of our lives might turn out to be a wall cutting us off from God, rather than a fitting habitation built on a solid foundation of faith.So, again, the basic message is the need for careful preparation, now in the time of this mortal life, as we work with or against God to give our souls the shape they will have through all eternity.? That is a good Advent theme:? careful preparation.That is the message.? But of course most of us most of the time do not think very much about the ways in which our daily lives have eternal ramifications.? For that reason I have taken for my text today the event that occurs immediately before the beginning of our gospel lesson.? The lesson itself, of course, is the story of Palm Sunday and the triumphal entry of our Lord into Jerusalem.? In Saint Matthew’s gospel, the last thing that our Lord does as he walks from Jericho to enter Jerusalem on Palm Sunday is to heal the blindness of two men.? The men cry, ‘Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David.’ ?And we are told that ‘Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes:? and immediately their eyes received sight’.? The pattern is clear:? human suffering or weakness or incapacity meets divine compassion and healing.? What is not clear, of course, is what the healed person will do after his healing.? Will he follow the Lord into the holy City and walk with him on the way of the cross?? Or will he take his healing and run?? Will or will not a momentary encounter with God produce lasting effects within the heart and soul of the newly healed?In our lesson many people encounter Christ.? ‘A very great multitude’, we are told, meet him and acclaim him with acts and words appropriate to the Messiah.? But crowds are fickle.? In the Wednesday Bible study we have just considered the weird episode in Acts 14, where Paul and Barnabas heal a crippled man in the city of Lystra.? There the crowd decides the apostles must be gods come to earth.? Paul is the talkative one, so they call him Hermes, the messenger of the gods.? Barnabas evidently looked impressive, so they call him Zeus.? Out comes the priest of Zeus, with oxen covered with garlands, to do sacrifice to the supposed gods.? Of course Paul and Barnabas put a stop to that particular impulse of a crowd – an impulse that is stupid and superstitious. ?One verse later the crowd does a complete about-face and decides to try to stone Paul to death.? One minute the crowd considers you a god, the next it’s throwing stones.? Such are crowds.But let’s return to Jerusalem and today’s crowd.? Their acclamation is correct, but their hearts are not.? Their words are right, but they know not what they mean or say.? The better starting point is the blind men a couple of verses earlier:? ‘Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David.’? What we are trying to do is to live carefully in the time of this mortal life so that we may enter into the holy City with Jesus.? We seek so to live that we may enter in the gate which leads to the heavenly kingdom of God.? We begin rather blind, rather careless.? We are unable to find the gate, the narrow gate along the strait way into the City of God.? The first thing, of course, is to know that we are blind, that we suffer from a disability and that we need our Lord’s help to open our eyes and to show us the gate.? We need, in a word, mercy.? Or, in another word, we need grace.? We need God’s free gift.We read this lesson today on the first day of the new Christian year, Advent I.? We stand today at the gate into the sanctities and cycles, the seasons and the feasts, which now begin to unfold once again before us in the ancient annual round.? The City in question was originally Jerusalem.? But Jerusalem is a figure for God’s kingdom.? God’s kingdom now in the time of this mortal life is the Church and her worship and sacraments and fellowship of love.? And in the life immortal, in the life of world to come, we will discover that the Church here and now is in fact an entry way which has already taken us inside the gates of God’s kingdom.So come.? Put aside carelessness and blindness and remember that Advent is a season of preparation and anticipation.? Advent is a time to read again the ancient prophecies of a Saviour to come.? Advent is a time to contemplate the end of the world, the end of time, and more particularly to contemplate the end of my own world and of my own little time here and now.? My death and yours are most assuredly today one day closer than they were yesterday, and that is a fit subject for Advent consideration.? Advent is a time to receive the sacraments with humble gratitude; to say our prayers, to make our confessions, to repent our sins, and to receive the Blessed Sacrament of the altar.? Advent is not Christmas, but the path to Christmas, the way to prepare to receive the Christ-Child, whom we are most certainly unworthy to receive without Advent and without careful preparation of ourselves.? Let us seek healing for our blindness, so that we may prepare ourselves wisely, and say, with the people of Jerusalem long ago, ‘Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.’In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen. H17-50Trinity II. June 25, 2017. Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon on the Second Sunday after Trinty at Anglican Church of Our Saviour, Florence, South Carolina U.S.A.St. Luke chapter xiv, verse 16 - A certain man made a great supper, and bade many....In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Good morning. This is my third Sunday in South Carolina this month. My fourth if you consider Augusta suburb of Aiken, as I am assured some people in Aiken do. In any case, it is always a pleasure to be with you here in Florence.Today's gospel lesson is the parable of the Great Supper. In this parable a man prepares a great dinner party. He first invites the most obvious guests, who, however, all make excuses not to come. If we understand the social customs of the day, these guests appear in a particularly rude light. These guests were invited early on, days and weeks earlier. Later, just before the time of the dinner, the host sends a servant to escort the guests to his house. The servant probably carries a torch to light the way. It is only at this point, at the last moment, when the escort has already come to accompany them to the dinner, that the guests make their excuses.It is because of this rudeness that the host becomes angry. He now has a dinner ready and no guests. So he invites two further groups. First, he sends his servant to bring in a much less socially desirable set of guests. We might call these guests the urban poor: they come from 'the street and lanes of the city' and include 'the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind'. But there still is room for more guests, so the servant is sent out again, this time to go further afield. He goes beyond the city gates to bring in guests from the 'highways and hedges' - that is, from the country lanes and the hedges that bordered the vineyards.The basic meaning of this parable is clear in St. Luke's gospel and is spelled out even more clearly in St. Matthew's version. The Great Supper is the feast of salvation, the banquet of the Messiah, the victory celebration of God. The city is Israel. The first, obvious guests are the leaders of Israel: the priests and scribes, the rulers and merchants, the devout people of the temple and synagogues. These people mostly prove to be Christ's opponents, and his parables often are directed against them. They are God's chosen people and the ones first invited to the feast of salvation, yet they refuse to come. They have long been invited: the Law and the Prophets were addressed to them to prepare them for the feast. But when God's servant comes to escort them at the chosen hour, they refuse. And this refusal is a profound failure.The second group of guests also comes from within the walls of the city. These people, therefore, like the first group, are Jews. But they are the common people of Israel: simple, unremarkable folk rather than the leaders. These people respond more positively to Christ. The third group comes from outside the walls of the city entirely, whose invitation to a town party is great surprise. These people are the Gentiles, whose invitation and inclusion mark the missionary pattern of the early Church. The parable, then, points to the actual situation of Jesus and his first followers. Since Christ was rejected by the leaders of Israel, the earliest Christians were mostly Jews of the poorer sort. Then in the next stage the gospel was preached to Gentiles in the world beyond the city gates of Judaism. St. Luke xiv from which this parable comes opens with our Lord invited to 'the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day'. It opens with Jesus as guest. But the parable ends with the divine host proclaiming the exclusion of others from the banquet. God is in charge. He is the real host. The question for people in Luke xiv, the question for the characters in the parable, and the question before us, is how we respond to God's invitations. And usually that question boils down to our priorities.Is God the first thing in my life, or do I put other good things ahead of him? The parable mentions a piece of land, yokes of oxen, and marriage as things that might skew our priorities. Consider the three. The piece of land represents property and possessions: the equivalents in our day might be land, money, investments, houses — the things into which we sink our wealth. The five yoke of oxen represent farming, which is a way of making a living: the equivalent now is our job — the way we obtain our income and support ourselves. The new wife does not require modern translation: the demands of marriage and family are not all that different today from what they have always been.So in the parable we have four concerns. The first is the supper of salvation. The other three we might call our family life, our wealth and possessions, and our job. These three are all important things; things that go to the heart of what and who most of us are. And these are all good things, or at least can and should be good things. But it is precisely these good and important things that can turn us away from God and his salvation and his feast. Good things can become idols, which take God's place in our hearts and in our scale of priorities. What we do with our time on Sunday morning is a small, though key, part of the matter. More important is what we do with the rest of our time; and what we do with our talents and our treasure.Of course if we turn away from God, he will find other guests for his dinner. If the obvious people fail, God will invite the less obvious. If good people turn away, God will call the bad people. If cradle Christians are indifferent, then God will convert the Muslims and the atheists. We need to apply the criticism implicit in this parable to ourselves. How do I evade God's call? What kind of excuses do I make for doing what I want, as opposed to what God demands? What do I put ahead of God in my life? How many ways can I invent to say 'no' to God? These questions, and the parables that put them in such a pointed fashion, enraged the ancient leaders of Israel. They certainly are not comfortable questions to ask ourselves. But there they are.The good news is that we are invited to the Great Supper of salvation. The great danger is that some who are invited shall not taste of his supper. God's table is now set before us in the Sacrament of the Altar. To taste of this banquet today is a start. To feed on Christ in our hearts and to obey him in our daily lives is the finish, to which, pray God, we may all attain.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H17-55Trinity VII. July 30, 2017. St. Stephen’s, Athens.(Father Athanaelos’s 18th anniversary of ordination)St. Mark viii, verse 3 – …if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way….In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.Today as always we read the lessons the Church assigns to this particular Sunday, but in addition, of our own choice as it were, we are observing the rector’s anniversary of ordination to the priesthood.? Several of us were there years ago in New Bern, North Carolina, and it was a happy day.? If you are a visitor here today, you have stumbled upon a local celebration.? Welcome and enjoy.? You need not go away fasting to your own house in danger of fainting on the way:? you may instead go to Dearing Street and have lunch with an exceptionally pleasant group of people.? In any case, the coincidence of today’s gospel lesson and the observance of an ordination anniversary is fortunate.? The two fit unusually well, as I was happy to discover when Father Athanaelos asked me to preach today.? I do not have to stretch at all to connect the fixed lesson with the happenstance of the anniversary.? Our gospel lesson is Saint Mark’s account of the multiplication of bread to feed four thousand disciples in the wilderness.? If you think that should be five thousand, you’re half right:? Mark and Matthew both tell us about our Lord feeding five thousand men on one occasion and four thousand on another.? My text today sets the scene for this miraculous feeding.? Our Lord has ‘compassion on the multitude’ that have listened to his teaching for three days (viii.2).? He says, ‘[I]f I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: ?for divers of them came from far.’ (3)It is impossible for us to read this lesson without seeing in it a foreshadowing and anticipation of the Eucharist and Holy Communion.? By God’s compassionate will Christ gives bread to his disciples to feed his people in the wilderness.? The continuation of this work of feeding is, of course, the distinctive and chief act of priests.? Priests do many things.? Priests preach – but so do deacons and even so may learned and licensed lay people.? Priests counsel – but so do psychiatrists and lawyers and wise friends and older relatives.? Priests care for the sick, but so do doctors and nurses and the parents of sniffly children.? Priests visit the shut-in, but so do social workers and friends and kind neighbors.? Priests do many, many things, but the one thing they do that no one except a priest may or can do is celebrate the Eucharist to feed the people of God with the bread from heaven in the wilderness of this world.? Or to put it in four words:? only priests say Mass.? And this we do to extend the compassion of Christ to all places and to all generations.? Much of what priests do can be done by others.? This thing only priests passion is perhaps the greatest attribute of our Lord in the gospels.? He sees two blind men by the way, who cry out, ‘Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David….So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes’, and healed them (Matthew xx.30f., 34).? A few chapters earlier in Mark, when he heals a man possessed by a demon he says, ‘Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee….’ (Mark v.19)? When he heals a leper in the first chapter of Mark, he was ‘moved with compassion’ (i.41).? Saint Luke tells us that the Good Samaritan and the father of the Prodigal Son, who are symbols for Christ, both ‘had compassion’ (x.33, xv.20).? In Matthew when our Lord ‘saw the multitude, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.’ (ix.36)?? And compassion is the central reason for our Lord’s Incarnation:? he came down from heaven for us men and for our salvation because of his compassion for us, ‘poor banished children of Eve, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.’ (Salve, Regina)In today’s lesson our Lord’s compassion is manifested by the gift of miraculous bread.? When we read this lesson, we are reading about ourselves and what we are doing at this very moment.? Our Lord feeds us with the bread of his Body, the Bread of his great compassion and love, and he does so lest we faint by the way, for divers of us come from far.? We come from here and there, from scattered lives, from a multitude of sorrows and difficulties, from a variety of sins and temptations, many of us only having found our way to this place by very roundabout paths.? We are not very strong; we are sore pressed.? We are quite capable of fainting by the way with all that life throws at us and all that we bring upon ourselves by our folly and by our neglect of the call of our compassionate Lord.But all of that is comparatively unimportant.? God knows you well:? better than you know yourself.? Unto him all hearts are open, all desires known, and from him no secrets are hid.? He knows us as we kneel before his altar, the table of his Banquet.? He knows the way we have come and the hunger we have.? And he would not have us walk on our pilgrimage through this world ‘having nothing to eat’.? Rather he says, ‘I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me,…and have nothing to eat’.? We have nothing but what he gives us, so he must give us more or we will have nothing more and will starve.This Eucharistic feeding is the work of Christ, but it continues among us because of the ministry of our priests.? Somebody else can do all the rest, but nobody else can do this.? By what our priests do today at the altar, in obedience and remembrance – by this the Kingdom of God comes among us, even here and now in this world, even if obscurely and in a manner that the world does not see; even if half the time in a manner that we ourselves hardly see.? By the word and hand of the priest eternity breaks into time, and Christ our God to earth descendeth from the realms of endless day. ?He whom heaven and earth cannot contain is by the priest circumscribed and accommodated to our world and is given to you and me in a little whiteness and in a little sweet wine.All this mystery is God’s work for you, that you might not faint by the way, though you come from far and have far to go.? In the words of Charles Wesley’s great Eucharistic hymn, ‘Victim Divine, thy grace we claim’:We need not now go up to heavenTo bring the long-sought Saviour down;Thou art to all already given,Thou dost e’en now thy banquet crown:To every faithful soul appear,And show thy real Presence here.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H17-62Trinity XIV. September 17, 2017.Saint Luke xvii, verse 18 – There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.Our gospel lesson today is found only in Saint Luke’s gospel.? It is typical of Saint Luke’s own particular perspective in its very positive and favorable portrayal of a Samaritan.? The Samaritans were thought of by orthodox Jews as half-breeds.? Samaritans were despised by the Jews of our Lord’s day, but are portrayed in a very good light by Luke.? Saint Luke wrote his gospel for a Church of Gentile or pagan converts who did not know much about the Old Testament or Judaism and who certainly did not care to maintain Jewish prejudices.? Luke more than the other gospel writers often picks out events to repeat from Christ’s life that show our Lord relating positively with non-Jews.? Today’s lesson is a good example.The basic theme of this lesson is, obviously, thankfulness.? Ten lepers approach Jesus.? Lepers were social outcasts, because people feared their disease and disfigurement.? Misery loves company.? The lepers’ common misfortune seems to have overcome other differences between them, so that in their little community a Samaritan could associate with Jews.? When our Lord heals the ten lepers, nine of them take their healing and run, without a backward glance or a word of thanks.? Only the one Samaritan ‘returned to give glory to God’.? None gave thanks ‘save this stranger’.The two highest forms of vocal prayer are thanksgiving and adoration.? Thanksgiving is a form of gratitude in which we praise and bless and thank God for some particular good that we enjoy or evil that we have avoided.? I am thankful for my parents.? I am thankful that God has delivered me from terrible accidents or disease.? Thanksgiving praises God for something that relates to us.? Adoration is higher still, because it praises and glorifies and worships God purely for himself.? In the end adoration spills over into contemplation, because it seeks simply to gaze upon the splendor and beauty of God with a spiritual eye and to adore him for his great glory.It is not necessary to separate thanksgiving and adoration.? My many blessings lead me to thank God, and that in turn leads me to understand God better as he is in himself.? Thinking about God in himself leads me inevitably to think about how God’s love and goodness and power led to my creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life, above all in my redemption by our Lord Jesus Christ.? We need not separate adoration and thanksgiving, but today the gospel leads us to concentrate more on thanksgiving.There are many kinds of thanksgiving.? I can thank God for myself or for others.? I can thank him for good received or evil avoided.? I can thank God for the past or present or future.? I can thank God for something specific or for his goodness in relation to us in general.? Perhaps the most important thing to say in a sermon about thanksgiving is that we need to cultivate a general attitude of thankfulness and gratitude.Let me give some examples.? I mentioned once in a sermon something that happened on, if memory serves, my trip to Haiti three years ago.? To get to the village of Tapio you have to take a bone-jarring jeep ride up a rocky, almost treeless, very hot, very steep mountain track.? The ride takes about 45 minutes. ?[Note from 2017 – some things improve – the trip is much faster now with a better road up the hills.] ?Most people, of course, don’t have vehicles, so they ride donkeys or, usually, walk.? The walk takes five or six hours.? Whenever I am riding up or down that track, I fantasize about what would happen if the jeep broke down.? I see children and old folks walking that mountain and know that I probably could do the same if I had to, but also, spoiled as I am, think that I would just about die.? Well, on this particular occasion the flight I was on back to Miami was cancelled, and I had to take a later flight which caused me to miss my connection to Atlanta.? I spent a couple hours in lines in the Miami airport, then took a taxi to a hotel where the airline put me up for the night and gave me a dinner.? I fumed and felt extremely sorry for myself.? Poor, poor, poor, poor me; poor, poor, pitiful me.? At some point, perhaps over a cocktail in the hotel restaurant or in the really very pleasant hotel room, to my credit, I thought, ‘You selfish idiot.? Every single soul in Tapio would probably gladly exchange his day for yours, and here you are feeling sorry for yourself.’? Just a little bit of thankfulness for my blessings transformed my attitude.? I suspect it lowered my blood pressure, and I’m sure it turned nasty, selfish sinfulness into an attitude more pleasing to God.Along the same lines, I like to remind the children of the parish of something I once told them after another trip to Haiti.? At our orphanage in Port-au-Prince everything each child owns is either on that child’s back or stored under his or her bed, which bed is in a room that five or six children share.? Those children have almost nothing, including parents or privacy, and yet they are luckier than many children in Haiti because the Church gives them shelter, food, education, the protection of loving adults, and the Christian religion.? I would like our children to think about what they have.? Most of them have rooms of their own, a telephone at their disposal, a television, plenty to eat, too many clothes to fit under their bed or perhaps even in their closet, families that love them, and so much more.? I don’t particularly want our children to feel bad about their blessings.? What I do want is for them to recognize their blessings, to be thankful to God and their parents, and to give a? thought to the fact that the vast majority of children in this world would be dumbfounded at the thought that our children could for even one minute have anything to complain about.? Think on these things next time Mom tells you you’ve got to go to Church or Dad tells you to clean up your room.What is true of us as individuals is true of us as a community and nation.? We live surrounded by incredible blessings.? Some of us here would have died years ago if we did not enjoy medical care undreamed of a few decades ago.? We enjoy the protection of the laws in a relatively orderly and decent society.? We have wealth and conveniences which make the poorest in our land in many ways far better off than the richest of most previous generations.? We are blessed to be where we are and when we live.? I have, again, no wish at all to make us feel guilty about this.? We should not feel guilty, but blessed – incredibly, wonderfully blessed.? We should return and give glory to God, again and again.? We should share our blessings with those less fortunate, and we will be eager to do this if we truly understand that those blessings are gifts which God and many others have made possible.We owe God thanks and thank-full-ness.? Not only is thanksgiving our bounden duty as blessed and graced creatures, but it also is the secret that transforms unhappiness and selfishness into a life of grateful peace.? A little with contentment is better than great riches, and a little leaven of thankfulness leavens the whole of life into peace and worship.? And so, let us now proceed to the central and great act of our thanksgiving, as is most meet and right.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H17-63Trinity XV. September 24, 2017.Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon at Saint Francis’, Gainesville, Georgia, U.S.A.Saint Matthew vi, verse 24 – But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.Today we are given a commandment and a promise.? The commandment is about priorities:? ‘[S]eek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness’.? The promise follows:? if we put God first, then ‘all these things shall be added unto you.’? So, first the commandment, then the promise.Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.? The lesson is from the Sermon on the Mount, which we find in chapters 5, 6, and 7 of Saint Matthew’s gospel.? My text is the end of chapter six, two-thirds of the way through the Sermon.? Chapters 5 and 6, which come earlier, contain the law of Christ.? Both the law of Moses and the law of Christ are given on mountains to govern God’s people.? These are the rules of God’s kingdom and describe the righteousness to which he calls us, with the law of Christ fulfilling the older law.The bad news, my friends, is that the new rules are not easy.? In many ways the law of Christ makes God’s law harder, not easier; more demanding, not less.? Where the law of Moses demanded an external set of behaviors, the law of Christ demands an inner attitude.? The old law says, don’t eat pork or shell fish.? The new law says, eat everything with a thankful heart and be mindful of those with nothing to eat.? The old law says, don’t commit murder.? The new law says, do not hate or be angry.? The old law says, don’t commit adultery.? The new law says, don’t indulge lust and sensuality.? The old law says, here are 300 or 400 things you must do and must avoid.? The new law says, everything you do must be in service to God.Think of it this way.? I might say to Johnny, ‘Don’t hit your sister.’? Or I might say to Johnny, ‘You must love your sister.’? Now not hitting Janey is a pretty clear and really not a terribly difficult thing.? But loving Janey is a commandment without limit that involves a whole attitude, an all-encompassing orientation of the heart.? Or again, suppose I say to a child, ‘Clean up your room.’? That’s clear, simple, and should be easy.? But what if I say to the child, ‘Always do the right thing’ or ‘Always be good’?? That is much more demanding.Our commandment today, then, is general and demanding:? always seek God’s kingdom, the road to which is straight and narrow and difficult.? This is not a commandment which tells us, say, what we ought to do on Sunday mornings:? though if we aren’t making the effort on Sunday mornings we’re probably failing otherwise as well.? The text is not, ‘On Sunday morning seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness for at least one hour.’? No; the command is not about one hour:? it is about how we live all of our lives all the time.? I do not mean it is about being perfect, which we are not and never will be.? But it is about the constant choices put before us every hour.? Do we put God first or somewhere well down in our priorities?? Today’s command is to put God first always.? Or perhaps we might say, in everything we always act for God and with God in mind.? That is the command.The promise in the second half of the text could be seen as a reward:? ‘all these things shall be added unto you.’? The things in question are stated earlier in the chapter – clothes and money and food and all the things over which we spend much of our worry and time.? The promise is that if we put God first, then the other things will fall into place.Now I don’t think this means the prosperity gospel.? I don’t think it means, the better Christian I am, the richer and more successful I will be.? This is not magic.? It is not, ‘If I do A,B, and C, then God will give me X, Y, and Z.’? I believe the point is that our worry does not help us, but hurts us, while putting God helps us and does not hurt us.Let me give two examples.? My late friend, Father Irvin, worried about money very much.? He was worried he would not have enough in his old age and would run out.? But he died in his mid-60s while still working.? All his worry was pointless.? It made him less happy when he was worrying and didn’t help at all in the end.? It did not help him, but hurt him.? Insofar as he worried he was distrusting God and did not put God first, and that hurt.Then consider an example of putting God first despite the possible hurt that would do.? After 1976 I knew many priests who believed just as I did – that the new prayer book was awful, the ordination of women was wrong, and that abortion was wicked.? These were the three issues that led to the formation of our Church.? Of these many priests, though, most did nothing. ?They were afraid.? They were afraid of losing jobs and comfortable rectories and social status.? They were afraid to do what they believed was right, because they gave other concerns priority.While many, many priests and parishes failed, some did not. ?After the General Convention of 1976, a group of men from St. Mary’s Church in Denver took their rector, Father Mote, out to lunch.? They asked him what he was going to do.? He said he wasn’t sure.? They said to him something like this:? ‘Father, you’ve taught us the faith for many years.? We believed you and we believed what you taught us.? We know on the basis of what you have taught us that we cannot remain in a faithless Church.? We are leaving.? The only question is whether we will leave following you or will leave on our own.’? Father Mote had taught his people so well that they left him no choice but to do the right thing, to put first the kingdom of God as they understood it.? So Father Mote did the right thing, and Saint Mary’s, Denver, was the first parish to leave, Father Mote was the first priest to leave, and so our modern Exodus began.Then God added all the other things to them in response to their fidelity.? St. Mary’s, Denver, lost the struggle for their buildings and property in the U.S. Supreme Court, but money poured in and they bought back what they alone had ever paid for.? They then funded a retirement plan for Bishop Mote far better than what he would have had if he had stayed put.? The parish is still there.? This story of faith rewarded could be multiplied, but I think you get my point.There you have the second half of the text:? and all these things shall be added unto you.? If our priorities are right, if the kingdom of God and its righteousness is our first priority, then other things will fall into place.? God says to the priest, Eli, ‘[T]hem that honour me I will honour…’ (I Samuel ii.30).? If we honor God above all things, then he will bring us through whatever difficulties he allows us to undergo.? If we fail to arrange our priorities in this way, then everything will tend to fall apart.? It is never too late to pursue God’s kingdom and his righteousness.? The promise of my text remains before us.? If we put first things first, then all will be well, and all will be well, and God will ensure that all manner of things shall be well.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H17-64Trinity XVI. Octobeer 1, 2017.Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon at Saint Barnabas’, Atlanta., Georgia, U.S.A.St. Luke vii, verse 12 – Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow….In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Good morning.? I greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.? It is my pleasure to be with you today.? We are about to plunge into a week of business in Dunwoody, as the 2017 Joint Synods of four Continuing Anglican Churches prepare to convene.? This is a notable, perhaps even historic occasion, and I am pleased that it begins for me with Mass here at Saint Barnabas’ and also with the celebration of Nigeria Day.? I have spent much time in Africa over the years and well know that there are few parties as good as a good African party.? Obviously I have timed my visit just right.Our collect, epistle, and gospel today are all about God’s care for his Church.? In the collect we beseech God to ‘cleanse and defend’ the Church.? Notice that we ask God to cleanse us before we ask him to defend us.? Until we are cleansed we do not deserve to be defended.? Furthermore, until we are cleansed it might actually be harmful for us to be defended.? It doesn’t do any good to build a wall if the enemy is inside the gate.? Before we deserve anything God cleanses us by his free grace, given to us especially through our baptism.? Only then, when we are cleansed and built into his Church, do we become proper objects of what the collect calls God’s ‘continual pity’.? This continual concern for us means that God always wishes to cleanse and forgive us when we sin and constantly defends us from spiritual harm.The epistle is also about God’s care for us.? St. Paul asserts the reality of God’s care when he speaks of ‘the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge’.? Paul reminds the Ephesians that God ‘…is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us….’