Anglican Church in North America
April 13, 2010
ONE HUNDRED AND SIX NEW CONGREGATIONS IN NINE MONTHS
New Anglican congregations are springing up all over North America. Since the church's founding in June of 2009 with 703 congregations, an additional 106 new churches have either joined or have been planted by the Anglican Church, bringing the church's total number of congregations to 809.
"When we began in June of 2010, I issued a challenge that we plant 1,000 new churches in the five years of my service as your Archbishop. It is wonderful to see how much progress has already been made," said Archbishop Robert Duncan.
One of those new church plants is Restoration Anglican Church in Addison, Texas. The congregation, which began meeting last fall, hosts between 100 and 120 people for Sunday services.
"We just want to do church for the sake of others. We really feel we have a calling for those who are broken, those who are lost and those who are looking for a place where they can walk through life together and grow in faith with other believers," said the Rev. Jed Roseberry, Resurrection's founding priest.
Restoration has made that vision concrete by taking on projects such as working with another ministry to provide a Thanksgiving meal for 438 members of their community last November. They also have focused on introducing people to Jesus through an Alpha Course and other intentional efforts.
In everything Restoration has done, from finding a place to meet, to organizing their first worship service, Roseberry emphasized that God has made impossible things possible. "I have come to see and realize that God loves working in the realm of the impossible, because when he does, he gets all of the glory," he explained.
Church of the Epiphany in Hamilton, Ontario, is another new Anglican church. According to the Rev. Vicky Hedelius, the church began meeting on January 31. The congregation's initial membership stepped out of an Anglican Church in Canada parish. "We left everything behind, and we started fresh," said Hedelius.
A local congregation of another denomination agreed to let Church of the Epiphany use their chapel as worship space, and congregation members, led by their deacon, the Rev. St. Clair Cleveland, constructed new furnishings for the space.
Like Restoration, the people of Epiphany have learned a great deal about God's love and faithfulness to them, said Hedelius. "We stepped out naked, and he has clothed us All you have to do is take the first step, and He guides you on to the next," she explained.
Being part of the Anglican Church in North America is important for the people of Church of the Epiphany. "To be part of this movement of God's Spirit in our church is exciting, It's humbling, it's such a blessing" said Hedelius.
The Anglican Church in North America unites more than 100,000 Anglican Christians in 28 dioceses and 809 congregations. For more information about the Anglican Church, please visit http://www.anglicanchurch.net.
April 13, 2010
April 12, 2010
It's not primarily about doubt
on John 20.19-31
by Scott Homer
History has been hard on St. Thomas. We have just read a passage from the Gospel of St. John known as the “doubting Thomas” passage. The stock teaching on this passage says that while the other disciples were faithful, Thomas struggled with his faith but that is that really what is going on here? Well, not exactly. The truth is that not just Thomas, but all the disciples, struggled to believe. And that is understandable isn’t it? Isn’t it a little difficult to believe that Jesus died on Good Friday and was alive three days later? I have never seen anything like that happen have you? And so the disciples doubt their own eyes. They all doubt that it is actually Jesus they are seeing until Jesus shows them his wounds. And then, once they see his wounds St. John tells us that, “the disciples saw the Lord and were glad.” So, the Gospel this morning is not really about doubting. It is really about God’s blessing—about how God’s blessing will be administered to the world and how God’s blessing will be received by the world. What I am saying is that, "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” God’s blessing depends upon belief, and belief is accepting that something is true, sight unseen. We think “seeing is believing.” We have been taught to trust our own eyes. Jesus teaches us to “believe without seeing,” that the blessing comes when we trust in what we have been told. And so, the fact is that none of us have seen Jesus firsthand but we have been blessed by believing the testimony of Peter and James and John, of Mark and Matthew and Luke. As the old children’s song says, “Jesus loves me this I know, cause the Bible tells me so.”
Now in our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus, good to his word, had come to visit with his disciples. He had told them, and apparently they didn’t believe him, that he would rise again from the dead on the third day. So, good to his word, he comes to them on the third day and stands in their midst, alive. Jesus has conquered death. He is master life and death no longer hold any power over him (or over his followers). And Jesus’ first words to his disciples are, “Peace be with you.”
I don’t suppose any of the disciples would have understood the immense importance of those first words spoken by Jesus, “Peace be with you.” Jesus was not exchanging a greeting with them. Jesus was declaring the new facts of life. The Peace that Jesus was declaring was the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. Jesus declares to his followers that there is no longer any hostility between God and man. The war is over. The victory is won and peace has been restored. The sins of the world that had left humanity distant and isolated from the love of God, the sins of the world that had forced us all to live under a curse, destined to die, destined to eternal separation from God, the sins of the world were no more—they had been atoned for. They had been forgiven and forgotten. The punishment that God had declared on mankind had been meted out and all the prisoners set free. Jesus paid for our sins on the cross. We were now at peace with God, free to be his beloved children, free to live out our lives with joy. Peace with God is the greatest gift the world could have ever received. It is the gift that Jesus gave us on the cross. And equally great is the gift that we received on Easter morning, when Jesus proved to have power even over death itself. As his followers we can know freedom from God’s judgment and freedom from eternal death. And so, when Jesus says to the disciples, “peace be with you” it is the confirmation that they have received the greatest gift ever given—peace with God.
Now we spend so much time beating up on Thomas for his doubting that we usually miss what Jesus says to his disciples in this passage. After he says, “Peace be with you, he says “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” The Father sent Jesus to establish peace, to proclaim peace, and to reconcile the world to himself. Jesus says he is sending his followers out to do the same. Jesus is not interested in his disciples living their lives afraid, locked up in their private little rooms. Jesus never intended for us to be hunkered down in our little churches every Sunday morning. Jesus wants us to go out into the world. In the same way that Jesus was sent into the world, his followers are now being sent into the world. This is not the first time that Jesus sends his followers out to do kingdom work. It won’t be the last either. Jesus is always directing us to go out into the world and to witness to the power of the resurrection, to care for the poor, to heal the sick, and to bring blessing in Jesus’ name. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus; very last words to his followers is to, “Go out, and make disciples of the whole world.” Jesus’ message of peace with God is too good to keep to ourselves. It is a message that has to be shared with other sinners. It is a word that is not just intended for us here in this place. It is the hope of the world. It is intended for people everywhere who are suffering, alone, and downtrodden. It is for the rich and the poor. It is for the young and the old. It is for blacks and whites and Asians. It is not just for Christians. It is a message that needs to be spoken to Muslims, and Jews, and Buddhists, and Hindus, and Agnostics, and Atheists. Because true peace is peace with God, and true peace only comes through the resurrected life of Jesus. It is only when a person belongs to Jesus that the war ends and peace is restored—and that means that Jesus is always sending his followers out, always asking us to tell the story, always insisting that we witness to his power and always asking others to join us as his followers.
He is sending us out…and praise God we are responding. We have begun to go out. We have begun to invite family and friends, neighbors and coworkers. We have begun to share lunch with people we do not know, to have friendships with people different than us. We have begun to invite people on weekend trips with us. We have begun to go out, in small ways, and we will be seeking new ways of going out, away from this cloistered little building, ways to get our congregation out into the midst of the community around us where the message of God’s love can be heard by others—where Christ’s transforming power can be experienced first hand. I want to ask you to help us envision it. What would it look like? How would we begin to obey Jesus’ call to “go forth into the whole world?” Will you pray and ask God about it?
You see, that is the whole point of this story about Thomas. There is nothing unique about Thomas’ doubts. We all have doubts. The punch line of the whole story comes when Jesus says, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” The world is full of people who have never actually seen the Risen Christ, and they never will in this lifetime. Jesus says, a person doesn’t have to be able to see him, and to place their hands in his wounds in order to be blessed by him. In fact, the best blessing is reserved for those who do not see and yet believe. It isn’t just a handful of first century followers that get the blessing. It is the millions of people from countries around the world, people who lived in the Middle Ages, and people alive today. The blessing is for all of us who believe even though we have never received documentary evidence. When we believe in the miracle, when we trust in Jesus, sight unseen, we are the ones who receive God’s blessing.
But how will those who have not seen the resurrected Jesus ever come to believe if nobody tells them? This town is full of young people that have never really heard about Jesus. And you don’t have to go out to the “less fortunates” for that to be true. There are grandchildren of people in this parish who are growing up without ever hearing the Christian story. America is no longer a Christian nation, and even we in the church, even us who call ourselves Christians are woefully uninformed about what it means to be a Christian or what it is that Christians actually believe. We seem to think we can make it up any way we personally want it to be. That is why we have all this wacky theology these days. We need to get smart about our faith. We need to be able to tell the story—all of us, not just a select few—we all need to be able and willing to tell the story if we ever hope to win America back for the Lord. Jesus is always sending his followers out, out to tell the story, out to witness to the power and to ask others to join us as his followers. How will those who have not seen the resurrected Jesus ever come to believe if we do not tell them?
This is the real message about Doubting Thomas. It is the story written by St. John the Evangelist who came by his name honestly. He has written the story with a purpose. And he tells us what that purpose is, right at the end of our reading this morning. He says, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”
We have been blessed because we have believed, even though we have not seen. And interestingly enough, when we believe without seeing, the power of Christ really does enter into our lives and transform us and our circumstances. When we step forward in faith and believe what we have not seen, God moves in tangible and concrete ways in our lives and so we are not left without our own testimony. We are being saved through the power of Christ, and as God’s redeemed people we are being called to go out and tell the world about the greatest gift the world has ever received, so that they too may know the immense joy and the tremendous privilege of being Christ’s own forever. Amen.
by Scott Homer
History has been hard on St. Thomas. We have just read a passage from the Gospel of St. John known as the “doubting Thomas” passage. The stock teaching on this passage says that while the other disciples were faithful, Thomas struggled with his faith but that is that really what is going on here? Well, not exactly. The truth is that not just Thomas, but all the disciples, struggled to believe. And that is understandable isn’t it? Isn’t it a little difficult to believe that Jesus died on Good Friday and was alive three days later? I have never seen anything like that happen have you? And so the disciples doubt their own eyes. They all doubt that it is actually Jesus they are seeing until Jesus shows them his wounds. And then, once they see his wounds St. John tells us that, “the disciples saw the Lord and were glad.” So, the Gospel this morning is not really about doubting. It is really about God’s blessing—about how God’s blessing will be administered to the world and how God’s blessing will be received by the world. What I am saying is that, "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” God’s blessing depends upon belief, and belief is accepting that something is true, sight unseen. We think “seeing is believing.” We have been taught to trust our own eyes. Jesus teaches us to “believe without seeing,” that the blessing comes when we trust in what we have been told. And so, the fact is that none of us have seen Jesus firsthand but we have been blessed by believing the testimony of Peter and James and John, of Mark and Matthew and Luke. As the old children’s song says, “Jesus loves me this I know, cause the Bible tells me so.”
Now in our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus, good to his word, had come to visit with his disciples. He had told them, and apparently they didn’t believe him, that he would rise again from the dead on the third day. So, good to his word, he comes to them on the third day and stands in their midst, alive. Jesus has conquered death. He is master life and death no longer hold any power over him (or over his followers). And Jesus’ first words to his disciples are, “Peace be with you.”
I don’t suppose any of the disciples would have understood the immense importance of those first words spoken by Jesus, “Peace be with you.” Jesus was not exchanging a greeting with them. Jesus was declaring the new facts of life. The Peace that Jesus was declaring was the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. Jesus declares to his followers that there is no longer any hostility between God and man. The war is over. The victory is won and peace has been restored. The sins of the world that had left humanity distant and isolated from the love of God, the sins of the world that had forced us all to live under a curse, destined to die, destined to eternal separation from God, the sins of the world were no more—they had been atoned for. They had been forgiven and forgotten. The punishment that God had declared on mankind had been meted out and all the prisoners set free. Jesus paid for our sins on the cross. We were now at peace with God, free to be his beloved children, free to live out our lives with joy. Peace with God is the greatest gift the world could have ever received. It is the gift that Jesus gave us on the cross. And equally great is the gift that we received on Easter morning, when Jesus proved to have power even over death itself. As his followers we can know freedom from God’s judgment and freedom from eternal death. And so, when Jesus says to the disciples, “peace be with you” it is the confirmation that they have received the greatest gift ever given—peace with God.
Now we spend so much time beating up on Thomas for his doubting that we usually miss what Jesus says to his disciples in this passage. After he says, “Peace be with you, he says “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” The Father sent Jesus to establish peace, to proclaim peace, and to reconcile the world to himself. Jesus says he is sending his followers out to do the same. Jesus is not interested in his disciples living their lives afraid, locked up in their private little rooms. Jesus never intended for us to be hunkered down in our little churches every Sunday morning. Jesus wants us to go out into the world. In the same way that Jesus was sent into the world, his followers are now being sent into the world. This is not the first time that Jesus sends his followers out to do kingdom work. It won’t be the last either. Jesus is always directing us to go out into the world and to witness to the power of the resurrection, to care for the poor, to heal the sick, and to bring blessing in Jesus’ name. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus; very last words to his followers is to, “Go out, and make disciples of the whole world.” Jesus’ message of peace with God is too good to keep to ourselves. It is a message that has to be shared with other sinners. It is a word that is not just intended for us here in this place. It is the hope of the world. It is intended for people everywhere who are suffering, alone, and downtrodden. It is for the rich and the poor. It is for the young and the old. It is for blacks and whites and Asians. It is not just for Christians. It is a message that needs to be spoken to Muslims, and Jews, and Buddhists, and Hindus, and Agnostics, and Atheists. Because true peace is peace with God, and true peace only comes through the resurrected life of Jesus. It is only when a person belongs to Jesus that the war ends and peace is restored—and that means that Jesus is always sending his followers out, always asking us to tell the story, always insisting that we witness to his power and always asking others to join us as his followers.
He is sending us out…and praise God we are responding. We have begun to go out. We have begun to invite family and friends, neighbors and coworkers. We have begun to share lunch with people we do not know, to have friendships with people different than us. We have begun to invite people on weekend trips with us. We have begun to go out, in small ways, and we will be seeking new ways of going out, away from this cloistered little building, ways to get our congregation out into the midst of the community around us where the message of God’s love can be heard by others—where Christ’s transforming power can be experienced first hand. I want to ask you to help us envision it. What would it look like? How would we begin to obey Jesus’ call to “go forth into the whole world?” Will you pray and ask God about it?
You see, that is the whole point of this story about Thomas. There is nothing unique about Thomas’ doubts. We all have doubts. The punch line of the whole story comes when Jesus says, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” The world is full of people who have never actually seen the Risen Christ, and they never will in this lifetime. Jesus says, a person doesn’t have to be able to see him, and to place their hands in his wounds in order to be blessed by him. In fact, the best blessing is reserved for those who do not see and yet believe. It isn’t just a handful of first century followers that get the blessing. It is the millions of people from countries around the world, people who lived in the Middle Ages, and people alive today. The blessing is for all of us who believe even though we have never received documentary evidence. When we believe in the miracle, when we trust in Jesus, sight unseen, we are the ones who receive God’s blessing.
But how will those who have not seen the resurrected Jesus ever come to believe if nobody tells them? This town is full of young people that have never really heard about Jesus. And you don’t have to go out to the “less fortunates” for that to be true. There are grandchildren of people in this parish who are growing up without ever hearing the Christian story. America is no longer a Christian nation, and even we in the church, even us who call ourselves Christians are woefully uninformed about what it means to be a Christian or what it is that Christians actually believe. We seem to think we can make it up any way we personally want it to be. That is why we have all this wacky theology these days. We need to get smart about our faith. We need to be able to tell the story—all of us, not just a select few—we all need to be able and willing to tell the story if we ever hope to win America back for the Lord. Jesus is always sending his followers out, out to tell the story, out to witness to the power and to ask others to join us as his followers. How will those who have not seen the resurrected Jesus ever come to believe if we do not tell them?
This is the real message about Doubting Thomas. It is the story written by St. John the Evangelist who came by his name honestly. He has written the story with a purpose. And he tells us what that purpose is, right at the end of our reading this morning. He says, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”
We have been blessed because we have believed, even though we have not seen. And interestingly enough, when we believe without seeing, the power of Christ really does enter into our lives and transform us and our circumstances. When we step forward in faith and believe what we have not seen, God moves in tangible and concrete ways in our lives and so we are not left without our own testimony. We are being saved through the power of Christ, and as God’s redeemed people we are being called to go out and tell the world about the greatest gift the world has ever received, so that they too may know the immense joy and the tremendous privilege of being Christ’s own forever. Amen.
April 6, 2010
Life or Death in a Garden
By Fr. Scott Homer
Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
There are three witnesses of the empty tomb in St. John’s account: Mary Magdalene, the beloved disciple (whoever he may be), and Peter. They have at various points in the narrative come to the tomb, witnessed the burial cloths still there but the body of Jesus gone. But St. John’s focus, and our focus this morning is on Mary Magdalene. This is the Mary that had traveled with Jesus and his followers for a long time. She had been possessed, we are told, by seven demons and she first met Jesus when he cast the demons out, and restored her to sanity and good health.
On the first day of the week, Mary roses early and she went to the garden. The accounts of the first resurrection sightings take place in a garden. We know this to be true because St John tells us, in chapter 19, verse 41, that, “In the place where Jesus was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid. So because of the Jewish day of preparation, as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.” And so Mary rises early and she goes to the garden—a garden devoted to life and beauty. She goes to a garden looking for the dead remains of Jesus. Interesting that Mary goes looking for death in the midst of life.
Gardens play an important role in the Scriptures. In fact, the first accounts of humanity and their relationship with God take place in a garden. We are told that God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve. Jesus prayed before his arrest in a garden. And at the end of time, after the world is put right and Jesus is reigning on his throne, it is in a garden where we find the saints dwelling eternally. In fact the whole creation account, that long account of the creation of planet earth, and all the plants and animals that God has placed upon it, is the account of a very large, very intricate, and very spectacular garden being designed, created and maintained by the our God—the Great Gardener.
That’s the thing about gardens. By definition gardens are cultivated places. A garden must be tended. It requires an overseer. It requires a gardener. He sets boundaries around it, builds walls and fences to protect it. He decides on its design and arrangement. He cultivates the ground, plants the seeds in the places he knows they will best prosper. He cares for the tender shoots, trains up the young plants, prunes and shapes the more mature plants until finally the garden is complete and able to grow, until it finally bursts forth in flower, and the flower gives way to fruit and the gardener reaps a harvest. All of the gardener’s plans, all his efforts are intended to bring the garden into bloom and to reap a harvest.
Mary goes to a garden and in this garden there is a tomb. A tomb seems like an odd thing to be in a garden. I mean, a garden is a place devoted to life. A tomb is a place devoted to death and for most of us there is a firm line of demarcation between life and death—life is where we enjoy ourselves—death is where we…well, don’t enjoy ourselves. Life is where we receive all the sensory input that pleases us and death is well, not that place. We go to gardens to enjoy life. Gardens are places where seed is planted, where plants are cultivated, where flowers bloom and fruit is born. We go to gardens seeking life. We go to cemeteries and tombs seeking death, just like Mary did. But in the resurrection accounts, the followers of Jesus have to go into this garden to find the tomb where Jesus’ body has been laid. It seems that God knew that Jesus’ disciples would not understand the mystery of Jesus’ resurrection unless they witnessed it in a garden.
God places the glorious resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord in a garden because God knows that gardens are the perfect teaching tool. Gardens are born in just the same way that our new lives in Christ are born—through death and resurrection. Gardens are designed and built around a thousand little passions. Gardens take their life, get their color and bring fruit out of new life emerging from little tombs. Every time a gardener punches a hole in the soil, and drops a dead seed into that hole, the gardener has created a tomb, placed a dead lifeless thing into it, and sealed the tomb. What better frame could God provide for the most spectacular event, the most important event in the history of the world? In the garden Jesus’ resurrection makes perfect sense.
But seeing it for the first time, who would believe that placing a dead seed in a dead hole and covering it with dead dirt would generate life? That after a few days new life would come bursting out of the dead ground? It is beyond comprehension and yet we all know it is true. We can’t understand it but we see it happening all around us. We say it is too fantastic that Jesus should rise from the dead. Doubters think the resurrection claims are absurd, and yet how many of us will be planting seeds in our gardens over the next few weeks expecting plants to emerge—not hoping beyond hope that a miracle might occur but fully convinced that a plant will spring forth out of the dead ground precisely where we buried it?
Mary came to the tomb expecting to find death—or whatever it is we find when we focus our attention on death. And when she does not find the remains she sought, she begins to look around for them someplace else. She recruits help. The help looks and confirms what she already knows and they quickly abandon the project and return to their homes but not Mary. Mary is so devoted to finding the dead body of Jesus that when she sees Jesus alive, and he is standing right there with her, she does not even recognize him. She is so convinced that he is dead that she thinks he must be someone else. Why do we find it so difficult to believe? Why are we so devoted to making death an absolute that can not be overcome? I don’t have the answer. I only know that even the great saints who have devoted their lives to cultivating a relationship with Jesus and who know him intimately, are awestruck and overwhelmed by death, just like Mary. We all are. We are devoted to the idea that death is an absolute. And so Mary doesn’t recognize Jesus.
Mary thinks Jesus must be a gardener—interesting—she isn’t able to recognize her Lord—but in some vague way she understands that this person standing before her is someone who is devoted to life, who designs life, who toils to cultivate life, who cares for life, and who brings life forth from the dead soil. Isn’t it ironic that even when Mary gets it wrong, even when she isn’t seeing clearly, she is still witnessing to the truth of who Jesus is? She is unaware that she stands before the resurrected Christ but she thinks the right thought—she labels him correctly. She recognizes she stands before a gardener—or rather, we might say, the One Great Gardener, the one who designs, cultivates, tends and harvests God’s Creation.
Mary does not recognize Jesus as Jesus until He speaks her name. When he speaks and says, “Mary,” then she recognizes her master’s voice. It is when the Lord speaks our name that our eyes are opened to the truth—and the truth is that we spend our lives focused on the wrong things. While we are looking at the likely possibilities and trying to understand our existence based upon the inevitability of dying—while we fear death and design around it, God is doing the impossible. God is bringing new life from dead bodies. When Jesus spoke Mary’s name, and she recognized His voice, and she gazed into his revealed face, then Mary recognized that the impossible had happened, that her Lord had risen from the grave, that his claim that he would be resurrected was true, that life really does triumph over death, that in the hands of the Master Gardener we can hope to spring forth from dead ground.
We will not recognize Jesus as Jesus until He speaks our name. When he speaks our name we will see him for who he is. We will understand that in some way that we can not possibly understand, that does not fit into our world view, in a way that science can not measure, Jesus has conquered death, Jesus stands alive and well, he stands above all the fundamental systems of the universe and He acts in ways that only he can act, using means that only he can access. Jesus Christ does the impossible. And on that day we will understand that we live in a fabulous garden, designed by the Master Gardener and that God specializes in resurrection—the resurrection of his Son first, and then the resurrection of the whole world!
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia!
Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
There are three witnesses of the empty tomb in St. John’s account: Mary Magdalene, the beloved disciple (whoever he may be), and Peter. They have at various points in the narrative come to the tomb, witnessed the burial cloths still there but the body of Jesus gone. But St. John’s focus, and our focus this morning is on Mary Magdalene. This is the Mary that had traveled with Jesus and his followers for a long time. She had been possessed, we are told, by seven demons and she first met Jesus when he cast the demons out, and restored her to sanity and good health.
On the first day of the week, Mary roses early and she went to the garden. The accounts of the first resurrection sightings take place in a garden. We know this to be true because St John tells us, in chapter 19, verse 41, that, “In the place where Jesus was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid. So because of the Jewish day of preparation, as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.” And so Mary rises early and she goes to the garden—a garden devoted to life and beauty. She goes to a garden looking for the dead remains of Jesus. Interesting that Mary goes looking for death in the midst of life.
Gardens play an important role in the Scriptures. In fact, the first accounts of humanity and their relationship with God take place in a garden. We are told that God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve. Jesus prayed before his arrest in a garden. And at the end of time, after the world is put right and Jesus is reigning on his throne, it is in a garden where we find the saints dwelling eternally. In fact the whole creation account, that long account of the creation of planet earth, and all the plants and animals that God has placed upon it, is the account of a very large, very intricate, and very spectacular garden being designed, created and maintained by the our God—the Great Gardener.
That’s the thing about gardens. By definition gardens are cultivated places. A garden must be tended. It requires an overseer. It requires a gardener. He sets boundaries around it, builds walls and fences to protect it. He decides on its design and arrangement. He cultivates the ground, plants the seeds in the places he knows they will best prosper. He cares for the tender shoots, trains up the young plants, prunes and shapes the more mature plants until finally the garden is complete and able to grow, until it finally bursts forth in flower, and the flower gives way to fruit and the gardener reaps a harvest. All of the gardener’s plans, all his efforts are intended to bring the garden into bloom and to reap a harvest.
Mary goes to a garden and in this garden there is a tomb. A tomb seems like an odd thing to be in a garden. I mean, a garden is a place devoted to life. A tomb is a place devoted to death and for most of us there is a firm line of demarcation between life and death—life is where we enjoy ourselves—death is where we…well, don’t enjoy ourselves. Life is where we receive all the sensory input that pleases us and death is well, not that place. We go to gardens to enjoy life. Gardens are places where seed is planted, where plants are cultivated, where flowers bloom and fruit is born. We go to gardens seeking life. We go to cemeteries and tombs seeking death, just like Mary did. But in the resurrection accounts, the followers of Jesus have to go into this garden to find the tomb where Jesus’ body has been laid. It seems that God knew that Jesus’ disciples would not understand the mystery of Jesus’ resurrection unless they witnessed it in a garden.
God places the glorious resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord in a garden because God knows that gardens are the perfect teaching tool. Gardens are born in just the same way that our new lives in Christ are born—through death and resurrection. Gardens are designed and built around a thousand little passions. Gardens take their life, get their color and bring fruit out of new life emerging from little tombs. Every time a gardener punches a hole in the soil, and drops a dead seed into that hole, the gardener has created a tomb, placed a dead lifeless thing into it, and sealed the tomb. What better frame could God provide for the most spectacular event, the most important event in the history of the world? In the garden Jesus’ resurrection makes perfect sense.
But seeing it for the first time, who would believe that placing a dead seed in a dead hole and covering it with dead dirt would generate life? That after a few days new life would come bursting out of the dead ground? It is beyond comprehension and yet we all know it is true. We can’t understand it but we see it happening all around us. We say it is too fantastic that Jesus should rise from the dead. Doubters think the resurrection claims are absurd, and yet how many of us will be planting seeds in our gardens over the next few weeks expecting plants to emerge—not hoping beyond hope that a miracle might occur but fully convinced that a plant will spring forth out of the dead ground precisely where we buried it?
Mary came to the tomb expecting to find death—or whatever it is we find when we focus our attention on death. And when she does not find the remains she sought, she begins to look around for them someplace else. She recruits help. The help looks and confirms what she already knows and they quickly abandon the project and return to their homes but not Mary. Mary is so devoted to finding the dead body of Jesus that when she sees Jesus alive, and he is standing right there with her, she does not even recognize him. She is so convinced that he is dead that she thinks he must be someone else. Why do we find it so difficult to believe? Why are we so devoted to making death an absolute that can not be overcome? I don’t have the answer. I only know that even the great saints who have devoted their lives to cultivating a relationship with Jesus and who know him intimately, are awestruck and overwhelmed by death, just like Mary. We all are. We are devoted to the idea that death is an absolute. And so Mary doesn’t recognize Jesus.
Mary thinks Jesus must be a gardener—interesting—she isn’t able to recognize her Lord—but in some vague way she understands that this person standing before her is someone who is devoted to life, who designs life, who toils to cultivate life, who cares for life, and who brings life forth from the dead soil. Isn’t it ironic that even when Mary gets it wrong, even when she isn’t seeing clearly, she is still witnessing to the truth of who Jesus is? She is unaware that she stands before the resurrected Christ but she thinks the right thought—she labels him correctly. She recognizes she stands before a gardener—or rather, we might say, the One Great Gardener, the one who designs, cultivates, tends and harvests God’s Creation.
Mary does not recognize Jesus as Jesus until He speaks her name. When he speaks and says, “Mary,” then she recognizes her master’s voice. It is when the Lord speaks our name that our eyes are opened to the truth—and the truth is that we spend our lives focused on the wrong things. While we are looking at the likely possibilities and trying to understand our existence based upon the inevitability of dying—while we fear death and design around it, God is doing the impossible. God is bringing new life from dead bodies. When Jesus spoke Mary’s name, and she recognized His voice, and she gazed into his revealed face, then Mary recognized that the impossible had happened, that her Lord had risen from the grave, that his claim that he would be resurrected was true, that life really does triumph over death, that in the hands of the Master Gardener we can hope to spring forth from dead ground.
We will not recognize Jesus as Jesus until He speaks our name. When he speaks our name we will see him for who he is. We will understand that in some way that we can not possibly understand, that does not fit into our world view, in a way that science can not measure, Jesus has conquered death, Jesus stands alive and well, he stands above all the fundamental systems of the universe and He acts in ways that only he can act, using means that only he can access. Jesus Christ does the impossible. And on that day we will understand that we live in a fabulous garden, designed by the Master Gardener and that God specializes in resurrection—the resurrection of his Son first, and then the resurrection of the whole world!
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia!
March 22, 2010
Lesbian Receives Consents and will be ordained Bishop Suffragan of LA in May
Lambeth Regrets Consents for Canon Glasspool
Posted on: March 18, 2010
A March 18 statement from Lambeth Palace has expressed the Archbishop of Canterbury’s concern about the confirmation of the Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool as a bishop suffragan for the Diocese of Los Angeles.
The statement notes that the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion affirmed the call by the Anglican Consultative Council and Archbishop Rowan Williams for continued restraint regarding partnered gay and lesbian bishops; public blessings of same-sex couples; and cross-jurisdiction border crossings.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Ian Douglas, bishop-elect of the Diocese of Connecticut, attended the December meeting of the standing committee, which was formerly known as the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council.
Episcopal News Service quoted portions of the statement, and the Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon posted the full 80-word text on his weblog.
This is the full statement from Lambeth Palace:
It is regrettable that the appeals from Anglican Communion bodies for continuing gracious restraint have not been heeded. Following the Los Angeles election in December the archbishop made clear that the outcome of the consent process would have important implications for the communion. The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion reiterated these concerns in its December resolution which called for the existing moratoria to be upheld. Further consultation will now take place about the implications and consequences of this decision.