? St. Paul does not try to prove this abundant care.? He does not try to justify the ways of God to anyone who might deny the goodness of those ways.? Paul assumes that the people to whom he writes already are convinced of that goodness in some measure.? Rather what Paul here begins with is the fact of God’s fatherly care, and then prays that the Ephesians may more and more realize in the depths of their hearts what they have already know at least at little.? To use the language of the collect, Paul speaks to people who have been cleansed (by baptism), and then seeks to ensure that they are continually defended and helped and preserved by God’s help and goodness.? It doesn’t do much good to have a coat if you won’t wear it or if you won’t take some care to button it up when you do wear it or to sew on the buttons if they pull off or to patch up holes if they develop.? All Christians have a coat, the robe of their baptism.? Paul wants us to remember this fact and to keep our robes in good condition and to use them.If the collect prays for the Church, and if in the epistle Paul exhorts the Church, we may likewise read the gospel as a story about this same Church.? The story concerns a woman and her child, a widow and her only son who has died.The raising of the son of the widow of Nain is plainly a foreshadowing of the Resurrection of our Lord.? Both men are the only sons of widowed mothers.? Both die and sadden many by their deaths.? Both rise because of God’s compassion and are restored to their mothers.? So on one level this story is about Christ and his mother, and it foreshadows the Resurrection.On another level, however, the story is about us and the Church.? The city, Nain, represents the world.? The dead man is a symbol for humanity, dead in its sins.? The mother is the Church, mourning and weeping for the sins of the world in this valley of tears.? She mourns and weeps because in this world the universal fate of man is death.? That the man is the only son of his mother represents this universality of sin and death.? The wages of sin is death, and the universality of sin means in consequence universal death.? ‘As Eve when she her fontal sin reviewed / Wept for herself and all she should include,’ so in this story all weep for the dead man.? Our compassionate Lord is the same in this story as in the larger world.? In the story he comes upon the funeral procession and raises the dead.? In the larger world for us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and was incarnate for us, and for us lived and taught and died.? In the story the young man is raised from the dead, though later he shall die again.? In the larger story Christ rises from the dead no more to die, and in the great and dreadful day of judgement he shall raise us up as well, also no more to die.? And again in the larger story, we rise to new life already by baptism.? As the dead man is restored to his mother after his resuscitation, so we, after being reborn in baptism, are restored to our mother, the Church, the bride of Christ, and in the bosom of her maternal care we are called to live.This same gospel lesson is read also on May 4th, the feast of St. Monica.? Monica was the widowed mother of St. Augustine.? Augustine as a young man fell into sin and a prodigal life, but he tells us in his Confessions that his mother never ceased praying for him.? Could, he asks, the son of so many tears not be saved?? Augustine eventually was saved, and turned from his sin, and was restored to his widowed mother as a converted Christian.The Church has many dead children, you know.? The Church, has many sons and daughters who are lapsed, who are in heresy and schism, or even who have never really encountered the gospel in a serious way at all despite their nominal upbringing.? The Church does not need more dead children.? The Church needs sons and daughters restored to life.? The Church needs us converted and alive to Christ.? She does not need us to be members because it is convenient for us to be members.? She needs us to be her children because we are converted, because we accept the fullness of faith in Jesus Christ as our Saviour and accept his Church as the place where that salvation comes to earth by divine promise.? The Church needs people like Monica, to pray quietly and continually for the conversion of the world.? People, even Christians, say all the time that we live in a post-Christian society.? That is wrong.? We live in a pre-Christian society, and our job is to convert it into a Christian one.? So too the Church needs Augustines, men and women of intelligence and conviction, who will convert to the faith themselves, and then boldly proclaim Christ to the unconverted.One of our themes today in this parish is the Catholicity of the Church.? Catholic, as you know, means universal.? This parish is a living icon of the Church’s universality, because here there gather members from all over the world.? This parish is geographically Catholic, if you will.? Our gospel reminds us that the human situation everywhere and in every age is the same.? Sin is universal.? The fall of mankind is universal.? Christ’s work of salvation is universally offered to us.? His bride, the Church, has members and priests and parishes in every land, of every tongue and race and class.? And our duty is also universal:? to be converted ourselves in our hearts, and to work to convert every person within range of our prayers and concern and influence.So in newness of life let us go where the saints have shown the way:? where Monica and Augustine and all the saints have gone before, in newness of life, cleansed and defended by God, who is ‘able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think’.? And may the love and power of God bring to his holy Church in every land much increase and many new sons and daughters until Christ is all in all.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H17-68Trinity XX/Christ the King. Octobeer 29, 2017.Saint John 18, verse 36 – My kingdom is not of this world:? if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews:? but now is my kingdom not from hence.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Our gospel today is from Saint John’s story of the trial of Jesus.? The trial of Jesus really is the trial of his accusers and of his judges.? It is in truth the trial of the world by our Lord:? the trial everyone but Christ by Christ, who is the judge of the quick and the dead.? A few verses further on in the story after today’s lesson ends are told that Pontius Pilate ‘brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgement seat in a place that is called the Pavement but in the Hebrew Gabbatha’ (19:13).? In the original Greek it is in fact unclear whether Pilate or Jesus sits down in the judgement seat.? I think the ambiguity is intentional and not the result of bad Greek.? Pilate seems to be the judge, but the apparent defendant sits in the true seat of judgement.Because today is the feast of Christ the King, and because the kingdom of Christ is the subject of my text, I would like now to look at the ambiguity that hovers over the whole trial story in regard to this one matter of kingship.? We might ask, Who is the real judge?? who is really on trial?? what is truth?? who sits in judgement?? who is the king?? what is the kingdom?? All of these questions are posed to us in John’s subtle telling of the story.? But in my text three times our Lord speaks of ‘my kingdom’.? So what is this kingdom and how does it relate to ‘the world’ from which our Lord distinguishes it?In John’s gospel the subject of kingship comes up in the very first chapter, as our Lord is gathering his earliest disciples about himself.? In 1:49 one of those disciples, Nathaniel, says to our Lord, ‘Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel’.? ‘Son of God’ and ‘King of Israel’ are two titles for the messiah, the Christ.? Though such titles properly belong to our Lord, he is wary of the title king.? In chapter 6, after feeding the five thousand, we are told that our Lord fled up a mountain when he ‘perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king’ (6:15).? From this it seems that a mistake about kingship was so serious a danger that it made Jesus run away.? Nothing could be more disastrous than a mistake on this point.? The title of king is next used for our Lord on Palm Sunday, when the crowds in John’s story say, ‘Blessed is the king of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.’ (12:13)?? We know how quickly that loyal and royal acclamation lasted.? Not long.? A few days later it turned to, ‘Crucify him!? Crucify him!’ and ‘We have no king but Caesar.’I think if our Lord had stuck around in chapter 6 and been forced to accept the title of king, then Good Friday would only have come sooner than it did.? Again, few problems could be so serious as misunderstanding the nature of the kingship of Christ.So, what exactly is the mistaken idea, and what is the correct idea?? John’s Palm Sunday story offers us a hint.? To the royal cries of the crowd, John adds words from the prophet Zechariah (9:9, conflated with 3:16):? ‘Fear not, daughter of Sion:? behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass’s colt’ (John 12:15).? These words speak of Israel’s king riding, not on a great royal charger, but on a little donkey, not on a mighty war horse, but on the humble transport of the lowly.? Not, in modern term, in a tank or a limousine, but in an old Ford or on a battered bicycle.? So begin with that:? Christ’s kingdom comes in humility, unexpectedly.? Christ is the king over life and death, as he proved by his miracles, but he is not a king of worldly power or military force or by the instruments of this world with its wisdom and wealth.? ?The people were looking for a military leader and a political king, to deliver them from the Romans, but that is a kingdom of this world, not the kingdom of our Lord.The real answer to the nature of the kingship of Christ is given, surprisingly, just before Palm Sunday by our Lord’s enemy, Caiaphas, the high priest. ?The Pharisees say, ‘What are we to do?? …If we let [this man] alone, …the Romans shall come and take away both our place and our nation.’ (11:47f.)? Their fear is worldly and political, that the Romans will feel challenged by the instability of a wildly popular rabbi that people were calling a king.? Caiaphas replies, ‘Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.’ (11:49f.)? What Caiaphas meant is cynical:? Let’s use this one man as a convenient scapegoat to deflect criticism from us, and let’s use the Romans to get rid of him.’? But Caiaphas speaks more truly than he knew.? In the end our Lord will in fact die for the people, that the whole nation perish not.? He will die to save others.? His kingdom will be revealed by his self-sacrificing offering of himself upon the altar of the cross.? And so it is upon the cross that his kingdom is most publicly proclaimed in John’s gospel, by the writing put up by Pilate above his head in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin:? ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of Israel of the Jews’.Until our Lord died, the nature of his kingdom could not be understood.? What the cross reveals is that our Lord rules by serving, saves by losing his own life, reigns by submission, and rescues by being defeated.? His kingdom is not at all what this world expects, but it becomes for us as Christians a model.? Christians do not move the world by use of power and force, but by love and service.? It is not for us to know if our nation or any other will perish or not.? It is rather for us to imitate our Lord, for the servant is not above his master, but should be as his master.Let me solemnly assure you, friends, that salvation is not to be found in any prince or president or party or platform.? Politicians and platforms may be better or worse, and we must do our best to discern the best – or more likely, the least evil – choices among those set before us.? But Christ’s kingdom is not of this world and his kingdom will not be fully present ever in this world.? This world is just a door, which opens up beyond this life to God’s kingdom or to another, unhappy place.? We only will come to God’s kingdom through the humility that rides on a little donkey, through the wisdom that causes us to run away when people want to force us to be what we are not, and through service to others in love.? That is the kingdom of Christ, and it alone (of all the things we are offered in this world) will never end.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.H17-70Trinity XXII. November 12, 2017. Saint Matthew xviii, verse 35 – So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.I was sent a very fine sermon once for the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi.? It contained a passage I would like to quote: The world is like a shop into which someone has stolen and placed all the expensive price-tags on cheap items, and all the cheap price-tags on costly things.?The preacher commented on this by simply saying, ‘The world’s priorities are upside-down.’? And so they are.? We usually accept the world’s false valuations.? We are impressed with the price-tags.The someone who has stolen into the shop to mislead us is the someone summarized in our baptismal renunciations as ‘the world, the flesh, and the devil’.? The world is all human opinion and action and civilization apart from God.? The world is the pursuit of fashion, position, rank, esteem, popularity, office, and competition.? These things teach us to value what has little worth and to neglect what has great worth.? The flesh is our appetites apart from God:? our appetites for food and drink, for ease, for sexual pleasure, for physical comfort.? These things are good in themselves, and our appetites for them are reasonable.? It is good that our tummies grumble when they are really empty.? But when these appetites are divorced from God, they become disordered.? We then grasp for what has little worth, and so risk missing the hidden treasure.? The devil, of course, is the malevolent spiritual personality that has mixed up the price-tags and who parades the shoddy, expensive things before us as pearls of great price.So again, the world’s priorities are upside-down.? With that in mind, let us consider the particular priority that today’s gospel brings to our urgent attention.? That priority is, in a word, forgiveness.? More particularly, it is forgiveness shown as mercy.? The duty to forgive is first stated in a positive way with a straightforward assertion: ?we should forgive our enemies, not just seven times, but seventy times seven – which is to say, infinitely.? That is easily and quickly said, though of course not so easily done.After this fairly straightforward, positive assertion, though, our Lord states the same lesson in a negative way.? He tells a story, whose point is the horrible consequences for us if we fail to forgive.? The positive duty to forgive includes very negative consequences for failures to forgive.? The unmerciful servant in the parable is punished terribly for his hardness of heart towards his colleague.? He is tossed into jail, and the key is thrown away:? ‘So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.’? The matter is serious.The lesson begins with Saint Peter’s question, ‘Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?’? The question deals with forgiveness on what we might call the horizontal level, as a matter involving two people trying to cope with each other.? Peter at least recognizes that he is injured by a ‘brother’ – by someone with whom he has a relationship that should involve some care and concern and mutual obligation.? But Peter still is asking about a human duty to forgive other people in human dealings.? Peter is looking at forgiveness as bound and limited by the human world.Our Lord takes Peter’s question about forgiving a brother, and concludes by demanding forgiveness of enemies.? Our Lord expands the duty, by extending the obligation to enemies as well as brothers by demanding forgiveness indefinitely.? Here Christ refuses to accept a limit to forgiveness on the human level.? But then he does something even more radical and challenging. He explains the duty to forgive each other by introducing another level entirely.? He raises Peter’s sights.? He says, in effect, that our dealings with each other are not just human affairs, whose horizon is in this world and whose parties are only human beings.? Our dealings with each other have another dimension entirely, a vertical dimension.? Our dealings with each other have another party to them, a King and Judge who stands above the human scene, who observes how we treat each other, and who then himself acts with authority and power.? The King’s action is proportioned to our actions.? His mercy reflects our mercy.? His hardness reflects our hardness.? His forgiveness is limited, though only by its proportion to our own forgiveness.? Heaven’s actions hum with the harmonics of our actions.? God gives to us what we give to others.? We get what we give.In the world’s shop forgiveness has some limited value.? The price-tag set by the world and the flesh tells us that there is a prudent amount of forgiveness and patience.? We might want to forgive seven times, for instance, because that forgiveness coming from us will increase admiration and esteem from others.? We might even want to be moderately forgiving because that will increase our self-esteem.? If desire for esteem is the world at work, then self-esteem is the devil at work.? The world, the flesh, and the devil are not always a united army.? The flesh’s desire for revenge may be countered by worldly concerns.? But these prudent calculations and limits are Peter’s idea of forgiveness, not Christ’s.? The upside-down pricing system gives forgiveness a little value.? Christ gives it nearly infinite value.Now there are real differences on the human level between servants.? Some servants really do better than others.? But our Lord cuts through such fine calculations – seven times? or seventy? or 490? – by introducing God’s claims and God’s values.The parable tells us that whatever the world’s price-tag on forgiveness may be, its real value is so great that no other item in the store can equal it.? Nothing – absolutely nothing – that has ever been done or said to you or me is unforgivable.? Some things may be pretty darned unforgettable, and so we have to struggle to pick our way through resentments, difficult memories, and reasonable caution concerning future dealings with difficult folk.? But if we let ourselves dwell on the false price-tags and the tinsel they represent, then we will lose the hidden treasure, the true pearl, the life-giving fountain of forgiveness, the well of mercy that brings us mercy.Jesus does not hesitate to tell us our duty with a very, very rough threat attached.? He delivers the servant who had no compassion ‘to the tormentors till he should pay all that was due.’? And so likewise shall he do to us if we fail in mercy, compassion, and forgiveness.? Our duty is clear. Forgive or be damned.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen. H18-05Christmas 1993. Uploaded 26 December 2018St. John i, verse 14 – And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. We have two gospel lessons tonight. They both tell us the same thing, but in two different ways. Our first gospel, from Saint Luke, tells us the familiar story of the birth of Christ. This lesson has the charming parts of the story that we all remember from our childhood and that we see reproduced in a hundred Nativity scenes and Christmas cards each year. This story tells of Mary and Joseph, the inn and the manger, the angels and the shepherds. Our second gospel, taken from Saint John, which we will hear at the end of this evening, is rather different. It too is about the birth of Christ, but it speaks, not in the language of a charming story, but rather in the majestic and weighty words of doctrine and theology: it speaks of eternity and flesh, light and darkness, life and glory, grace and truth. If the first gospel is charming and seemingly simple and humanly approachable, then the second gospel is deep and complex, and no less complex for conveying its weighty message almost entirely in monosyllables. These two gospels in their different ways teach us the two sides of the Christmas coin, the two points of the Christmas paradox: that God became man; that the Son of God by whom all things were made became a speechless baby; that omnipotence became weak; that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. This doctrine of the incarnation, of the enfleshment of God the Son, is the central doctrine of the Christian religion, and upon it all else depends.For you tonight, and every night and day, the most important question of your life is this: What think ye of Christ? Or in Christmas terms: What meaning does the child of Bethlehem have for you? I find as I look over past sermons for Christmas Eve that I rather often have quoted Christmas poems and carols in order to illustrate various points. Tonight I would like to consider the different attitudes that people assume towards the Christ-Child by considering a variety of such verses.I will pass over those verses that concern Frosty and Rudolph. We will leave them to the children. To the very, very young children. I will move directly to more adult possibilities.My first adult attitude towards Christmas is what we might call the attitude of the polite, regretful agnostic. Thomas Hardy’s rather well-known poem, ‘The Oxen’, is a good illustration of this attitude. You might care to know that a ‘barton’ is a farm-yard and a ‘coomb’ is a hollow in a hillside: Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. ‘Now they are all on their knees,’ An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearth side ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! yet, I feel If someone said on Christmas Eve, ‘Come; see the oxen kneel, In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know,’ I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so.This is a poem of regret. It is the poem of someone who acknowledges the beauty of the Christmas gospel, but who has lost his faith in its truth. I at least think that this is an intellectually respectable attitude towards Christmas which Christians should courteously acknowledge. This, however, is not our view. The final word in our second Christmas gospel, which proclaims the enfleshment of the Word of God, is ‘truth’ — ‘full of grace and truth’. To Thomas Hardy we can only offer polite understanding and say to him, ‘If you sincerely hope that what your “childhood used to know…might be so”, then God in his time will reward your hope with something more.’A second common adult attitude towards Christmas we might call the sentimental view. I define ‘sentiment’ as feelings or emotion and ‘sentimentali?ty’ as feelings about feelings or emotions about emotions. Love is a sentiment. Being in love with the idea of being in love, as some people are, is sentimental?ity. Feeling sorrow is a sentiment. Feeling sorry for yourself because you’re in sorrow is sentimentality. The emotions that Christmas brings are good and fine. But being emotional about the idea of Christmas and its associated celebra?tions is sentimentality. A largish number of popular Christmas songs illustrate sentimentality of this sort. For instance, ‘Chestnuts roasting on an open fire’. I’m sure you can multiply examples of songs, which are not really about Christmas, but about feelings about Christmas. They are not about the Incarnation, but about eggnog and fireplaces and snow and presents and family. Now sentimentality is not the worst of all things. Perhaps some of you are here because of Christmas sentimen?tality — because being in church on Christmas Eve is part of the Christmas feeling or atmosphere you wish to have. It is not for me to pronounce any final judgement upon such an attitude. I would only say that in terms of our two gospels the sentimental approach to Christmas sticks with the charming story from Saint Luke but does not do justice to the mighty words from Saint John. If the Word of God has indeed been made flesh and dwelt among us, showing us the glory of God the Father, full of grace and truth, then surely the Christmas message should engage our minds as well as our feelings and surely it lays claim to more from us than our passing attention at Christmas?tide. A third adult attitude we might call the doctrinal. This is religion for the head, the religion of the Creeds. This attitude is essential for serious Christians at Christmas, and it too we find in many Christmas hymns. You know, people will sing things that they never, ever, ever would say. Can you imagine walking into Wal-Mart and seeing the Nicene Creed plastered to the walls? Of course not. But you can walk into Wal-Mart and hear Bing Crosby singing the second verse of ‘O come, all ye faithful’, which is more or less straight out of the Nicene Creed: God o-of Go-od, Li-ight o-of Li-ight, Lo! he abhors not the Virgin’s womb: Ver-ry-y God, Begotten not created.That’s not very good verse, but it’s perfectly sound, orthodox, catholic, Christian doctrine. So too is this couplet from the same hymn: Word of the Father, Now in flesh appearing.And so too this from a carol: ‘Fear not, then,’ said the angel, ‘Let nothing you affright; This day is born a Saviour Of a pure virgin bright, To free all those who trust in him From Satan’s power and might.’ O tidings of comfort and joy.Christmas begins with such Christian proclamations of the doctrines of our Faith: that for us men and for our salvation, God the Son came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; that to free us from Satan and sin Christ became flesh and submitted himself to the course of our world and to obedience even unto the death of the cross. Along with such doctrines, finally, we come to the fullness of an adult, Christian Christmas. This fourth attitude begins with the doctrines of our salvation, but accepts their application to us personally. It combines sentiment and doctrine, heart and head. We find this full, adult attitude also in many Christmas verses that both proclaim our Christmas faith and also call for some active response to it from us. For instance, consider this: Child, for us sinners Poor and in the manger, We would embrace thee, with love and awe; Who would not love thee, Loving us so dearly?Of course there are people who do not care that Christ died a bitter death for them; who do not love him who them so dearly. But how can we who are here now contemplate such a terrible, ungrateful, loveless possibility? Let us not be so. Let us receive our Saviour in our Christmas communion with love and awe; let us love and receive him who, poor and in the manger, loved us so dearly. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H18-26Lent IV. Our Saviour, Florence, SC. March 11, 2018.Saint John vi, verse 4 - And the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.I don't know if you've noticed it on your own or if a preacher has ever pointed it out to you, but the gospel lessons for the first three Sunday in Lent all involve the devil. On Lent I we have the story of the three temptations of Christ - by the devil. On LentII we have the woman of Canaan, whose daughter is 'grievously vexed with' - 'a devil' (Matthew 15). Then last Sunday, on Lent III the gospel began with our Lord 'casting out' - 'a devil' and continues with a long discussion of demonic possession.In short, the first half of Lent is surprisingly focused on the demonic and spiritual evil. Why is that? It seems odd at first, but really it isn't. Lent is the season for spiritual renewal and for getting rid of unhealthy things in myself and in my relationships. This healing requires both negative and positive work. Spiritual growth has a negative element, which spiritual writers often speak of as purgation. This means that we have to turn away from or do away with or purge bad habits, bad attitudes, and bad associations. We can't make spiritual progress until, if you will, the devils are cast out. I think that is the point in the heavy emphasis on the demonic in the first part of Lent. To borrow a phrase from Paul and the Advent collect, in Lent we 'cast away the works of darkness'. We clear away the junk. We open up room in ourselves.But as last week's gospel told us, making room in our souls by casting out some bad things doesn't do us much good if a vacuum remains within us. Vacuums tend to fill. It does us no good to cast out one devil if, in the words of last week's gospel, he 'then goeth... and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first'. We need to fill ourselves with God and goodness, or removing this or that bad thing won't do us much long term good.Which is why, I think after three weeks dealing with the negative work of exorcism, of renouncing evil and casting it out, we find that today's gospel changes gear. Today we turn towards a more positive message of the gospel. Today we begin to consider what will replace evil within us if make room.One of today's popular names is Refreshment Sunday. Today we learn of the help God offers us in our spiritual warfare through the refreshment and grace of theEucharist. In fact the whole of chapter 6 of John, from which today's gospel is taken, concerns the Eucharist and its heavenly Bread.The chapter opens with John's version of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. One of the persistent themes of Saint John's gospel is the way in Christ replaces Jewish feasts and observances with himself. In today's gospel this theme is clearly presented in the introduction: 'And the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.' As you will remember, the Passover was and is a feast that involves a meal. The meal includes bread, wine, and lamb. In today's lesson bread also appears, as our Lord feeds the multitude. This miracle in turn ushers in a long discussion that continues past the end today's lesson. This discussion, involving Christ, his disciples, and the Pharisees, concerns the true and proper meaning of the Passover with its bread and the manna. Christ tells those around him that he is the true Bread, the Bread from heaven. And so for us as Christians the meaning of the manna, the Passover bread, and the bread of today's miracle is fixed. All of these breads - indeed all of the bread and grain which abound in Scripture - are types, foreshadows, prefigurements, and symbols that point us to Christian realities. Christ is the Bread of Heaven. Christ is the Bread of the Eucharist. Christ is our spiritual food, our sustenance, our life, and our hope on earth. Christ is our Refreshment. Christ is the living Bread that came down from heaven. And in the Eucharist Christ replaces the Passover.This replacement occurred decisively at the Last Supper and at Calvary. As the gospels for the coming weeks remind us, the Last Supper and the Crucifixion occurred historically and originally during the Passover feast. And that is why my text is so appropriate: 'And the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.' Was nigh and is nigh. And at the Last Supper and on the Cross our Lord himself becomes the true Paschal bread, as well as the true Paschal Lamb and the true Vine and Wine of God. As a shadow recedes to insignificance when we see the original that casts that shadow, so the Passover, though nigh, does not so much disappear as recede. Types and shadows have their ending, for the newer rite is here. The old rite is the Passover. The new rite is that in which you and are engaged at this very moment.So let us combine the themes of the previous group of Sundays and of this day. At our baptisms we promised manfully to fight under Christ's banner against sin, the devil, and the flesh. The fight is usually interior and spiritual, though Satan is quite capable of persecuting Christians and the Church in external and physical ways as well. In this warfare we were enrolled on one side at our baptism and confirmed that enrollment at our confirmation. In Advent we are told by Saint Paul to put on the armour of light. In this warfare we are not left by God to our own strength, which is very feeble and faltering indeed. God continually offers us grace - his free and undeserved gift of himself to us. It is this grace that is our reliance and strength. Constantly in the Christian life we gain help from unexpected quarters. We are aided by a reminder that comes from a book; by a kindness from a stranger; by forgiveness from another person that we have not deserved; by an unexpected solution or resolution of a problem that seemed insoluble; by a resolve and determination in myself that surprises me. On the worldly level these are coincidences. But Christians find that such coincidences seem to come to us when we are using the means of grace, and seem to elude us when we are neglecting prayer and the sacraments. God opens doors for us. God sends his Holy Spirit upon us. But an open door does not good if we don't try it or walk through. The Holy Spirit, who is in truth always with us, cannot do anything for us if we are utterly inattentive.So today's miracle of feeding, and the Eucharist that it foreshadows, remind us of the great help and aid that God is offering. Grace upon grace is held out to us. Grace is offered to us in very concrete, tangible, and immediate ways. God offers himself to you this very morning. All we must do is hold out a hand or open a mouth to receive the Bread that came down from heaven. In the face of the grace that is presented to us this very day, the power that is against us is nothing.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H18-28Palm Sunday.? March 25, 2018.? St. Francis’, GainesvilleIn the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.I think almost any verse of the Passion according to St. Matthew can serve as an entrance into the whole story.? With a little thought we find that almost every detail of our Lord’s Passion suggests the whole event.? I would like to show you this by considering briefly one of the basic points of the Passion:? that our Lord achieved our salvation by substituting himself for us.? He put himself in our place and took upon himself the punishment we deserved for our sins.? The only truly innocent human being in history suffered as if he were guilty, and so paid the debt owed by our race and ended ‘Satan’s power and Satan’s sway’.? This idea of substitution, if you look carefully, runs like a thread through the Passion.Matthew’s Passion begins with Judas returning the thirty pieces of silver to the priests.? Judas is stricken with remorse — with a remorse that leads, not to repentance and amendment of life, but to the ultimate sin, which is despair.? So Judas returns ‘the price of blood’, and with it the priests buy the potter’s field, also called the field of blood, to bury strangers in.? The Passion begins with a price paid.? Our Lord’s Passion brings every human being benefit.? Even Judas profits in a way, though he cannot enjoy his profit because of his sin.? Our Lord’s cross pays in full a price to God, the price of Adam’s sin and of every single sin committed by every person since humanity began.? At the beginning of Genesis Cain kills his brother Abel in a field of blood.? Here in Matthew’s Passion is new field, paid for by the price of our Lord’s blood, to bury strangers, people without a home, people who would come to Jerusalem to die.? One field of blood is substituted for another.? One righteous victim, our Lord, replaces another, righteous Abel.? Abel’s blood, shed in the first field, we are told, cried out for vengeance to God.? Our Lord’s blood, whose price buys the new field, will cry better things; it will cry mercy for us.? A verse from the hymn, ‘Glory be to Jesus’, which the American hymnal unfortunately omits puts this point this way:Abel’s blood for vengeance????????????????????????????? Pleaded to the skies;??????????????????? But the Blood of Jesus????????????????????????????? For our pardon cries.In the next great scene of Matthew’s Passion, we see our Lord substituted for Barabbas, whom Matthew calls a ‘notable prisoner’, and whom we learn elsewhere was a rebel and a murderer.? The innocent Jesus is substituted for the guilty Barabbas upon the cross.? The name ‘Barabbas’ means in Hebrew ‘son of the father’.? Barabbas stands for every son of God, for every man and woman, for all of those guilty since the beginning of Adam’s rebellion and Cain’s murder.? Rebels go free because the one and only obedient Son of God does not go free.? Our Lord dies to save us from our sins and rebellions against God, so that we might become sons of the Father in a new and better way.? The true and perfect Son of God dies for the sake of his guilty brothers and sisters, Barabbases all, so that we might become God’s redeemed children of grace.? Christ becomes the saving victim opening wide the gate of heaven to man below, to Barabbas and to you and to me.After Barabbas is released, our Lord is next stripped and arrayed in a royal, scarlet robe, crowned with thorns, and mocked by the soldiers, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’? A bit later the soldiers will take our Lord’s robes and cast lots for them.? Here our Lord is mocked and set at naught, but beneath the scorn and the torture, Christians see the atoning substitution.? The Biblical parallel again is in Genesis.? Remember that Jacob’s favorite son, Joseph, was envied by his brothers for his coat of many colors.? The brothers seized Joseph and sold him into slavery in Egypt.? Then they soaked his coat of many colors in the blood of an animal to convince their father, Jacob, that Joseph had been killed by a wild beast.? The brothers intended mischief and evil, but God used their evil and their brother, Joseph, as his providential instrument to deliver Israel from famine.? Joseph’s coat of many colors was soon replaced by Pharaoh, who clothed Joseph in his own royal clothes when he made him the grand vizier of Egypt.? In Matthew’s Passion the soldiers unintentionally, like Joseph’s brothers, save the people by attacking the Father’s favorite Son.? The scarlet robe of the Passion replaces the coat of many colors and the clothes of Pharaoh in Genesis.? Once against a Father’s favorite son will seem to die, but later will be wonderfully restored to his father.? God again will save many alive by turning evil into good, by turning the suffering of an innocent man into the instrument of mercy.Our Lord is not the only one who substitutes for another in this Passion.? On the way to Calvary, a man named Simon of Cyrene is made to bear the cross for a time, since our Lord, in his weakened state, is not able.? This substitution shows us our part in the Passion.? Our Lord bore our sins.? Every unkindness, every bit of vicious gossip, every infidelity, every grumble, every disobedience, every Sunday skipped, every mean and wicked thing we do, every duty left undone, is a nail to wound our Lord’s hands and feet.? Every sin advances the spear thrust into his side.? Every evil pierces his heart.? Every wickedness is a thorn pressed down upon his head.? Every indifference is a scourge.? He bears our transgressions to save us from ourselves.? But this fruit of Christ’s victory for us is not given to us unconditionally.? We must take up our cross and follow him daily.? We must join Simon of Cyrene by walking the way of the cross in union with our Lord.? Our Lord died for us, so we must live and die for him.? Our Lord bore the cross for us, so we must take it up and follow him.? Our Lord was crucified for us, so we must crucify our sins for him.You were taught, I suppose, in Sunday school as I was that we our Christ’s hands and feet in this world.? That is a sound and true teaching, which means much the same as Simon’s bearing of the cross:? that as Christ substitutes for us, so we must follow and substitute for him.? But perhaps you have not thought this idea out to its conclusion:? if we are Christ’s hands and feet, then we will be nailed to a cross and wounded; we will be raised by God’s power to be sure, but even raised we will bear the scars of our wounds.? We bring God’s offer of healing to the world, as our Lord’s Body and continuing presence in the world.? But we are wounded healers, scarred, as was and is our Lord, by the battle against the world, the devil, and the flesh.? On Easter our Lord’s scars are but a minor part of the story — a cause, in truth, of greater joy, since they prove the reality of the Resurrection to doubting Thomas — but in Holy Week it is fitting that we dwell for a time on the price paid for our redemption, on the cost to Christ of his substitution for us, and on the pains of the Passion.