Posted on: March 18, 2010
A March 18 statement from Lambeth Palace has expressed the Archbishop of Canterbury’s concern about the confirmation of the Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool as a bishop suffragan for the Diocese of Los Angeles.
The statement notes that the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion affirmed the call by the Anglican Consultative Council and Archbishop Rowan Williams for continued restraint regarding partnered gay and lesbian bishops; public blessings of same-sex couples; and cross-jurisdiction border crossings.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Ian Douglas, bishop-elect of the Diocese of Connecticut, attended the December meeting of the standing committee, which was formerly known as the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council.
Episcopal News Service quoted portions of the statement, and the Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon posted the full 80-word text on his weblog.
This is the full statement from Lambeth Palace:
It is regrettable that the appeals from Anglican Communion bodies for continuing gracious restraint have not been heeded. Following the Los Angeles election in December the archbishop made clear that the outcome of the consent process would have important implications for the communion. The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion reiterated these concerns in its December resolution which called for the existing moratoria to be upheld. Further consultation will now take place about the implications and consequences of this decision.
Professor at Trinity Seminary Nominated for Bishop of Rio Grand
Trinity Professor Joins Rio Grande Slate
Posted on: March 22, 2010
by The Living Church
The Rev. Dr. Leander Harding of Trinity School for Ministry has joined the slate of nominees to become the ninth bishop of the Diocese of the Rio Grande. Harding is Trinity’s dean of church relations and seminary advancement and associate professor of pastoral theology.
The diocese, which encompasses New Mexico and the southwestern corner of Texas, announced Harding’s nomination by petition on March 20. The electing convention will convene April 24.
The diocese has also released question-and-answer essays by all six nominees. The essays reveal how the nominees envision helping the diocese heal after what the diocesan profile [PDF] describes as an extended period of turmoil in leadership.
“The argument could be made that the last ‘normal’ episcopacy in the Diocese of the Rio Grande was that of Bishop [C. James Kinsolving III], which ended in 1972,” the profile said after describing the tenures of Bishops Richard M. Trelease (1972–87), M. Terence Kelshaw (1989–2005) and Jeffrey Steenson (2005–07).
The profile said some in the diocese were wounded by Bishop Kelshaw’s leaving the Episcopal Church, after his retirement, for affiliation with the Anglican Church of Uganda and by Bishop Steenson’s leaving to become a Roman Catholic priest.
Each of the six nominees wrote of the Rio Grande’s need for a renewed sense of its identity.
“The bishop has to help humanize the divisive debates, create an envelope in which people can safely address differences with each other without the risk of winning or losing, and rebuild trust, mutual respect,” wrote the Rev. Ellis Tucker Bowerfind, rector, St. Luke’s, Alexandria, Va.
The bishop also should “offer an exciting opportunity to explore the natural beauty of the diocese, meeting the faithful clergy and people in their congregations, learn about and support their many important local ministries, and restore some creative peace to a diocese that has been troubled by ideological debates,” he wrote.
Harding described a challenge of staying on the side of Jesus rather than the side of battling factions within the diocese.
“It will be a challenge to stay in touch with those who disagree with me without appearing to have joined their side in the dispute and it will be difficult to stay in touch with those who agree with me without appearing to have joined their side,” he wrote. “I call this the challenge of staying on the side of Jesus despite the temptation to enlist in someone else’s cause. The tune will be as important as the words and getting the tune right is very difficult.”
Some nominees addressed the diocese’s future by discussing their past experiences.
The Rev. James R. Harlan, rector, Church of the Ascension, Denver, Colo., described coming to love the three primary forms of piety within Anglicanism.
“From the [Anglo-Catholic] parish of my childhood with its rich worship and reverent mystery to the evangelical/charismatic parishes of my adolescence where the spirit flowed freely and the Bible was taught, to the large, socially active cathedral with its very broad membership, I fell in love with all that the Episcopal Church is,” he wrote. “I came to value different streams of our tradition, not because someone told me to, but because in all those places, God’s love reached out to me and to so many other people.”
The Rev. Jedediah D. Holdorph II, rector, St. Mark’s, Medford, Ore., drew on St. Paul’s image of the Church as the body of Christ.
“I understand that difficult issues remain, but I believe the greatest challenge before us now is to move beyond debating contentious issues and learn to live together in the midst of our different opinions,” he wrote. “If one takes St. Paul’s image of the Church as the Body of Christ seriously — and I do — then we cannot afford to cut anyone off; we know we are more complete when we are together.”
The Rev. John S. Nieman, rector, Holy Trinity, Clemson, S.C., stressed reconciliation.
“Reconciliation as I understand it is not uniformity in all things, but the recognition that we need each other in our differences, and that what binds us together is the one, Triune God and the apostolic mission we have been given,” he wrote. “What excites me most is the opportunity to lead and be a part of the good work God has begun in you. I can envision with great joy looking back with you ten years from now and seeing the road we have walked together through God’s grace toward ‘restoring all people to unity with God and one another in Christ.’ I also see this as an opportunity to incarnate the gift of reconciliation for the larger Church.”
The Rev. Dr. Michael Louis Vono, rector, St. Paul’s Within the Walls, Rome, Italy, discussed one congregation’s disputes on whether it should keep a simple cross above the altar, which a previous rector had used to replace a Celtic cross.
“I proposed placing three different crosses over the Altar; a Christ the King cross, symbolic of an Anglo-Catholic spirituality, the original Celtic cross, symbolic of broad Anglican spirituality, and the simple wooden cross, symbolic of Evangelical spirituality,” Vono wrote. “Each cross spiritually represented a particular understanding of mission as well as ministry. Each remained over the altar two months. Throughout those six months we held evening discussion forums which enabled us to address issues such as the Church’s identity, history in the community, and mission priorities. … Today the Celtic cross is in place as well as an effective broad Anglican mission.”
Douglas LeBlanc
Posted on: March 22, 2010
by The Living Church
The Rev. Dr. Leander Harding of Trinity School for Ministry has joined the slate of nominees to become the ninth bishop of the Diocese of the Rio Grande. Harding is Trinity’s dean of church relations and seminary advancement and associate professor of pastoral theology.
The diocese, which encompasses New Mexico and the southwestern corner of Texas, announced Harding’s nomination by petition on March 20. The electing convention will convene April 24.
The diocese has also released question-and-answer essays by all six nominees. The essays reveal how the nominees envision helping the diocese heal after what the diocesan profile [PDF] describes as an extended period of turmoil in leadership.
“The argument could be made that the last ‘normal’ episcopacy in the Diocese of the Rio Grande was that of Bishop [C. James Kinsolving III], which ended in 1972,” the profile said after describing the tenures of Bishops Richard M. Trelease (1972–87), M. Terence Kelshaw (1989–2005) and Jeffrey Steenson (2005–07).
The profile said some in the diocese were wounded by Bishop Kelshaw’s leaving the Episcopal Church, after his retirement, for affiliation with the Anglican Church of Uganda and by Bishop Steenson’s leaving to become a Roman Catholic priest.
Each of the six nominees wrote of the Rio Grande’s need for a renewed sense of its identity.
“The bishop has to help humanize the divisive debates, create an envelope in which people can safely address differences with each other without the risk of winning or losing, and rebuild trust, mutual respect,” wrote the Rev. Ellis Tucker Bowerfind, rector, St. Luke’s, Alexandria, Va.
The bishop also should “offer an exciting opportunity to explore the natural beauty of the diocese, meeting the faithful clergy and people in their congregations, learn about and support their many important local ministries, and restore some creative peace to a diocese that has been troubled by ideological debates,” he wrote.
Harding described a challenge of staying on the side of Jesus rather than the side of battling factions within the diocese.
“It will be a challenge to stay in touch with those who disagree with me without appearing to have joined their side in the dispute and it will be difficult to stay in touch with those who agree with me without appearing to have joined their side,” he wrote. “I call this the challenge of staying on the side of Jesus despite the temptation to enlist in someone else’s cause. The tune will be as important as the words and getting the tune right is very difficult.”
Some nominees addressed the diocese’s future by discussing their past experiences.
The Rev. James R. Harlan, rector, Church of the Ascension, Denver, Colo., described coming to love the three primary forms of piety within Anglicanism.
“From the [Anglo-Catholic] parish of my childhood with its rich worship and reverent mystery to the evangelical/charismatic parishes of my adolescence where the spirit flowed freely and the Bible was taught, to the large, socially active cathedral with its very broad membership, I fell in love with all that the Episcopal Church is,” he wrote. “I came to value different streams of our tradition, not because someone told me to, but because in all those places, God’s love reached out to me and to so many other people.”
The Rev. Jedediah D. Holdorph II, rector, St. Mark’s, Medford, Ore., drew on St. Paul’s image of the Church as the body of Christ.
“I understand that difficult issues remain, but I believe the greatest challenge before us now is to move beyond debating contentious issues and learn to live together in the midst of our different opinions,” he wrote. “If one takes St. Paul’s image of the Church as the Body of Christ seriously — and I do — then we cannot afford to cut anyone off; we know we are more complete when we are together.”
The Rev. John S. Nieman, rector, Holy Trinity, Clemson, S.C., stressed reconciliation.
“Reconciliation as I understand it is not uniformity in all things, but the recognition that we need each other in our differences, and that what binds us together is the one, Triune God and the apostolic mission we have been given,” he wrote. “What excites me most is the opportunity to lead and be a part of the good work God has begun in you. I can envision with great joy looking back with you ten years from now and seeing the road we have walked together through God’s grace toward ‘restoring all people to unity with God and one another in Christ.’ I also see this as an opportunity to incarnate the gift of reconciliation for the larger Church.”
The Rev. Dr. Michael Louis Vono, rector, St. Paul’s Within the Walls, Rome, Italy, discussed one congregation’s disputes on whether it should keep a simple cross above the altar, which a previous rector had used to replace a Celtic cross.
“I proposed placing three different crosses over the Altar; a Christ the King cross, symbolic of an Anglo-Catholic spirituality, the original Celtic cross, symbolic of broad Anglican spirituality, and the simple wooden cross, symbolic of Evangelical spirituality,” Vono wrote. “Each cross spiritually represented a particular understanding of mission as well as ministry. Each remained over the altar two months. Throughout those six months we held evening discussion forums which enabled us to address issues such as the Church’s identity, history in the community, and mission priorities. … Today the Celtic cross is in place as well as an effective broad Anglican mission.”
Douglas LeBlanc
What's Your Story?
The Reverend Scott Homer
In the name of God Almighty, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Have you ever thought of your life like a story? Sometimes we look at our lives as a story. Sometimes somebody will say to us, “So, what’s your story? Or someone will ask, “may I tell you my story?” Sometimes you hear about somebody who lived a fairytale life. Sometimes people live a horror story. So, what is your story?
The Gospels, in fact all of the Scriptures, tell a story. They tell the story of God’s Salvation playing out in the lives of God’s people. Of course, the story of God’s is an immense story that begins with Creation and ends with the world restored and God’s kingdom come. God’s story is so big it looks like a tapestry because within this one overarching story describing God are hundreds, even thousands of micro-stories, and they all fit into the larger tapestry giving it color and variety. The little stories are stories about real people’s lives as they are being lived out within God’s story. Have you ever thought about your life that way? We tend to think that we are living independent and free—that our story is ours and ours alone. We want to believe that it is our choices that determine our destiny. We want to believe that the things we face in our lives today, the successes and failures, are results of our own decisions…but our destiny is not of our own making. Our story is not ours alone. Our destinies belong to God. Our lives are played out within his reality, according to his rules and our past, present and future are all part of God’s larger tapestry. Our salvation belongs to the Lord—it is Jesus’ work , Jesus’ power and Jesus’ compassion. And the essential task of the human life is to acknowledge this fact, not just here between our ears—but most especially to close the 18 inch gap between our heads and our hearts and to love the Lord with all our hearts.
The Gospels are full of micro-stories, stories about real people and what happened to them when they found themselves caught up in God’s story. All these little sub-stories come together to form the rich and ornate tapestry we call Holy Scripture—God’s story. The Scriptures were written for our instruction—in order that we might know God, know our salvation, and know the joy of a life lived in the assurance of God’s grace and mercy. In the Gospel this morning we see no less that four sub-stories. There is Lazarus, Martha, Mary, and Judas Iscariot. Each story is compelling. Each holds important lessons for us but I want to focus on just two of the four. I want to look at Mary, Lazarus’ sister and at Judas Iscariot a disciple of Jesus. Let’s begin with Mary.
Mary is passionately in love with Jesus—and I wish it went without saying that I don’t mean that in a sexual way. Our culture has become all twisted about intimacy. We confuse intimacy with sexuality treating the two as if they are the same thing. So, if we say someone was intimate with someone else we all conclude that they must have slept together. Why can’t we conceive of a friendship that is so close that the people know everything about one another and yet allow that it may be platonic? This confusion has caused and will continue to cause huge problems in our society and in the church. It is why we see so many stories about clergy sexual misconduct. It also explains why the congregations where sexual misconduct has occurred are so reluctant to seek healing. It seems like such dangerous ground. It explains why those same churches are unable and unwilling to develop any real community for years afterwards. After all real community depends upon intimacy and if intimacy and sexuality are the same thing then intimacy means sin and if we want to avoid sin than we must avoid intimacy at all cost. The result is that isolation, and maintaining distance from one another, is the only viable option. Thankfully, intimacy is not the same as sexuality. We can be kind and gentle and genuinely open and passionate in our love for another human being without demanding that sexual contact be a part of it. It is not a hypothetical possibility. It is a genuine reality—and that is the first thing we observe in Mary’s relationship to Jesus. Her love for Jesus demonstrates the sort of love that ought to characterize our relationships--intimate with one another in ways that are God honoring, that respect one another and that bring blessing and health to one another. We need to learn how to have these sorts of relationships even if it is a challenging and risky enterprise. Otherwise how can we claim to love one another as we love ourselves? And so, as I began to say, in our Gospel this morning we see that Mary is passionately in love with Jesus.
Mary’s love for Jesus was passionate. I did a little research on the cost of perfumes nowadays and I found that the most expensive perfume in the world is Perfume No. 1 by Clive Christian. You can purchase it at Neiman Marcus for $2350. We are told that the perfume Mary bought was worth 300 denarii. In today‘s dollars that would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $18,000. And she doesn’t place a drop behind his ear and save the rest. She just slathers it all over Jesus’ feet and uses it all up. You would have to be pretty fond of someone to do that. And Mary slathers that perfume on Jesus feet with her own hair—so close, so intimate and personal, so much passion for her Lord.
Of course Mary has seen Jesus for who he truly is. She has seen the corpse of her dead brother and she has seen her brother resurrected. She watched as Jesus called her brother out of the tomb and she witnessed Jesus’ resurrection power, first hand. She has seen salvation and his name is Jesus of Nazareth. And so, quite naturally, she gives herself totally to honoring him, and perhaps most remarkably of all, she does so openly and in public. She is unashamed. She is unconcerned with what others might think or what others might say. She loves her Lord and her desire is to honor and bless him. Mary devotes herself whole-heartedly—body, mind, and spirit—to worshipping Jesus.
Mary is a challenge to us. She causes us to wonder about ourselves and the ways we pull back from giving ourselves completely to the Lord. What would it look like for us to give ourselves wholeheartedly, unashamedly to Jesus? How much money would we be willing to spend in order to bring honor and glory to him? Are we prepared to be embarrassed for Jesus? Would you risk other people thinking less of you in order to please the Lord? And how about the church? What would our corporate worship look like if we worshipped like Mary worships? What would the world around us think if we behaved like Mary? I don’t mean for us to just look at this negatively. I believe that we are called to worship like Mary and I believe that the world would be impressed. People might even be inspired to come and see what all the fuss is about.
Now the real conflict in our story this morning comes when Judas responds to what he sees Mary doing. Judas is not impressed. In fact, he is rather unhappy about this display of love for Jesus. Judas Iscariot also has something extraordinarily important to teach us. Judas, we are told, had already determined to betray Jesus but he couches his complaint in practical terms. He is shocked by the squandering of a large sum of money. Surely that money could have been put to better use.
It is essential that we recognize the role that money played in Judas’ betrayal of Jesus because in some really frightening ways our view of money mirrors his. Judas seems to think that his welfare, and the welfare of those around him, depends upon the amount of money in his purse. He claims to seek wealth in order to care for the needs of the less fortunate but he actually want the wealth to serve himself. Plainly put, in Judas’ mind, salvation has little or nothing to do with Jesus. Salvation is having enough money in the bank to handle life’s adversities. That makes Judas the most American of all the disciples. After all, don’t we believe the same thing?
Bad health? Your healing depends upon owning health insurance, disability insurance, and having sufficient money in the bank. Old age? Your salvation depends upon having adequate retirement planning. Premature death? Your salvation depends upon having sufficient life insurance in place to sustain your family. I am not condemning any of that. I’m just pointing out that it is contrary to what God’s story tells us.
This is not the only instance where we see Judas’ greed. Later, when Judas betrays Jesus to the Sanhedrin he does so by selling Jesus to them for thirty pieces of silver. Our Lord was betrayed by a man who trusted in money rather than the Lord. Jesus might have been betrayed for any number of other reasons liked religious zeal, or political persecution but the Scriptures are very specific on this point. The Lord wants us to know that thing that caused the Son of Glory to be killed was love of money over the love of the Lord. As we talk about stewardship issues over the course of the year I pray that we will all heed Scripture’s warning and recognize our own vulnerability to the seduction of money in our lives. Money can not save us. Only Jesus can save us.
Let me try and tie this all together. We began by talking about the overarching story of God. It this story, the story we call Scripture are lots of sub-stories, like those of Mary and Judas. These sub-stories do not have a life of their own. They only exist as a small part of that larger story. Mary understood that her story was completely and utterly dependant on the larger story. Judas did not—at least not until it was too late. Mary understood that her brother was alive not because he was wealthy, not because he could afford the best doctors, not because they had made the right decisions and the right choices over the years. Mary knew that Lazarus was alive because Jesus said so. And although Judas must have witnessed Lazarus rising from the dead, somehow or another it didn’t touch him. The reality of what had happened didn’t make any sense to him. He still thought that somehow or another his life was independent of God. He still thought his salvation depended upon his own ability to make the right moves and access the right tools, and to have enough money in the purse. For Judas, in spite of all the miracles he had witnessed, Jesus was still just the son of a Jewish carpenter. Judas took offense at Jesus and at all the attention that he was receiving, and he chose to betray the Son of God and his only hope for salvation.
We have been trained since we were babies to believe that we create our own story through the decisions that we ourselves make. If we are wealthy it is because we made wise choices. If we are poor it is because we made poor choices. We act as though we are the masters of our own destinies but we are not. Lazarus did not die by choice. He was not resurrected by any choice of his own either. We don’t either. St Paul tells us in chapter 14 of Romans, “7 For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; 8 for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.”
Each of us is a sub-story of the one great story. Our lives are small but important parts of this great tapestry that we know as God. God has caused the Light of Christ to shine in your life. He has blessed you by allowing you to read the story and to determine your part in it. Abandon yourself to God. Devote the rest of your life to him. Rejoice in worship. Celebrate in prayer because in Jesus your story has the most blessed and joyful ending. In fact, in Jesus the story never ends because in Jesus love triumphs and joy is eternal. What’s your story? Amen.
In the name of God Almighty, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Have you ever thought of your life like a story? Sometimes we look at our lives as a story. Sometimes somebody will say to us, “So, what’s your story? Or someone will ask, “may I tell you my story?” Sometimes you hear about somebody who lived a fairytale life. Sometimes people live a horror story. So, what is your story?
The Gospels, in fact all of the Scriptures, tell a story. They tell the story of God’s Salvation playing out in the lives of God’s people. Of course, the story of God’s is an immense story that begins with Creation and ends with the world restored and God’s kingdom come. God’s story is so big it looks like a tapestry because within this one overarching story describing God are hundreds, even thousands of micro-stories, and they all fit into the larger tapestry giving it color and variety. The little stories are stories about real people’s lives as they are being lived out within God’s story. Have you ever thought about your life that way? We tend to think that we are living independent and free—that our story is ours and ours alone. We want to believe that it is our choices that determine our destiny. We want to believe that the things we face in our lives today, the successes and failures, are results of our own decisions…but our destiny is not of our own making. Our story is not ours alone. Our destinies belong to God. Our lives are played out within his reality, according to his rules and our past, present and future are all part of God’s larger tapestry. Our salvation belongs to the Lord—it is Jesus’ work , Jesus’ power and Jesus’ compassion. And the essential task of the human life is to acknowledge this fact, not just here between our ears—but most especially to close the 18 inch gap between our heads and our hearts and to love the Lord with all our hearts.
The Gospels are full of micro-stories, stories about real people and what happened to them when they found themselves caught up in God’s story. All these little sub-stories come together to form the rich and ornate tapestry we call Holy Scripture—God’s story. The Scriptures were written for our instruction—in order that we might know God, know our salvation, and know the joy of a life lived in the assurance of God’s grace and mercy. In the Gospel this morning we see no less that four sub-stories. There is Lazarus, Martha, Mary, and Judas Iscariot. Each story is compelling. Each holds important lessons for us but I want to focus on just two of the four. I want to look at Mary, Lazarus’ sister and at Judas Iscariot a disciple of Jesus. Let’s begin with Mary.
Mary is passionately in love with Jesus—and I wish it went without saying that I don’t mean that in a sexual way. Our culture has become all twisted about intimacy. We confuse intimacy with sexuality treating the two as if they are the same thing. So, if we say someone was intimate with someone else we all conclude that they must have slept together. Why can’t we conceive of a friendship that is so close that the people know everything about one another and yet allow that it may be platonic? This confusion has caused and will continue to cause huge problems in our society and in the church. It is why we see so many stories about clergy sexual misconduct. It also explains why the congregations where sexual misconduct has occurred are so reluctant to seek healing. It seems like such dangerous ground. It explains why those same churches are unable and unwilling to develop any real community for years afterwards. After all real community depends upon intimacy and if intimacy and sexuality are the same thing then intimacy means sin and if we want to avoid sin than we must avoid intimacy at all cost. The result is that isolation, and maintaining distance from one another, is the only viable option. Thankfully, intimacy is not the same as sexuality. We can be kind and gentle and genuinely open and passionate in our love for another human being without demanding that sexual contact be a part of it. It is not a hypothetical possibility. It is a genuine reality—and that is the first thing we observe in Mary’s relationship to Jesus. Her love for Jesus demonstrates the sort of love that ought to characterize our relationships--intimate with one another in ways that are God honoring, that respect one another and that bring blessing and health to one another. We need to learn how to have these sorts of relationships even if it is a challenging and risky enterprise. Otherwise how can we claim to love one another as we love ourselves? And so, as I began to say, in our Gospel this morning we see that Mary is passionately in love with Jesus.
Mary’s love for Jesus was passionate. I did a little research on the cost of perfumes nowadays and I found that the most expensive perfume in the world is Perfume No. 1 by Clive Christian. You can purchase it at Neiman Marcus for $2350. We are told that the perfume Mary bought was worth 300 denarii. In today‘s dollars that would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $18,000. And she doesn’t place a drop behind his ear and save the rest. She just slathers it all over Jesus’ feet and uses it all up. You would have to be pretty fond of someone to do that. And Mary slathers that perfume on Jesus feet with her own hair—so close, so intimate and personal, so much passion for her Lord.
Of course Mary has seen Jesus for who he truly is. She has seen the corpse of her dead brother and she has seen her brother resurrected. She watched as Jesus called her brother out of the tomb and she witnessed Jesus’ resurrection power, first hand. She has seen salvation and his name is Jesus of Nazareth. And so, quite naturally, she gives herself totally to honoring him, and perhaps most remarkably of all, she does so openly and in public. She is unashamed. She is unconcerned with what others might think or what others might say. She loves her Lord and her desire is to honor and bless him. Mary devotes herself whole-heartedly—body, mind, and spirit—to worshipping Jesus.
Mary is a challenge to us. She causes us to wonder about ourselves and the ways we pull back from giving ourselves completely to the Lord. What would it look like for us to give ourselves wholeheartedly, unashamedly to Jesus? How much money would we be willing to spend in order to bring honor and glory to him? Are we prepared to be embarrassed for Jesus? Would you risk other people thinking less of you in order to please the Lord? And how about the church? What would our corporate worship look like if we worshipped like Mary worships? What would the world around us think if we behaved like Mary? I don’t mean for us to just look at this negatively. I believe that we are called to worship like Mary and I believe that the world would be impressed. People might even be inspired to come and see what all the fuss is about.
Now the real conflict in our story this morning comes when Judas responds to what he sees Mary doing. Judas is not impressed. In fact, he is rather unhappy about this display of love for Jesus. Judas Iscariot also has something extraordinarily important to teach us. Judas, we are told, had already determined to betray Jesus but he couches his complaint in practical terms. He is shocked by the squandering of a large sum of money. Surely that money could have been put to better use.
It is essential that we recognize the role that money played in Judas’ betrayal of Jesus because in some really frightening ways our view of money mirrors his. Judas seems to think that his welfare, and the welfare of those around him, depends upon the amount of money in his purse. He claims to seek wealth in order to care for the needs of the less fortunate but he actually want the wealth to serve himself. Plainly put, in Judas’ mind, salvation has little or nothing to do with Jesus. Salvation is having enough money in the bank to handle life’s adversities. That makes Judas the most American of all the disciples. After all, don’t we believe the same thing?
Bad health? Your healing depends upon owning health insurance, disability insurance, and having sufficient money in the bank. Old age? Your salvation depends upon having adequate retirement planning. Premature death? Your salvation depends upon having sufficient life insurance in place to sustain your family. I am not condemning any of that. I’m just pointing out that it is contrary to what God’s story tells us.
This is not the only instance where we see Judas’ greed. Later, when Judas betrays Jesus to the Sanhedrin he does so by selling Jesus to them for thirty pieces of silver. Our Lord was betrayed by a man who trusted in money rather than the Lord. Jesus might have been betrayed for any number of other reasons liked religious zeal, or political persecution but the Scriptures are very specific on this point. The Lord wants us to know that thing that caused the Son of Glory to be killed was love of money over the love of the Lord. As we talk about stewardship issues over the course of the year I pray that we will all heed Scripture’s warning and recognize our own vulnerability to the seduction of money in our lives. Money can not save us. Only Jesus can save us.
Let me try and tie this all together. We began by talking about the overarching story of God. It this story, the story we call Scripture are lots of sub-stories, like those of Mary and Judas. These sub-stories do not have a life of their own. They only exist as a small part of that larger story. Mary understood that her story was completely and utterly dependant on the larger story. Judas did not—at least not until it was too late. Mary understood that her brother was alive not because he was wealthy, not because he could afford the best doctors, not because they had made the right decisions and the right choices over the years. Mary knew that Lazarus was alive because Jesus said so. And although Judas must have witnessed Lazarus rising from the dead, somehow or another it didn’t touch him. The reality of what had happened didn’t make any sense to him. He still thought that somehow or another his life was independent of God. He still thought his salvation depended upon his own ability to make the right moves and access the right tools, and to have enough money in the purse. For Judas, in spite of all the miracles he had witnessed, Jesus was still just the son of a Jewish carpenter. Judas took offense at Jesus and at all the attention that he was receiving, and he chose to betray the Son of God and his only hope for salvation.
We have been trained since we were babies to believe that we create our own story through the decisions that we ourselves make. If we are wealthy it is because we made wise choices. If we are poor it is because we made poor choices. We act as though we are the masters of our own destinies but we are not. Lazarus did not die by choice. He was not resurrected by any choice of his own either. We don’t either. St Paul tells us in chapter 14 of Romans, “7 For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; 8 for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.”
Each of us is a sub-story of the one great story. Our lives are small but important parts of this great tapestry that we know as God. God has caused the Light of Christ to shine in your life. He has blessed you by allowing you to read the story and to determine your part in it. Abandon yourself to God. Devote the rest of your life to him. Rejoice in worship. Celebrate in prayer because in Jesus your story has the most blessed and joyful ending. In fact, in Jesus the story never ends because in Jesus love triumphs and joy is eternal. What’s your story? Amen.
The Parable of the Three Sons
the Reverend Scott Homer
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit—Amen
The Middle East has an arid climate. There is little rainfall. The land is dry and rocky. Only the most drought resistant plants survive. Attempts to cultivate the land and grow crops require great effort and substantial good fortune. If the rains do not come, there will be no crop. If there is no crop there is no food. And if there is no food there is no life. So it should come as no surprise that in the scriptures “water” is a common metaphor for life—no water, no life—abundant water, abundant life. Water is even used to describe eternal life.
In Zechariah 14.5—8, the prophet speaks of the time when messiah will come. He declares, “Then the LORD my God will come, and all the holy ones with him. On that day there will be no light, no cold or frost. It will be a unique day, without daytime or nighttime—a day known to the LORD. When evening comes, there will be light. On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half to the eastern sea and half to the western sea, in summer and in winter.”
The prophet foretells the day when life will no longer ebb away from us little by little, but a new day, a day of everlasting light and eternal life will flow, like a river of “living water.” It will flow out from Jerusalem in both directions. It will flow in season and out of season.
In the gospel of John chapter 7, verse 38, Jesus declares, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."
Jesus claims the prophecy for himself. He claims that, the “Lord your God has come,” just as Zechariah had promised. Jesus says, “I am he. And those of you who believe in me will know eternal life flowing through you.”
Do you know how good water can taste? I don’t mean Perrier or Pellegrino with their happy, teasing bubbles. And I don’t mean Aquafina, Dasani or Evian with their attractive packaging. What I am asking is have you ever realized that plain ordinary H2O is the greatest taste in the world? If you have never been thirsty, you have no idea what I’m talking about. If you have grown up in the city, in a house with three to ten water faucets, with bottled water at every corner store, and water fountains at work and school, then you may have never experienced true thirst. And if you have never experienced true thirst you may be of the opinion that water is just plain and bland. You may wonder, what’s to like? And, given an option, you probably choose to drink coca-cola or ice tea or maybe even a glass of wine over plain old water.
But if you know what it means to be truly thirsty you know that it is not a happy experience. Maybe you have walked down a long hot trail, or gone for a very long run; or maybe you’ve gone to a remote beach somewhere and forgotten to take anything to drink along with you. If you have experienced true thirst you know what it feels like when your tongue is stuck to the roof of your mouth, and your mouth feels like cotton, and you can’t sweat because there’s no moisture left in you, so you start to run a fever, and your lips are all chapped and splitting—and yet there is still no water in sight—and you realize you could die of thirst. If you’ve ever been truly thirsty then you know how good water tastes! When you are truly thirsty you don’t drink daintily from a glass. You get grabby. You don’t sip. You guzzle. You act like a drunk under a bridge getting his first drink of the day. You relish the cool slippery liquid sliding down your throat. You lick you cracked lips and rejoice at the refreshment it brings. A glass of wine won’t do it. You might put up with a soda or an iced tea but when you are bone dry thirsty—cool, pure water is the only thing that truly satisfies!