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H18-35Easter. April 2, 2018The Resurrection of Jesus is the heart of the Christian proclamation.? The complex of events that Easter summarizes (the Passion and Crucifixion; the Resurrection and Ascension) cap all four of the gospels, form the main theme of Saint Paul’s letters, and are the main focus of the speeches in Acts.? Without the Resurrection Christianity is pointless or worse:?? And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins…[and] they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.? If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.? (I Corinthians xiii.17-9)Paul has it right, and modernist Christians, including the mitered agnostics, who would reduce the Resurrection to an ahistorical metaphor, have it wrong.? It is on the basis of the Resurrection that Christians come to understand Christ’s divinity and the meaning of his human life.? Therefore it is also on the basis of the Resurrection that Christians came to glimpse the Trinity.? The whole of the Christian faith rises or falls with the Easter proclamation: ‘He is risen.’? Easter goes by many names, of which our English word and the related German name Ostern, are perhaps the oddest.? According to Saint Bede and many later scholars, ‘Easter’ is derived through a Northumbrian spelling from a Germanic name, Eostre, a goddess whose feast was observed on the spring equinox.? As both the modern English and German words are close to the word ‘east’ (Easter, east; Ostern, Osten), it appears that Eostre was thought to be the goddess of the dawn which rises in the east.? Some of these connections continue in Easter hymnody:Not one darksome cloud is dimming?? Yonder glorious morning ray,Breaking o’er the purple east,Symbol of our Easter feast. ?? (Cecil Frances Alexander)The Prayer Book is usually careful to give the formal titles of days along with their more common name.? So, for instance, Christmas is ‘The Nativity of our Lord, or the Birthday of Christ, commonly called Christmas Day’; Epiphany is ‘The Epiphany, or the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles’; Ash Wednesday is ‘The first day of Lent, commonly called Ash Wednesday’.? In the Prayer Book, however, Easter is not called, as one might expect, ‘The Resurrection of our Lord, commonly called Easter Day’, but just ‘Easter Day’.? Please note that there is no such day as ‘Easter Sunday’.? In Prayer Book usage, which is standard English usage, there is ‘Easter’ or ‘Easter Day’, which is always a Sunday, but never ‘Easter Sunday’.? The day of the week is properly only used for the rest of the days in Easter week: Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday, etc.In most European languages the name for Easter is a word that in English we now usually find only as an adjective, ‘paschal’:? the paschal mysteries, paschaltide, the paschal lamb.? In older English, however, ‘Pasch’ was a fairly common name for Easter, which is why the adjective ‘paschal’ is still common.? In Latin, including the Latin translation of the Prayer Book, the day is Pascha.? Likewise, for the Eastern Orthodox Easter is ‘Holy Pascha’ in the various languages such as Greek (π?σχα) and Russian (Пасхи).? In French it is P?ques (the circumflex accent over the ‘a’ indicating here, as it usually does, an elided ‘s’); in Spanish, Pascua; and similar names exist in the other Romance languages.? (Again, on the matter of ‘Easter Sunday’ – one of my pet peeves, as you will have discerned – Easter day in French is le jour de P?ques, ‘the day of Easter’, not le Dimanche de P?ques, ‘the Sunday of Easter’.)? This name, Pascha, comes ultimately from the Hebrew word for Passover, Pesakh, and indeed in many languages Pascha refers both to Easter and to the Jewish festival.? In French, for instance, the only difference in the words for Passover and Easter is the number and gender: ?P?ques, masculine = Easter; la P?que, feminine and singular = Passover.Whatever we call it, Easter is the greatest Christian feast and the center of our religion.? The Easter proclamation rings through the forty days:?? ‘Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.’?? (Orthodox troparion of Holy Pascha)H18-39Easter II. Tallahassee, FL, April 16, 2018[The Sermon below turned out to be unexpectedly ‘interactive’.? The congregation in Tallahassee was quite small, but included an eight year old who laughed audibly when I mentioned a sheepdog.? He said, ‘A sheep dog!’? He and I then discussed the matter:? he thought a ‘sheep dog’ was part dog and part sheep – an understandable mistake.? We cleared the matter up to his satisfaction, and the congregation seemed content to listen in on the discussion.? Here is my text, prior to unanticipated interpolations….]Saint John x, verse 16 – And other sheep have I, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.In the Prayer Book tradition today, the Second Sunday after Easter, is commonly called Good Shepherd Sunday, from the theme of Christ as the shepherd of our souls, which occurs in both the epistle and the gospel.? In today’s gospel our Lord is speaking to ‘some of the Pharisees which were with him’ (ix.40), as we are told by John just before the lesson begins.? That is, our Lord is addressing a Jewish audience.? To these Pharisees our Lord says in my text, ‘[O]ther sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring’ (x.16).? Here Christ makes a prophecy.? He means that his work and care will eventually extend beyond the Jews to the Gentiles.? This prophecy creates a division among those who hear it, and some of the hearers are hostile.? These hostile folk want nothing to do with the Gentiles, but to consign them to outer darkness.? They want nothing to do with Jesus either, unless he is just as hostile to the Gentiles as they are.? They say in response to talk of other sheep in other folds that Christ ‘hath a devil, and is mad’ (x.20).? But some of them are more positive: they say, ‘These are not the words of him that hath a devil.’ (x.21).So in its original context this lesson says that God’s first sheep are the Jews, but that the Gentiles also will become his sheep and will also be brought into his flock.? The flock will consist of Jews and Gentiles both.Later on interpretation of this text went beyond this original meaning and applied it to the structure of the Church, and in particular made it a proof text for the papacy.? This use of the text came about partly because of a mistranslation of the original Greek by S. Jerome, who produced the common or Vulgate Latin Bible at the end of the 4th century.? The Vulgate Bible was the standard Bible of the Western Church into the Middle Ages and Reformation era, around which time scholars began once again to learn the original Biblical languages and so could correct Jerome’s translations.In this case the debate concerns the final words: ‘there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.’? The words ‘fold’ and ‘shepherd’ in the Greek are very closely related to each other, and both come from a verb meaning ‘to feed’ or ‘to graze’.? The ‘shepherd’ is the one who provides the food, the grazing.? The ‘fold’ consists of those who are feeding and grazing.? μ?α πo?μvη, ε?? πoιμ?v – one feeder, one fed.? Now a bunch of feeding animals is usually translated as a herd or a flock:? a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep.? But notice that our translation is ‘fold’ rather than ‘flock’.? The Prayer Book translation follows S. Jerome rather than the Greek, and here Jerome made a mistake.? A fold or sheepfold is not the flock of sheep, but rather is the pen or hedge or the cave in which the flock is kept.? Jerome emphasizes the thing that encloses the animals rather than the animals that are enclosed.I’m sorry to have to spend so much time on this point of translation, but it is rather important.? It makes a great deal of difference whether we are talking about the sheep themselves or about the structure or institution which holds them.? The text doesn’t say that there will be one sheepfold, one institution, one cozy fenced in place.? The text says that the flock of sheep will be one.? The herd of the King Ranch in Texas might be held in many different pens, but we can still say there are 50,000 head of cattle in the King Ranch herd.? The herd or flock can be one without being in one fold or cattle pen.So what our Lord actually says is that he is the one true shepherd of the sheep, and that the sheep are united because of him, because they hear his voice.? He does not say is that he has one true representative on earth, whose fenced in area is the one fold outside which no sheep is safe.Bishop Mote used to say that he didn’t think of priests and bishops as shepherds so much as sheepdogs working for the Shepherd.? As with so many things about Bishop Mote, that rather homely idea got straight to the heart of the matter with great precision.? Saint Peter himself says that Christ is ‘the shepherd and Bishop of your souls’.? Of course our Lord shares his work with the clergy, so that we do have shepherds and bishops in our world.? But the shepherds and bishops in this world very much need to think of themselves as sheepdogs, whose duties are rather strictly limited to the work Christ has given them:? to preach the good news, to bring people to conversion, then to teach the faith to those who have been converted; to administer baptism and the Eucharist and the other sacraments; to encourage the faithful and warn the erring and care for the aged and lonely and sick; to be watchmen and sheepdogs under strict obedience to the one great Shepherd and Bishop of souls.There are two kinds of problems in the Church.? There are the problems caused by the sheep.? Sheep in fact are not terribly clever or clean or obedient critters.? They get into all sorts of problems.? The people of the Church naturally tend to bring all sorts of dubious tendencies and ideas into the Church.? That’s one set of problems.? But just as bad, or worse, are the problems caused by the sheepdogs, the clergy, who can be self-serving, wilful, abusive, weak, and otherwise inadequate.? The answer in both cases is to cleave to Christ as the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, the one and only Saviour of the clergy and the laity both.? The unity of the Church does not come from a fence or a mechanical or organizational matter, but from a sacramental unity with the one true Head of the Church, the Risen Christ.? Sacramental unity with Christ does indeed require structures and organizations and outward and visible things – the water of baptism, the Eucharistic elements received by faith, the laying on of hands at confirmation and ordination, the Apostolic Succession.? But all of these things are sacramental ways of sharing in the personal gift and life of Christ himself.? He is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, and only by dwelling in him, and he in us, are we united in the one flock of God.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H18-42Easter V, Rogation Sunday.? May 6, 2018.? All Saints’, Aiken, SCSaint John xvi, verse 33 – These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.? In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.The Common Prayer Book calls today ‘The Fifth Sunday after Easter, commonly called Rogation Sunday’.? ‘Rogation’ comes from the Latin verb, rogare, meaning ‘to ask’, and the gospel today speaks of asking the Father for things in Christ’s name.? So the great theme of the day is prayers of asking:? both prayer that ask God for something for myself, which we call supplication, and prayers that ask God for something for others, which we call intercession.Prayer is, if we think about it, an odd thing.? Why do we pray if we believe God is all-knowing and all-good?? If he knows all things, including what I want and need, and if he wills good for me, What is the point of telling him what he already knows?To give an example, yesterday and the day before yesterday this week were the feasts of the Conversion of Saint Augustine of Hippo and of his mother, S. Monica.? We know a good deal about these two because of Augustine’s great autobiography, The Confessions.? In that book we learn that Monica was a Christian, that her husband, Patricius, was not, and that their son, Augustine, was not baptized.? Augustine tells us that his mother prayed constantly for his conversion and baptism, which only happened well into his adulthood after he had lived a very modern American kind of life, having a child out of wedlock and joining an off-beat Eastern religious cult.? In any case, Augustine says – perhaps ‘claims’ would be a better term – that it was not possible that so many tears and prayers would have gone unanswered by God.That is, of course, a moving tribute from a son to his mother’s love and faith and persistence.? But in truth don’t you and I often want something keenly and pray for it fervently and yet it does not come?? We must believe that God knows better than I do what is for the best, but how can we tell when ‘thy will be done’ at the end of my prayer means that I will get my heart’s desire, as did Monica, or that I will not?? So again, why do we ask for things in prayer?There are several answers, but one of the best is that prayer teaches us humility.? Why do we pray, when God already knows what we need?? We pray that we may learn to be humble.Let me explain.? Suppose that John and Jim both go to the same restaurant on the same day and around the same time.? John and Jim both order the same things for dinner.? Both pay for their dinners with money which both have earned by working similar jobs and left similar tips.? Now to the outward observer, John and Jim have done identical things in very similar circumstances.? There is little difference between them or what they have done and experienced.? They ate the same food, paid the same amount, and will get similar nutritional value.But now consider the matter from another angle.? John is a man wholly immersed in the world. He gives no thought to God.? Prayer is entirely foreign to him.? He has in his own mind earned his own money and now he provides for his own dinner by paying for what he gets.? John is part of a closed system in which he is self-made and self-sufficient.? He has asks nothing of anybody for which he is unwilling to pay.? And God is for John an unnecessary hypothesis.In contrast, Jim prayed that morning for his daily bread.? Jim is conscious of the fragility of life and of the way time has of rushing past.? Jim sees that everything is a gift, beginning with the life and health that enable him to earn a living and including the love and care of parents and teachers and friends who have brought him where he is.? Jim’s prayer doesn’t change the way the kitchen cooks his dinner and it does not alter his digestive processes.? But Jim’s prayer is an act of humility, an act through which he accepts what is given in life, even when it is given in response to his own actions.? Jim accepts all as a gift, as a wonder, as moments that come from God and lead back to God and whose purpose rests in God.? John and Jim seem completely the same in their dinner, but John and Jim have completely different approaches to the world, completely different hearts and intentions.Prayer, and prayer of asking in particular, is the line that separates John and Jim.? Prayer is the key that converts self-sufficiency and pride into humility, love, and gratitude.? Prayer, which in one sense changes nothing, in another sense changes everything.? Prayer changes the eye of the beholder and opens up an inner eye that sees through the surface to the heart of things.Our Lord, at the end of today’s gospel, tells his disciples that the things he has just taught them, about asking the Father and doing so in his name, that these things are designed ‘that in me ye might have peace’.? It seems likely to me that John and Jim do differ at least in their stress levels.? Jim is quite likely, whatever his health or his difficulties, to possess a kind of peace that John does not.? If we pray faithfully, and if we accept that what we receive is sent by God in his love and in his providential care for us, then even the hardest, most bitter things in life are changed. Prayer transfigures burdens into gifts.? And prayer also transforms the pleasant things – the good dinner and the wonderful conversation and the happy circumstances.? Prayer changes these good things also, so that they become, not just passing pleasures, but graces, blessings, that have an eternal significance and an enduring purpose.? Nothing good for Christians ever finally dies.? And everything evil is passing away as a shadow in the night.? Death dies, life lives.? That simple conviction is, I think, what Christ means by ‘peace’.? In him we have peace, because in him we know that even betrayal and abandonment and pain and crucifixion will be swallowed up.? We know this because we see it in him, we see it in Easter, and we experience it as we live in him.So now as Eastertide draws towards its close, have peace.? Pray to God for your daily bread, and receive it and everything else with humility.? This has our Lord spoken to you, that in him you might have peace.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H18-48 Trinity Sunday.? May 27, 2018.? Holy Trinity, Greenville, SCRevelation iv, verse 8 – Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.A separate feast of the Most Holy Trinity began in the Middle Ages.? The feast was particularly beloved by Saint Thomas Becket, who was Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry II in the 12th century.? The result was that in England both before and after the Reformation, Sundays in the second half of the Church year are counted as Sundays after today, after Trinity, while in the Roman Catholic and Lutheran worlds, they are counted as Sundays after Pentecost.That little bit of trivia aside, what are to make of this day?? Clearly the first half of the Church year moves towards this feast.? The Trinity, the personal and perfectly united comm-unity of the one true God, is the goal towards which we all move.? This life is passing quickly, but you and I, although we were created and have a beginning, are now eternal and will have no end.? Unity with God the Holy Trinity is the goal of your life and of mine.? This life is brief and passing, eternity is unending.? Human desire is infinite.? It can only be satisfied by an infinite good.? We long for God, even if we do not understand that longing.? Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.? So this feast of the Trinity is at the hinge of the Church year, as the great seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, give way to the long green season of Trinitytide.The temptation for the preacher on this Sunday is to try to explain the Trinity, as if God is fundamentally a problem or a puzzle.? If God is basically a problem or a puzzle, then you and I would like the solution or the answer.? We want the key that will unlock the riddle.Of course there are things that Christians believe about the Trinity, answers that we can make to some questions.? We’ve just recited the Athanasian Creed, which gives some of those answers.? We say that there is one God, not three.? That there are three divine Persons.? We say that Jesus Christ is one of those divine Persons, and that in his human life lived in our world we saw as much of God as our limited human minds can grasp.? Theologians do think and speak and write about these questions and answers.? But in the end, God is infinite and we are not:? our small human minds cannot understand God directly and fully.? We cannot look at the sun directly either, but the sun makes it possible for us to live and to see everything else.? We cannot understand God directly, but only by what he does in our world as Creator and Preserver, as Saviour and Sanctifier.? We do not grasp God, because that would make him smaller than our minds.? Yet God is and in him we live and move and have our being.So if we can only understand God partly, the most important thing today is not to explain God, as if solving a puzzle.? Let me offer another approach to the Trinity.? The main goal today is not to grasp God but rather to love God.? My text today from Revelation is a glimpse of the worship of heaven.? Today is not mainly about a sermon in which things are explained for our minds to understand, but rather is about the hymns that we sing, the music that we hear, that beauty of this very beautiful place that we enjoy, and the prayers of adoration by which our hearts are lifted beyond this passing world into the peace and eternity of heaven.? Today is mainly about our hearts.? I am not telling you to turn off your minds, but rather to recognize that in regard to God, love reaches farther than intellect and that our hearts grasp more than our heads.In this regard, think about families, at least good families.? Little children do not much think about their parents.? Perhaps later in life we think back about our parents, about their strengths and limitations.? But while we are little we simply – to use those words from Paul again – simply live and move and have our being under the shelter of our parents and other, we hope, loving adults.? Those adults are the horizon of their children’s lives, and the most important thing about family relations are not matters of the head, but of the heart.? I do not think that our Lady mainly thought about her divine Son and the amazing facts of his conception and birth and later life.? I think she mainly just loved him, because he was her child, and then because he was full of goodness and kindness and compassion.So too with us and the Trinity.? As we grow we may or may not think much about God, about the mystery of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three Persons and one God.? But mainly you and I are called, not to understand what will always be more than we can grasp, but rather to love him, to worship him, and to sing his praises.? There are things about God that would be false to say and things that are true to say.? But mostly for Christians, God is like a parent and we are like little children.? Our relationship is mostly one of love, not of thinking, and our hearts will take us further into the mystery than will our heads.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H18-52.Trinity IV, Nativity of S. John Baptist.? Saint Andrew & Saint Margaret of Scotland, Alexandria, VA. June 24, 2018.??Isaiah xl, verse 1 – Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.? In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.Father Roddy and I when planning today agreed that I would preach, as I normally do on parochial visitations.? We noted how after 15 or 20 years of preaching the round of epistles and gospels becomes very familiar.? Neither of us checked out the calendar, or we would have noticed that June 24th is one of those relatively rare occasions when a major feast displaces the normal such-and-such Sunday after Trinity.? So today my text is not from a usual Sunday epistle, though it is a very familiar verse.? In fact this is the famous verse which begins the 40th chapter of Isaiah, which itself is a particularly important chapter at the beginning of a particularly important section of the Old Testament.? The theme of the text is ‘comfort’.The word ‘comfort’ has changed its meaning greatly since 1611 and the King James Version of the Bible.? In our own day, ‘comfort’ means to soothe, to console, or to ease.? Think of a mother comforting a crying child or of a tired man gratefully settling into an easy chair.? But the word has at its root the Latin fortis, which means ‘strong’, as in our words ‘fort’, ‘fortitude’, and ‘fortify’.? A fort is a stronghold.? A fortified wine is one strengthened by additional fermentation alcohol content.? In this older sense,? ‘comfort’ means to strengthen, to sustain, or to encourage.Father Gavin Dunbar in Savannah, some years ago provided a wonderful illustration for this change in meaning in the word ‘comfort’ with one of the panels of the great Bayeux tapestry of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.? Panel 54 of the tapestry shows Bishop Odo, William the Conqueror’s brother, who was probably the man who commissioned the tapestry.? In this panel Odo is waving a very large staff at some soldiers or squires.? The text reads, Hic Odo Episcopus baculum tenens confortat pueros.? That’s pretty easy Latin.? ‘Hic Odo Episcopus’ – ‘Here Bishop Odo’ – ‘baculum tenens’ – ‘holding a staff’ – ‘confortat pueros’ – ‘comforts the lads’.? Now I would be willing to bet that if you were one of the lads getting pushed along by a bishop with a big old stick you would not think of easy chairs or soft beds.? The bishop most certainly was encouraging or fortifying or strengthening the troops, and in older usage that was comforting.? Notice that in this case the older meaning of ‘comfort’ is almost directly opposite to our modern meaning.So back to Isaiah.? When God says to the prophet, ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God,’ what is meant?? Well, if you know anything about Old Testament prophecy, then the truth is that often the prophets really were rather like Bishop Odo with his annoying, poking, pushing staff.? But if we read today’s lesson carefully we find both senses of the word ‘comfort’ present here.? We don’t have to decide between them, because both are meant in this case.? God wants the prophet to comfort Israel in the context of national defeat and demoralization and exile. He wants to console a defeated people and soothe their embittered spirits.? But God also wants Israel to be ready to respond to his call.? God will ‘gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young,’ as Isaiah puts it later in the chapter.? That work is comforting in the modern sense.? But God also calls his prophet and people to ‘lift up th[e] voice with strength, lift it up, be not afraid’.? That is comfort in the sense that embraces Bishop Odo and his staff.We read this lesson today on the feast of the birth of Saint John the Baptist, because the gospel associates this lesson with John.? Isaiah 40 is quoted by Saint Mark at the very beginning of his gospel by way of introducing the preaching of Saint John the Baptist: ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’ (S. Mark 1.3)? These words about the voice in the wilderness are found in Isaiah 40 and Saint Mark 1 both.? John the Baptist came preaching the Kingdom of God in the wilderness, which preaching brings judgement of sin but also promise of forgiveness and redemption.? It is this preaching that God calls in the text ‘comfort’.? The Baptist is very much a character illustrating both aspects of comfort.? For the sinners to whom John brought baptism and forgiveness, his preaching is consoling, a gathering up the lambs and the ewes.? But for those who reject God’s kingdom, John is the fiery denouncer, the wild man of the gospel, the prickly and uncompromising preacher, the strange prophet eating bugs and honey in his animal skins.? John not only is one who ‘speaks comfort’ to God’s people, as Isaiah is told.? He also is the one who prepares ‘the way of the Lord’ and made ‘straight in the desert a high-way for our God’.? John is the Forerunner, the prophet in the desert whose preaching and baptism point to Christ.In today’s gospel the people ask, ‘What manner of child shall this be?’? John’s conception and birth were attended by strange doings which are recounted in a way that self-consciously harkens back to the Old Testament.? John’s nativity is similar to that of Samson and Samuel, two other prickly and fairly dangerous Biblical characters.? Since John’s mother, Elizabeth, had difficulty in conceiving, and only became pregnant very late in life, his birth is really the last in a long line of Biblical conceptions to women who were old or apparently barren.? Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Manoah’s wife, and Hannah, all had experiences similar to that of Elizabeth.? John therefore stands at the end of a line reaching from Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samson, and Samuel.? John’s birth shows him truly to be the last of the Old Testament heroes and prophets.? In that respect John’s birth looks backwards.But after John’s birth in Saint Luke 1, we turn to our Lord’s birth in Saint Luke 2.? In both cases an angel announces the wonderful, unexpected conception.? In both cases pregnancy follows in ways that contradict the normal course of things.? In both cases there is a nativity.? In both cases the birth is greeted with hymns.? In both cases the child is named with special significance.? John’s birth looks backwards to the Old Testament and its heroes, but also and even more significantly it looks forward to Christ.? John is the hinge, the pivot on which the two Testaments turn.? And the pivot is comfort in its double aspect of consoling and strengthening.Today I seek to comfort you, both by sermon and by sacrament.? I seek to challenge you to repent your sins and to turn from your sloth.? I want to give you a little nudge.? Bishop Mark joins Bishop Odo.? But also I want to console you, to give you the Bread of Heaven to strengthen you on your journey as you seek to live out the gospel in your life the rest of this week.? Be comforted.? Be consoled.? Be eased.? Rejoice in the birth of this child and in the joy he brought his aged parents.? But also be strengthened, be strong, and be challenged:? for this child is the Forerunner of judgement as well as salvation.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H18-56Trinity VIII.? St. Francis’ Church, Gainesville, GA.? July 22, 2018.St. Matthew vii, verse 15f. – Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.? Ye shall know them by their fruits.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.There are some things that only exist in case of disaster.? Two such thing are emergency exits on airplanes and sprinkler systems in buildings.? The drug to reverse opioid overdoses is another. ?Yet another such is Church courts.? 21 years ago, as Archbishop Lewis was dying, the Provincial Court had to meet in Athens to adjudicate a squabble over which bishop should be acting metropolitan if the Archbishop were not able to function.? A few of the bishops were being, if not ravening wolves, at least misbehaving children.? On that Sunday I had to be in Charleston, SC, to represent Archbishop Lewis at Saint Timothy’s 20th anniversary.? Knowing I’d be gone from Athens, I called Father Cotterell, who at the time lived in Indiana but was going to be in Georgia for the court, and asked him to preach for me.? Father John agreed and then asked me if I wanted him to speak about the troubles the Court was to consider.? I said, ‘No.? I don’t believe in topical sermons of that sort.? Just preach on the gospel for the day.’? He agreed that that was best.? Five minutes after we hung up from that conversation the phone rang.? It was Father John again.? He said, ‘I can’t preach on the gospel for the day.’? Why not, I asked.? ‘Because,’ he said, ‘it’s about false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.’? We agreed that might hit a little too close to home and that he’d better preach on the epistle.But there’s no reason today why I shouldn’t stick to the gospel.? Beware of false prophets.? This particular warning comes from our Lord himself, but it is just one in a long line of denunciations of false prophets and priests in the Old Testament.? John the Baptist continued the denunciations into the New Testament, and our Lord brought to a pitch with his verbally violent denunciations of the religious leaders of his day — brood of vipers, whited sepulchers, hypocrites, children of Satan, murderers of the prophets.? Our Lord shows no inclination to go easy on religious leaders, and therefore Christian leaders should not be too easy on themselves.Now what is a false prophet?? In the Old Testament the chief way to distinguish a true from a false prophet was to watch what happened.? If the prophet’s prediction came to pass, he (or occasionally she) was a true prophet.? If it did not, he was a false prophet.? But there was another rule which would produce results faster.? That rule was that true prophets were usually blunt, unpleasant, and unpopular.? For example, when good king Jehoshaphat of Judah asks evil king Ahab of Israel to consult a prophet about a military matter, Ahab says that there’s only one prophet around, Micaiah: ?‘[B]ut,’ Ahab continues, ‘I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil…’ (I Kings 22:8).? We, like Ahab, prefer prophets who will say, ‘You’re just fine and dandy,’ or, at worst, ‘You’re not so bad.’? But true prophets, of course, don’t flatter.? Wanting a prophet to ‘prophesy’ only ‘good concerning me’ is about as sensible as setting my scales ten pounds light or disabling the smoke alarm so that I won’t be disturbed if a fire comes in the night.? What’s the point of that?The rule Jesus gives is a little different from these Old Testament rules.? He says, ‘Ye shall know them by their fruits.’? Like so much that our Lord teaches, this is profound but not quite as simple as it sounds.? At face value this could be taken as saying success equals virtue.? Those who are good will do well; those who are bad will do poorly.? This is the morality of Deuteronomy:? obey the law of God and he will make you rich and give you lots of children who will be nice to their parents and you’ll live long and prosper, like a successful Vulcan; disobey the law of God and you’ll be poor, your spouse will nag, you’ll die young, and your children will be a constant headache.? But that’s Deuteronomy, not the New Testament; that’s the prosperity gospel, built on a crude reading of a sliver of the Old Testament.So let’s look at it again:? Ye shall know them by their fruits.? This does not actually say that virtue will have earthly rewards.? Instead and more it seems to suggest to me what we might call the coherence of the various dimensions of our being.? When we examine ourselves before approaching the throne of grace, we should consider ourselves in terms of thought, word, and deed, in terms of our innermost hearts and also in terms of our outward acts.? That we are known by our fruits surely means that the easiest and most obvious way to know others is not by what we suspect about their innermost heart and not even by what they suggest in word but rather by what they do, and especially by what they do over time.We all know that very good people can do very foolish or bad things.? We all know, also, that sometimes bad people do very good and noble things.? The quality of a life is not a matter of one deed or a single moment, but rather of long term behavior, habits, and enduring character.? Don’t trust a sudden conversion, in yourself or in others:? be hopeful but watch and wait and see if it lasts.? Don’t be discouraged by a bad act, past or present:? be penitent and work at it and alter bad influences around you, and do it all little by little by little.In particular, don’t worry too much about your feelings.? Feelings come and go and are often a matter of what we had for dinner or whether we had a good night’s sleep or have a cold coming on.? I can’t make myself like my disagreeable neighbor:? but I can resist the fruit of my snippy reply.? I can’t avoid the driver who cuts me off or the rude clerk, but I can resist the temptation to retaliate.? Whether you feel you’ve forgiven John or Jane matters much less than whether you’re kind and patient toward him or her.The ravening wolves let their thoughts, words, and deeds run wild, and woe to those who get in the way.? Beware – beware of them.? As for you and me, we also should beware and be careful, to keep control over our deeds so that they both appear to be and in fact are fruits of the Spirit as becomes Christian men and women and children.