And that drink of water doesn’t just quench your thirst; it allows you to live on. It doesn’t just wet your whistle. It saves your life.
On Ash Wednesday as we placed ashes on your forehead we said, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” and, in fact, the deciding difference between flesh and blood and dust and ashes is water. When you are dried up, when you are truly thirsty, nothing in all the world can substitute for water. But plain old water is not enough. In physical terms, even if we can escape disease and injury, even if we manage to stay healthy late into life, even if we enjoy all the necessities of life our days will eventually come to an end. So, if we are going to survive for the long run, that is beyond our appointed years here on earth, there is going to have to be some other source of life, something even more essential than water. What we need to obtain eternal life is what Zechariah called, “living water.” We need a spring of living water welling up within us and flowing through us. If we hope to last we need eternal life…and for eternal life we need Jesus Christ because he is the sole source of that living water.
Now let’s turn to our gospel reading for today. In Luke chapter 15, verse 32, at the very end of our reading, the Father confirms to his elder son that the important thing is fellowship with the Father. He says, “We had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” The prodigal son was faced with death but that did not occur when he realized he was starving. It happened long before then. The Prodigal son began to die when he broke fellowship with the Father. After that his life was a downward spiral. And he was not revived when the Father fed him. He was revived when the Father embraced him. Reunion with the Father restored his life.
This is the lesson we learn from the younger son. We will not discover living water—we will not find fulfillment apart from the Father. We think we will. We think that as we venture out on our own journey we will stumble upon something life-giving, but nothing we discover will quench our thirst. We can take the gifts that God has given us—our inheritance—and we can squander all those gifts on a million pleasures, countless things of beauty, sensual gratification galore and we will find ourselves emptier than when we began. “Water, water, everywhere but not a drop to drink” Ask any addict. They will tell you that the more they used the less satisfying it became. More and more meant less and less. We can insist on denying that our Father is wiser than us. We can ignore the necessity of living in relationship with God but without him we will always fail.
We can continue running from God as long as we like. All it will ever accomplish is to lead us to the point of death and despair. It always does. The drunk living under the bridge is no worse off than the obsessive compulsive business executive with his two martini lunches. The anxiety driven mom who is ready to lose it at any moment is only one step away from the woman inmate who stepped over the line in a fit of anger. Whether you are ignoring God’s plain call for you to do ministry or whether you are grudgingly serving on ten committees at church, it is no different. Pursuing our own path, demanding life on our terms always leads us into the desert of despair. We always discover we are eating and drinking out of a pig trough. There’s no water there and unless we are able to find enough humility to turn around and return to the Lord we will surely die there. That’s what happened to the likes of Anna Nicole Smith, Howard Hughes, Keith Ledger, and Kurt Cobain. In a shockingly literal way, it was what happened to Bp. James Pike who abandoned the traditional teachings of the church. He was the darling of the liberal church. He enjoyed an international reputation. There was water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. In the end he died of thirst—literally, lost in the Judean desert, not very far from the place where Jesus—the Lord he so openly and unashamedly denied—was crucified. He was so close to his Salvation and yet he was light years away because he was not willing to humble himself. (that remains the great danger facing our churches today)
And this is the lesson of the older son. “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” All over the world today there are Christians living miserable, unhappy, legalistic lives. We work too hard. We are constantly striving to “do God’s will” but we try too hard—our obsession with being good Christians betrays a real lack of trust. While we claim to surrender to God’s plan we insist on God being intolerant, bossy, and condemning. Emotionally, many of us have decided to cover up our depression or our anger, or any other negative thoughts or feelings, because we fear that no true Christian is permitted to feel that way. We know all the right things to say and do. We look so good on Sunday morning. We drive ourselves daily, trying to prove our love for Jesus. But we can’t find any joy. There is no peace. We don’t seem able to grasp the fact that God loves us without condition. We desperately need to accept the fact that God wants to set us free. God does not seek to punish us. He has, in fact, wiped the slate clean. The sins of our past are forgiven and forgotten. Our future is debt free. We don’t seem able to conceive of a God who could simply take delight in forgiveness. There always has to be a “yea but”—some catch—something else we must do to qualify. And many of us are deeply offended—never publicly of course—but deeply offended when God’s grace and freedom shines in the life of some wretched sinner. We will not—will not—celebrate in God’s forgiveness. We refuse to join in God’s celebration. We have never come to understand that true freedom is the goal of “salvation” and “forgiveness.” It is the joyous work of God—it is the only reason for the party…and so we trudge along wondering when the drudgery will end—questioning whether in the end our merits will outweigh their demerits. We spend our whole lives thirsty while a vast ocean of pure living water runs right through the middle of their lives. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make us drink.
Now I don’t usually title my sermons—the Presbyterians always wanted to know the title of my next sermon but Episcopalians just don’t even ask. But if a Presbyterian were to ask me for the title of today’s sermon it would be, “The Parable of the Three Sons,” because there is a third Son in our story this morning. The third son is the only begotten Son, the Son telling the story. Jesus paints a picture of a loving, forgiving Father and his two wayward sons for a reason. He is answering a complaint. Jesus had been accused of acting contrary to God’s will. At the beginning of chapter 15 St. Luke tells us that “…the tax collectors and "sinners" were all gathering around to hear [Jesus]. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them." We are told that “they muttered”—and muttering is not good. Muttering destroys lives and ruins ministries. They were muttering that if Jesus was God’s anointed one, as he claimed to be, then he should be hanging around with the righteous people and insisting that the sinful be punished. And since Jesus was doing the opposite Jesus must be opposed to God’s purposes.
Jesus’ answer is that this third Son, this Son that is telling the tale, is different than the rest. This third Son is not running from the Father’s will like the prodigal did and like sinners always do. Neither was He leaving brother sinners in despair nor self-righteously insisting that they be forever punished. No, this Son who is telling the story is different. He desires what his Father desires. He rejoices in bringing the dead to life—he delights in finding the lost—he loves to set sinners free—just like the Father. And neither he nor his Father waits for sinners to clean up their act and show proper penance. Instead, as soon as they see the sinners coming, while they are still a long way off, the Father and the true Son run out to meet them. This third Son is just like the Father. In fact, when you look at the Son you see the Father. And this Son does not act on his own authority. Rather He does the will of the one who sent him. It is the Father’s will that sinners be saved. It is Jesus’ will too. The Father is devoted to compassion and forgiveness. The Son is too. In fact, Jesus has come for the very purpose of opening the door for compassion and forgiveness. He came to save sinners, people who look and act just like us, people who have spent their whole lives fighting to get away from God and people who have been refusing God’s gracious gift and insisting upon justice; all the younger sons and the older sons who ever lived, Jesus has come to save.
That is the sole reason the Son came down from heaven. It was the Father’s desire that springs of living water would flow out from Jerusalem, to the east and to the west, for all time. Generation after generation thirsty, lost sinners, have quenched their spiritual thirst from the spring of living water that flows from Jesus’ self-sacrificing wounds. We have been refreshed and we have been restored through faith in Jesus Christ.
Every time someone drinks from that stream there is rejoicing in heaven—and so God’s banquet, his party for saved sinners continues uninterrupted to this day.
Some of you have been wasting your time searching for refreshment everywhere but in Jesus. You can’t understand why you keep getting beat up by life—when will you return to the Lord? Others of you have been hard-hearted Christians for years. You mean well, you try harder than the rest, but you are desperate for refreshment.—when will you let go and let God?
Before his son ever got to the father, the father jumped up and ran to them. It is as if he was watching and waiting for a glimpse of them. He is watching and waiting for a glimpse of you too. He has been watching and waiting for a long time, longing to see you, longing for you to come into the banquet. He longs to embrace you and to set you free. He longs to give you a drink from the stream of living water—a drink so refreshing that everything else pales into insignificance. Have you ever been really thirsty? If you have you know how good the living water tastes. Amen.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit—Amen
The Middle East has an arid climate. There is little rainfall. The land is dry and rocky. Only the most drought resistant plants survive. Attempts to cultivate the land and grow crops require great effort and substantial good fortune. If the rains do not come, there will be no crop. If there is no crop there is no food. And if there is no food there is no life. So it should come as no surprise that in the scriptures “water” is a common metaphor for life—no water, no life—abundant water, abundant life. Water is even used to describe eternal life.
In Zechariah 14.5—8, the prophet speaks of the time when messiah will come. He declares, “Then the LORD my God will come, and all the holy ones with him. On that day there will be no light, no cold or frost. It will be a unique day, without daytime or nighttime—a day known to the LORD. When evening comes, there will be light. On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half to the eastern sea and half to the western sea, in summer and in winter.”
The prophet foretells the day when life will no longer ebb away from us little by little, but a new day, a day of everlasting light and eternal life will flow, like a river of “living water.” It will flow out from Jerusalem in both directions. It will flow in season and out of season.
In the gospel of John chapter 7, verse 38, Jesus declares, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."
Jesus claims the prophecy for himself. He claims that, the “Lord your God has come,” just as Zechariah had promised. Jesus says, “I am he. And those of you who believe in me will know eternal life flowing through you.”
Do you know how good water can taste? I don’t mean Perrier or Pellegrino with their happy, teasing bubbles. And I don’t mean Aquafina, Dasani or Evian with their attractive packaging. What I am asking is have you ever realized that plain ordinary H2O is the greatest taste in the world? If you have never been thirsty, you have no idea what I’m talking about. If you have grown up in the city, in a house with three to ten water faucets, with bottled water at every corner store, and water fountains at work and school, then you may have never experienced true thirst. And if you have never experienced true thirst you may be of the opinion that water is just plain and bland. You may wonder, what’s to like? And, given an option, you probably choose to drink coca-cola or ice tea or maybe even a glass of wine over plain old water.
But if you know what it means to be truly thirsty you know that it is not a happy experience. Maybe you have walked down a long hot trail, or gone for a very long run; or maybe you’ve gone to a remote beach somewhere and forgotten to take anything to drink along with you. If you have experienced true thirst you know what it feels like when your tongue is stuck to the roof of your mouth, and your mouth feels like cotton, and you can’t sweat because there’s no moisture left in you, so you start to run a fever, and your lips are all chapped and splitting—and yet there is still no water in sight—and you realize you could die of thirst. If you’ve ever been truly thirsty then you know how good water tastes! When you are truly thirsty you don’t drink daintily from a glass. You get grabby. You don’t sip. You guzzle. You act like a drunk under a bridge getting his first drink of the day. You relish the cool slippery liquid sliding down your throat. You lick you cracked lips and rejoice at the refreshment it brings. A glass of wine won’t do it. You might put up with a soda or an iced tea but when you are bone dry thirsty—cool, pure water is the only thing that truly satisfies!
And that drink of water doesn’t just quench your thirst; it allows you to live on. It doesn’t just wet your whistle. It saves your life.
On Ash Wednesday as we placed ashes on your forehead we said, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” and, in fact, the deciding difference between flesh and blood and dust and ashes is water. When you are dried up, when you are truly thirsty, nothing in all the world can substitute for water. But plain old water is not enough. In physical terms, even if we can escape disease and injury, even if we manage to stay healthy late into life, even if we enjoy all the necessities of life our days will eventually come to an end. So, if we are going to survive for the long run, that is beyond our appointed years here on earth, there is going to have to be some other source of life, something even more essential than water. What we need to obtain eternal life is what Zechariah called, “living water.” We need a spring of living water welling up within us and flowing through us. If we hope to last we need eternal life…and for eternal life we need Jesus Christ because he is the sole source of that living water.
Now let’s turn to our gospel reading for today. In Luke chapter 15, verse 32, at the very end of our reading, the Father confirms to his elder son that the important thing is fellowship with the Father. He says, “We had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” The prodigal son was faced with death but that did not occur when he realized he was starving. It happened long before then. The Prodigal son began to die when he broke fellowship with the Father. After that his life was a downward spiral. And he was not revived when the Father fed him. He was revived when the Father embraced him. Reunion with the Father restored his life.
This is the lesson we learn from the younger son. We will not discover living water—we will not find fulfillment apart from the Father. We think we will. We think that as we venture out on our own journey we will stumble upon something life-giving, but nothing we discover will quench our thirst. We can take the gifts that God has given us—our inheritance—and we can squander all those gifts on a million pleasures, countless things of beauty, sensual gratification galore and we will find ourselves emptier than when we began. “Water, water, everywhere but not a drop to drink” Ask any addict. They will tell you that the more they used the less satisfying it became. More and more meant less and less. We can insist on denying that our Father is wiser than us. We can ignore the necessity of living in relationship with God but without him we will always fail.
We can continue running from God as long as we like. All it will ever accomplish is to lead us to the point of death and despair. It always does. The drunk living under the bridge is no worse off than the obsessive compulsive business executive with his two martini lunches. The anxiety driven mom who is ready to lose it at any moment is only one step away from the woman inmate who stepped over the line in a fit of anger. Whether you are ignoring God’s plain call for you to do ministry or whether you are grudgingly serving on ten committees at church, it is no different. Pursuing our own path, demanding life on our terms always leads us into the desert of despair. We always discover we are eating and drinking out of a pig trough. There’s no water there and unless we are able to find enough humility to turn around and return to the Lord we will surely die there. That’s what happened to the likes of Anna Nicole Smith, Howard Hughes, Keith Ledger, and Kurt Cobain. In a shockingly literal way, it was what happened to Bp. James Pike who abandoned the traditional teachings of the church. He was the darling of the liberal church. He enjoyed an international reputation. There was water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. In the end he died of thirst—literally, lost in the Judean desert, not very far from the place where Jesus—the Lord he so openly and unashamedly denied—was crucified. He was so close to his Salvation and yet he was light years away because he was not willing to humble himself. (that remains the great danger facing our churches today)
And this is the lesson of the older son. “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” All over the world today there are Christians living miserable, unhappy, legalistic lives. We work too hard. We are constantly striving to “do God’s will” but we try too hard—our obsession with being good Christians betrays a real lack of trust. While we claim to surrender to God’s plan we insist on God being intolerant, bossy, and condemning. Emotionally, many of us have decided to cover up our depression or our anger, or any other negative thoughts or feelings, because we fear that no true Christian is permitted to feel that way. We know all the right things to say and do. We look so good on Sunday morning. We drive ourselves daily, trying to prove our love for Jesus. But we can’t find any joy. There is no peace. We don’t seem able to grasp the fact that God loves us without condition. We desperately need to accept the fact that God wants to set us free. God does not seek to punish us. He has, in fact, wiped the slate clean. The sins of our past are forgiven and forgotten. Our future is debt free. We don’t seem able to conceive of a God who could simply take delight in forgiveness. There always has to be a “yea but”—some catch—something else we must do to qualify. And many of us are deeply offended—never publicly of course—but deeply offended when God’s grace and freedom shines in the life of some wretched sinner. We will not—will not—celebrate in God’s forgiveness. We refuse to join in God’s celebration. We have never come to understand that true freedom is the goal of “salvation” and “forgiveness.” It is the joyous work of God—it is the only reason for the party…and so we trudge along wondering when the drudgery will end—questioning whether in the end our merits will outweigh their demerits. We spend our whole lives thirsty while a vast ocean of pure living water runs right through the middle of their lives. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make us drink.
Now I don’t usually title my sermons—the Presbyterians always wanted to know the title of my next sermon but Episcopalians just don’t even ask. But if a Presbyterian were to ask me for the title of today’s sermon it would be, “The Parable of the Three Sons,” because there is a third Son in our story this morning. The third son is the only begotten Son, the Son telling the story. Jesus paints a picture of a loving, forgiving Father and his two wayward sons for a reason. He is answering a complaint. Jesus had been accused of acting contrary to God’s will. At the beginning of chapter 15 St. Luke tells us that “…the tax collectors and "sinners" were all gathering around to hear [Jesus]. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them." We are told that “they muttered”—and muttering is not good. Muttering destroys lives and ruins ministries. They were muttering that if Jesus was God’s anointed one, as he claimed to be, then he should be hanging around with the righteous people and insisting that the sinful be punished. And since Jesus was doing the opposite Jesus must be opposed to God’s purposes.
Jesus’ answer is that this third Son, this Son that is telling the tale, is different than the rest. This third Son is not running from the Father’s will like the prodigal did and like sinners always do. Neither was He leaving brother sinners in despair nor self-righteously insisting that they be forever punished. No, this Son who is telling the story is different. He desires what his Father desires. He rejoices in bringing the dead to life—he delights in finding the lost—he loves to set sinners free—just like the Father. And neither he nor his Father waits for sinners to clean up their act and show proper penance. Instead, as soon as they see the sinners coming, while they are still a long way off, the Father and the true Son run out to meet them. This third Son is just like the Father. In fact, when you look at the Son you see the Father. And this Son does not act on his own authority. Rather He does the will of the one who sent him. It is the Father’s will that sinners be saved. It is Jesus’ will too. The Father is devoted to compassion and forgiveness. The Son is too. In fact, Jesus has come for the very purpose of opening the door for compassion and forgiveness. He came to save sinners, people who look and act just like us, people who have spent their whole lives fighting to get away from God and people who have been refusing God’s gracious gift and insisting upon justice; all the younger sons and the older sons who ever lived, Jesus has come to save.
That is the sole reason the Son came down from heaven. It was the Father’s desire that springs of living water would flow out from Jerusalem, to the east and to the west, for all time. Generation after generation thirsty, lost sinners, have quenched their spiritual thirst from the spring of living water that flows from Jesus’ self-sacrificing wounds. We have been refreshed and we have been restored through faith in Jesus Christ.
Every time someone drinks from that stream there is rejoicing in heaven—and so God’s banquet, his party for saved sinners continues uninterrupted to this day.
Some of you have been wasting your time searching for refreshment everywhere but in Jesus. You can’t understand why you keep getting beat up by life—when will you return to the Lord? Others of you have been hard-hearted Christians for years. You mean well, you try harder than the rest, but you are desperate for refreshment.—when will you let go and let God?
Before his son ever got to the father, the father jumped up and ran to them. It is as if he was watching and waiting for a glimpse of them. He is watching and waiting for a glimpse of you too. He has been watching and waiting for a long time, longing to see you, longing for you to come into the banquet. He longs to embrace you and to set you free. He longs to give you a drink from the stream of living water—a drink so refreshing that everything else pales into insignificance. Have you ever been really thirsty? If you have you know how good the living water tastes. Amen.
February 28, 2010
Enemies of Faith: Presumption and Despair
Fr. Scott Homer
Second Sunday of Lent, 2010
In the name of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Our God is an awesome God. We are so fortunate. God is on friendly terms with us. You know, its really quite amazing when you think about it. God, the creator of the universe, all powerful, all knowing, and yet compassionate and kind. He hold the supernova and the black hole in his hand. Light years are moments. The billions and billions of stars? All his and yet he has promised to take a personal interest in each of our lives and to see to it that we are protected and cared for forever. What does this sovereign Lord of the Universe expect in return? He expects us to cooperate with him by exercising our faith—by believing in the promises he has made and by preserving the hope we have in his saving work. We are saved by God’s grace alone, but we are saved through faith. And although faith is all that is required of us, it is required, and we need to beware that we do not fall into patterns of faithlessness. Faith is trusting in the hope of God’s promises refusing to succumb to either despair or presumption.
In the letter to the Ephesians Paul says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” And Jesus, Paul, Peter and just about everybody else in the Holy Writings agree that it is God alone who does the saving work. God forgives our sins. God conquers the power of evil and death. God leads us into his eternal kingdom. God provides everything. All of this divine work is what we call Grace. God’s saving work in our lives is God’s grace and apart from God’s grace no one is saved. All depends upon God—almost. We human beings have not been left without a part in the process. We , in fact, play a vital role, so vital that there will be no salvation without our part. God saves but we accept God’s grace in our lives. It is God’s power working in us but it operates through our faith. And so faith, whatever that entails, is the link between us and God, the source of life. Faith is the key to our future so we might want to learn about it and get good at it. There is nothing more important—not family or career, not environment or economics, not even food, clothing or shelter. If our long term wellbeing depends upon receiving God’s grace, and if God insists upon working via our faith, which all the messengers of God tell us is the case, then having faith, living in faith, being expert at faith is the essential life task.
Now, as we look at this issue of faith, let’s not be confused about the nature of faith. Faith is not quantitative in nature. You don’t have a little faith or a lot of faith. You don’t have strong faith or weak faith. You’ve either got faith or you don’t. Either you is or you ain’t! The disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith and Jesus responds by saying that even a tiny amount of faith is sufficient. He says the faith of a mustard seed can move mountains. Jesus’ point is that quantity of faith isn’t the issue, are you are acting out of faith or out of something else, that is the issue. I personally believe you can have faith one second and not the next. I think that is what we see in Peter’s confession. One second Peter is declaring Jesus the Christ. He is acting in faith. The next second he is arguing with Jesus. He is acting out of something other than faith. So, faith is neither great nor little. Instead, it is either on or off. So we don’t need to worry about how to increase our faith. We need to figure out what motivators are causing us to abandon our faith. If we can identify the enemies of faith, those things that cause us to act apart from faith, then we may be able to limit the enemy’s power over our lives. By the way, this is true of all dysfunction. If we are able to describe the dysfunctional behavior, and to understand the purpose it is trying to serve, then we begin to have options once again. As long as the dysfunction is invisible we are powerless over it but when we see it for what it is, we can begin to be set free from its destructive influence.
So what are these destructive motives that compete with faith and threaten us with extinction by separating us from the saving grace of God? What might be causing us to act apart from faith? Well, it is really much simpler than we might think. There are really only two root causes. They are opposites, but although they are opposites, they both cause the same mischief in us by leading us to act as if God’s Word and God’s purposes do not matter. One is very familiar to us. One is nearly invisible but both are deadly. The two are: presumption and despair. God builds up hope within us and presumption and despair tear it down. Most of us are very familiar with despair. We have experienced its powerful affect upon us at numerous points in our lives. We have felt its crippling effect. Despair is the near certainty that all is lost. There is no hope, no way that anything good can come out of our situation. In its extreme it is the feeling that God is powerless to help us or maybe even worse, that God is indifferent to our plight. It is no coincident that we are told that at the Gates of Hell there is a sign that reads, “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.” Despair is a hellish feeling that leads people away from God’s saving grace. And yet all of us, on a regular basis, choose to act out of the spirit of despair rather than out of faith.
Every time we say, “I can’t do anything about it,” or, “It’s beyond my control. The system is just screwed up. That person is a hopeless case. None of it matters. Whatever,” every time we abandon what we know to be right, decent, true and good, by resigning ourselves to futility we are acting out of the spirit of despair. Judas hung himself by completely and utterly cutting himself off from the hope of God’s forgiveness and salvation. But we entertain the same sort of despair in small ways on a daily basis. We all know despair intimately and usually when we talk about the enemy of faith, we talk about the various ways that despair manifests itself. But what about presumption?
Years ago I heard a story about a wild group of college students who decided it would be fun to watch a hurricane make landfall. These were the folks who had the most outrageous parties on campus. These guys belonged to the fraternity everybody wanted to pledge. The ones who claimed to work hard and play hard. And so when they heard that a category five hurricane was approaching, they decided to rent a beach house and to hold a big hurricane party and watch as the storm made landfall right before their eyes. As everybody else was fleeing for inland, this group was carrying their belongings, and the kegs and the liquor onto the barrier island. Well, when the storm hit the power went out. The water was so high that rescue workers could not get to the island for a couple of days afterwards. And when they did, there was no beach house left. There were no signs of life. Just waves lapping up on a deserted stretch of beach.
The young partiers had heard the warnings. They ignored them all. The partiers knew that police and rescue personnel wanted to protect them by getting them inland but they chose to believe they were above the danger. All the wisdom said, don’t do it but they knew better than all the experts. If any of them believed in God they must have believed that God would ignore their arrogance and recklessness and would protect them anyway. In a word, the partiers were presumptuous.
Jerusalem was the City of God—or at least it was supposed to have been—a city built around the Temple—the city where God dwelt in the midst of his people. Jerusalem was supposed to have been the city that housed God’s chosen people, the place where God’s people lived in God’s presence, worshipped in God’s sacred Temple and enjoyed God’s shalom, the peace that only God could ever provide. And when they strayed, God sent his prophets to Jerusalem. He sent them dozens of times and for hundreds of years—God anointed messengers to give storm warnings, to persuade the people to repent and return to the Lord, to listen to God’s word and to obey God’s clear commands but they ignored all the warnings and went on doing precisely what they wanted.
And so, as Jesus looked out over Jerusalem he gave voice to God’s complaint against the city. He said that Jerusalem was not the City of God. It had become something quite different from what He and his Father had intended it to be. Jerusalem had become the city devoted to killing God’s Word, the city devoted to crushing God’s people, the city that rebelled against God’s authority, and that thumbed their noses at God’s warnings. Jerusalem had become the city of God’s absence. A group of reckless and arrogant partiers in the face of an immense and dangerous storm. Jerusalem acted as if they could do as they pleased with impunity, that somehow being God’s chosen people exempted them from God’s clarion call to faith. In a word, they were presumptuous. They challenged God’s sovereign will, refused to heed the prophets’ warnings, choosing instead to kill God’s prophets in order to silence them, and now they were preparing to kill God’s Son.
Jesus laments the certain demise of Jerusalem. As a consequence of their actions, God had abandoned them. Jesus speaking in his true voice, as God Almighty, said, “Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’” There would be no peace. There would be no freedom from the foreign oppressor. God would not enter into their presence. He rescue them from their fate. They would live forsaken—alone and apart from God. They would live vain, conflicted lives because of their presumption.
Some of us have made presumption high theology. We behave as though faith is proven by challenging God,by ignoring holy living, by acting selfishly, and by living recklessly and carelessly. We think we can behave like drunkards and God will not care. We act as if we can manipulate the world around us for our own advantage and Jesus will simply smile and ignore our bad behavior. We think we can ignore God’s call upon our lives, ignore the plight of the poor, ignore the pain and suffering around us and that God will ignore our indifference. But our God is not just a merciful God. Our God is a just God. Even when we don’t, He cares. Make no mistake about it. He cares and there will be a day of reconing.
Jesus, speaking like a prophet, though far more than a prophet, does what prophets always do. His words do not simply condemn. His words also point to restoration and salvation. Jerusalem will know God’s salvation. They will see God in their midst again. They will be redeemed. But when? When will Jerusalem once again receive God’s blessing? When will God’s people know God’s presence and God’s peace? Jesus says, it will be when they acknowledge God’s promises and heed God’s warnings, when they accept God’s Word and when they honor God’s Anointed One. Their salvation will come when they act in faith. They will be redeemed when, in faith, they welcome the LORD saying, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”
We are saved by God’s grace. It can happen in no other way. It is a free gift—a gift we can do nothing to merit. Our salvation comes when Jesus enters into our midst and administers it to us. He is God’s word in our lives. From the moment he enters into our lives we will choose whether we will welcome him as the source of life and salvation or we will kill him as a false prophet. If we act out of despair we will not be able to believe that Jesus could actually make a difference in our lives or we will believe that He could not possibly care about us and we will have no faith in the promises he has made to us. If we act out of presumption we will believe that Jesus is an unnecessary step. We will believe that God would never be so closed minded as to insist on faith in his Son. Surely God will save us apart from all this old religion stuff. In either case, if we act out of despair or out of presumption we will be lost, not because God’s grace was absent but because we refused to acknowledge God’s grace when He presented himself to us.
Finally, we can choose to act on faith, to accept the promises as true. This may not be that easy. It may require that we suffer rather than submit to lies. It may compromise relationships. It may mean that we have to humble ourselves and admit that in God’s eyes we have fallen far short of his expectations but when we choose to act on faith, and to accept God’s promises as true, it will mean salvation for us. Amen.
Second Sunday of Lent, 2010
In the name of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Our God is an awesome God. We are so fortunate. God is on friendly terms with us. You know, its really quite amazing when you think about it. God, the creator of the universe, all powerful, all knowing, and yet compassionate and kind. He hold the supernova and the black hole in his hand. Light years are moments. The billions and billions of stars? All his and yet he has promised to take a personal interest in each of our lives and to see to it that we are protected and cared for forever. What does this sovereign Lord of the Universe expect in return? He expects us to cooperate with him by exercising our faith—by believing in the promises he has made and by preserving the hope we have in his saving work. We are saved by God’s grace alone, but we are saved through faith. And although faith is all that is required of us, it is required, and we need to beware that we do not fall into patterns of faithlessness. Faith is trusting in the hope of God’s promises refusing to succumb to either despair or presumption.
In the letter to the Ephesians Paul says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” And Jesus, Paul, Peter and just about everybody else in the Holy Writings agree that it is God alone who does the saving work. God forgives our sins. God conquers the power of evil and death. God leads us into his eternal kingdom. God provides everything. All of this divine work is what we call Grace. God’s saving work in our lives is God’s grace and apart from God’s grace no one is saved. All depends upon God—almost. We human beings have not been left without a part in the process. We , in fact, play a vital role, so vital that there will be no salvation without our part. God saves but we accept God’s grace in our lives. It is God’s power working in us but it operates through our faith. And so faith, whatever that entails, is the link between us and God, the source of life. Faith is the key to our future so we might want to learn about it and get good at it. There is nothing more important—not family or career, not environment or economics, not even food, clothing or shelter. If our long term wellbeing depends upon receiving God’s grace, and if God insists upon working via our faith, which all the messengers of God tell us is the case, then having faith, living in faith, being expert at faith is the essential life task.
Now, as we look at this issue of faith, let’s not be confused about the nature of faith. Faith is not quantitative in nature. You don’t have a little faith or a lot of faith. You don’t have strong faith or weak faith. You’ve either got faith or you don’t. Either you is or you ain’t! The disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith and Jesus responds by saying that even a tiny amount of faith is sufficient. He says the faith of a mustard seed can move mountains. Jesus’ point is that quantity of faith isn’t the issue, are you are acting out of faith or out of something else, that is the issue. I personally believe you can have faith one second and not the next. I think that is what we see in Peter’s confession. One second Peter is declaring Jesus the Christ. He is acting in faith. The next second he is arguing with Jesus. He is acting out of something other than faith. So, faith is neither great nor little. Instead, it is either on or off. So we don’t need to worry about how to increase our faith. We need to figure out what motivators are causing us to abandon our faith. If we can identify the enemies of faith, those things that cause us to act apart from faith, then we may be able to limit the enemy’s power over our lives. By the way, this is true of all dysfunction. If we are able to describe the dysfunctional behavior, and to understand the purpose it is trying to serve, then we begin to have options once again. As long as the dysfunction is invisible we are powerless over it but when we see it for what it is, we can begin to be set free from its destructive influence.