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H18-58Trinity X.? August 5, 2018.? Good Shepherd, Palm Bay, FLSt. Luke 19, verse 41 – And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it….? In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.Jesus weeps.? He weeps in my text today as he draws near to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.? Immediately before this text our Lord has been acclaimed by the multitude with ‘palms and scatter’d garments strowed’, as the hymn puts it.? But suddenly the hymns and praises of the crowd stop, our Lord sees the holy city, ‘and [he] wept over it’.? In the context of Saint Luke’s gospel this text is striking in part because of its contrast with the triumphant reception that came just before it:? we move very suddenly from triumph to tears.? But the text also is contrary to the usual picture of Jesus in Saint Luke’s gospel.? Usually in Luke Christ seems very much in charge of things.? As a child of twelve he teaches the rabbis in the temple and reminds his Mother and Saint Joseph who his real father is.? He stills the storm, he heals the sick, he teaches the ignorant, he rebukes the great.Luke even shows Jesus in charge during his Passion:? at his arrest he pauses to heal the severed ear of one of the temple soldiers (22.51); he is nobly silent or virtually so before Pilate and Herod (23.9); and from the Cross itself he promises paradise to the penitent thief and resigns his life with the confident words, ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ (23.46)?? From first to last our Lord in Luke is in control and acts with composure and with little apparent emotion.? Yet here, as ‘he beheld the city…he wept over it’.These tears are not entirely unprecedented.? I hope we all know that the shortest verse in the English Bible, Saint John 11, verse 35, is this:? ‘Jesus wept.’? The other gospels certainly show us a Lord who weeps for his dead friend and is moved with compassion and pity on many other occasions.? In Luke’s gospel the words ‘laugh’ and ‘laughter’ hardly appear at all, while ‘weep’ and ‘wept’ occur over 40 times.? But the tears here are still odd.? Only Luke gives us this scene, with the Lord weeping over Jerusalem.? Matthew, Mark, and John do not tell us this story.? So why does Luke show our Lord weeping over Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?We have a hint later in the gospel, as our Lord is walking on the way to the cross.? When a group of women who are following ‘bewailed and lamented him’, he turns to them and says,Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.? For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.? Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.? (23.28ff.)This passage also is only in Saint Luke’s gospel.? In between these two passages about weeping for Jerusalem, comes a sermon during Holy Week, in which our Lord foretells the destruction of Jerusalem.? Our Lord weeps in Luke because he knows that the Romans will destroy the city in a few years.Our Lord weeps, and tells those who love him to weep, not because he himself is suffering, not because he hates those who will reject him, not because he fears his coming Passion.? Our Lord weeps with compassion and love for those who will reject him.? He weeps for the holy city because it is doomed.? He weeps for those who do not want the good news that he brings.? He weeps to show that God has entered into our world with compassion, mercy, and love, not to punish and reject but to convert and to save.? He weeps because in his omniscience he knows that the free gift which he offers will be spurned and refused by many of us, to our hurt and our loss.In this respect we have our own experience to help us understand.? Parents no doubt often disapprove of or regret what their children do.? But what really hurts is to watch someone we love make decisions which we know will produce sorrow and pain, particularly when we suspect that the decision will have long-term or permanent effects.? Parents want few things as much as that their children should be happy and good.? Few things can be as painful, then, as to see destructive choices being made.? ‘If only you knew; if only you understood,’ a parent might say.? Or as our Lord does say in this gospel, ‘If thou hadst known…the things which belong unto thy peace!? But now they are hid from thine eyes.’ (19.42)?? The death of his friend, Lazarus, and the foreknowledge of Jerusalem’s coming doom, when the Romans will destroy the city:? these are the things that reduce the Lord of compassion and mercy to tears.God does not cease to love us when we reject him.? Love is God’s nature, and he can no more not love us than he can not be God.? In his divine omnipotence and omniscience, God knows that all things and all decisions ultimately are part of his Providential plan for the universe.? In his divinity God does not weep, because he knows that the world is governed and over-ruled by his goodness.? But from the human perspective, which God assumed when he took upon himself human nature of Jesus – from that perspective the sins of the world produce intense suffering, unnecessary pain and evil, and overwhelming desolation and loss.? The evil of the world is finally controlled by God and is turned into part of the pattern of the universe.? But God also sees things from our perspective, and by becoming one of us he shares in the tears of the world.? We are assured of God’s understanding and compassion, because God became man and dwelt among us.? Lest we complain that the suffering of this world is too great, God took it upon himself at the Incarnation, and lived it out to the end, even unto the bitter end of a shameful, painful death.Saint Luke’s gospel is often called the Gospel of Joy.? Luke, more than any other of the gospels, tells us of joy:? the angels singing Gloria in excelsis; our Lady singing Magnificat; Simeon singing Nunc dimittis; Zacharias singing Benedictus.? But the joy comes because Jesus wept.? The joy comes because God took to himself at the Incarnation everything that is human, so that it all might be redeemed and transformed and transfigured.? He went not up to joy before he first tasted death.? He does not save us without weeping for our sins.? He brings joy precisely because he suffered, and that for our sakes, not his own.? ‘Gospel’ means ‘good news’.? The good news is that Christ weeps for us in our transitory life, so that we might rejoice with God in his eternal life.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? AmenH18-59Trinity XI. Saint Michael & All Angels’, Fleming Is., FL, August 12, 2018Saint Luke xviii, verse 13 – God be merciful to me a sinner.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Our parable today is about pride and humility told through the familiar parable of the Publican and the Pharisee. Infant baptism is, of course, one of the most perfect illustrations of the doctrine of grace which is closely connected to humility. Infants bring and can bring nothing to the font. They have to be brought. Their salvation through the waters of the sacrament is pure gift, unearned and unmerited. It can be no occasion for pride or self-satisfaction. So it is most fitting that this lesson and the baptism this morning of Hugh Laurence Tarsitano coincide.The setting for the parable is the same as the setting of last week’s gospel, namely the temple in Jerusalem. When our Lord cleanses the temple in Luke he quotes Isaiah 56, ‘mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people’. In that same chapter Isaiah speaks of God’s favor extending to new groups who were outside the normal bounds, at least for public worship in the temple. God’s house of prayer will open up not only to the righteous of Israel, but also to ‘the outcasts of Israel’ and Gentiles and eunuchs. In the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee we see an illustration of the same idea. Those who had seemed excluded now have hope that their prayers will be heard.So, again, our theme is pride and humility. Now we all know all too much about pride, so today I will concentrate on humility, which is the opposite of pride and its antidote.My late friend Father Irvin used to say that humility is learning not to mind. Let’s begin by considering this definition. ‘Learning not to mind’ humility involves a kind of learning. We do not begin in a state of not-minding, but rather we have to learn not to mind. If we don’t mind something at the outset, then we probably are not so much humble as stupid or ignorant or silly or untutored. If I don’t mind terrible food, that may just mean that I don’t know better because I’ve never enjoyed good food. If I don’t mind bad music, it may just be that I’ve never learned to enjoy good music. There is no virtue and no humility in not knowing any better. But if I know and yet I teach myself or am taught not to mind, then humility may be present. Humility implies that we have enough knowledge to know that something could be better, but that we have learned not to mind.What do you mind? We all mind different things, but most of us mind lots of things. We mind people when they do not sufficiently consult our opinions. We mind people not doing what we want. We mind check-out clerks who dawdle. We mind drivers who cut us off. We mind people who talk too much. We mind people who don’t listen when we talk too much. We mind slights, whether real or imagined. We mind getting in the wrong line at the bank. We mind the way the service is conducted at church. We mind people different from ourselves or, alternatively, we mind people who are rather too much like us.Humility learns not to mind such things. Humility is not the same, I repeat, as stupidity or ignorance. If a driver cuts me off, that is rude and may be dangerous. But I am not helped by losing my temper or by fretting about it. A driver who dangerously cuts off others perhaps should be ticketed. But if I respond by tailgating him, then I do mind, I am not humble, and I am making a bad situation worse. Humility does not retaliate, learns not to mind, and overlooks the fault. Humility does not demand to be heeded and is not offended by all the outrages of daily life.What our gospel parable today adds to this picture, of course, is God. The humble publican is shown to be humble because he ‘would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven’. The publican, to be sure, does not mind: he does not mind the slighting and disparaging comment of the proud Pharisee, who compares him to ‘extortioners, unjust, adulterers’. Rather the publican passes over the insult in silence and looks steadfastly at the ground, the fertile earth, the humus, the mother of humility. But by looking upon the earth rather than asserting his righteousness before heaven, the publican shows himself to be in a right relationship with God. Before God we have no merit, since the best person falls far short of the total obedience and perfect love that alone could meet God’s perfection. If we assert the claim of our righteousness before God, then with the Pharisee we will go down to our house unjustified, damned by our pride: ‘for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased’, but ‘he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.’In this humility our Saviour gives us the model and example. Our Lord is from all eternity God the Son, coequal with the Father Almighty. Yet our Lord stooped to the condition of our humanity, and on Christmas he was revealed in the lowliness and helplessness of an infant. That is humility. Parents love their children and so are willing to change their diapers and clean up their messes. But what sensible adult would choose to revert to the diapers and the mess for himself if he could avoid it? Yet God stooped to that condition. For ‘though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered’ (Hebrews v.8), and ‘he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.’ (Philippians ii.8) This is the humble path Christ began by his birth in Bethlehem.Again, at the beginning of his public ministry, our Lord stooped to be baptized by his inferior, John the Baptist. John himself felt that this was unfitting and said to Jesus, ‘I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?’ (Matthew iii.14) Our Lord answered John and said, ‘Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.’ (15) By receiving baptism from John, our Lord ‘fulfils all righteousness’, because he thereby showed forth perfect humility. Humility fulfils righteousness. Our parable today opens with the notice that it was addressed by our Lord to ‘certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others’ (Luke xviii.9). The point of the parable is to distinguish false, or self-, righteousness from true righteousness. And true righteousness is revealed and fulfilled by Jesus at his baptism: the greater bows down before the lower and accepts baptism from him. True righteousness is revealed by the humility of the birth in Bethlehem, by the humility of the baptism by John, by submission to the mockery and spitting of the Passion; and it is revealed, above all, by the quiet death upon a cross. In all of this God shows us that he chooses not to mind us, even at our worst, so long as we do not pretend that we are in ourselves righteous. God is righteous. God only is good. Tu solus sanctus: ‘Thou only art holy.’ Et tu solus bonus: and ‘Thou only art good.’ We are only righteous in that God forgives us and gives us grace. And this he does, not to the proud and the great, but to those who say, again and again and again, with the humble publican: ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner.’In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H18-64Trinity XVI. September 16, 2018. St. Stephen’s, Athens. Saint Luke 7:12 – [B]ehold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother:? and she was a widow….In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.In chapter 17 of the First Book of the Kings we have a story involving the prophet, Elijah the Tishbite.? The next story I am going to talk about concerns his disciple with a confusingly similar name, Elisha, with an ‘sh’ rather than a ‘j’.? To help us keep them straight let’s just call this first fellow ‘the Tishbite’.? The Tishbite, during a terrible drought in Israel, is given hospitality by a widow woman in a place called Zarephath.? In return for this hospitality, the Tishbite saves the woman and her only son from a famine.? A little later the boy dies.? The woman is very bitter: ?were she and her boy saved from famine just so that her child could die prematurely a few weeks later from another cause?? The Tishbite doesn’t try to answer the question with words, but he does come and raise the boy from the dead.? This miracle produces faith in the woman, who says, ‘Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the LORD is in thy mouth.’ (I Kings 17:24)? So the only son of an Old Testament widow is raised from the dead.In the Second Book of the Kings, we have a somewhat similar story concerning the Tishbite’s successor, Elisha.? In this second story, Elisha is given hospitality by a woman from a town called Shunem.? This woman is not a widow, but her husband is very old and they have no children.? Elisha, like the Tishbite, rewards his benefactress for her hospitality, and she has a son.? Some years later the boy falls and dies (II Kings 4:20).? Once again the mother is very bitter:? she didn’t ask to become pregnant and have a child unexpectedly.? But having had this unlooked for child, it seems hard that he should die suddenly in that way.? Once again, the prophet raises the dead son and restores him to his mother (4:36).Of course I am telling you of these two Old Testament stories because they lie behind today’s gospel lesson.? Our Lord, who is among other things a prophet, a new Tishbite, a new Elisha, comes to another town in northern Israel, Nain.? There he also encounters a woman, also a widow, also with one son.? Here too the only son of the woman has died.? And here too the son is restored to life miraculously, and he is returned alive to his mother. ?The result of this miracle is that ‘there came a fear on all, and they glorified God’.When similar stories keep cropping up in the Bible, we should notice the fact and we should ask, ‘Why?’? Usually the reason is that the repetition underlines something important.? If the same thing keeps happening, we are supposed to pay attention and look for the reason.Now let me remind of a fourth story.? There was a widow woman from another little town in Israel which, like Zarephath and Shunem and Nain was in the north of the country.? This widow woman also has an only Son.? Her only Son also came to her miraculously and contrary to expectation.? Then her only Son also dies young, unexpectedly, and in an untimely fashion.? Finally, this fourth, bereaved, and mourning mother also has her dead Son restored to her wonderfully and miraculously.? This last widow’s name, of course, is Mary, and her Son is Jesus.? We are never told the names of the sons in the three stories.? Their names do not matter, because they mostly are pointers, directing us to this greatest Son who dies and then rises.At this point we might well say that the story of our Lord’s death and resurrection is in a sense not unexpected or unprecedented, but rather is part of a pattern in Scripture.? The Old Testament, like the gospels, has a direction.? It moves from the last the greatest biblical example of an unexpected and miraculous birth, through various other well-established patterns, forward towards Good Friday, when mother’s only son dies another untimely death and the seven sorrows will fall upon that mother.? But even more, the Old Testament and the gospels move forward in another well-established pattern of resurrections and restorations, towards the great example of all, which we call Easter, when the only Son who died rises from the dead and is restored to his mother and to his followers.Let me give you a fifth and final story, this one from Church history rather than from Scripture.? Our gospel lesson about the son of the widow of Nain is not only the gospel for Trinity XVI.? It also is the gospel for the feast of the conversion of St. Augustine of Hippo.? Augustine was also the son of a widow, St. Monica.? Augustine too, in a manner of speaking, was dead.? He was dead in sin.? He had a concubine and an illegitimate son, and he belonged to a silly religious cult, the Manichaeans.? But Augustine’s mother never ceased her prayers for her son, and eventually St. Monica’s prayers brought him rebirth just as her body gave him his first birth.? Augustine became a Christian, and God raised him from spiritual death as surely as our Lord raised the son of the widow of Nain.? And so too even in our own day God can raise the dead, the morally dead, just as he will some day raise all of the physically dead as well.The repeated miracle of the raising of the widow’s son joins all the periods of salvation into one:? Old Testament prophecy, gospel miracle worked by the Lord, gospel climax in the Lord himself, and then subsequently in all the ages of the Church’s history.? The purpose of the miracle at Nain in today’s lesson is to show us the glory of God, to pull back the veil, to give us a glimpse.? Our Lord shows his glory and he does so because, we are told, he had compassion on the bereaved mother.? God’s glory extends his compassion and relieves our loss.? St. Paul tells us this in today’s epistle:? he says that the glory of God is revealed so that we ‘faint not’ (Ephesians iii.13); so that we may be comforted ‘in all our tribulation’ by ‘the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort’ (II Cor. i.4,3).? God knows what it means for a widow to lose her only son.? Indeed, Christ himself was a widow’s only son:? he suffered a cruel death so that he might know all that human beings can suffer, and his mother suffered with him.? In the midst of this suffering, and as the fruit and gift of this suffering, our Lord’s Father offers us the vision of glory, the great weight of glory that outweighs all the evils of this world.? The widow’s son is restored; Good Friday gives way to Easter.? So ‘faint not at my tribulations’, and faint not at your own tribulations, for these will become your glory and the light of God and the glory of the risen Lord will transform every cross into a crown.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H18-65Trinity XVII. September 23, 2018Ephesians iv, verses 4 & 5 – There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism….In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.Our first lesson today is taken from St. Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians.? Ephesus was an important city in Asia Minor, and in the book of Acts, chapters xviii and xix, we read at some length about St. Paul’s experiences there.? We find lots of strange things and people in Ephesus.St. Paul followed his usual missionary practice in Ephesus.? Generally when St. Paul went to a new city he began by going to the synagogue, where people already would have some understanding of and sympathy for the idea of a messiah, a Christ.? So in Ephesus Paul ‘entered into the synagogue, and reasoned with the Jews.’ (xviii.19)? We are not told that Paul gained any converts there immediately, but neither do we sense any hostility towards him either:When they desired him to tarry longer time with them, he consented not; but bade them farewell, saying, I must by all means keep this feast that cometh in Jerusalem:? but I will return again unto you, if God will.? (xviii.20-1)This passage suggests at least that Paul was listened to with respect and interest.? So we begin with the gospel message offered to the Jews, just as it was earlier in Christ’s own life.? Salvation springs from and is offered first to the Jews.Now Paul did leave for Jerusalem, but in the next chapter we find that he returned to Ephesus as he had promised.? There Paul met ‘certain disciples’ (verse 1), who, it turns out, were not yet really Christians, but only followers of John the Baptist (v. 3).? St. Paul baptized and confirmed these men, all of whom, we are told, received the Holy Ghost (v. 6) and ‘were about twelve’ (v. 7) in number.? Biblical numbers are usually significant, and this one certainly is.? Ephesus is going to be the base for St. Paul’s third missionary journey.? Every mission is a renewal of the work of Pentecost, when the gospel message was preached by the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, to men and women of all languages and lands.? In the history of salvation we begin with the Jews, we have the preaching of John the Baptist, the work of Christ, and the Spirit-filled college of the twelve apostles.? So too in Ephesus we have the preaching in the synagogue, the disciples of John, and twelve core converts.? From this beginning, which so obviously mirrors the original gospel and Pentecost stories, Paul’s third missionary journey will spread.After this positive beginning, Paul ran into trouble.? First, he encountered resistance in the synagogue, so that he had to stop preaching there, and instead started meeting in a school (v. 9).? Then we read about certain ‘vagabond Jewish exorcists’ (v. 13), who, without following Paul, used his authority to try to cast out demons in the name of Jesus:And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?? And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.? (vv. 15f.)This actually was no trouble for Paul, but rather for the naked and wounded exorcists.? But this story of the exorcists, like the notice of disciples of John the Baptist, does indicate that Ephesus had some strange things going on, with odd undercurrents and divisions and a very complex religious picture.We get the same picture again a moment later when we are told that many practitioners of ‘curious arts’ – that is ‘magic’ – ‘brought their books together and burned them’ publicly (v. 19) after they heard Paul’s message.? In other words, the gospel began to dispel magic, fortune-telling, and other forms of superstition; which evidently were common in Ephesus, since the value of the books burned was ‘fifty thousand pieces of silver’ (v. 19).Now all of this information from the book of Acts emphasizes for us that the Church in Ephesus was formed from the most diverse and strange collection of people you could imagine.? There were converts from the synagogue, from the followers of John, from suspect Jewish sects, from the pagans, from the black arts, from all sorts of backgrounds and practices.? The Church began with diversity, division:? it was, if you will, multi-cultural.? And in his epistle to this Church, to the Ephesians, Paul often reminds them that they include both Jews and Gentiles, circumcised and uncircumcised, ‘strangers and foreigners’ (Eph. ii.19), as well as natives of the ‘commonwealth of Israel’ (Ephesians ii.12).But my text today, written to these same Ephesians, emphasizes, not their diversity and division, but rather their essential unity in God.? The unity comes from the fact that all Christians are baptized into the body of Christ and so are united as members or parts of one body, which is filled by the one, Holy Spirit of God our Father:There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.? (Eph. iv.4-6)There is only one Church, and it is the Catholic Church, which was founded by the apostles, and which is filled with God’s Spirit, and so is holy.? There is ‘One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church’, which we say we believe in whenever we recite the Creed.? This Church is not purely spiritual and its unity is not merely invisible, for Christ came to make divine things visible and tangible and accessible to human beings by his incarnation or enfleshment in human time and space.? The Church has a spiritual and invisible dimension, but the unity of the Church also involves outward and visible signs and marks.St. Paul writes, ‘[O]ne Lord, one faith, one baptism’.? The unity of the Church rests ultimately in the unity of Christ, which is expressed first in faith and doctrine, ‘one faith’, and secondly in sacrament, ‘one baptism’.? Our Church teaches in more detail that the unity or catholicity of the Church may be seen by four marks:? first, the Bible, which contains all things necessary for salvation; secondly, the Creeds, which summarize the teaching of the Bible; thirdly, the sacraments, especially baptism and the Eucharist, by which God actually makes us his body and gives us his life; and thirdly, the apostolic succession of bishops, around which the Church gathers and through whose ministry God gives the sacraments and preserves the right understanding of Scripture and creed.? Bible, Creeds, sacraments, and apostolic succession:? these are the four marks of the Catholic Church, and wherever you find all four of these truly preserved, there is the Holy Spirit and essential unity, even in the midst of all our wild diversity and eccentricity.? Our Church preserves for us Bible, Creeds, sacraments, and apostolic succession, and so she is our Mother, and by cleaving to the Church as our Mother, we gain God as our Father and heaven as our home.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H18-72Trinity XXIV. November 11, 2018. St. George’s, Fayetteville, NC.St. Matthew 9, vv. 20-1 – And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment: for she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.My text from today’s gospel is about a woman suffering from a long-term hemorrhage, or issue of blood, who secretly touches Christ’s clothes to be healed.Now this woman is well enough to be in a crowd of people and to approach Christ stealthily on her own, so we might think that her problem isn’t all that serious.? This would be a mistake.? Her problem is very serious.? First, she’s had the problem for twelve years.? In St. Mark and St. Luke we are told that in that period no one was able to heal her (Luke 8.43, Mark 5.26).? Mark adds that ‘she had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse’ (5.26).? The best manuscripts of St. Luke, who was himself a physician, tactfully omit that observation about the expense and failure of the doctors.? I’m glad that Mark kept it, since I’m sure it has over the years comforted many people suffering from medical bills.? In any case, the woman has had a very long, expensive health problem, even if it didn’t totally incapacitate her.The other thing that makes her situation worse than might first appear to us is a religious matter.? According to the Law of Moses, this woman is in a state of perpetual ritual impurity and is something of an outcast.? In the Old Law touching blood makes you temporarily unclean and unable to participate directly in religious life.? Leviticus 15, verse 19, reads: ‘[I]f a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even.’? This ritual separation did not imply any moral fault or wrong.? Many things in the Old Law made you ritually impure.? Touching a dead body, for instance, did so, but everyone understood that care for the dead by family members was necessary and proper.? In the case of today’s lesson, however, the woman’s ritual impurity was not just a monthly occurrence for seven days, but was permanent.? For Leviticus goes on to say, ‘if a woman have an issue of her blood many days out of the time of her separation…all the days of the issue of her uncleanness shall be as the days of her separation: ?she shall be unclean.’ (15.25)? So, as I have said, this woman is in a state of perpetual ritual impurity.? She was something of an outcast because Leviticus also directs that anyone who touches someone who is impure for this cause, or even who touches the bed or seat of such a person, will also become impure for a day (15.27).? So those who did not want to go to the trouble of washing ritually and waiting a day to be purified would avoid all contact with this unfortunate woman.? In short, as a child of the old Law she is in a bad way.Now this woman comes to Christ and touched what the Authorized Version calls ‘the hem of his garment’, ‘for she said within herself, “If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.”’? This ‘hem’ of his garment is probably the fringe which Orthodox Jews wear in accordance with the Law of Moses: ?‘Thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters of thy vesture, wherewith thou coverest thyself.’? (Deut. 20.12). ?So says Deuteronomy.? And again, God says to Moses in Numbers: ‘Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments…and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue.’ (Num. 15.38) ?The many strings of this fringe symbolized the many laws of Moses: ?as Numbers says, so ‘that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the LORD’ (Num. 15.39).? So the woman wished to touch this fringe, which was itself a physical reminder of the Mosaic Law which condemned her as impure and as an unwelcome threat to the purity of others.Now our Lord was a rabbi.? As a rabbi he knew all about the rules in Leviticus concerning purity and impurity and about the rule in Numbers concerning the hem of garments.? As God incarnate he was also aware that he had been touched by this woman.? But our Lord was not a typical rabbi in that he did not care at all that she was ritually impure, nor was he worried that contact with her would made him impure. ?He looked at her and saw someone who deserved his compassion.? He addresses her, not as an annoyance or as a threat to his own purity, but as a human being: ?‘Daughter,’ he calls her.? He does not chastise her, as the typical rabbi would, for daring to approach him and for threatening his own purity.? No; rather he encourages her: ?‘Daughter, be of good comfort.’? He does not scold her, but rather praises her faith: ?‘Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole.’? The sorts of things that so often concern us, such as being respectable and fitting in, and the details of the religion of his day, simply do not interest Christ.? His concern was and is with people who are sick and unhappy and disliked and in need.? The rather strange bad news of the gospel for the respectable world is that Christ doesn’t much care for the respectable world.? The even stranger good news of the gospel is that in God’s eyes not one of us really is very respectable: ?all we like sheep have gone astray.? If we view ourselves honestly and in the light of God’s perfection, then we see our need for God’s mercy.? If we put away our pride and reach out to the hem of God’s glory, then he will turn about and have compassion upon us and comfort us.This woman’s two great traits are faith and humility.? Listen to her great faith: ?‘If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.’? She keeps the almost fanatic idea of the Old Law that merely touching something will have a spiritual effect.? But here the idea no longer piles on ritual burdens, but rather opens up an easy way to healing and salvation.? Such is this woman’s faith: ?only a touch is necessary.? And her humility is so great that does not call herself to Christ’s notice at all.? She does not speak to him, she does not ask for anything.? She only reaches out to touch the fringe.? But faith and humility are two things that Christ always finds irresistible.? Faith and humility will always bring healing of one sort or another, because faith and humility open us up to God.Though for many years we may have been diseased by our pride and self-destructive self-sufficiency, let us in faith and humility now reach out our hands to God, though we see only a fringe of what and who he is.? If we will but reach to the hem of his garment in humble faith, then God will say to us as he said to our sister long ago, ‘Be of good comfort!’? And he will heal us as well unto life eternal.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H19-21.Quinquagesima. March 4, 2019. Our Redeemer, Marietta, Georgia.St. Luke 18, verse 34 – And they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.Chapter 18 of Saint Luke’s gospel begins with parables and stories about our Lord which contrast spiritual insight with spiritual blindness.? So the chapter begins with the parable of the humble publican and the proud Pharisee.? We have the disciples rebuking those who bring children to Christ, then Christ rebuking the disciples in turn for this behavior.? Next we have the rich man asking how to enter the kingdom of heaven, to whom our Lord says, ‘[S]ell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor…and come, follow me.? And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich.’ (22f.)At this point in the chapter Peter says, ‘Lo, we have left all, and followed thee.’ (v. 28)? Peter wants to be rewarded as a self-sacrificing follower of the Lord.? But isn’t this just another form of blindness?? Isn’t Peter, asking for a reward, really closer to the proud Pharisee than the humble publican?? In any case, it is just after this interchange involving Peter that our gospel lesson today begins.? And this lesson too is about yet more blindness.In this lesson our Lord foretells his passion: ?‘Behold, we go up to Jerusalem,’ he says (31), where ‘the Son of man…shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: ?and they shall scourge him, and put him to death: ?and the third day he shall rise again.’ (31ff.)? To us this seems to be a very clear prediction of coming events.? But we are told that the disciples are blind to what they have been told.? In fact, their blindness is emphasized three times in the verse that I have taken as my text: ?‘And they understood none of these things: ?and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.’ (v. 34)? There is triple blindness:? they understood not, the saying was hid from them, neither knew they.So, again, this chapter contrasts blindness with insight.? Peter proclaims how much he has given up to follow Christ, but immediately we see his blindness proclaimed three times.? Then in the second half of the lesson we find this contrast acted out for us in a healing miracle.? We have just heard the blindness of the disciples emphasized three times.? This blindness is followed by the healing of ‘a certain blind man [who] sat by the way side begging’ (v. 35).? Where the disciples fail to understand their Lord, the blind man sees clearly.? He knows his condition and his need, so he cries to our Lord, ‘Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.’ (v. 38) As the disciples earlier in the chapter rebuked those who brought children to Christ, so here again they rebuke someone who is humbly seeking a blessing.? But the blind man ‘cried so much the more, Thou son of David, have mercy on me.’ (v. 39) Our Lord responds to this appeal, and when the man asks for help the third time, Christ says, ‘Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee.’ (v. 42)In short, then, this chapter and lesson end with another contrast between spiritual blindness and insight.? The disciples are blind to the nature of Christ, namely that he must suffer in order to save them and us.? Their blindness is emphasized in triplicate: ?they understood not, the saying was hid from them, neither knew they.? Though they can see Christ and have long heard his teaching, they are blind.? Then immediately we find a blind man who three times calls upon Christ, reversing the triple ignorance of the disciples.? The sighted disciples are blind, but the blind beggar truly sees.? The faith of the beggar sees where the disciples’ blindness sees not.? His faith saves him, and as a conclusion we are told:? ‘And immediately he received his sight, and followed him, glorifying God: and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God.’ (v. 43)Throughout the chapter faith and blindness are contrasted, and in the end the contrast, as I have said, is acted out for us in a miracle.? We are shown the effect of faith in the healing of the blind man, whose faith is the ultimate rebuke to the faithless blindness of those who should have known better.Notice, please, that the blindness of the disciples concerns the passion and cross of Christ.? This is the third time in Saint Luke’s gospel that Christ has predicted his coming sufferings.? After three predictions, the disciples can have no excuse.? Three times Christ has plainly foretold what is coming, and three times they have refused to understand.? It is fitting that my text today emphasizes their lack of understanding in triplicate.? But let us not be too smug about this.? It is natural that we should shrink from the passion and cross.? We all do it.? Our Lord himself will at Gethsemane.? But our Lord is a crucified Lord, and he has told us that we too must take up the cross and follow him: ?‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.’ (Luke 9:23)?? This is not the way we would prefer to have it, but it is the way of Christ.Today we stand on the verge of Lent.? Today our gospel reminds us that, if we would not be blind, then we must follow Christ to Calvary and there take up our station at the foot of his cross.? ‘For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.’ (Luke 9:24)? It is natural for fallen man to cling to himself and to shrink from the self-abandonment that Christ calls us to.? But it is precisely to such daily self-denial and patient bearing of our crosses that our Lord summons us.And behind and above all of this lies the love of God which is St. Paul’s theme today in our epistle.? The blind man is healed because of his implicit trust in Christ, which we call faith.? But faith itself is less than charity, the love of the heart which draws us to God.? Faith takes hold upon God and looks to him for strength and salvation.? Hope helps us to endure in the face of trials and difficulties.? But it is charity, the burning desire to know God even as also I am known by him, which leads us to embrace our crosses and to bear all things for his sake.? Without the love of God in our hearts, bearing the cross is merely stoicism.? Without charity our good works are ‘as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.’? Without charity I am, as Paul says, nothing.But if in love our hopeful faith cries out, ‘Thou son of David, have mercy on us!’, then our blindness is cured.? If we understand our condition, our need, our blindness, then we will turn to God as children in need of aid turn to their father.? And if we hold up our empty hands to God, then he will save us and will ‘pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues’ (BCP p. 122).? And so we shall receive our sight, following Christ, bearing our cross daily, and glorifying God in his Church.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H19-27Passion Sunday. April 7, 2019. Saint Timothy’s Charleston, SC.St. John viii, verse 59 – Then took they up stones to cast at him:? but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.As I have long passed three decades as a preacher and am within hailing distance of four, one thing I find is that now I increasingly consider not only the lessons for individual Sundays, but also the patterns they form over groups of Sundays.? The epistle and gospel for each Sunday is important.? But it also is important to think about the context given to each Sunday by the surrounding Sundays and season.This is particularly so in Lent.? A few years ago I noticed for the first time something that should be obvious:? the first three Sundays in Lent all concern the devil and the demonic.? The gospel for Lent I is about the temptation of Jesus by the devil in the wilderness.? On Lent II we read about our Lord healing a girl who is ‘grievously vexed with a devil’.? And on Lent III our Lord casts out a devil, he is accused of being in league with the devil, and he tells a saying about devils and their victims.? How strange.? Devils, devils, devils.? Why?? Well, I think the reason is that Lent is about spiritual renewal.? And spiritual renewal presupposes what spiritual writers call purgation:? that we have to cast out bad habits and spiritual obstacles that stand in the way of God’s positive work in us.? Just as you must clear a building site before you can construct something, so God needs to purify us and cast out from us the works of darkness before he can begin in us the positive work of grace.? Conversion involves not only turning towards God, but also turning away from the things we renounce at baptism:? the world, the flesh, and the devil.The first half of Lent, then, is devoted to this negative side of the Christian life.? After those three somewhat grim Sundays, we came last week to Refreshment Sunday, with its more positive theme of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes and the Eucharist, which the multiplying bread foreshadows.? After we cast away the works of darkness, we begin to put upon ourselves the armor of light, which is the sacraments and the grace of the sacraments, particularly baptism and the Eucharist.? This refreshing reminder, coming as it does at the mid-point in Lent, let’s us catch our breath before the rigors of Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday, and Holy Week.Thus strengthened, we come today to the conflict in the temple between our Lord and his antagonists.? This lesson ends with the Jews taking ‘up stones to cast at him’.? In the verse just before my text, our Lord has claimed divinity by applying to himself the name God revealed for himself in Exodus 3:? ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.’? The Jews understand that by these worlds our Lord claims to be divine, and by taking up stones, they seek to impose the Old Testament penalty for blasphemy:? death by stoning.? In this case, the conflict does not end with our Lord’s death, because his time has not yet come:? for the moment he evades his enemies.? We are told that ‘he hid himself’, but this hiding is, I believe, supernatural:? we are also told that he ‘went out of the temple, going through the midst of them’.? I am reminded here of the Genesis story of Sodom, when the wicked men of the city press upon the door of Lot’s house and God intervenes to save his servant by smiting ‘the men that were at the door of the house with blindness…so that they wearied themselves to find the door.’ (Genesis 19:10)? Then Lot also went out of the city, as it were, ‘through the midst of them, and so passed by’.? In any case, today’s lesson ends with an intention of the people to kill our Lord, though their intention is frustrated, again for the moment.? Next Sunday, of course, Palm Sunday, our Lord will not hide himself, he will not go through the midst of his enemies, and he will not pass by.? Next week the intention to kill our Lord will be enacted.‘Then took they up stones to cast at him’.? Let us think for a moment about these stones.? On Lent I, in his temptations of Christ, Satan spoke of stones, urging that Christ turn stones into bread and that he cast himself from the temple in confidence that angels would rescue him lest he ‘dash [his] foot against a stone’ (Matthew 4:6).? Now Satan, having failed in tempting our Lord at the temple, wishes to convert those same temple stones into instruments of the Lord’s death.? Earlier in chapter 8 of John’s gospel, the same chapter from which comes today’s lesson, men were going to stone a woman taken in adultery.? Our Lord turned aside their merciless intention saying, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’ (8:7)? On that occasion shame and self-knowledge turned aside wrath, and the stones were not cast at Abraham’s daughter, but rather fell harmlessly from the hands of her self-convicted judges.? Next week, however, self-knowledge will fail, mercy will flee away, and the Lord who forgives the sinner will himself be killed by sinners.? Again, our Lord once asked, ‘Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?’ (Matthew 7:9)? So our loving Father sent to his children manna in the old covenant and the Messiah in the new, the Living Bread of heaven.? But the foolish children, old and new, rather than accepting the Father’s Bread and Son, would stone to death the Gift.The stones in today’s lesson do no harm, because our Lord hides himself and passes through the midst of his would-be assassins.? Next Sunday will end otherwise, with our Lord dead upon a cross.? In Holy Week we read each day that our Lord saves others by not saving himself, by dying for others, by forgoing for himself the mercy he extended to the adulterous woman, the hungry children crying for bread, and the wayward Israelites in Sinai.And so in Holy Week another stone enters the story: ?a great stone rolled to seal up a tomb, to keep God safely away, to remove the offence of his convicting mercy, to take away the Giver of bread to heedless children.? But the love of God is greater than the hatred of man, and that great stone at the holy sepulchre, meant to hide God in death, will itself be taken away to show the death of death by the Lord’s death.? Pay attention to the stones in Scripture.H19-43Ascensiontide. May 30, 2019.Psalm xlvii, verse 5 – God is gone up with a merry noise, and the LORD with the sound of the trump.Many years ago I was very surprised when visiting the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.? In the Ascension chapel if you look up you will see a pair of plaster feet sticking out of the ceiling, as if our Lord were perpetually stuck on his way through the roof.The doctrine of the Ascension asserts in part that at one time Jesus was a person living in our world of time and space just as we live in this world; then at a later moment he was no longer in our world in the way he had been and we are in it.? We cannot speak simply about this change without using some spatial terms.? We are limited by human speech and human experience and have to speak of divine things with human terms.? If somebody goes away, he has either died or he has gone up or down, right or left, forward or backward.? We may be vague and say that somebody ‘went away’.? But that still means that he died or went up or down, east or west or north or south.? I think that about exhausts the possibilities.? When Jesus went away at the Ascension the apostles saw him go up.? That is an inadequate description of what happened, but the inadequacy is inevitable.In the Creed we say that our Lord ‘ascended into heaven’.? So, where is heaven?? In an earlier day many Christians no doubt naively believed that heaven was quite literally up – up above the visible sky.? ‘Now above the sky he’s King’, as the Easter hymn says.? Likewise, the Ascension hymn by Charles Wesley says, ‘Hail the day that sees him rise, / Glorious to his native skies.’? Some modern Christians find such language implausible, if it is taken literally, and theologians who are silly with sophistication find the Ascension an embarrassment.? It should not be.? So let us boldly ask again: ?Where is heaven?? Where did Jesus ascend?? Where is he now?We might say that heaven is ‘where’ God the Father is, but that doesn’t really help.? God does not have a body, but is ‘without body, parts, or passions’.? Since God does not have a body, he does not have place or position.? God is not somewhere; God simply is.? When Jesus became one of us, he took on a body in a place and a time, which he also resumed at his resurrection.? That body he still has.? It therefore seems that the Ascension is about the humanity of our Lord, which is taken up into the divine.? While the Father is no place and every place equally, Jesus, with his human nature and his body, is some place in particular, which we call heaven.? So, again, where is heaven?? Where did Jesus go at the Ascension?We can only speculate.? Heaven includes the glorified body of Jesus and of the saints:? but those bodies and that place are not the same as the bodies and places we know now.? That should not disturb us.? Contemporary physics asserts all sorts of extremely weird and wonderful things, at least as speculations.? In a world whose best scientists speculate about matter and antimatter, parallel universes, big bangs and black holes, charms and quarks and bizarre particles and forces, and time running this way and that or not at all – all of which can hardly be spoken about except in mathematical terms far beyond most of us:? in such a world I find nothing implausible or embarrassing about speaking of heaven as an unimaginable place – perhaps a place parallel to and touching us right now in ways we cannot understand.So let’s sing the good old Ascension hymn with gusto: ‘Hail the day that sees him rise’.? That’s no more naive or improbable than any other possible language about what really matters.? We have to use symbols.? They are all we’ve got.Let’s even go back a few millennia before Charles Wesley, and hear the Psalmist sing another hymn.? The Psalmist wrote, ‘God is gone up with a merry noise; and the LORD with the sound of the trump.’? We can picture the priests in the temple blasting away with their rams’ horns to celebrate a great festival of Jehovah.? The Psalmist is probably thinking of that, and also of David or some other king rising to his throne while musicians play, and also of God as a kind of thunder-God, rumbling the world.? But the mood of the text is not ominous or fearful.? It is a joyful text, full of uncontainable happiness and merriment.? ‘God is gone up with a merry noise; and the LORD with the sound of the trump’:? the verse rollicks.Evil and death seemed to triumph over Jesus on Good Friday.? But they did not.? Our Lord has trampled down death by death, and then transcended the limits of our world by his Ascension.? He did not so much leave our world behind, as take the lead in leading our world beyond itself.? He does not abandon us, but rather leads our human nature into a new dimension of life with God. Christianity does not seek to abolish humanity or time.? It does not seek to escape time and space.? Our religion does not say that the world is evil or unreal.? Our religion, rather, says that the world is a vessel, a fragile vessel of time and space, which God is pleased to fill up with delight and immortality and life beyond death.? Christ ‘is gone up with a merry noise’, and where Jesus has gone, in merriness and joy, we may follow.‘God is gone up with a merry noise; and the LORD with the sound of the trump.’? This verse begs to be turned into an anthem. ‘He who sings well prays twice,’ Saint Augustine said.? Singing keeps the words, but transforms them into something more, a merry noise.? Perhaps this idea of singing a text is itself a fitting emblem of the Ascension.? Our ascended Lord remains what he was, a human being with human body, mind, spirit, and soul.? But now his human nature is more – changed, transformed, lifted up, united with God, and filled with light.? If Christ is the Word of God made flesh, then the Ascension turns that Word into a song and unites our life with the life and energy of God.By itself the Ascension provides an ending to the story of the gospels, or at least an end to an important chapter of the story.? But it also has a deeper significance.? Its meaning goes beyond history and our world.? The Ascension shows the point of intersection between time and eternity, between history and heaven, between life in this world and the life of the world to come.? Christ came down from heaven, we say, for us men and for our salvation.? He became what we are, ‘like us in all things save sin’, so that we might go where he has gone.? Christ, who was God the Son from all eternity, at a moment in time became one of us.? He became the head of a people, the Church.? Then at his Ascension he took our human nature, which he had assumed, into eternity, so that where the head has led the way, there the body might follow.? Christ did not put on humanity as we might put on a shirt, only to take it off later on.? Rather he retains his human nature and has taken it up into God’s own inner life.? He did not ascend into heaven just so that the story might have a convenient conclusion.? He ascended into heaven to lead the way for us: so that, as the Preface for the Ascension puts it, ‘where he is, thither we might also ascend, and reign with him in glory’.At the Ascension the apostles beheld two things:? first, our Lord ‘was taken up’; secondly, ‘a cloud received him out of their sight’ (Acts 1:9).? Notice that in both clauses Christ is passive:? he was taken up; a cloud received him.? The Ascension is a kind of coronation, the reception of Christ’s humanity by the Trinity and its enthronement at the right hand of the Father.? The glorious Trinity takes Christ’s humanity nature to the heart of God and receives him up.? Humanity is now crowned with divinity.This glorification and coronation of humanity is spoken of symbolically when we are told that ‘a cloud received him out of their sight.’? In the Old Testament a cloud is the sign of God’s glorious presence:And it came to pass, as Aaron spake unto the whole congregation of the children of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness, and, behold, the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud.? (Exodus 16:10)The cloud is the sign of the shekinah, the glory or splendor of God.? When Acts tells us that ‘a cloud received him out of their sight’, it does not just or even primarily mean that Christ went into the sky.? The primary point is that Christ’s humanity was received into the glory of the Godhead.? The glory of God that appeared in ancient time to the children of Israel as cloud and majesty and awe, now appears as that which receives and envelopes the humanity of our risen Head.? The glory of God receives the new Adam, so that all his sons and daughters may have hope.? The glory of God is become our destiny.? Though for a time the cloud ‘received him out of their sight’, the angels come to promise that as he left, so he shall return.? They say, ‘[T]his same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go’.? The glory, in other words, shall return, and then it shall be our glory as well.? It shall be glory for all who have been transformed by the Holy Spirit working in us through prayer and sacrament.? That is the promise of the Ascension and the meaning of the cloud.H19-45Pentecost. June 9, 2019. S. Stephen’s, Athens, Georgia.Saint Luke 9, verse 2 – And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.In the two lessons we have just read we hear our Lord’s prediction of the coming of the Holy Spirit after his Ascension and then in the Acts of the Apostles we read about the event itself.? From these lessons and elsewhere in Scripture I believe we learn that the Holy Spirit comes for two main purposes.First, in the Acts the Holy Ghost comes on Pentecost to turn the Apostles into effective missionaries:? to inspire them so that they are able to spread the good news, the gospel, throughout the world. Christ says to the Apostles just before his Ascension,[Y]e shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.? (Acts 1:8)This power to witness to Christ is illustrated ten days later at the original Pentecost, when the gift of tongues and the sermon of St. Peter lead to the first mass conversion in Christian history.? The Church grows on that day from a little band of 120 followers of Christ, the original core group.? We are told, ‘they that gladly received’ Peter’s ‘word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.’ (Acts 2:41) ?Ever since Pentecost, the Church has periodically, in the midst of persecutions and spiritual dryness and indifference, enjoyed sudden, unexpected, almost miraculous conversions.Just 20 years after the most bitter and bloody of persecutions under the Emperor Diocletian around the year 305, another emperor, Constantine, presides over the Council of Nicaea.? Some of you will remember our late member, Anita Steinbeck Callahan, who was born in 1905 in eastern Germany.? In the 1970s she visited her sister in their hometown in Mecklenburg and on May Day watched a Communist parade through the main square.? The sister pointed to the church on the square and said, ‘That church watched the Nazis march by.? Now it watches these people march by.? The Nazis are gone.? These people will be gone.? That church will still be here.’? And so it is.? Who dares explain such changes without reference to Christ’s promise: ‘Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me…’?So, first the Holy Ghost comes to empower the followers of Christ to be his witnesses and missionaries, to proclaim his Holy Name effectively, to lift high his cross before the eyes of our dying world, and to glorify the Holy Trinity: ?all of which we do so as to convert men and women to the saving gospel of our Lord.The second main purpose of Pentecost is the one emphasized by Christ himself in today’s gospel:? ‘to teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.’? This purpose is internal to the Church.? The Holy Ghost preserves the Church in truth.? He teaches us ‘all things’.? Of course he does not teach us all things whatsoever: he does not teach us the names of all of the state capitals or quadratic equations or color coordination.? Rather the Holy Ghost teach us ‘all things’ necessary for our salvation.? He ‘brings all things to [our] remembrance,’ whatsoever Christ said.? That is, the Holy Spirit ensures that the Church as a whole remains aware of Christ’s teaching, so that she will never forget that teaching so deeply as to endanger her ability to lead men and women to God.Our Saviour did not come to earth to bring us a book.? He came to earth to give us the Holy Spirit, whom he bestows in and through his Church.? The Church produced the Bible, the Church preserves the Bible, the Church teaches the Bible, the Church interprets the Bible.? If the Bible disappeared tomorrow, the Church would still exist, just as the Church existed for centuries before the canon of the New Testament was finally determined.? It is in the living, sacramental world of the Church that Scripture comes to life so that ‘all things…whatsoever [Christ]…said unto’ us are brought to our minds for our salvation by the Holy Spirit.So, the Holy Spirit was sent by the Father to lead and preserve the Church in truth, and then to enable that true Church to go forth into all lands in mission.? On the one hand, then, if the Church is not teaching the truth, its mission is useless or actually harmful.? On the other hand, if the Church is teaching the truth, but has no mission, no outreach to our dying world, then it is not serving her Lord well and is not obeying his commandment to make disciples.? True teaching and evangelical mission are both needed.My text today is from Saint Luke’s version of our Lord’s missionary discourse to his disciples.? Our Lord sends forth his twelve disciples and gives them power and authority over diseases and devils and sends them forth to preach the kingdom of God.? Here again we see both an emphasis on teaching, on preaching the kingdom of heaven, and also an emphasis on effective mission, which in this case comes not only from the truth that is taught but also from the pastoral care that come from healing and exorcism.Nothing really, my friends, has changed.? We still are called as a Church in community and as individual Christians and clerics to preach and teach the truth:? the truth rooted in the deposit of Scripture, the truth taught by the Fathers, by the Creeds, by the Councils of the ancient and undivided Church, by the doctors of the Church, and by the truth as preserved to our own day both by positive affirmations and by negative rejection of modern innovations and heresies and immoralities.? But teaching the truth alone is not enough.? We are obliged also to share the truth, to be effective missionaries, to go about as in the Acts we see Peter and Stephen and Philip and Paul going about, to preach and heal and teach, whether by an individual sermon or by settling for years in a city to form a stable community of committed Christians.Our own Church has been one of the great missionary Churches in human history.? But in the United States Anglicans has historically not done very well in this respect.? The old joke was that the Baptist preachers walked west the pioneers; the Methodist preaches rode west on horseback; the Anglicans waited for the Pullman car.? I hope we have been good about preserving the faith once delivered to the saints.? I fear that too often we are like the unprofitable servant, who has taken his talent and wrapped it in a napkin and hidden it in the earth.? That, my friends, is not enough.? We are called to take the Church, taught us by the Spirit, and to share it by word and deed so as to convert and heal our world.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H19-52Trinity IV. July 14, 2019. Saint Luke vi, verse 36 - Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Mercy is a theme in both our collect and our gospel today. The collect prays that God would ‘increase and multiply upon us [his] mercy’ that we may ‘so pass through things temporal that we finally lose not the things eternal’. It is God’s mercy that can bring us to the eternal glory of which Saint Paul speaks in today’s epistle. That is the blessing that may come to us from God’s mercy. In the gospel our Lord tells us that God in turn calls us to imitate his own mercy towards us, to be merciful as our Father in heaven also is merciful. In fact such reflective or imitative mercy is the condition on which mercy is offered to you and me. Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. We need God’s mercy if we are to enjoy his gift of eternal glory. But if that is to happen God requires of us that we be merciful. ‘Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.’ The Greek word for ‘mercy’, and so for the related adjective ‘merciful’, has at its root the Greek version of the pained exclamation that comes forth when we hear or see some great sorrow: oi! To be merciful is, at its root, to feel the sudden, pained rush of sympathy that this sound expresses. To be merciful is to have pushed out from our heart a great ‘Oh!’ Pity, mercy, and compassion have this visceral, gut-churning experience at their base. This we might call natural mercy, the sympathy that we feel when we hear of a great sad thing. But this kind of natural foundation of mercy in sympathetic fellow-feeling is not the full story. God is a being without passions or feelings of this natural sort. God’s love and mercy are dispassionate. In God is no variableness or shadow of turning. God’s love and mercy are perfect and unchanging precisely because they do not rest on fluctuating emotions or on changeable rushes of feeling. God’s love and mercy rather are established in the absolute and unchanging perfection of his very nature. God is perfectly merciful, so he is not merciful in quite the same way that we are. Sometimes you and I are merciful precisely because we are so weak and so much in need of mercy ourselves. We go easy on others in hopes that they will return the favor when our time for screwing up comes along, as it surely will. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews expresses this idea beautifully: ‘Every high priest taken from among men,’ the author writes, ‘can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity.’ (v.1f.) It’s rather like a parishioner of mine whom I happen to know used to be very glad because his g.p. was overweight, smoked, and drank. How nice to have a doctor whose advice was tempered by a merciful toleration of human foibles. While this kind of mercy is itself often a good thing, it is not quite the same as being merciful ‘as [our] Father also is merciful’. God doesn’t have foibles that need to be overlooked. God is not ‘compassed with infirmity’, and therefore is not in need of compassion. God is not merciful in hopes that we will go easy on him. Natural human mercy has at its roots a kind of gentle, tolerant weakness, which is not characteristic of God or his mercy. God is not merciful as a reflection of his own imperfection. Rather God is merciful because of his love. God’s mercy is not that of an overweight doctor, but rather that of a good father. Parents are usually willing to judge their children gently, to overlook some things, to hope optimistically for improvement in the future. Parents are willing to give second – and third and fourth – chances. Parents are inclined to give love unconditionally. Nonetheless, good parents also know that overindulgence is bad for children. The wrong kind of mercy is harmful for children. The child who is never corrected will never improve. The child who is never punished will never behave. The child who experiences only mercy, and never justice and order and discipline, will be, as we say, spoiled. And spoiling is a terrible, wasteful thing. Think of curdled milk or rotting fruit, and then we get some idea of what the wrong kind of mercy can produce. If you spend a little time looking through your Prayer Book, you will find that the words ‘mercy’ and ‘merciful’ occur far more often than do the such words as ‘judgement’, ‘wrath’, ‘punishment’, and ‘anger’. God’s love is such that from a human point of view we would say that mercy predominates over judgement in him. Nonetheless, God’s mercy includes and embraces all that is good and appropriate in the harder virtues of right judgement, justice, and order. So while we are called to mercy and love above all, they are not meant to be separated from these other good things. God is less like an overweight, overly easygoing doctor or a Santa Claus who really never does seem to care if the children are naughty or nice, and is more like those amazing parents whom we all admire who seem effortlessly to balance for their children the qualities of love and discipline, support and expectations, freedom and structure. Now you and I never get this pitch perfect. We have personalities which tend to be too demanding and judgemental or too easygoing and relaxed. We need to know ourselves, and then work to develop the virtues that balance our own natural tendencies. Those who tend to be harsh and unforgiving, need to cultivate gentleness, forgiveness, and compassion. Those who tend to be overly easy need to understand that sometimes that tendency can come from a kind of laziness, which needs to be stiffened with a bit of straight-speaking and discipline. To be merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful means to balance the elements of gentleness and justice, forgiveness and order, which are perfectly blended in heaven’s mercy. Love is the guide that helps us steer appropriately through the practical difficulties of being merciful in this world of sin. If we have to err, of course it is best to do so on the side of gentleness and forgiveness. But it is better still to balance mercy and justice and love as our heavenly Father does and as the good parents around us on earth also do. When we succeed in balancing justice and love, then we can truly fulfil our Lord’s command: Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H19-53Trinity V. July 21, 2019. Saint Luke v, verse 11 - And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him.?In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.?Near the beginning of our Lord’s ministry in all of the gospels the evangelists tell us about the calling of our Lord’s first disciples.? Saint John gives us several stories not told by anyone else.? In Matthew and Mark we have a very brief story in which our Lord calls two pairs of fishermen brothers, Peter and Andrew and James and John, to follow him and to become fishers of men.? These brothers and partners obey the call and become our Lord’s closest helpers and first apostles.? The event is very important, yet the story as told by Matthew and Mark could hardly be shorter or more unadorned.?In today’s gospel we have Saint Luke’s version of the call that Mark and Matthew tell of so briefly.? In Saint Luke’s version, Peter’s brother, Andrew, is not mentioned, but Peter, James, and John are there.? In Matthew and Mark the story of the call is brief – the Lord calls the fishermen and they obey this simple call.? Today’s version, from Luke, it is more complicated. In Luke there is no direct and simple call, but rather a more extended encounter with several parts.? ?The story begins with Jesus teaching the crowd from Peter’s boat after the crush of people makes things uncomfortable for him on the shore.? From this starting point, there follows a fishing expedition, which veers from a seemingly dismal failure at the beginning to an almost overwhelming success.? The haul of fish is so great that it nearly sinks the boat.? There is something about Peter’s experience of Christ in this series of events on the lake that somehow opens up his eyes.? We don’t know all that is going on in S. Peter’s mind, but he obviously sees something during the fishing expedition that persuades him to follow Jesus, to become a disciple.? ?The conclusion of the story in Luke is that the fishermen partners, after coming to shore, forsake all and follow Jesus.? They abandon their fishing boats and their livelihoods and ‘followed him’.? We will come back to this conclusion in a moment:? ‘they forsook all, and followed him.’?But before that, let me make a couple of points by the way.? First, this story is sometimes called the miraculous draught of fish.? It is, however, not necessarily a miracle story at all.? The fishermen have had little success and then suddenly they have such a haul of fish that their boats are almost swamped and sunk.? That is a wonderful and surprising turn of events, but it may also have been perfectly natural. Fishing can be that way.? Now usually we see God not through supernatural events or through a miraculous suspension of everyday rules and natural laws, but rather in and through the everyday itself.? Insight is typically not a matter of signs and wonders, but rather is a matter of correctly understanding the everyday.? As a rule, for those without eyes to see, no miracle would be believed, while for those with eyes to see, no miracle is necessary.? Somehow Peter comes to understand Christ through his occupation in a fishing boat.?My other point before coming to the conclusion concerns Peter’s language.? Please note that at the beginning of the story when Peter first addresses Jesus he calls him ‘Master’:? ‘Master, we have toiled all the night and have taken nothing.’? The word translated here as ‘Master’ means ‘teacher’.? This is the word usually used to translate ‘Rabbi’.? Peter begins by assuming that Jesus is a rabbi, a teacher of the Jewish law.? This is a perfectly understandable assumption, since Peter has just heard Jesus teach a crowd on the lake shore, as any rabbi might.? In this period in Galilee the villages and roads and shores were filled with itinerant rabbis and teachers.? But notice that after the great haul of fish taken in obedience to Jesus’ directions, after the boats were nearly sunk but did not in fact sink - after this complex experience - Peter’s address changes.? When Peter addresses Jesus the second time he calls him not ‘Master’/‘Rabbi’ but rather ‘Lord’, ‘Kyrie’.? In common Greek Kyrie can just mean something like ‘Sir’ in our language.? It is respectful.? But Kyrie also is a Greek term to address a deity, just as in English ‘Lord’ can refer either to a nobleman or to the Lord God.? When Jesus is addressed in the gospels, ‘Master’ is usually used by people who are not yet his followers, while ‘Lord’, Kyrie, is the language of a disciple.? This is consistently the case in S. Matthew’s gospel, where the only people who call Jesus ‘Teacher’ are Judas and the scribes and Pharisees.? So, again, Peter’s experience converts and changes him into a disciple: ?from someone who sees Christ as a rabbi into someone who calls him ‘Lord’.?What then is a disciple?? My text is the point:? the brothers ‘forsook all, and followed him’.? Here are two actions.? First, they forsook all.? Secondly, they followed him.? ‘Forsook all’ is a negation, a renunciation, a sacrifice, a walking away, a giving up.? ‘Followed him’ is an affirmation, an acceptance, an obedience, a taking up.? Christian discipleship always has this two-fold character.? The idea runs as a thread through the whole of the gospels.? We cannot be his disciple unless we take up our cross daily - and follow him: ?the cross is a giving up, the following him is a taking on.? We must die to self – which is sacrifice; and, we must live to him – which is obedience.? We must give up so that we may gain.? Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it cannot bring forth fruit for the harvest, which is obedience.?Of course we would rather it not be this way.? How much more pleasant to keep our lives untroubled and our ways unreformed.? Zebedee is never mentioned again as his sons wander off after this troublesome rabbi and Lord, though perhaps he too became a disciple.? In truth we balk at both sides of the equation.? We would rather not die to self, give up our favorite sins, or offer up our wills.? We also would rather not walk obediently, accept God’s will, or try to follow his ways.? But these two difficult things are required of us.?The wonderful thing about the gospels, and one of the great evidences of our Lord’s truth, is the way in which people do drop everything to follow him.? I suppose when people live close to the land and have little in the way of possessions that might be easier - easier for the poor than the rich who have more to shed.? But for all of us - then and now, rich and poor, simple and complex - this story gives us a model.? We must learn to forsake our own wills and ways, and then work to follow Christ day by day.?In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen. H19-54Trinity VI. July 28, 2019. St. Stephen’s, AthensSt. Matthew 5, verse 20 – For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.I write this sermon late morning Friday after in the very early morning one of those unpleasant procedures that we are supposed to have after age 50. Anaesthesia was administered. My take-away patient instructions tell me that my judgement may be adversely affected for up to 24 hours. So, if you do not care for my sermon, kindly blame the doctor, but be aware that he may reply, ‘I did warn him.’In our epistle today from Romans 6, Saint Paul speaks of baptism as a kind of dying, a death with Christ so that we may rise with Christ. We could expand this idea with other passages to show that many Old Testament events involving water combine the ideas of death and new life. Noah’s ark is an example, as is the crossing of the Red sea, which brought life and liberation to the Israelites but death to Pharaoh and his armies. The casting of Moses into the Nile in a papyrus ark and the crossing of the Jordan river at the end of the Exodus are further examples. Baptism by water brings a death, death to sin and to our old nature; but also brings new life in Christ.Our gospel lesson today from the Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew presents our Lord as a new Moses. As the new Moses, Christ gives God’s people a new law – a law for those who come to new life in God by baptism in water. This law describes how we should live in this world and with each other: it tells us what dying to self and rising in Christ look like. It tells us how we should live.In my text from this lesson, our Lord compares the behavior and attitudes demanded by the Old Testament with what he himself expects from us. He compares the ‘righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees’ with the righteousness of his followers.One obvious fact in the comparison is that our Lord in one way makes things more difficult and more demanding for us. He says, ‘Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ (5:20) Now, ‘exceeding righteousness’ sounds pretty daunting to me. It is true that our Lord and the apostles removed from us many of the ceremonial burdens of Jewish law. We can eat pork and shrimp; we can drive and sew on a button on the sabbath; we aren’t obliged to circumcise; we don’t sacrifice animals. Those laws were types and foreshadowings of Christ and the sacraments, and when the reality came in its fulness, the shadows passed away. So some things became easier and simpler.But while many ceremonial and civil laws of Israel passed away, the moral and ethical side of the Old Testament remained in force and, in fact, became more demanding in the new law of Christ.Our lesson gives an example in the matter of anger and forgiveness. The Old Testament law as interpreted by the scribes and Pharisees mostly required outward restraint: ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ says the old law. Christ wants us not to kill, of course, but he also demands that we go beyond that and also control and purify our inner attitude. We are expected not just to control our outward behavior but also our desires and our motives. Christians are expected not just to suppress our impulses to actual violence, but also hatred, anger, harsh words, and even harsh thoughts. The Sermon on the Mount is daunting because it says that what really matters is not our outer behavior, but what is in our hearts. If we are full of anger, malice, wrath, and all uncharitableness, then that is what and who we are. That we do not kill will do us little good if we are full of those other things. God looks to our intentions and attitudes, not just our actions. We may sin in thought as well as in word and deed.To illustrate the meaning of ‘exceeding righteousness’, I often say, use the example of a parent dealing with a squabbling brother and sister. Which is more demanding: to say, ‘Johnny, don’t hit your sister!’; or, to say, ‘Johnny, love your sister!’ The law of the scribes and Pharisees seems to concern the less demanding, outer thing. The law of Christ concerns the exceeding, more demanding command to love.The good news of the Sermon on the Mount is that our Father in heaven is infinitely compassionate and infinitely forgiving. There is no end to the mercy of God. This good news, however, itself makes a demand on us. God’s perfect mercy to me calls me to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees in response and in gratitude for the forgiveness I myself am given.Now how can this be possible? How can we possibly exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, who were so very scrupulous in religion? How can we achieve the forgiving heart and exceeding righteousness that Christ calls for? The answer is that we cannot if we rely upon ourselves and our own strength. But the process of receiving God’s grace changes us so that we want to respond to it and its Giver by showing grace to others. It is more blessed to give than to receive, because we want to give when we have already received the gifts that really matter.In short, our righteousness cannot exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees until it is no longer our righteousness, but God’s righteousness in us, transforming our hearts, smoothing out the scars of our fallen nature, and drawing the sting from our painful pasts which can make it very hard for us to forgive. Our own righteousness cannot go very far. But God working in us can go as far as we need. That is our hope of salvation.Alone we cannot surpass the scribes and Pharisees, but God can and will. Our duty is to use the means of grace that God’s gives us — namely, prayer and the sacraments — so that by those God-given means he may convert us and make us pleasing to him. In this way we may exceed the scribes and Pharisees — by being exceedingly forgiven and exceedingly blessed and therefore exceedingly grateful in return. Then we may enter the kingdom of heaven.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H19-60Trinity XII. September 8, 2019. All Saints’, Soddy Daisy, TNSaint Mark vii, verse 34 – And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him: Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.There are several great feasts in the Church year that are very much feasts of light. Christmas, the Epiphany, Easter, and the Transfiguration all fall into this category. The Transfiguration, August 6th, for example, has lessons and propers and hymns that are full of light. In the Introit we have ‘lightenings [that] shone upon the ground’ (Ps. lxxvi); in the Gradual is reference to the ‘brightness of the everlasting light’ (Wisdom vii); its Gospel is about our Lord’s transfigured glory with his ‘raiment…white and glistering’ (S. Luke ix). In the Secret prayer for the day at the offertory the priest prays that ‘by the splendour of [Christ’s] brightness’ we might be cleansed from our iniquities. Splendor, brightness, light, and glory shine forth from the feast to lighten our darkness and to burn away our sin. These visual metaphors of light and shining glory reappear in our epistle today, in which Saint Paul contrasts the glory of the Old Testament Law, which shone forth from the countenance of Moses, with the still greater and exceeding glory of the gospel (II Cor. iii). Light and brightness are common themes in Scripture, in Christian hymns, and in the Church year.In our gospel lesson today, however, we have another set of metaphors. This lesson switches from visual images to the senses of touch and hearing. Our Lord heals a deaf man by ‘[putting] his hand upon him’, by ‘[putting] his fingers into his ears’, and by ‘[touching] his tongue’. There is touch. And then also our Lord sighs and speaks to him, and the whole lesson is about ears and tongues, speaking and hearing. So this gospel is tactile and aural rather than visual.The difference between these two sets of metaphors perhaps lies in their position within the Christian life. The glory which our Lord reveals at his Transfiguration is only shown to three of his closest and most favored apostles, namely Peter, James, and John. Likewise, Saint Paul ‘s references to the shining glory of the gospel are made in a letter to people who are already Christians. But the healing miracle in our gospel today is given to a man who is encountering Jesus for the first time: not to a close follower or to a committed disciple, but rather to someone who is brought to Christ apparently for the first time by other people (Mark vii.32).This pattern is usual in the Christian life. Christmas – one of those other feasts full of light – speaks of Christ as he comes into our world personally and directly. But before Christ is conceived in the womb and then manifested at Christmas, first the message of the angel came to his mother by word. As Karl Barth says, the organ of our Lord’s conception was the ear. And Paul tells us that ‘faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God’ (Romans x.17). And hearing presumes that we are capable of hearing, that we are not deaf, that our ears have been opened. Before the light is seen, the word is heard.I heard on National Public Radio some years ago a little segment about a summer camp for juvenile agnostics and atheists. One little skeptical camper said that he thought that if there were a God that he should appear daily, say at 3:15 p.m., for ‘God time’, and then everybody would know about him. I thought to myself, ‘But God does appear every day, just as regularly as the junior agnostic would like, for God time.’ But of course neither junior nor senior atheists perceive our Lord’s daily Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar or his daily revelations in nature and grace. They do not perceive, they do not see, because they have not received the gospel into their hearts. They have not received the gospel into their hearts, because they have not heard it with their ears. And they have not heard it with their ears because they deaf, because their ears are closed. The psalmist tells us thatThe heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handy-work…There is neither speech nor language; but their voices are heard among them. Their sound is gone out into all lands; and their words into the ends of the world. (xix.1, 3f.)But then too the psalmist tells us elsewhere that the ‘fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.’ (xiv.1) In fact the psalmist says that twice (Psalm liii.1).So, here is the mystery. We only come to God, to the brightness of his glory, by hearing; but we cannot hear unless God opens the ears of our hearts. Therefore, our gospel lesson today is a story about us all. The deaf man is everyman. We all need healing in order to hear God. This point is made clear in the liturgical history of the Church. In the Western Church in an ancient ceremony before baptism, the priest ‘touches the ears’ of the candidate and says, ‘Ephthatha, that is, Be opened.’ (English Ritual, p. 30) Likewise in our Prayer Book we pray for that which a child by nature cannot have before we proclaim to the child and his godparents the baptismal gospel. God has to do something for us before we can hear his gospel. God has to give us ears to hear and then open our ears before we will hear. We can, of course, choose to keep our ears shut, no matter what God does. But faith comes by hearing, and it is God that makes us hear. Only after we hear can we see God’s glory.Before our Lord commands the man’s ears to ‘be opened’ we are told that ‘looking up to heaven, he sighed’. Because he looks to heaven, we see that the opening of the ears of faith is a grace from heaven, a gift from God, as I have already said. But between the look to heaven and the healing of hearing, ‘he sighed’. The word translated here as ‘sighed’ really has a stronger sense, something more like ‘he groaned’. In the next chapter when the Pharisees tempt Christ and demand from him ‘a sign from heaven’ (viii.11), Saint Mark shows us Christ’s reaction by use of a related word which our English version translates as ‘sighed’: ‘he sighed deeply in his spirit’ (12). Again, Saint Paul uses related words in Romans viii when he tells us that ‘the whole creation groaneth…in pain together until now’ (22) and that ‘the Spirit…maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered’ (26). So when we are told ‘he sighed’, we should understand a deep groan with an element of pain. We cannot see God without first hearing the gospel. We cannot hear the gospel unless God heals our hearing. And our hearing is not healed without the groans of Christ. Our healing is costly to God. A world of sin must be drowned in the Red Sea before Israel can leave Egypt. Good Friday must come before Easter. Christ must groan before we are healed.But healed the man is, and his tongue is loosed, and he spake plain. Though in this life the disciple may only stand for a moment on the mountain of Transfiguration, yet we have those occasional glimpses of God’s glory even now. And so we pray that the splendor of God may purge away our sin and that we finally may behold ‘the king in his beauty’.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H19-68Trinity XX. November 3, 2019. All Saints’, Macon, GAEphesians v, verses 15-16 – See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Let me begin at the end of my text: ‘the days are evil’. Nobody who knows St. Paul’s letters can be surprised to hear him announce that ‘the days are evil’. In fact, this is an assertion we could make in most places and in most periods without stirring up too much controversy. The older generation always thinks that the young are ill-behaved, or at any rate not so well-behaved as they were. My parents thought our hair was bad, and they were right. I think the pink and green hair in downtown Athens is worse. Twenty years ago there was a pretty appalling goatee fad among young men. Nowadays the female college students in Athens wear what appear to be gym shorts as they go to restaurants or classes. And so it goes with age and youth. Age always thinks the days are evil, and in some ways they’re usually right.Likewise, people enjoy complaining about crime. In 1993 I went to Bulgaria, and a local woman told me that crime there was very, very bad, because just three months earlier two Australian tourists had been robbed on the streets in Sofia in broad daylight. I thought, ‘This woman can remember a mere mugging from three months earlier. Crime is nothing here.’ But for in her mind, ‘The days are evil.’In many ways the days are undoubtedly evil. In other ways we live in the best of times. I have no desire to live in any century except our own, unless I can take my dentist and my g.p. with me. Also airconditioning and my iPod and electricity. Nevertheless, I recognize that the last century is the bloodiest and most vicious of centuries in many ways. The days are evil. Our own country is much richer than it was 30 or 40 years ago, and we are at peace, and Soviet-style Communism is dead almost everywhere. Those are great blessings. Yet when I grew up I did not know any children whose parents were divorced. I only knew two or three children who did not live with both of their birth parents, and those children had had a parent die. Compared to the situation now, that world was a paradise in that children could generally count on something that millions of children now lack. The days are evil in this way and in many others that we could name.The days are always evil. St. Paul is not saying something unusual about 1st century Ephesus or about our days or about any particular period or place. My text is not social commentary but theological truth and exhortation. We live in the midst of what the Prayer Book calls a ‘naughty world’: a world that is running headlong to ‘naughtiness’, which is to say, ‘nothingness’. Mankind is fallen and the world is vanity, a nothingness, a naught. So it always is. The end of the text is correct. The days are always evil.What, then, about Paul’s exhortation? He writes, ‘See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time….’ We have a constant duty, to ‘redeem the time’, which amounts to the same thing as walking ‘circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise’. What does this mean?First, ‘walk circumspectly’: ‘walk’ — that is live, go about, behave in the world — ‘circumspectly’ — that is, carefully, diligently, with a careful regard to the situation. Because we live in a dangerous, fallen world and in evil days, we cannot afford spiritual sloth. We can’t just coast along spiritually. We are called to a diligent, careful, examined, self-reflective life. Just before today’s lesson Paul tells the Ephesians to wake up: ‘Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.’ This may be a quotation from an early baptismal service, which would fit my point exactly. As baptized Christians we are called to be watchful, wakeful, careful, to walk circumspectly in a world full of booby-traps and pitfalls. Just after my text Paul says, ‘be not drunk with wine’, which is the same point: if we are circumspect and careful, then we will be wakeful and sober. If we’re waiting for the bombs to fall or the Chinese to march in or the IRS audit to begin or we think our child is in danger — if the days really are evil — then we won’t take a nap or drink a bottle of wine. We’ll be careful and circumspect. Of course this doesn’t mean we may never sleep or have a drink. Rather the point is that our lives in general should be careful and examined, because we are set in the midst of many and great dangers and our eternal souls are in the balance.Paul also tells us to be ‘not as fools, but as wise’. Again, if you’re in the midst of pressing and serious danger, it is the height of folly to take a nap or get drunk. Paul does us the honor to assume that our spiritual and moral decisions are important matters. It matters to God whether we are wise or fools, whether our souls are spiritual disaster areas of chaos, anger, envy, malice, pride, vainglory, lust, sloth, and deceit, or whether our souls bear the spiritual fruits of joy, love, peace, long-suffering, kindness, gentleness, prudence, and truth-telling. Care for the soul’s state is spiritual wisdom. Neglect of the soul is folly: ‘Thou fool,’ says God on the night of death when he calls the unprepared man: ‘Thou fool.’ But we are to walk, ‘not as fools, but as wise’.If we walk circumspectly, if we are wise and not fools, because the days are evil and our time is short, then we will be ‘redeeming the time’. Greek has two words for time: chronos, meaning chronological, sequential time, such as your watch measures. The word here is different, kairos, usually meaning a decisive moment, a fixed or definite time: not ‘an hour’ or ‘any old hour’ but ‘the hour’, the ‘H-hour of D-day’. Because the days are evil, we are to ‘redeem the “time”’, meaning the definite moment, with its decisive problems and choices that confront us now and demand our serious, careful decision. We are to ‘redeem’ the moment. The word ‘redeem’ here usually means ‘make the most of’, ‘make good use of’. We are supposed to make good use of the moments God gives us, for each might be our last and each might prove to be a decisive spiritual turning point.Please note, we are supposed to make good use of the moments God gives us, not of the moments he does not give us. A great spiritual writer of the 18th century, Pierre de Caussade, speaks of ‘the sacrament of the present moment’. He means that every moment sent to us by God brings decisions for us to make, each of which has a purpose. Each moment is sent to us to be endured or used or enjoyed. But for whatever purpose each moment is sent, however awful or wonderful it may be, it is a kind of sacrament which we are called upon to receive and to use. The use we make of each moment brings spiritual advancement or setback. This is why we must walk circumspectly: because every moment is full of spiritual challenges and opportunities and dangers. We must continually call on God to let us see what the moment is calling us to do, but also must do his will in each moment even if we do not see what that purpose is. If we accept each moment as a kind of sacrament, not as trivial, but as full of possibilities of grace, then we will indeed be walking circumspectly. If we recognize that the days are evil and therefore may hurt us, then we will be wise and accept the sacrament of the present moment. We will not slumber and sleep, as did the foolish virgins of the parable who missed the party because they were not careful enough. If we see God at work in every moment of the day, then though the days be evil, yet we will have made good use of our time and thereby will redeem the days for God as he has redeemed our souls for himself.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H19-03Advent III. December 15, 2019. Saint Mary’s, Winter Haven, FLSaint Matthew, chapter 11, verse 7 – What went ye out into the wilderness to see?In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.Usually in recent years I have visited you all here in Winter Haven on this Sunday, the third Sunday in Advent. Next year I plan my official visit to you in February, just two months from now, when I will spend three Sundays in a row in Florida. That will let me preach to you on a different set of lessons.Usually I speak to you about the theme from the collect and epistle of clerical stewardship: what it means to speak of the clergy as ministers and stewards of the mysteries of God. Today instead I will speak about the gospel, which concerns John the Baptist, the Forerunner of Jesus and the last of the prophets beginning in the Old Testament who prepared the way for the Messiah. In particular, in this lesson our Lord talks about John the Baptist, while in next week’s gospel the reverse is the case: John the Baptist will talk about our Lord.Of course John the Baptist is himself a minister and steward of God, which connects the themes of the various propers for today. Specifically John is that kind of minister called a prophet, and was the greatest of prophets – the prophet who ushered in ‘the kingdom of heaven’.Our word ‘prophet’ is a compound word from two Greek words. The second part of the word, –phet, comes from the Greek verb meaning ‘to say’ or ‘speak’. The first part of the word, pro-, means ‘for’ – as in to speak for someone else or to be a spokesman. Pro– also means ‘fore’ as in ‘before’. A prophet foretells, he speaks of things before they happen. Finally, pro– can mean ‘forth’, as in to be forthright, to speak forth the truth, to tell forth what is really the case. All of these shades of meaning are present in this word. Prophets, are people who speak for God – who tell us what God thinks of things in our world, including our own behavior. Prophets also are people who predict what is God is going to do, who tell the future. And finally, prophets tell forth the truth, often by speaking the truth frankly and forthrightly to kings and rulers who often consider themselves beyond judgement and beyond being held to account.John the Baptist is a prophet in all of these ways. John goes before one of the Herods and condemns Herod’s marriage to his sister-in-law as incestuous. For this John is thrown into prison, which is where he is in the beginning of today’s lesson. John also speaks for God when at the beginning of his ministry he calls the people to repent their sins and to be baptized. And, finally, John foretells what will be in the future when he proclaims Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, the one who will usher in the kingdom of heaven and who will surpass John and all the prophets of the Old Testament. A spokesman ultimately is less significant than the person for whom he speaks. So too in this case: John is a voice, but a voice that is talking about someone else.My text today refers to John’s location, namely ‘in the wilderness’. At the actual moment of the lesson John is ‘in the prison’ (11:2). But John’s proper place is that spoken of by Christ when, when speaking of John to the people, he asks, ‘What went ye out into the wilderness to see?’ Our lesson is from chapter 11 of Saint Matthew. Back in chapter 3 we were told that John the Baptist came ‘preaching in the wilderness of Judea’ (3:1). John the Baptist is a man of the wilderness, the desert.The wilderness is the place of many great things in Scripture. First, the wilderness was the place where Israel wandered for forty years during the Exodus. That wilderness was the place where Israel received the Ten Commandments and encountered God on mount Sinai ‘in cloud and majesty and awe’. That wilderness was the place where God fed his people with manna and led them with cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. That wilderness was the place where the slaves of Egypt became a nation – by no means perfect but under God’s eye and his rule.In later history, the wilderness is the place where from time to time prophets would flee to escape evil kings, as when Elijah flees wicked Ahab and Jezebel. When Americans used to find life intolerable, they would head west. When prophets felt that way, they headed to the desert. The wilderness is where the prophet Isaiah foretold a voice that would come to proclaim ‘the way of the Lord’ (Isaiah 40:3). The wilderness is where Jesus himself will go after his baptism to fast and to overcome the temptations of Satan. The same wilderness is where our Lord later feeds the people of God with miraculous bread from heaven: in all four gospels he feeds five thousand in the wilderness; in Matthew and Mark he also feeds four thousand, again ‘in the wilderness’.So when in today’s lesson our Lord speaks of John’s place in ‘the wilderness’, he is invoking this history, stretching from the Exodus through the line of Israel’s prophets, concluding with John the Baptist, and then fulfilled by Christ himself in his temptations and ministry. The wilderness, to put the matter briefly, is where men and women encounter God.Why? Well, in the wilderness the distractions of the city are banished. In the wilderness the unnecessary is stripped away and the human heart is addressed by God. In the wilderness the human body, at least in the Bible, is nourished by God. In the wilderness God sends manna and water through Moses. Later in the same wilderness God feeds Elijah before his journey to Sinai; God sends John the Baptist locusts and wild honey; God’s angels minister to our Lord after his forty day fast; and, our Lord himself multiplies loaves and fishes to feed the four thousand and the five thousand. The wilderness is a place that seems barren. But the wilderness is the place where, with everything else stripped away, we are forced to rely upon God, and God responds with his care.The heart of John’s message was to look to him who was to come, to look to Jesus, to follow Jesus, and to trust Jesus. You and I may not be in quite the same desert, quite the same wilderness as the Sinai desert or the Judean Negev. But I assure you this world, which has such plenty and such wealth, is very much a wilderness, a place of dangers, a place of hunger and thirsting after the word of God and the food of the Spirit. It is an irony that we only find the food we really need, when we realize that we have a need, that there is a great hunger in our world and in ourselves that our world cannot supply. Our Lord asks, ‘What went ye out into the wilderness to see?’ Perhaps a prophet. If so, hear the words of the prophet, and follow the Lord, who alone can lead us through this barren land in which we wander.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H19-09Christmas I. December 29, 2019. Saint Stephen’s, Athens?Galatians 4:4 – …[W]hen the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.?In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.?The week following Christmas day contains four other major feast days:? S. Stephen on the 26th, S. John on the 27th, the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem on the 28th, and the Circumcision of our Lord on the Octave day, January 1st.? If the First Sunday after Christmas falls on one of these four days, it is not observed but is superseded by the feast.? So in most years today does not exist.? Christmas I is only observed it falls on the 29th, 30th, or 31st of December, as it does this year.?Christmas is described in three of the gospels.? Saint John does not give us the familiar Christmas stories that we associate so strongly with this season. ?Instead John explains the meaning of Christmas:? he gives us an interpretation.? John’s is the gospel for Christmas morning, ending mostly in mighty monosyllables:? ‘And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us:? full of grace and truth.’? Those are very, very simple words which proclaim the central mystery of the universe.?Saint Matthew and Saint Luke are the other two gospel versions, and in them we do find the familiar stories of Christmas.? Each of these evangelists has a different perspective, though they agree on the central facts.? They agree about who – who is born and the names of Mary and Joseph.? They agree about where, namely Bethlehem.? They agree about what, namely miracles and wonders attending the birth, although they describe different miracles and wonders.? And most importantly, they agree about the results of the birth:? namely salvation.? Despite these agreements, the two versions present the facts from very different angles.? ?Luke’s version is the story we hear on Christmas Eve, beginning with the decree that went out from Caesar Augustus.? Luke tells us about the conception and birth of our Lord almost entirely from Mary’s point of view.? Matthew, the third version, is our gospel today, and it presents the matter almost entirely from Joseph’s point of view.? ?The result of these multiple versions is to give us a deeper understanding of the matter.? Just as two eyes allow depth perception that perceives more dimensions than a single eye, and just as multiple witnesses allow a clearer understanding of an event than one witness, so multiple gospels deepen our understanding of Christmas.? ?Less often noticed than the three gospel accounts is today’s epistle, which adds, at least briefly, a fourth notice about our Lord’s birth.? In Galatians 4:4 Saint Paul tells us that ‘when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.’? ?Paul’s version is brief, and it omits all the charming elements of the familiar Christmas stories.? Paul’s version, like John’s, is a matter less of story than of interpretation of the story.? But Paul’s version also is consistent with the other versions.? Nothing in Matthew, Luke, or John is contradicted by Paul.? ?Paul’s main point is to tell us that our Lord was born ‘under the law’.? By ‘the law’, Paul mainly means the Jewish law, the law of Moses, the law found in the first five books of the Old Testament.? Paul argues in Galatians and elsewhere that the Jewish law was God’s main tool for educating and preparing the world for salvation from sin and death.? Since men and women always failed to fulfil the Jewish law, God sent his Son to take upon himself that burden.? And we see in the other versions of the story the beginnings of that obedience.? Even as an infant Christ fulfils the Jewish law, as when he is circumcised on the eighth day and presented in the temple on the fortieth day, as Moses required.? ???Throughout Matthew’s stories of the birth and infancy of Christ, we see the obedience of Joseph to the law and to God’s angels.? Joseph will do again and again just what ‘the angel of the Lord had bidden him’ (1:24).? In obedience Joseph accepts Maty.? In obedience, Joseph flees from the murderous wrath of Herod, and then later in obedience again returns from Egypt after angelic word of Herod’s death.? Saint Joseph is a kind of renewal of the Old Testament Joseph:? both are dreamers of dreams, both bring their families down into Egypt, and both carry forward God’s plan of salvation by their actions.? In all of these cases, Joseph as the responsible adult, and then Jesus as he comes of age, act under the law, under the direction of God, to show us humble obedience that fulfils the burden we by ourselves can and do not fulfil.? When ‘the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.’? ?By the way, it was not only the Jewish law that Joseph, Mary, and Christ fulfilled.? There was another law in place at that time, which they also fulfilled, namely the Roman law.? When Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem in Luke’s gospel, they did so in obedience to a decree that ‘went out from Caesar Augustus’.? Just as our Lord was ‘made under’ the law of Moses, so he was ‘made under’ the law of Caesar, to whom later as an adult he would render due and appropriate obedience.? We are not saved by the law of Caesar, and the law of God is greater.? But with few exceptions we are called upon to obey that law also.? If doing so was good for our Lord’s blessed Mother and his foster father and for our Lord himself, then you and I also should be law abiding.? ?In Matthew’s gospel today, the angel tells Saint Joseph that ‘JESUS...shall save his people from their sins.’? In today’s epistle, Saint Paul tells us that ‘in the fulness of time, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law’.? These lessons tell us the same thing, once by a story and once by an interpreter of the story.? ?Christ saves us from our sins; Christ saves us from ourselves.? We are not happy until we rest in God, but we cannot come to God by the law or by our own merits and works.? We are not happy while sin burdens our consciences, but we cannot absolve ourselves from the sins that so easily beset us.? We need help from above, and that help is from Christ our Saviour, who came with the birth we are now celebrating in this Christmas season.? That is the story which began long ago in the days of the patriarchs and prophets.? That is the story that reached a climax on the first Christmas.? And that is the story which continues today in every choice we make and in every grace bestowed upon us by a merciful and loving God.? ???In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.? ?H20-79Purification of Saint Mary. February 2, 2020.?Saint Luke 2, verse 22 - And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord....?In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.?Today is the feast known commonly as the Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin and also as the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.? It also is called Candlemas, for on this day in many places there is a blessing of candles for use in the church in the coming year.? ?The gospel for today refers several times, both by reference and by quotation, to the law of Moses. According to Exodus 13, Israel was to ‘Sanctify unto [God] all the first-born, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast: it is mine.’ (13.2)? The law provided that the first-born of clean animals were to be sacrificed to God upon his altar.? The first-born of unclean animals, such as donkeys, and the first-born human child was to be redeemed:? that is, a lamb or, for the poor, two pigeons or doves were to be offered in place of the child (Leviticus xii.8).? This sacrifice was to be performed in Jerusalem on the fortieth day after the birth of a son and on the eightieth day after the birth of a daughter (Lev. 12.2-4).? This explains the timing of this feast.? February 2nd is the 40th day after Christmas, and in some liturgical respects Christmastide extends up until today.? ?This offering had two main purposes.? First, it was to serve to the cleansing or purification of the mother ‘from the issue of her blood’ (Lev. 12.7).? In Old Testament thought contact with blood rendered a person ritually impure.? Thus women were impure monthly, as were those who touched a wound, as was the woman with an ‘issue of blood’ who touched the hem of Christ’s garment.? Since child-bearing involves blood, it required ‘an atonement’ for ritual cleansing.? That explains the common name for today, the Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin.? Of course this purification has no moral overtones.? The impurity was purely and merely cultic.? Our Lady’s spotless conception and the Virgin Birth tells us that the Holy Family is simply fulfilling the requires of the law in humble obedience to God’s will.?Secondly, the offering of a lamb or two doves served as a sin offering for the child, to present the child to God as an acceptable part of Israel’s service and covenantal community.? Israel belongs to God, and the Presentation in the Temple and the offering that goes with the Presentation embrace our Lord in his people’s communal relationship with his Father.? The Father already truly possesses the Son, and the Presentation does not change their relationship with each other.? But the Presentation joins Christ to his people and so joins those people to him as he begins his life of self-offering back to the Father.? Or put it another way.? Normally the rites of purification and presentation served to atone for human sins and to cover Israelite with the promises of God’s covenant.? But in our Lord’s case there are no sins to atone for and there is no need for Christ to be redeemed through the covenant.? Rather by submitting to these ordinances Christ sanctifies them.? He is not blessed by coming to the temple in Jerusalem.? Rather he blesses the temple by coming to it.? His sins are not atoned for; rather he makes atonement himself and gives power to human rites and sacraments to atone for us.? He is not presented to his Father with whom he dwelt from all eternity.? Rather through his Presentation the Father presents grace and salvation to Israel and the world.? He does not need to be purified from sins under the old Law.? Rather he submits to and fulfills himself perfectly that old Law, and so opens up for us the way to salvation through mercy and grace in him.? ?Our Lord became man, not to debase God but to elevate humanity.? Our Lord was baptized, not for forgiveness of sins but rather to empower the waters of baptism to wash away our sins.? Our Lord later will submit to crucifixion and a cursed death, not to pay for his sins but rather for ours and to deliver us from the curse and to make our deaths occasions of birth into eternal life.? Likewise today our Lord was presented to the Father, not because he before was alienated from or unknown to the Father, but rather in order to present the Father to us.? The Lord, as said the prophet Malachi, whom we sought, has suddenly come to his temple with an offering of righteousness (Malachi 3).?And so we see that this occasion in the gospel is filled with joy.? Old Simeon rejoices and is now ready to die in peace.? Anna ‘gave thanks likewise’.? All is done to fulfil the law.? The lovers of the law rejoice.? They are ancient, they are passing from this world – for the old Testament had grown old and now is ready to give way to the new.? The baby comes, and with him comes the new Testament with its law of love and grace and salvation.? The law of Moses is accomplished, its rites fulfilled, its symbols complete.? The shadows depart, for the Light that lighteneth all men that come into the world has shined forth to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of Israel.? The day has dawned in Jerusalem.? Night is passing, and the day begins that shall never end.?In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.??H20-26Lent IV. March 23, 2020.Saint Andrew’s, Tallahassee, FL.? 2020.Saint John vi, verse 4 – And the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.I don’t know if you’ve noticed it on your own or if a preacher has ever pointed it out to you, but the? gospel lessons for the first three Sunday in Lent all involve the devil.? On Lent I we have the story of the three temptations of Christ – by the devil.? On Lent II we have the woman of Canaan, whose daughter is ‘grievously vexed with’ – ‘a devil’ (Matthew 15).? Then last Sunday, on Lent III the gospel began with our Lord ‘casting out’ – ‘a devil’ and continues with a long discussion of demonic possession.In short, the first half of Lent is surprisingly focused on the demonic and spiritual evil.? Why is that?? It seems odd at first, but really it isn’t.? Lent is the season for spiritual renewal and for getting rid of unhealthy things in myself and in my relationships.? This healing requires both negative and positive work.? Spiritual growth has a negative element, which spiritual writers often speak of as purgation.? This means that we have to turn away from or do away with or purge bad habits, bad attitudes, and bad associations.? We can’t make spiritual progress until, if you will, the devils are cast out.? I think that is the point in the heavy emphasis on the demonic in the first part of Lent.? To borrow a phrase from Paul and the Advent collect, in Lent we ‘cast away the works of darkness’.? We clear away the junk.? We open up room in ourselves.But as last week’s gospel told us, making room in our souls by casting out some bad things doesn’t do us much good if a vacuum remains within us.? Vacuums tend to fill.? It does us no good to cast out one devil if, in the words of that gospel, he ‘then goeth…and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in, and dwell there:? and the last state of that man is worse than the first’.? We need to fill ourselves with God and goodness, or removing this or that bad thing won’t do us much long term good.Which is why, I think after three weeks dealing with the negative work of exorcism, of renouncing evil and casting it out, we find that today’s gospel changes gear.? Today we turn towards a more positive message of the gospel.? Today we begin to consider what will replace evil within us if make room.One of today’s popular names is Refreshment Sunday.? Today we learn of the help God offers us in our spiritual warfare through the refreshment and grace of the Eucharist.? In fact the whole of chapter 6 of John, from which today’s gospel is taken, concerns the Eucharist and its heavenly Bread.The chapter opens with John’s version of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand.? One of the persistent themes of Saint John’s gospel is the way in Christ replaces Jewish feasts and observances with himself.? In today’s gospel this theme is clearly presented in the introduction:? ‘And the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.’? As you will remember, the Passover was and is a feast that involves a meal.? The meal includes bread, wine, and lamb.? In today’s lesson bread also appears, as our Lord feeds the multitude.? This miracle in turn ushers in a long discussion that continues past the end of today’s lesson. This discussion, involving Christ, his disciples, and the Pharisees, concerns the true and proper meaning of the Passover with its bread and the manna.? Christ tells those around him that he is the true Bread, the Bread from heaven.? And so for us as Christians the meaning of the manna, the Passover bread, and the bread of today’s miracle is fixed.? All of these breads – indeed all of the bread and grain which abound in Scripture – are types, foreshadows, prefigurements, and symbols that point us to Christian realities.? Christ is the Bread of Heaven.? Christ is the Bread of the Eucharist.? Christ is our spiritual food, our sustenance, our life, and our hope on earth.? Christ is our Refreshment.? Christ is the living Bread that came down from heaven.? And in the Eucharist Christ replaces the Passover.This replacement occurred decisively at the Last Supper and at Calvary.? As the gospels for the coming weeks remind us, the Last Supper and the Crucifixion occurred historically and originally during the Passover feast.? And that is why my text is so appropriate:? ‘And the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.’? Was nigh and is nigh.? And at the Last Supper and on the Cross our Lord himself becomes the true Paschal bread, as well as the true Paschal Lamb and the true Vine and Wine of God.? As a shadow recedes to insignificance when we see the original that casts that shadow, so the Passover, though nigh, does not so much disappear as recede. ?Types and shadows have their ending, for the newer rite is here.? The old rite is the Passover.? The new rite is that in which you and are engaged at this very moment.So let us combine the themes of the previous group of Sundays and of this day.? At our baptisms we promised manfully to fight under Christ’s banner against sin, the devil, and the flesh.? The fight is usually interior and spiritual, though Satan is quite capable of persecuting Christians and the Church in external and physical ways as well.? In this warfare we were enrolled on one side at our baptism and we confirmed that enrollment at our confirmation.? In Advent we are told by Saint Paul to put on the armour of light.? In this warfare we are not left by God to our own strength, which is very feeble and faltering indeed.? God continually offers us grace – his free and undeserved gift of himself to us.? It is this grace that is our reliance and strength.? Constantly in the Christian life we gain help from unexpected quarters.? We are aided by a reminder that comes from a book; by a kindness from a stranger; by forgiveness from another person that we have not deserved; by an unexpected solution or resolution of a problem that seemed insoluble; by a resolve and determination in myself that surprises me.? On the worldly level these are coincidences.? But Christians find that such coincidences seem to come to us when we are using the means of grace, and seem to elude us when we are neglecting prayer and the sacraments.? God opens doors for us.? God sends his Holy Spirit upon us.? But an open door does no good if we don’t try it or walk through.? The Holy Spirit, who is in truth always with us, cannot do anything for us if we are utterly inattentive.So today’s miracle of feeding, and the Eucharist that it foreshadows, remind us of the great help and aid that God is offering.? Grace upon grace is held out to us.? Grace is offered to us in very concrete, tangible, and immediate ways.? God offers himself to you this very morning.? All we must do is hold out a hand or open a mouth to receive the Bread that came down from heaven.? In the face of the grace that is presented to us this very day, the power that is against us is nothing.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H20-27Passion Sunday. March 29, 2020.?St. Stephen’s, Athens, Georgia.Hebrews ix, verses 13 & 14 – For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclear, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.Once a year in ancient Israel on the Day of Atonement, which we know as Yom Kippur, the High Priest performed a complex set of rituals at the temple in Jerusalem.? The priest first presented a bull and a goat, next sacrificed them, and then offered their blood by carrying it into the Holy of Holies of the temple, along with a lighted censer.? In the Holy of Holies the priest offered the incense and sprinkled the blood seven times on the mercy-seat.? Then he returned from the Holy of Holies to the altar outside the veil.? Finally he placed his hands on the head of another goat, confessed the sins of the nation, then sent the goat away to a solitary place to represent the banishment of sins and the restoration of unity with God.In the epistle to the Hebrews, including our lesson from this epistle today, the rituals and fixtures of the ancient temple are taken as foreshadows and symbols of the work of our Lord upon the cross.? Today, as we begin to turn our concentrated attention to the Passion, and as we read of our Lord’s presence in the temple in the controversy described in the eighth chapter of Saint John, perhaps we can benefit from thinking about the relation between the Day of Atonement in ancient Israel and the Passion of our Lord.The sequence of events in the temple has a movement whose goal is the forgiveness of sin and the restoration of unity between God and sinful men. ?The movement is that of a people, a nation, not merely of individuals.? In the name of the whole community the high priest presents the sacrificial victims and then slays them.? Christ is, as Hebrews makes clear, the true, great High Priest, as well as the sacrificial victim.? In Christ’s Passion the presentation of the victim includes the events leading up to Calvary as well as the crucifixion itself.? When Pontius Pilate says, ‘Behold, the Man!’, he is presenting the sacrificial victim to the nation.? When our Lord is lifted high upon the cross, he is presented to the world.? If Christ is to unite the world with God, the world has to see him do so.? The sacrifice has to be presented, beheld, observed.Next the sacrificial victim is slain.? It was not enough that Christ be crucified.? The Muslims accept that Christ was crucified.? Christ also had to die, which the Muslims do not believe occurred.? The sacrifice is not completed except by the death of the victim.? A thing is not really offered until it is offered completely and fully – and in the case of a life a complete offering involves death.While today we are mainly concerned with the Passion leading up to the cross, we should note that the other acts of Yom Kippur also are enacted by our Lord.? The priest entered into the Holy of Holies with the sacrificial blood represents our Lord’s Ascension, when he takes our human nature into the true Holy of Holies, which is the presence of God.? The sprinkling of the mercy-seat with blood suggests baptism, whereby the fruit and benefits of Christ’s bloody sacrifice are bestowed upon us to bring us mercy and forgiveness.? After Old Testament sacrifices the priest and people ate those parts of the sacrificial animal that were not burnt in offering.? For Christians such participation in the sacrificial meal occurs in Holy Communion.? From beginning to end the outward symbols of Israel’s Day of Atonement are completed and fulfilled by Christ and the Church.The point of our epistle today is that all of the Old Testament system of worship could not really bring forgiveness of sins or atonement between God and man.? The killing of animals and other outward, ritual acts don’t really change or do anything.? The significance of these outward and visible signs lies in the reality towards which they point.? That reality of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who in his own person combines the two poles that need to be united, God and man.? As true God Christ has the power and the right to forgive us our sins, to give us his help and grace.? As true man Christ is able to offer on the behalf of us all human worship that is acceptable to God and a sacrifice that is unblemished.? The outward sacrifices and rituals of the Day of Atonement were enacted with great solemnity.? How much more effective are the sacrifices and rites of a priest who is perfect and who offers a sacrifice which is spotless.These same ideas are presented more subtly in our gospel lesson today.? Our Lord is debating with the authorities in the temple, where the worship of ancient Israel was performed.? Our Lord there applies to himself the divine name from Exodus iii, namely, ‘I AM’: ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.’? Abraham, the father of the Jews, is surpassed by his descendant, Jesus, as the worship of the temple will be surpassed by the worship of the Church.? The Church surpasses the ancient temple because the Church worships through the priesthood of Christ, who is himself the God is who is worshipped.One way to think of this all is to contrast the Jewish altar and its sacrifices with the Christian altar and its single sacrifice.? In Judaism there was a single temple, a single altar, and an overflowing multiplicity of sacrifices.? The Old Testament is awash in the blood of doves and pigeons, goats and bulls, sheep and calves.? All of these countless animals were sacrificed in a single place on a single altar.? But in Christianity, in contrast, there are countless temples, countless altars, countless places of acceptable worship, on which, however, there can only be a single Sacrifice and Victim, as there is in truth a single great High Priest.? The Eucharists of Christendom are simply re-presentations of the one sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, offered once and for all on the altar of the Cross long ago.? In the timelessness of God and in the mystery of the Sacrament this great and unique sacrifice is made present again for us here and now.? The Cross is made present again, without being repeated, as Christ at his Ascension brought into his Father’s eternal presence that which in time was once and for all in the past.? So there are countless altars, but a single sacrifice.That which bulls and goats could not do, Christ has done.? That which fallible and weak human priests could not perform, Christ has performed.? That which the countless little passions of sacrifice and suffering that our world endures, are all taken up and united in the one great Passion of our Saviour, both God and man, both Priest and Victim.? It is through Christ that our consciences are made pure from dead works and sin.? In Christ we are enable to worship the Father in spirit and in truth.? The Father seeketh such to worship him, and we become such through the merits and mediation of our Saviour and our Lord.? The Priest and the Victim are one, and those who are saved thereby are without number.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H20-33Good Friday. Saint Frances. April 19, 2020.St. Luke chapter xxiii, verses 52 & 53 – And [Joseph of Arimathea] went unto Pilate and begged the body of Jesus.? And he took it down, and wrapped it in linen, and laid in sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein man never before was laid.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.This year as I prepared a sermon for Passion Sunday, two weeks ago, I noticed, for the first time in the almost forty years that I have been writing sermons, all the stones that turn up in Lent.On that Sunday itself, there are stones – stones of hostility.? You will recall that on that Sunday the lesson from the eighth chapter of Saint John’s gospel tells of a sharp conflict in the temple between our Lord and his antagonists.? In the course of that conflict our Lord applies to himself (v. 58) the divine name that God revealed to Moses from the burning bush in Exodus 3:? ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.’? The Jews understand perfectly well that by using these worlds our Lord claims to be divine, so ‘took they up stones to case at him’ (v. 59).? That is, they seek to impose the Old Testament penalty for blasphemy:? death by stoning.Now on that occasion the conflict did not end with our Lord’s death, because his time had not yet come:? for the moment he evaded his enemies.? We are told that ‘he hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them’.If we think a little further back in Lent, there are other stones.? On the First Sunday in Lent, in his temptations of Christ, Satan spoke of stones, urging that Christ turn stones into bread and that he cast himself from the temple in confidence that angels would rescue him lest he ‘dash [his] foot against a stone’ (Matthew 4:6).? It is only after failing to tempt Christ with stones in the temple that Satan, also in the temple, tries to turn those temple stones into instruments of the Lord’s death.? There are still other stones in the gospels.? Early in chapter 8 of John’s gospel, the same chapter from which the attempted stoning in the temple, men sought to stone to death a woman taken in adultery.? Our Lord turned aside their merciless intention saying, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’ (8:7)? On that occasion shame and self-knowledge turned aside wrath, and the stones were not cast at Abraham’s daughter, but rather fell harmlessly from the hands of her self-convicted judges.? Again, on Palm Sunday in S. Luke, when the Pharisees rebuke our Lord for permitting the disciples to greet him with Messianic praise, he responds, ‘I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.’ (Luke 19:40)Today, of course, the story has changed.? Today our Lord does not pass unharmed through the midst of his enemies, but lets himself be taken.? Today the Lord who delivered a guilty woman from stoning with his convicting mercy, will not deliver himself from condemnation to death.? Today the Lord, who could have called upon the angels to deliver him, lest he dash his foot against a stone, does not call upon the angelic legions.? Today the loving Father, who ‘if his son ask bread, [would not] give him a stone’ (Matthew 7:9), permits his son to taste vinegar and gall and to thirst in a dusty noontide death.Our loving Father sent to his children manna in the old covenant and in the new sent the Messiah, the Living Bread of heaven.? But the Father’s foolish children, old and new, rather than accept the Father’s Bread and Son, would stone to death the Gift.? Or today, which amounts to the same thing, the foolish children crucify the Lord of mercy, the Saviour of the world.? They would, if you will, turn the bread back into stone.? And no mystery there:? for our Lord saves us by not saving himself, by forgoing for himself the mercy he extended to the adulterous woman, to the hungry children crying for bread, and to the wayward Israelites in Sinai.Today’s story, in Saint Luke’s version from which I have taken my text, ends with still another stone:? Joseph of Arimathea begs our Lord’s body from Pilate and lays it in the holy Sepulchre, hewn from stone.? Lent begins and ends with stones.? Joseph begs the body of Jesus.? There is a neglected text.? Our Lord presents himself, his body, constantly to us in the sacrament of the altar.? So often Christians do not condescend to receive what is so freely given, much less ‘beg’ for ‘the body of Jesus’.? Perhaps we would appreciate it more if it were so.? In any case, the Body is given by Pilate, and for time it is sealed away in a cave, behind a stone.A great stone is rolled to seal up the tomb, to keep God safely away, to remove the offence of his convicting mercy, to take away the Giver of bread from the heedless children.? But the love of God is greater than the hatred of man, and that great stone at the holy sepulchre, meant to hide God in death, will itself be taken away to show the death of death by the Lord’s death.? Today’s story ends with this stone at the tomb.? But today is Good, not despite, but because, of its death and because of this stone.? We are Christians, and though we sorrow for the day, we already know about the ending that lies beyond this ending.? The stone will not remain in place, and we already may anticipate its movement with the words of Alice Meynell’s great poem:????????? Public was Death; but Power, but Might,????????? But Life again, but Victory,????????? Were hushed into the dead of night,????????? The shuttered dark, the secrecy,????????? And all alone, alone, alone,????????? He rose again behind the stone.? [Alice Meynell]In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H20-39Second Sunday after Easter Day. April 26, 2020.?Good Shepherd Sunday.? St. Stephen’s, Athens, Georgia.St. John x, verse 11 – I am the good shepherd….In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.Years ago I supplied one long, hot summer for St. James’ Church in Cleveland, Ohio.? St. James’ is one of the oldest churches of any description in Cleveland and it has many treasures.? One day when I was cleaning a chalice after the daily mass I happened to turn it upside down.? There I was surprised to find three diamonds and around them the words, In honorem Sanctissimi Sacramenti – ‘In honor of the Most Holy Sacrament’.? Decades ago some pious layman gave those gems, to be placed where almost no one but God would know of them.? In a world where good works are often accompanied by extraordinary ostentation and publicity, rather than by the secrecy that our Lord recommends, I have seldom seen anything that so impressed me.? Of course some people would say that that placement of diamonds was a waste.? But then some people said the same thing when a woman lavishly poured precious ointment on Christ.? He did not seem to think so.? I mentioned this all some years ago in a sermon here, and a week or later received a rather large check from a member of the congregation who asked to remain anonymous.? She included a note which read, ‘My secret diamonds.’The first time I put on this chasuble, which belongs to Archbishop Lewis, I impressed in a similar way by a secret feature.? The medallion on the back of this vestment is old and depicts Christ as the Good Shepherd.? On the inside of the chasuble, where normally only the priest will notice, are embroidered the words ‘Feed My Sheep’.? Any priest who puts this on reads, ‘Feed My Sheep’.I hope you recognize those words:? ‘Feed my sheep’.? They come from a wonderful passage at the very end of St. John’s gospel.? The Risen Christ appears to some of the apostles on the shores of Galilee as they are fishing.? They have caught nothing all night, but at Christ’s command they try again and get a huge catch of fish.? Then St. John recognizes the Lord.? Peter in his excitement jumps into the water and swims to shore.? There the apostles have breakfast with Christ.? After giving them bread and fish, our Lord has a little conversation with Peter.? Three times he asks Peter, ‘Do you love me?’:? ‘Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me…?’? You will remember that Peter denied his Lord three times after his arrest.? By asking Peter three times, ‘Do you love me?’ – by asking so as to grieve Peter by implying that there is some doubt as to his love – our Lord gently rebukes him for his denials and gives him the chance to reverse his earlier failure.? God always holds open the door for us.? Three times Peter is asked and three time he protests that he loves Christ:? ‘Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee.’? Three times our Lord then responds, ‘Feed my lambs….Feed my sheep….Feed my sheep.’ (St. John xxi)What suitable words, then, these are for a priest to recall as he prepares to celebrate the sacrament that Christ instituted on the night Peter denied him.? The priest feeds Christ’s sheep in this sacrament, among other ways.? Our gospel lesson today concerning the Good Shepherd, from St. John x, sets up a model for the clergy.? Their authority is ministerial — they are meant to minister to others.? The Church does not exist for the sake of the clergy.? The clergy exist to serve the Church.? In this responsibility we have as our model Christ himself, the Good Shepherd.? Christ tells us in today’s gospel that the Good Shepherd is known by his willingness to lay down his life for the sheep.? In the epistle St. Peter draws out in more detail the evidence for Christ’s service to his flock:Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example…:…who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:? who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:? who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree…by whose stripes ye were healed.? For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.? (I St. Peter ii.)That is the ideal the clergy in general should emulate.? Since the laity also have a share in Christ’s priesthood – since we all are part of the priestly people of God who are meant to show forth Christ to the world – this ideal also applies to you.? We all are meant to serve – to serve the Church, our fellow Christians, and the world – in a self-sacrificial manner.That is the ideal.? But again, it is useful to remember that it is to St. Peter that Christ addresses the words inside my chasuble, ‘Feed my sheep’.? If the ideal is self-sacrificial service, the reality is often much more like St. Peter.? St. Peter in the gospels always seems to get things wrong.? He begins to walk on water with great enthusiasm, but then loses his faith and begins to sink (St. Matthew xiv).? At the Transfiguration when Peter sees Moses, Elijah, and Jesus talking together, he proves himself to be the first High Church sacristy rat:? he wants to build a shrine – ‘Lord,…let us make here three tabernacles….’ (St. Matthew xvii.4)? Peter will not let Christ wash his feet at the last supper; then when told that he must he asks for a whole bath (St. John xiii).? Peter swears that he will never desert Christ; a few hours later he runs away and then denies him point blank three times.? Peter is consistently presented in the gospels as slightly bumbling, over-enthusiastic, weak, and very fallible.? This presentation, by the way, is one of the great proofs for the authenticity of the gospels.? If the gospels were cooked up by the early Church to bolster its own authority, it is exceedingly strange that the greatest leader of that Church is presented as such a failure.And yet there it is.? This weak, imperfect, often failing man is the one to whom our Lord says, ‘Feed my sheep.’? This should be a great comfort to us.? We fail again and again, just as did Peter.? We have great enthusiasms, which come to nothing.? We promise our devotion and loyalty, which disappear at the first pressure.? We, like Oscar Wilde, find that we can resist anything except temptation.? We repent us of our sins, then we relapse in them.? But there is always before us the undershepherd, Peter, who was so weak but became so great.? I hold him up, not so as to confirm you in sin, but so as to encourage you in repentance.? I hold him up, not so as to lessen the sting of failure, but so as to give you hope for success.? For Peter did not end in weakness and failure.? The bumbler in the gospels is firm and strong in Acts.? The man who denied Christ in the beginning, died for him in the end.We, the sheep and the undershepherds who so often fail, have to encourage us not only the example of Peter, but even more, the promise of Christ:? ‘I am the good shepherd:? the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.’? The Good Shepherd already has given his life for us.? We are already saved.? We fail again and again.? Perverse and foolish oft we stray.? We have erred and strayed from his ways like lost sheep.? Yet he is the Good Shepherd.? He laid down his life for us, and he took it up again.? He is risen, and we are saved.? And if we will stay in the fold under his care, then we will find grace in time of need.? Like Peter we will find that failure may be undone, and sins be forgiven, and lives be improved so that we may die better than we have lived under the care of the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H20-01Advent I.? November 29, 2020.? St. Stephen’s, Athens.Romans 13, verse 14 – But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ….In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.Our collect and epistle today are built around a series of contrasts or opposites.? We hear about ‘works of darkness’ and the ‘armour of light’; ‘this mortal life’ and ‘the life immortal’; ‘great humility’ and ‘glorious majesty’; ‘the quick’ and ‘the dead’; ‘night’ and ‘day’; ‘sleep’ and ‘to awake’.? The pivot that moves us from the one side of these opposites to the other is spoken of in two main ways.? The first way is put in the first request made in the collect:? that Almighty God would ‘give us grace’.? God’s grace is what strengthens and enables us to ‘cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light’.? Grace is a free gift from God of new life that lets us move from darkness to light, from night to day, from death and dying to life unending.In my text from Romans 13 Saint Paul speaks of this pivot or movement in a second way with a figure or symbol.? Paul tells the Romans to ‘put…on the Lord Jesus Christ’.? The verb here, ‘put on’, is something we say in English about dressing.? Mom tells you to put on a sweater because it’s cold outside; or to put on something nicer looking because the occasion is more formal.? The Greek verb also, enduō, meaning ‘to put on’, refers often to clothing and dressing.? When Paul tells us to ‘put…on the Lord Jesus Christ’, he is speaking as if Christ were a garment – a cloak or coat or something else we might wear.???Now one notable thing about clothing is that it both is and is not part of us.? Clothing has to be ‘put on’, but once it’s on we often don’t think much about it.? It becomes a part of us.? A newborn baby is unclothed.? But the newborn is almost immediately cleaned up then clothed to keep warm.? From that point on clothing is normal in most circumstances.? By nature the baby may come forth naked into the world.? But healthy and happy life in the world means people need to ‘put on’ something to be warm enough and comfortable in the world.? What Saint Paul tells us is that we will not be right until we are clothed in the Lord Jesus Christ.? I have a friend who says, ‘When people dress better they tend to behave better.’? Now I am sure many bad things have been done by people in nice business suits, and no doubt many unkind things have been said by people in lovely evening wear.? But as a rule, I think my friend is right.? In terms of my text, if we have ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’, we will be more likely to behave well, to behave as Christians should behave.?This verb, enduō, ‘put on’, occurs twice in today’s epistle.? In addition to telling the Romans that they should put on the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul also tells them to ‘put on the armour of light’.? This is the same verb, ‘put on’, enduō.? The opposite of ‘cast off the works of darkness’ is to ‘clothe yourself in the armour of light’ or, as our translation says, to ‘put on’ the ‘armour of light’.? We start out in this fallen world of ours spiritually naked, not clothed, in a fallen state in which we are inclined towards selfishness.? We begin in the realm of shadows and of darkness.? If we do not receive God’s grace and put on the armour of his light, then we remain in this original obscurity, in a shadowy and insubstantial world in which we are turned in upon ourselves, alienated from the life of God and of his peace and joy.? But in the new life of grace, we are transferred, translated, moved from one side of those contrasting pairs with which I began to the other side:? from darkness to light, from death to life, from this world into the world to come.For many of us the transition from the one side of these various opposites to the other began unconsciously.? It occurred, or at least began, when we were baptized, quite possibly as infants.? At our baptism the seed of the new life of grace was planted in us and the channels of grace into our souls were opened up.? In such a case the beginning of grace was assumed as unconsciously as is the little cap and first clothes put on a newborn to keep her warm.?Paul, however, in his letters is mostly writing to adult converts.? For adults converts the beginning of grace may well be much more dramatic than for a child who grows up surrounded by real Christian influences.? Sometimes adult conversions involve an emotional and biographical upheaval.? In our gospel today Saint Matthew tells us that ‘when [Jesus] was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved’.? The word here translated as ‘moved’ is rare and means a profound agitation or disturbance.? It is a word often used in Greek for what earthquakes do.? The same word occurs, for example, later at the crucifixion where Matthew tells us that when Christ died ‘the earth did quake’ or was moved, ‘and the rocks [were] rent’.? So when Matthew tells us that on Palm Sunday ‘all the city was moved’, he means that a kind of spiritual earthquake hit the city when Christ entered its gates.? For adult converts, and sometimes for adult Christians who have strayed and then returned to the faith, conversion or reconversion is less like the quiet, happy dressing of a new baby and more like the mental upheaval and spiritual earthquake Christ brought to Jerusalem.? But in either case, whether it comes gently or dramatically, whether it is a quiet, almost unconscious maturing of something begun in infancy or is a radical alteration of life, we are called from darkness to life, from worldliness into the serious Christian commitment, from a life centered on myself to a life given to others:? from, in brief, death to life.Today we begin the new Church year with the first Sunday in Advent.? As the secular year often begins with resolutions, so the Church year – though we hope our Advent resolutions fare better than all too often do our secular resolutions to go to the gym or to lose 15 pounds.? In either case, today as we begin to prepare for the anniversary of our Lord’s birth, we should also resolve to be better Christians and better churchmen:? to be more disciplined in our prayer life, kinder to friends and neighbors and coworkers and to strangers, and more devoted to the sacraments by which God feeds us continually with spiritual meat and drink.? Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.? Clothe yourselves in the armour of light, the glory of the Lord.? Cleave to Christ.? Lead the life of grace through which our lives gain eternal meaning and by which grace even in the midst of this world’s present humility, we? glimpse the glorious majesty of the life of the world to come.?In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H20-08Feast of St. John the Divine, December 27, 2020In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.Today is, according to the Prayer Book, the feast of Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist.? This John was one of the twelve apostles, a son of Zebedee and brother to Saint James.? Our Lord gave these brothers the name ‘Boanerges’, the ‘sons of thunder’ (Mark iii.17), because of their impetuosity.? John and James, together with Saint Peter, were our Lord’s closest disciples.? This inner group of three were the only ones present for several events in our Lord’s life, such as the Transfiguration and the agony in the garden of Gethsemane.? St. John traditionally is considered the author of the fourth gospel, the three epistles called by his name, and the Book of Revelation.?In the 19th century radical German scholars began to doubt the authenticity of the gospel of Saint John, and asserted that it in fact could not have been written until late in the 2nd century, long after John’s death.? This was a fairly silly opinion, even in the 19th century, but was blown to smithereens by the publication in 1935 of a codex fragment from the gospel now in the John Rylands Library, Manchester.? This fragment is from the early 2nd century and is the earliest known surviving manuscript of any part of the New Testament.? It follows that John’s gospel had to have been written before the early 2nd century.? Which is to say, there is no good reason to doubt that it was written when the Church always thought it was written, late in the 1st century.? Archaeological and other evidence since the 1930s have confirmed that John is rooted in knowledge of 1st century Palestine and Jerusalem.?Saint Jerome, writing much later, says that John wrote his gospel against various heretics who doubted the divinity of Christ and his existence before his conception in Saint Mary.? Saint Irenaeus names in particular the heretic Cerinthus as John’s opponent.? The 4th century Church historian, Eusebius, quotes St. Polycarp as saying that John was once in the bath house at Ephesus.? When John heard that this heretic, Cerinthus, was in the bath house as well, he ran outside, fearing that the building would fall in on such an enemy of truth.?In the book of Acts it is apparent that John was one of the most important leaders of the early Church in Jerusalem.? In several events in the first half of the book he is closely associated with Saint Peter.? Later tradition has it that John went to Asia Minor and settled in Ephesus, where he lived to an extreme old age of almost 100.? It seems likely that the gospel as we now have it was written down on the basis of John’s eyewitness testimony late in the 1st century by John’s own followers.? Saint Irenaeus, who lived until about the year 200 and was a major figure in settling early Christian doctrine, tells us that as a boy he listened to St. Polycarp, who himself ‘was familiar with John and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord’.? There was, therefore, because of St. John’s long life, only one generation separating the eyewitnesses and disciples of Christ from Irenaeus and the Fathers of the late 2nd and early 3rd century.? Tradition also has it that John was the only one of the apostles to die a natural death.In addition to being called a ‘son of thunder’ John refers to himself in his gospel, not by name but as the ‘beloved disciple’.? It was to St. John that our Lord from the Cross entrusted his mother, and it was to her that he entrusted John, saying, ‘Woman, behold thy son!’ and ‘Behold thy mother!’? ‘And from that hour,’ the gospel continues, ‘that disciple took her unto his own home.’ (xix.26-7)? As a follower beloved of Christ, St. John stands as a representative of all later Christians.In Church art Saint John’s symbols are an eagle and a chalice with a serpent.? I am not sure what the chalice with a serpent means.? Of the eagle, St. Augustine writes as follows:…the Apostle Saint John is not unfitly compared in point of spiritual discernment to an eagle.? For in his preaching he has taken a higher flight than the other three [gospels], and has soared aloft more sublimely….The other three Evangelists walked with the Lord as a man might walk, as on earth, for of the Godhead they told only a little.? But the Evangelist John seems to scorn to tread the earth.? Even in the very opening words of his discourse he thunders upon us, and soars not only above earth and air and sky, but above the hosts of the angels also, and all the array of the invisible Powers.? Through them all he passes to the very Maker of them all, saying:? ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’Saint John is the most theological of the gospel writers.? The divinity of Christ is plain from the outset in John.? That is why those who do not believe in our Lord’s divinity have tried so long to discredit his gospel.Whereas the other gospel writers tell us many stories about Christ and his words and deeds, John’s goal is show us the meaning of Christ and his words and deeds.? For instance, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us about the baptism of Christ and the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper.? John assumes that we already know about these events.? Instead of repeating the stories, he goes deeper and tells us what they mean.? He tells us about the footwashing (ch. 13) to show us that the meaning of Eucharist is loving service.? He gives us a long discourse about the Bread of Life to show us the meaning of holy communion (ch. 6).? He shows us the meaning of baptism by a discourse with Nicodemus about being born again (iii.3, 7) and by a discourse with the Samaritan woman about the water that ‘springeth up into everlasting life’ (iv.14).?Perhaps the central theme of both John’s gospel and his first epistle is the glory and love of God revealed to us in Christ in order to lead us into the life of God himself.? The path that leads to this everlasting life is love of our neighbor in imitation of Christ’s love for us.? This message is summed up in a story about St. John in one of Jerome’s commentaries.? Jerome writes:The blessed Evangelist John lived at Ephesus down to such an extreme old age that he was with difficulty supported in the arms of his disciples and so was carried to the church.? And being unable to articulate many words, he was wont to utter each time to the congregation the simple words:? ‘Little children, love one another.’? At last his disciples and brethren were weary of hearing these words so often, and asked him, ‘Master, why do you always say only this?’? To which question he gave an answer worthy of John:? ‘It is the commandment of the Lord, and if this only be done, it is enough.’Little children, love one another.? If this only be done, it is enough.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.H21-54Feast of Saint James. Our Saviour, Florence, SC. 25 July 2021.Saint Matthew 20, verse 21 – Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left, in thy kingdom.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.There are two apostles named James. The apostle we recall today is the brother of John. James and John with Saint Peter appear to be our Lord’s three most favored followers, in that they only are with Christ at the Transfiguration and on several other occasions. The gospels tell us of the calling of James to be an apostle at the beginning of the public ministry. Our lesson from Acts today tells of James’ martyrdom after the Ascension. Our gospel story for today occurs, of course, between the calling of James and his death. The basic story is given in the twentieth chapter of Saint Matthew and in the tenth chapter of Saint Mark. There is an immediately noticeable difference between these two versions. According to Mark, James and John themselves ask Jesus for the best seats when he comes into his ‘glory’ (10:37). In Saint Matthew’s version, however, the brothers put their mom up to the task, perhaps reckoning that their self-seeking will seem a little bit less selfish if somebody else, albeit their mother, asks on their behalf. In the subsequent conversation, however, our Lord cuts through the pretense and speaks, not to their mother, Salome, but to James and John themselves, directly. That is an implied rebuke here, as if Christ says, ‘Why do you drag your mother into this? We all know who is really asking for promotion here.’ Chutzpah is not a Christian term, but it does seem to apply in this case. If that first rebuke is merely implied, a second one seems more direct when our Lord tells the brothers that promotion and leadership in his kingdom require service and suffering. It means drinking a ‘cup’, whose nature will become clear at Gethsemane, when our Lord begs his Father to take that cup away from himself. Leadership under Christ means sharing Christ’s sufferings, not the kinds of reward James and John seem to want. It is true that the brothers here say that they are willing and able to drink the cup. That, however, it not yet clear.To continue for a moment with this idea that our Lord is rebuking the brothers for their presumption, we might see a third rebuke in the immediate aftermath of today’s lesson. The next and final incident in chapter 20 of Saint Matthew’s gospel concerns a little story of a healing miracle. Matthew writes, ‘And, behold, two blind men sitting by the way side, when they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David.’ (20:30) Please notice that there are two blind men involved in the healing. The blind men are, I think, personifications for the spiritual state of James and John in today’s lesson. I think what is going on in this story is that our Lord is implicitly suggesting that James and John required correction and a kind of healing of their spiritual confusion and blindness. If this is right, then our Lord in effect has rebuked the brothers twice in speech and then once in a symbolic deed by healing physical blindness.We have now briefly considered our Lord correcting two brothers, who want to sit ‘one on [his] right hand, and another on the left’. We also have read about him immediately thereafter healing two blind men, as if to illustrate his correction of James and John. Let me remind you of one other occasion when Christ teaches two men who are in dangerous straits. In the familiar story of our Lord’s crucifixion you will recall that ‘Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left.’ (27:38) The ‘cup’ of our Lord’s sufferings is filled to the brim on that occasion. His Father in heaven has not removed that cup. James and John confidently asserted that they were able to drink the Lord’s cup, and therefore perhaps deserved the thrones they requested at the right and left hand of the Lord. But on Golgotha James is nowhere to be seen. Here we might see a fourth and final rebuke for the pushy brothers. Later Church legends tell us that most of the apostles eventually died for their Lord, so we need not despair of James. John by the time of the crucifixion seems to have learned the lesson: he is the only apostle who remains to the end at the foot of the cross. And perhaps it is significant that later Church legends also suggest that John was the only one of the Twelve who did not die by martyrdom. By standing steadfast with the faithful women, John drank the cup the Lord gave him to drink. In any case, today we note that Saint Matthew carefully notes of pairs of men – James and John, the two blind men, and the two malefactors at Golgotha – a subtle rebuke to the prideful blindness we see in today’s lesson.The basic point of the lesson is clear. Whatever may come for us in the kingdom of heaven, when God’s will will be perfectly and fully done, here and now in this world Christians are called to lead by serving, to live by giving up our lives for others, and to be saved by abandoning ourselves to God’s sometimes alarming providential care. This lesson is simple to state and difficult to absorb, easy to assert and hard to fulfil. Most of the most important things about Christianity are that way: ‘Trust God. Forgive.’ – three brief little words that imply a lifetime of effort and learning. In Saint Matthew’s gospel among other things our Lord is teaching his apostles. He slowly selects, rebukes, corrects, warns, shapes, and blesses them. Saint James, whom we honor today, did not begin as the great apostle, one of our Lord’s three closest followers. Only little by little was he formed into that character. And so it still is with us today.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H21-28Palm Sunday. 28 March 2021. Saint Luke’s, Augusta, GASaint Matthew 27 verse 42 – Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others; himself he cannot save.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.In Saint Matthew’s Passion our Lord on the cross is mocked by people three times: first, by ‘they that passed by’ (39); secondly, by ‘the chief priests…with the scribes and elders’; and, finally, by ‘the thieves also, which were crucified with him’ (44). And all of this mockery occurs beneath the silent mockery of the ‘accusation written’ and ‘set up over his head’, reading ‘THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS’.Man proposes, but God disposes; and, the saying goes, God is not mocked. The passers-by and chief priests and thieves may mock, but God replies with earthquake and eclipse and the rending of the temple veil. Consider only one of these replies: ‘Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land’ (45). The crucifixion plunges the world back to the primordial chaos and darkness of Genesis 1, from whence God called forth the world at creation. The crucifixion brings back for three hours the horrible darkness which was the penultimate plague of Egypt and lasted three days: ‘that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt,’ as God says to Moses (Exodus 10.21). Darkness comes with the cross, and so is fulfilled the word of the Lord to the prophet Amos:The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more….Shall not the land tremble for this…? And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day…. (8.1, 8, 9)Man mocks, but God will have the final word.But also notice that even in their mockery, the priests of Israel are revealing the truth. This fact is noted explicitly by Saint John when he tells us of the hatching of the plot against the Lord. Caiaphas, the high priest, John tells us, inadvertently prophesies that ‘Jesus should die for that nation; and not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God’. Caiaphas ‘this spake not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied’ (12.50ff.). There is the power of ordination in spades: the high priest is a prophet, even as he plots to destroy God. If Saint John proclaims the high priest a prophet, let us consider again when the high priests say about the Lord upon the cross: ‘he saved others; himself he cannot save.’ There is another prophecy, another truthful saying from the lips of those who mean to mock. The only flaw in its truthfulness is the modal verb, ‘cannot’. It would be perfectly truthful if they had said, ‘he saved other; himself he will not save.’ As the great hymn of this season puts it, ‘Born for this, he met his passion, This the Saviour freely willed’ (Pange lingua). Our Saviour freely and willingly accepts the cross. With this single change, the mockery of the chief priests, scribes, and elders is turned into a proclamation of the meaning of the cross.We may again alter the prophecy slightly to consider even more deeply the meaning of the cross. ‘He saved others, because he does not save himself.’ And how often that is the case. Self-sacrifice occurs all the time in our world, when a parent or a spouse or a friend or even a stranger gives his own life for the sake of another. Some years ago a priest of our diocese gave up a kidney so that his son would not have to spend a life on dialysis. That is not the ultimate self-sacrifice, but it is a pretty big one. He helped his son precisely with willingness to suffer a loss himself. This is the exchange, the self-giving of love, and it is the heart of the cross. The inner meaning of the Passion and cross is conveyed in the mockery of the scribes and priests. Strip away the scorn that was intended, and it shows us that salvation comes from God precisely because, as Saint Paul puts it, he …made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2.7f.)Or to put the same thing in another way, we may summarize today’s meaning in Saint John’s most familiar words: ‘So God loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son.’ He gave himself, so we are loved. He humbled himself, so we are exalted. Himself he did not save, so we are saved. Darkness came at noon, that the light might shine in the night. He died, and so we live. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H21-99Self-Effacement and the Liturgy, November 18, 2021From Most Rev. Mark Haverland’s post on Anglican Catholic Liturgy and TheologyFew things are more important in the liturgical life of a cleric than whether he approaches public worship in a spirit of self-effacement or as a matter of self-expression.? And few things are so seldom explicitly considered by clerics.The key dividing line between a traditional and a modernist approach to worship, I think, is not the language of the liturgy (Latin versus English; Tudor and Stuart English versus ersatz modern or actually modern).? It is not the date of one’s prayer book or missal.? It is not Pius V versus Paul VI.? The key dividing line is whether the cleric does or does not assume, whether consciously or not, that he should efface himself by submission to liturgical authority and to the objective nature of the Church’s worship.Once this simple principle is understood, any moderately observant worshipper almost immediately can know whether a liturgy is traditional or modernist.?For the second time in two years I was present in a Roman Catholic beach parish this autumn.? The celebrant said in his sermon that some people tell him that they are distracted at Mass by his constant grinning.? This rather serious criticism the priest swept aside by saying that he was a just a joyful, happy worshipper.? The priest thereby admitted, though he did not take the matter to heart, that some people find his liturgical style distracting and something that stood between themselves and God.? The priest seemed to believe that his own emotional reaction to worship and the liturgy is more important than the experience of the people or the objective duty of his role.? Since congregations in time tend to adopt the assumptions and approach of their clergy, this essentially self-expressive, emotional, even sentimental approach to the Mass will color those regularly subjected to it.? The complainers and those distracted will tend to be people from a traditional background:? such as me.Because, of course, traditionally a priest’s interior feelings about the liturgy and his emotional response to his liturgical activity are only subjectively relevant, as when the priest privately examines his conscience or makes his confession.? A tired or unhappy priest, a priest who at a particular Mass does not feel particularly joyful, is still expected to do his job competently, to enact the Mysteries with dignity, and to open the gate of heaven for the people of God objectively.?Everything about traditional worship teaches this central fact.? Consider the ways in which the great Churches and the central tradition of Christendom have sought to efface the ministers of her worship:First, the ancient Church quickly learned the dangers of permitting her clergy freedom to make up the liturgy themselves.? The construction of liturgical texts ad libitum permitted the introduction of explicitly heretical teaching.? When the clergy were free to improvise, Arian clergy, for example, could introduce Arian doctrine not only in the language of creeds, but also in the Eucharistic canon.? More commonly still, perhaps, clergy who were theologically deficient or simply inattentive were likely to introduce error or ambiguity inadvertently when left free to improvise.? And most commonly of all, probably, clergy with too much liberty were likely to impose upon their people bad taste, bad judgement, and bad prose.? ?A fixed liturgical text forces the deep subordination of the individual celebrant’s beliefs, tastes, and understanding to the much sounder mind of the Church that he serves.?Secondly, the use of vestments, less importantly but more visibly, literally covers up the individual celebrant and his personality.? Uniforms always serve the goal of fitting an individual into an organization, a group, or a role.? A poor sense of color coordination or taste in fashion matter little if a priest puts on a black cassock or a black suit, black clerical shirt, and black shoes.? Even more in the liturgy itself, the use of vestments literally covers up the individuality of the ministers in the external garb of the roles they are serving.? For this reason, the use of relatively traditional styles and colors of vestments is desirable.? Strikingly beautiful vestments may be desirable.? Strikingly different vestments are not.?Joe Sallenger’s personal aside: I have joked with priests that they all dress alike because they are interchangeable. If the priest laughs, smiles, or even groans – you probably have a good one. If the priest seems offended – well, there may be trouble ahead.Thirdly, restraint in gesture and movement minimizes distraction for the worshipper.? Sudden, striking, intrusive, unusual, and flamboyant manual acts, arm movements, and other movement all turn the attention of the worshipper from devotion and the objective significance of the liturgy itself to awareness of the person through whom the liturgy is enacted.? Of course, anything new in a parish’s worship might cause some distraction or annoyance to some people for a time.? If the priest at Saint Swithun’s appears under a biretta, when none of his predecessors ever did, that may be somewhat distracting for a time.? A new setting of the Gloria in excelsis or singing the Lord’s Prayer rather than saying it might annoy or distract some people.? But such variations within set standards can be consistent with self-restraint and minimization of the startling or intrusive, so long as they are not overly frequent.?Fourthly, and related to the two previous points, clergy traditionally were taught to minimize eye contact with the congregation – except, of course, in a sermon when the personality of the preacher is properly given freer scope.? In the liturgy itself eye contact pushes those in the congregation to encounter the cleric as an individual rather than as a minister.? The liturgical officiant properly is the enactor of a role:? in the Eucharist he is the alter Christus.? That role is infinitely more important than anything the officiant is personally and individually.? The priest, when addressing the congregation should look at a point on the floor, not at Mrs. Smith or Mr. Jones.? The priest should not intrude himself between the worshipper and God, and incidentally also should not distract himself by looking at Mrs. Smith’s odd hair or Mr. Jones’s startling shirt.? Likewise, during the administration of Holy Communion, the priest should not look into the eyes of the communicants, but rather at the host or the chalice that he is administering:? Jesus Really Present should be the center of the priest’s and communicant’s attention, not each other.? Similarly, I once knew a priest who when placing the host on the palm of each communicant’s hand would fold his own hand over theirs.? This intrusive, physical act compelled a personal encounter between the priest and communicant precisely when the communicant was preparing for the most direct, intimate, and important encounter possible with his or her Lord.? At the very moment when the priest should most definitely recede from the picture, he was placing himself firmly into it.? Wrong, wrong, wrong.Finally, the priest should as a rule read the liturgical texts in an objective, clear, and distinct fashion.? Of course the priest should not mangle his reading or make it unintelligible.? But the priest also should not attempt to interpret the text by emotional, expressive reading or by sobbing forth the text.? The text, particularly texts that regularly recur as part of the Ordinary of the Mass, carry their own freight of meaning if read simply, clearly, and distinctly.? The priest does not need to sigh forth, ‘Do THISSSSS….in remembranccccce….of….meeeee.’? He only needs to say, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’?Most of these individual points, and the general principle behind them of self-restraint, self-effacement, and modesty in the liturgical celebrant, are, I think, tacitly understood by those who are accustomed to traditional worship.? The articulation of these matters, however, will, I hope, help to inform laymen about the soundness of their tacit and instinctive aversion to modernist worship.? And, I hope, such articulation will also help guide the clergy both by suggesting the general principle behind particular practices and also by indicating ways in which that principle should extend itself but which they may not have fully considered.?H21-03Advent III. Saint Stephen’s, Athens. December 12, 2021.Saint Matthew 11, verse 3 – Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. In our gospel and my text today messengers come to Christ from John the Baptist and ask, in effect, ‘Who are you?’ or, ‘Who are you?’ I told you two weeks ago that that is the main question we should be asking ourselves during Advent. Who is Jesus? who is he in himself and, just as importantly, who is he for me? Or, to put this another way, What difference does he make to me and my life? In King James’ English, John’s followers ask, ‘Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?’ In modern English that means, ‘Are you the one we’re expecting, or will he be somebody else?’ In Jewish terms their question is, ‘Are you the messiah, or will the messiah be someone else?’ As is often the case, our Lord does not answer the question directly. His answer is indirect. He tells John’s followers to report to John what they have been witnessing. Again, in effect, he tells them that his actions speak for themselves and provide the answer to their questions. ‘Forget what people say about me; forget what I say about me; look at what I’m doing.’ – which is usually a good answer when we really want to understand somebody. Actions speak louder than words.Now at this point we have to look further back in the gospel. Today’s lesson is the very beginning of chapter 11. Chapter 10 is private sermon spoken by our Lord to his disciples, usually called the missionary sermon. Chapter 10 is words, not deeds, and those words were not heard publicly or by John’s followers and therefore could not be reported back to John by them. So to know what ‘works’ or deeds Jesus wants reported to John we have to go back in the gospel to previous stories of deeds. Those stories come in chapters 8 and 9. Fortunately for us, chapters 8 and 9 of Matthew are filled with works. These chapters contain ten miracles, which together give a comprehensive picture of the authority of Christ over physical illnesses and infirmities, over what we now would describe as mental illness, and over the natural world. They show Christ as the Lord and Ruler of men and women, angels and demons, storms and the seaOur Lord in his answer today says, ‘Go and show John again the things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.’ That is a list of six things, five of which are miracles. These are precisely the things that occurred in chapters 8 and 9. In those chapters there are healings of the blind, of lepers, and of the lame, and also there is a raising up of a dead child. Our Lord does not ask that John or John’s followers begin by listening to a sermon, but instead tells them to think about good works which he has already done. Now I just said that of the six things mentioned by our Lord, five were miracles. The miracles build up to a crescendo: ‘the dead are raised up’. What greater deed could be done than to raise the dead? But in fact that final miracle is not the final item in the list. The final item in the list is this: ‘the poor have the gospel preached to them.’ It seemed in this lesson that attention was moved away from words and placed instead squarely on deeds: ‘Look at what I do, not at what I say.’ But then in the list of what Christ does, we circle back from his deeds to his words: ‘the poor have the gospel preached to them.’ The point of the miracles is to authenticate the teaching. Miracles have little permanent significance. As I often remind you, every single person healed by God will eventually get sick again. Every person Christ raised from the dead will die again. Miracles are signs, not destinations. Miracles point to something else. And what the miracles properly point us towards is that final item in the message to John: Tell John that ‘the poor have the gospel preached to them.’ You, my friends, are the poor. I am the poor. No matter how rich we are, we have only a little store of life, which is passing quickly. We need good news preached to us, as John in his prison, moving quickly to his execution and death, needed good news preached to him. And here is the message from our Lord to John and to you and to me: the Lord of creation, the Lord of the star fields; the Lord of miracles who healed the sick and raised the dead; the Lord who stilled the storm and calmed the sea; the Lord whose birth angels will proclaim to poor shepherds in a few days: that Lord has come to our world and brought us hope and given us a life that will not end after the little dramas and the few years of our worldly time have ended. We are dying into life, where all of this world’s sorrows will be reversed and where all things marred by sin will be healed by Christ. John’s followers asked, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another? The answer is that we do not need to look for another. Our Saviour has already come and he has preached the gospel to the poor. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.H22-24 Lent II. March 15, 2022.Saint Matthew 15, verse 21 – But he answered her not a word.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen.My text today is no text.? God’s word in this verse is no word.? I am going to preach about silence.? To be more precise, when the Gentile woman comes to Jesus asking him to heal her daughter, his reply is to keep silent:? ‘But he answered not a word.’? In this story our Lord does not remain silent, but he begins with silence.? Since Scripture is never without significance, we should ask ourselves what this silence of Jesus means.In our day literary critics often seem stark raving mad, if they are not merely careerists or con artists.?? But one thing the new critics have usefully reminded us all is that the meaning of a story or writing includes not just what it says, but also what it leaves unsaid.?A few years ago a friend of mine took a summer van trip out west with his five sons and with a friend who brought along his three sons.? After the trip Morgan made each of his boys write a ‘What I did on my summer vacation’ account, with the oldest son helping the youngest – who was too young to write yet.? In due course I was given a copy of the five accounts.?Now the high point of the trip in four of the accounts was the morning when the two adults and the boys climbed into the van and rode for an hour before discovering that there were seven boys present, not eight.? Philip had been left behind.? Peter, Crawford, Kemp, and Cole all dwelt at some length on this matter of forgetting Philip at the motel. ?Philip’s account, however, passed over that particular incident in complete silence.? For anyone who knew what happened, Philip’s silence about it might be interpreted as what literary critics call the ‘presence of the absent’.?Now sometimes silence is significant and sometimes it is not.? The gospels contain not a word about nuclear reactors or Swiss cheese or the Ming dynasty, but that silence is neither strange nor significant.? But the gospels also are silent about our Lord laughing or smiling.? The gospels tell us that ‘Jesus wept’, that he was sorrowful or groaned, and that he was moved with compassion.? The gospels never say that our Lord laughed.? This absence of our Lord’s laughter is surely significant.? It tells us that our Lord fulfils the words of the prophet Isaiah about God’s Suffering Servant: ?‘He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: ?and we hid as it were our faces from him…’ (53:3).? In this case the silence of Scripture is significant.The most explicit case of Christ’s silence is in the description of his trial in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.? In all three cases when our Lord first appears before Pontius Pilate, all he says to Pilate is, ‘Thou sayest’ (Matthew 27:11).? Thereafter he is silent.? He says, in effect, ‘You speak, because I am not going to speak.’? And so Pilate and his wife and the chief priests and the mob all speak in the story, but Christ is silent.? Pilate asks him, ‘Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee?’? But our Lord ‘answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly.’ (v. 14)?? He answered never a word; he was silent.? And that was a most eloquent silence:? non-resisting, not hateful, not angry, patient, humble, accepting of God’s will without word or complaint.?Our Lord reminds us earlier in Saint Matthew that he did not have to accept the verdict against himself:? ‘Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?’ (26:53f.)? When our Lord says to Pilate, ‘You speak,’ he is freely accepting divine Providence.? When he is silent in the face of the onslaught of the ‘hour and power of darkness’ (Luke 22:53), he again signals his submission to the Father’s plan of salvation.So in our lesson today, when our Lord answered the woman not a word, his silence may well be significant.? He does not say to her what later he says to Pilate: ?‘Thou sayest’; ‘You speak.’? Nonetheless, the woman does speak, and indeed it is in the space created by Christ’s silence, both with this woman and later with Pilate, that his will is worked out.? Here our Lord’s silence gives the woman the opportunity to show her love for her daughter, her faith in Christ, and her own wit and resourcefulness.? It is in this case precisely God’s silence that allows the necessary words to be spoken by the woman, and that in turn allows the word of God to be effective for her.Think of it another way.? Conversation is virtually impossible when the background is a stream of constant and loud noise.? Meaningful conversation requires the space of relative quiet.? Saint John calls our Lord ‘the Word’ by whom all things were made (1:1, 3).? God the Son is the agent of creation and he equally is the power that sustains all creation in being.? If the Word of God were completely silent, then all that is would dissolve into nothingness.? But although the Word of God is constantly uttered, what it creates in part is a world in which you and I are given the power to speak our own words.? God is willing to be silent, or at least to create a relatively quiet space, where we can speak and act and live and exercise our own free will and make our own moral and spiritual decisions.? It is not that God has nothing to say to us.? But he lets us speak too, and then he responds appropriately to our faith and love and wit or, perhaps, to our infidelity and hate and stupidity.? And perhaps sometimes also he seems silent so that he and we can be quiet together and simply commune quietly in love.? God is never utterly silent; but sometimes he speaks to us by seeming to be silent and by listening to us.? So it was with the Gentile woman.? She speaks to Jesus, and he by turns is silent and then speaks and then acts.?If what you mostly seem to hear from God is his silence, then you should neither be alarmed nor discouraged.? In truth God always is addressing you through the words of Scripture and the book of nature and the music of worship and in a thousand ways.? Sometimes God’s relative silence is his gift of space to you.? What matters, as always, is how you respond, whether to his words or his silences.? We should not be alarmed or discouraged by God’s quiet.? This is an important lesson for us to remember in Lent, which is certainly a time for us to quiet ourselves and listen to God seriously as we prepare for Easter.? We should both persist in prayer, as does the woman of Canaan on behalf of her daughter, and sometimes also take God’s advice in the psalms:? ‘Be still then, and know that I am God.’? In time God’s answers will come, and we are much more likely to hear them then if we have been listening quietly all along.In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.? Amen. ................
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