So what are these destructive motives that compete with faith and threaten us with extinction by separating us from the saving grace of God? What might be causing us to act apart from faith? Well, it is really much simpler than we might think. There are really only two root causes. They are opposites, but although they are opposites, they both cause the same mischief in us by leading us to act as if God’s Word and God’s purposes do not matter. One is very familiar to us. One is nearly invisible but both are deadly. The two are: presumption and despair. God builds up hope within us and presumption and despair tear it down. Most of us are very familiar with despair. We have experienced its powerful affect upon us at numerous points in our lives. We have felt its crippling effect. Despair is the near certainty that all is lost. There is no hope, no way that anything good can come out of our situation. In its extreme it is the feeling that God is powerless to help us or maybe even worse, that God is indifferent to our plight. It is no coincident that we are told that at the Gates of Hell there is a sign that reads, “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.” Despair is a hellish feeling that leads people away from God’s saving grace. And yet all of us, on a regular basis, choose to act out of the spirit of despair rather than out of faith.
Every time we say, “I can’t do anything about it,” or, “It’s beyond my control. The system is just screwed up. That person is a hopeless case. None of it matters. Whatever,” every time we abandon what we know to be right, decent, true and good, by resigning ourselves to futility we are acting out of the spirit of despair. Judas hung himself by completely and utterly cutting himself off from the hope of God’s forgiveness and salvation. But we entertain the same sort of despair in small ways on a daily basis. We all know despair intimately and usually when we talk about the enemy of faith, we talk about the various ways that despair manifests itself. But what about presumption?
Years ago I heard a story about a wild group of college students who decided it would be fun to watch a hurricane make landfall. These were the folks who had the most outrageous parties on campus. These guys belonged to the fraternity everybody wanted to pledge. The ones who claimed to work hard and play hard. And so when they heard that a category five hurricane was approaching, they decided to rent a beach house and to hold a big hurricane party and watch as the storm made landfall right before their eyes. As everybody else was fleeing for inland, this group was carrying their belongings, and the kegs and the liquor onto the barrier island. Well, when the storm hit the power went out. The water was so high that rescue workers could not get to the island for a couple of days afterwards. And when they did, there was no beach house left. There were no signs of life. Just waves lapping up on a deserted stretch of beach.
The young partiers had heard the warnings. They ignored them all. The partiers knew that police and rescue personnel wanted to protect them by getting them inland but they chose to believe they were above the danger. All the wisdom said, don’t do it but they knew better than all the experts. If any of them believed in God they must have believed that God would ignore their arrogance and recklessness and would protect them anyway. In a word, the partiers were presumptuous.
Jerusalem was the City of God—or at least it was supposed to have been—a city built around the Temple—the city where God dwelt in the midst of his people. Jerusalem was supposed to have been the city that housed God’s chosen people, the place where God’s people lived in God’s presence, worshipped in God’s sacred Temple and enjoyed God’s shalom, the peace that only God could ever provide. And when they strayed, God sent his prophets to Jerusalem. He sent them dozens of times and for hundreds of years—God anointed messengers to give storm warnings, to persuade the people to repent and return to the Lord, to listen to God’s word and to obey God’s clear commands but they ignored all the warnings and went on doing precisely what they wanted.
And so, as Jesus looked out over Jerusalem he gave voice to God’s complaint against the city. He said that Jerusalem was not the City of God. It had become something quite different from what He and his Father had intended it to be. Jerusalem had become the city devoted to killing God’s Word, the city devoted to crushing God’s people, the city that rebelled against God’s authority, and that thumbed their noses at God’s warnings. Jerusalem had become the city of God’s absence. A group of reckless and arrogant partiers in the face of an immense and dangerous storm. Jerusalem acted as if they could do as they pleased with impunity, that somehow being God’s chosen people exempted them from God’s clarion call to faith. In a word, they were presumptuous. They challenged God’s sovereign will, refused to heed the prophets’ warnings, choosing instead to kill God’s prophets in order to silence them, and now they were preparing to kill God’s Son.
Jesus laments the certain demise of Jerusalem. As a consequence of their actions, God had abandoned them. Jesus speaking in his true voice, as God Almighty, said, “Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’” There would be no peace. There would be no freedom from the foreign oppressor. God would not enter into their presence. He rescue them from their fate. They would live forsaken—alone and apart from God. They would live vain, conflicted lives because of their presumption.
Some of us have made presumption high theology. We behave as though faith is proven by challenging God,by ignoring holy living, by acting selfishly, and by living recklessly and carelessly. We think we can behave like drunkards and God will not care. We act as if we can manipulate the world around us for our own advantage and Jesus will simply smile and ignore our bad behavior. We think we can ignore God’s call upon our lives, ignore the plight of the poor, ignore the pain and suffering around us and that God will ignore our indifference. But our God is not just a merciful God. Our God is a just God. Even when we don’t, He cares. Make no mistake about it. He cares and there will be a day of reconing.
Jesus, speaking like a prophet, though far more than a prophet, does what prophets always do. His words do not simply condemn. His words also point to restoration and salvation. Jerusalem will know God’s salvation. They will see God in their midst again. They will be redeemed. But when? When will Jerusalem once again receive God’s blessing? When will God’s people know God’s presence and God’s peace? Jesus says, it will be when they acknowledge God’s promises and heed God’s warnings, when they accept God’s Word and when they honor God’s Anointed One. Their salvation will come when they act in faith. They will be redeemed when, in faith, they welcome the LORD saying, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”
We are saved by God’s grace. It can happen in no other way. It is a free gift—a gift we can do nothing to merit. Our salvation comes when Jesus enters into our midst and administers it to us. He is God’s word in our lives. From the moment he enters into our lives we will choose whether we will welcome him as the source of life and salvation or we will kill him as a false prophet. If we act out of despair we will not be able to believe that Jesus could actually make a difference in our lives or we will believe that He could not possibly care about us and we will have no faith in the promises he has made to us. If we act out of presumption we will believe that Jesus is an unnecessary step. We will believe that God would never be so closed minded as to insist on faith in his Son. Surely God will save us apart from all this old religion stuff. In either case, if we act out of despair or out of presumption we will be lost, not because God’s grace was absent but because we refused to acknowledge God’s grace when He presented himself to us.
Finally, we can choose to act on faith, to accept the promises as true. This may not be that easy. It may require that we suffer rather than submit to lies. It may compromise relationships. It may mean that we have to humble ourselves and admit that in God’s eyes we have fallen far short of his expectations but when we choose to act on faith, and to accept God’s promises as true, it will mean salvation for us. Amen.
February 17, 2010
Anglican or Other: Where Exactly Do We Stand in the Communion?
The Rev. Scott T Homer
February 17, 2010
On October 4, 2008 the Diocesan Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (ADP) voted to separate from the Episcopal Church in the United States (TEC). We followed a similar action on the part of the Diocese of San Joaquin in California. These were unprecedented acts. A diocese has not separated from its mother church since Americans separated from the Church of England at the time of the Revolutionary War. Although parishes had left TEC, no diocese ever had and for those of us who consider membership in the Anglican Communion an important, even vital, part of belonging to the Body of Christ, the action has raised the question, where exactly do we stand? Is the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh Anglican in name only or are we truly part of the worldwide Anglican Communion?
Of course, the first question begs a second. That is, what does it mean to be Anglican? What makes Anglicanism distinct? Here is a partial list: Anglicans have a particular organizational structure. They share a common set of beliefs and they worship in specific ways. But is that all? Is anyone who claims similarity in matters of organizational structure, belief, and liturgy legitimately Anglican or is there something more to it? Perhaps, some sort of official recognition that needs to occur?
Christian First, Anglican Second
This ought to go without saying but regrettably it has become a clouded issue. We are Christians before all else. We believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God. We believe that he was born of a virgin. We believe in his bodily resurrection and that he is alive and living in heaven today. And we recognize that being Anglican is simply a distinctive way of being Christian but we also assert that there can be no Anglicanism apart from the core Christian beliefs. The one follows the other and their position can never be inverted. We are Christians first, and then we are Anglicans.
Theologically Anglican
We are theologically Anglican. Like Anglicans everywhere and at all times, we believe in the Creeds, the Apostle’s and the Nicene, as normative statements of the Faith. In them, we are told certain things about the character of God and the character of man and the nature of God’s redemptive work in the world. The Creeds are not historical oddities. Their teaching is not optional. The content of the creeds is nothing less than the Apostle’s teaching coming down to us through the ages, to instruct and to guide us in right belief. The Creeds define what it means to be Christian.
We, along with Anglicans around the world, ascribe to the teachings of the Thirty-nine Articles. These statements of belief were formulated in order to clarify what the Church of England and her daughter churches believed and how they differed from other denominations. We are theologically Anglican because we believe what Anglicans believe.
Liturgically Anglican
We worship like Anglicans. We do not worship like Presbyterians, Baptists, or Methodists. We are known as a liturgical church because our services follow an order that is both ancient and universal in form. Our Eucharist dates back to very roots of Christianity and the Medieval Church. In most respects we worship in precisely the same way that people worshipped in the Court of Charlemagne and perhaps much earlier even than that.
We believe in sacraments. We believe that the Holy Spirit has blessed and ordained certain outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace and that we can actually come to know the Lord in powerful ways through certain actions and events in the life of the Church. We believe that Baptism is not just an initiation rite but that, in fact, the Holy Spirit does come and wash away sin, and take up residence in the life of the Baptized. We believe that the Lord is really present to us in Holy Communion. And to lesser or greater extents, Anglicans honor the other sacraments as well. We are Anglicans because we worship like Anglicans worship.
Structurally Anglican
We are Anglicans because we believe that the Christian Church is universal. The Christian church is represented all over the world. We are all one body which the Bible calls the Body of Christ. As a consequence, we can not act independently. Our actions have a profound impact on other parts of the Body and so we are called to interdependence. So for us, a Church is a diocese made up of many parishes. Parishes belong to a diocese and are accountable to it. Diocese voluntarily join in a province, again to promote interdependence, and that province becomes a part of the worldwide communion. And we take council with one another to assure that our message is universal both in content and in effect, not just within our own context but for believers throughout the world.
We believe in different orders. We have lay people, deacons, priests, and bishops. Each has a legitimate function in the Church but the really distinctive thing about Anglicans is that their Bishops receive the laying on of hands by other bishops and they always have, all the way back to the time of the Apostles. We believe, therefore, that our Bishops stand in a special place of authority and responsibility and they deserve a special place of honor. We have traditionally listened to our bishops and allowed them to lead us. We are Anglican because our Church is built in the Anglican model for church.
Politically Anglican
Before a final vote to depart TEC and before any clergy led worship following the split the bishop and the clergy of our diocese were officially received as clergy in good standing in the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. That relationship existed then. That relationship exists today. Our diocese was never anything other than Anglican. We have never been without accountability to the Anglican Communion. Today, the majority of Anglicans and the majority of Anglican Churches in the world recognize the Diocese of Pittsburgh as an Anglican Diocese. They have declared they are in communion with us. They are, likewise, in the process of recognizing the Anglican Church in North America, as the authentic Anglican province on our continent. And so, politically, we are Anglican.
When will we be officially recognized as Anglican?
Despite our legitimate claim to the title Anglican, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Communion Office, and the “official” decision making bodies of the Communion evade and obfuscate. They acknowledge in private what they ignore in public—that our bishops, our clergy and our churches are legitimate. Why? There are two major reasons. First, they are unhappy with the way we went about the separation. Second, they are afraid of TEC. They recognize that when we split with TEC we presented a viable option to dissidents around the world and they do not want to encourage dissident actions in their own provinces. But by far the more compelling problem for the Communion is that much of the work of the Anglican Communion is being financed, governed and controlled by TEC. There is a real question as to whether the Communion Office could remain open apart from TEC funding. And there are real questions about whether or not the clear majority in the Communion has any real voice in the decisions being made or any real authority to act against TEC.
And so, we sit and wait. We are Anglican in every legitimate sense of the word but we are like the Man in the Iron Mask, the true heir to the throne who has been imprisoned and disguised in order that the usurper might continue in power. I believe the day will come when we will be officially recognized but it will be a long time before we see it. In the meantime, we will continue to live out our lives in Christ, honoring the Anglican way and awaiting the day when the instruments of unity acknowledge what the rest of the world already knows.
February 17, 2010
On October 4, 2008 the Diocesan Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (ADP) voted to separate from the Episcopal Church in the United States (TEC). We followed a similar action on the part of the Diocese of San Joaquin in California. These were unprecedented acts. A diocese has not separated from its mother church since Americans separated from the Church of England at the time of the Revolutionary War. Although parishes had left TEC, no diocese ever had and for those of us who consider membership in the Anglican Communion an important, even vital, part of belonging to the Body of Christ, the action has raised the question, where exactly do we stand? Is the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh Anglican in name only or are we truly part of the worldwide Anglican Communion?
Of course, the first question begs a second. That is, what does it mean to be Anglican? What makes Anglicanism distinct? Here is a partial list: Anglicans have a particular organizational structure. They share a common set of beliefs and they worship in specific ways. But is that all? Is anyone who claims similarity in matters of organizational structure, belief, and liturgy legitimately Anglican or is there something more to it? Perhaps, some sort of official recognition that needs to occur?
Christian First, Anglican Second
This ought to go without saying but regrettably it has become a clouded issue. We are Christians before all else. We believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God. We believe that he was born of a virgin. We believe in his bodily resurrection and that he is alive and living in heaven today. And we recognize that being Anglican is simply a distinctive way of being Christian but we also assert that there can be no Anglicanism apart from the core Christian beliefs. The one follows the other and their position can never be inverted. We are Christians first, and then we are Anglicans.
Theologically Anglican
We are theologically Anglican. Like Anglicans everywhere and at all times, we believe in the Creeds, the Apostle’s and the Nicene, as normative statements of the Faith. In them, we are told certain things about the character of God and the character of man and the nature of God’s redemptive work in the world. The Creeds are not historical oddities. Their teaching is not optional. The content of the creeds is nothing less than the Apostle’s teaching coming down to us through the ages, to instruct and to guide us in right belief. The Creeds define what it means to be Christian.
We, along with Anglicans around the world, ascribe to the teachings of the Thirty-nine Articles. These statements of belief were formulated in order to clarify what the Church of England and her daughter churches believed and how they differed from other denominations. We are theologically Anglican because we believe what Anglicans believe.
Liturgically Anglican
We worship like Anglicans. We do not worship like Presbyterians, Baptists, or Methodists. We are known as a liturgical church because our services follow an order that is both ancient and universal in form. Our Eucharist dates back to very roots of Christianity and the Medieval Church. In most respects we worship in precisely the same way that people worshipped in the Court of Charlemagne and perhaps much earlier even than that.
We believe in sacraments. We believe that the Holy Spirit has blessed and ordained certain outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace and that we can actually come to know the Lord in powerful ways through certain actions and events in the life of the Church. We believe that Baptism is not just an initiation rite but that, in fact, the Holy Spirit does come and wash away sin, and take up residence in the life of the Baptized. We believe that the Lord is really present to us in Holy Communion. And to lesser or greater extents, Anglicans honor the other sacraments as well. We are Anglicans because we worship like Anglicans worship.
Structurally Anglican
We are Anglicans because we believe that the Christian Church is universal. The Christian church is represented all over the world. We are all one body which the Bible calls the Body of Christ. As a consequence, we can not act independently. Our actions have a profound impact on other parts of the Body and so we are called to interdependence. So for us, a Church is a diocese made up of many parishes. Parishes belong to a diocese and are accountable to it. Diocese voluntarily join in a province, again to promote interdependence, and that province becomes a part of the worldwide communion. And we take council with one another to assure that our message is universal both in content and in effect, not just within our own context but for believers throughout the world.
We believe in different orders. We have lay people, deacons, priests, and bishops. Each has a legitimate function in the Church but the really distinctive thing about Anglicans is that their Bishops receive the laying on of hands by other bishops and they always have, all the way back to the time of the Apostles. We believe, therefore, that our Bishops stand in a special place of authority and responsibility and they deserve a special place of honor. We have traditionally listened to our bishops and allowed them to lead us. We are Anglican because our Church is built in the Anglican model for church.
Politically Anglican
Before a final vote to depart TEC and before any clergy led worship following the split the bishop and the clergy of our diocese were officially received as clergy in good standing in the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. That relationship existed then. That relationship exists today. Our diocese was never anything other than Anglican. We have never been without accountability to the Anglican Communion. Today, the majority of Anglicans and the majority of Anglican Churches in the world recognize the Diocese of Pittsburgh as an Anglican Diocese. They have declared they are in communion with us. They are, likewise, in the process of recognizing the Anglican Church in North America, as the authentic Anglican province on our continent. And so, politically, we are Anglican.
When will we be officially recognized as Anglican?
Despite our legitimate claim to the title Anglican, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Communion Office, and the “official” decision making bodies of the Communion evade and obfuscate. They acknowledge in private what they ignore in public—that our bishops, our clergy and our churches are legitimate. Why? There are two major reasons. First, they are unhappy with the way we went about the separation. Second, they are afraid of TEC. They recognize that when we split with TEC we presented a viable option to dissidents around the world and they do not want to encourage dissident actions in their own provinces. But by far the more compelling problem for the Communion is that much of the work of the Anglican Communion is being financed, governed and controlled by TEC. There is a real question as to whether the Communion Office could remain open apart from TEC funding. And there are real questions about whether or not the clear majority in the Communion has any real voice in the decisions being made or any real authority to act against TEC.
And so, we sit and wait. We are Anglican in every legitimate sense of the word but we are like the Man in the Iron Mask, the true heir to the throne who has been imprisoned and disguised in order that the usurper might continue in power. I believe the day will come when we will be officially recognized but it will be a long time before we see it. In the meantime, we will continue to live out our lives in Christ, honoring the Anglican way and awaiting the day when the instruments of unity acknowledge what the rest of the world already knows.
February 14, 2010
Never Give In
By Fr Scott Homer
On October 29, 1941, just about a year after the Blitzkrieg of England began, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, visited Harrow School to listen to the traditional songs he had sung there when he was a student and to speak to the students about the war. The last half of 1940 and the first half of 1941 had been brutal. While much of the world seemed willing to allow the Nazis to overrun much of the world, England made a mutual assistance treaty with Poland and when Germany invaded Poland, England declared war on Hitler and his Third Reich. They were outgunned and outmanned. England experienced immense suffering and great hardship. Her people were reduced to living on rations. German bombs rained down on them without ceasing for days and weeks at a time. City children had to leave their families and were sent out into the countryside to live with strangers they had never met in the hope that they would be kept safe from the German attacks. And England was alone. The U.S. had declared neutrality. Much of Europe had already surrendered. The German invasion of England was already to be implemented. But despite what seemed like insurmountable odds England endured. They refused to surrender. They refused to allow evil to go unanswered. And their steadfastness was rewarded. Things did begin to look up a bit in the last half of 1941. The US would finally join in the war effort soon. The Soviets would stand against the Nazis as well. While the end was far from in site, England had hope that having faced down the most evil government in modern history, they might indeed triumph and Churchill did not want the lesson they all had learned to be lost. He told the boys at Harrow that the lesson learned was this:
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” (Winston Churchill)
Churchill concluded his speech by saying,
“... our country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.”
And of course, we who live in the aftermath of WWII, we know that Churchill was indeed correct. Britain would conquer, and the Axis of evil that brought so much pain and so much suffering to so many millions of people was eventually defeated. But what Churchill did not say, because he either did not know or would not say, was that Britain, and the rest of the free world conquered because the Lord was with them. It was the power of God that enabled the Allied Forces to triumph. And it was not grit that empowered the British people to endure through all the famines, all the explosions and all the uncertainty. It was their faith in Christ that carried them through night after dark night. It was faith that bolstered them up when their spines felt as if they were turning to rubber. It was faith that gave them the will to continue on in spite of all appearances. Truly, “they never gave in. {They} never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never gave in. [They] never yielded to force. Never yielded to the apparent overwhelming might of the enemy.”
A poor, bedraggled, befuddled, father comes to Jesus. He is at his wits end. He has tried everything and still a demon continues to torment and torture his possessed son. If you have ever seen a grand mall seizure you know how frightening they are—and how dangerous. A person in the throws of such a seizure has no control over their thrashing and they will injure themselves without even knowing they are doing it. Can you imagine that person being your child? Surely this boy’s father is tormented and tortured too. So this father, desperate to find freedom for his son approaches Jesus. Jesus is just returning from a retreat. He has seen the commotion from a distance. And when the father talks to Jesus he tells him that he “begged the disciples to cast [the demon] out and they could not.” Jesus looks at the situation. It is dark and ugly and plainly evil. He hears what has happened. His disciples have failed. And not only that they have failed to keep trying. He finds them having abandoned the boy. The people Jesus commissioned and empowered to cast out demons and heal in his name, are allowing evil to go unchallenged in their presence. And Jesus responds by saying, to his disciples, “O faithless and perverse generation! How long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring the boy to me.” In Mark’s version of this story the emphasis is on the disciple’s lack of prayer and fasting but here in Luke there is no mention of either. Here in Luke the problem is reduced to its essence—the followers of Christ had been authorized to act on his behalf. They had been empowered to cast of demons. They had been instructed to go out and do just that—to confront evil and to defeat it. But when Jesus comes down off the mountain, he finds them not even trying. Their initial efforts failed and they have abandoned the project all together. They ran into strong resistance and they threw up the white flag. Instead of conquering evil in the name of Christ, they have surrendered it.
No wonder Jesus scowls at his disciples and said, “O faithless and perverse generation!“ They don’t get it. Although they have received the Promise, although they have been blessed with supernatural power and authority, although they have the assurance of God himself that nothing in earth or under the earth can possibly prevail against them, they have chosen to live as if they are victims, powerless, incapable of making a difference.
Friends, we are the people of God. We are the disciples of Christ. The authority the disciples were given has been given to us. The commission given to the disciples is our commission. We live in the assurance of God’s grace and power just like the disciples. Like them, we are called to a purpose. We have been charged to go into every town and village, and to confront evil wherever we find it. Like them, we have been charged to be warriors, to do battle with the spiritual forces of darkness that separate humanity from the love of Christ. It is not a call to dabble in good deeds. We have not been told to do a good deed everyday—that is what Boy Scouts do. We are not to be content with occasional surprise prayer that actually comes true. We are the people of the promise and we are the living and breathing Body of Christ and we are called to never relent, never surrender, never, never, never give in.
But it isn’t easy, is it? Evil is powerful. It is not as powerful as God. Evil isn’t as powerful as good but it does not just lie down when we confront it. And appearances make it seem far more powerful than it is. When the chips are down, when the threats are real and when we doubt our ability to withstand the assault, honesty does not feel like the best policy, and we will be tempted to take matters into our own hands, and twist the facts and distort the truth. The problem is, as Iain Duguid says in our Bible study, when we play the game according to the world’s rules we are likely to find that we are outplayed. When we see corruption winning the day or we see bullying behavior being rewarded with them getting what they want, we are likely to want to back away from the conflict, to resign ourselves from the situation and to allow the evil to triumph. “Who are we,” we ask. “What difference can we make,” we wonder. Or we decide, “it is simply not worth it.” We all do it all the time. I’m not pointing the finger at one person here. In the midst of the battle it is easy for us to find ourselves with our backs to the battle and miles away from where we turned and ran. The Red Badge of Courage comes to mind.
Now, of course, when Jesus returns he will cast the demon out and the boy will be restored but he and his family will have gone through unnecessary pain and suffering. They will have lived on doubt about the power of God to keep his promises. He will not know the power that comes from a Body of believers surrounding him in love, praying without ceasing for his salvation, buoying him up and carrying through his hard times. This is work that only we can do. And it is the work we have been given to do. We can not assure the outcome. It is Jesus who rebukes evil and the Holy Spirit that drives evil away. God is in the results business but we are in the efforts business and maintaining effort despite the apparent odds is what Christians do. It is our witness to the world.
Trinity Beaver is showing remarkable faith in the midst of remarkably great challenges. We have engaged in a fight to defend the place of Holy Scripture in the universal church and this parish has been willing to give freely of its resources to support the cause. There has been no retreat and no relenting by your leadership. Their courage witnesses to a God who continues to be good to his promises, a God we can depend upon despite how desperate our circumstances appear to be. Does the world need that witness? More now than ever. This parish is investing itself in the lives of others, through programs like Financial Peace University, The Mustard Seed Café, and Flowers in the Desert. And of course, when we begin to invest our lives in other people’s problems we begin to see the truth. The truth is that the problems are legion. There is way more to do than we have resources for. And when we begin to see the actual need we may be repelled. We may, like the disciples, decide to cut our losses and pull back, and wait for the boss to get back. But as I think we have seen, Jesus is not pleased with that sort of contingency planning.
Two lessons this morning: The first is that Jesus is indeed, the Holy One, the Mighty One, the only One in whom we should trust. He is indeed stronger than any of the forces that seek to destroy us. His word is greater than Moses. His power is greater than Elijah. He is god’s beloved Son and the source of all healing. He is the only one who can restore us even in those cases that seem beyond hope. Jesus is Lord of all. The second lesson is a point of application.
We have been called to fight the good fight without flinching and without retreat. We are called to lean into the promises God has made to us, and to insist on claiming the power and the authority he has bestowed upon his Church. We are the source of hope in a hopeless world. We are the only ones able to successfully confront the evils of our day. When we surrender the field to the enemy we become the faithless and the perverse. So together lets take courage and never, never give in. We have nothing to loose. Nothing of value can be taken from us. Our lives are secure in Christ. So we can listen to the words of Teddy Roosevelt and we can claim them as our own:
“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” Amen.
On October 29, 1941, just about a year after the Blitzkrieg of England began, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, visited Harrow School to listen to the traditional songs he had sung there when he was a student and to speak to the students about the war. The last half of 1940 and the first half of 1941 had been brutal. While much of the world seemed willing to allow the Nazis to overrun much of the world, England made a mutual assistance treaty with Poland and when Germany invaded Poland, England declared war on Hitler and his Third Reich. They were outgunned and outmanned. England experienced immense suffering and great hardship. Her people were reduced to living on rations. German bombs rained down on them without ceasing for days and weeks at a time. City children had to leave their families and were sent out into the countryside to live with strangers they had never met in the hope that they would be kept safe from the German attacks. And England was alone. The U.S. had declared neutrality. Much of Europe had already surrendered. The German invasion of England was already to be implemented. But despite what seemed like insurmountable odds England endured. They refused to surrender. They refused to allow evil to go unanswered. And their steadfastness was rewarded. Things did begin to look up a bit in the last half of 1941. The US would finally join in the war effort soon. The Soviets would stand against the Nazis as well. While the end was far from in site, England had hope that having faced down the most evil government in modern history, they might indeed triumph and Churchill did not want the lesson they all had learned to be lost. He told the boys at Harrow that the lesson learned was this:
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” (Winston Churchill)
Churchill concluded his speech by saying,
“... our country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.”
And of course, we who live in the aftermath of WWII, we know that Churchill was indeed correct. Britain would conquer, and the Axis of evil that brought so much pain and so much suffering to so many millions of people was eventually defeated. But what Churchill did not say, because he either did not know or would not say, was that Britain, and the rest of the free world conquered because the Lord was with them. It was the power of God that enabled the Allied Forces to triumph. And it was not grit that empowered the British people to endure through all the famines, all the explosions and all the uncertainty. It was their faith in Christ that carried them through night after dark night. It was faith that bolstered them up when their spines felt as if they were turning to rubber. It was faith that gave them the will to continue on in spite of all appearances. Truly, “they never gave in. {They} never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never gave in. [They] never yielded to force. Never yielded to the apparent overwhelming might of the enemy.”
A poor, bedraggled, befuddled, father comes to Jesus. He is at his wits end. He has tried everything and still a demon continues to torment and torture his possessed son. If you have ever seen a grand mall seizure you know how frightening they are—and how dangerous. A person in the throws of such a seizure has no control over their thrashing and they will injure themselves without even knowing they are doing it. Can you imagine that person being your child? Surely this boy’s father is tormented and tortured too. So this father, desperate to find freedom for his son approaches Jesus. Jesus is just returning from a retreat. He has seen the commotion from a distance. And when the father talks to Jesus he tells him that he “begged the disciples to cast [the demon] out and they could not.” Jesus looks at the situation. It is dark and ugly and plainly evil. He hears what has happened. His disciples have failed. And not only that they have failed to keep trying. He finds them having abandoned the boy. The people Jesus commissioned and empowered to cast out demons and heal in his name, are allowing evil to go unchallenged in their presence. And Jesus responds by saying, to his disciples, “O faithless and perverse generation! How long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring the boy to me.” In Mark’s version of this story the emphasis is on the disciple’s lack of prayer and fasting but here in Luke there is no mention of either. Here in Luke the problem is reduced to its essence—the followers of Christ had been authorized to act on his behalf. They had been empowered to cast of demons. They had been instructed to go out and do just that—to confront evil and to defeat it. But when Jesus comes down off the mountain, he finds them not even trying. Their initial efforts failed and they have abandoned the project all together. They ran into strong resistance and they threw up the white flag. Instead of conquering evil in the name of Christ, they have surrendered it.
No wonder Jesus scowls at his disciples and said, “O faithless and perverse generation!“ They don’t get it. Although they have received the Promise, although they have been blessed with supernatural power and authority, although they have the assurance of God himself that nothing in earth or under the earth can possibly prevail against them, they have chosen to live as if they are victims, powerless, incapable of making a difference.
Friends, we are the people of God. We are the disciples of Christ. The authority the disciples were given has been given to us. The commission given to the disciples is our commission. We live in the assurance of God’s grace and power just like the disciples. Like them, we are called to a purpose. We have been charged to go into every town and village, and to confront evil wherever we find it. Like them, we have been charged to be warriors, to do battle with the spiritual forces of darkness that separate humanity from the love of Christ. It is not a call to dabble in good deeds. We have not been told to do a good deed everyday—that is what Boy Scouts do. We are not to be content with occasional surprise prayer that actually comes true. We are the people of the promise and we are the living and breathing Body of Christ and we are called to never relent, never surrender, never, never, never give in.
But it isn’t easy, is it? Evil is powerful. It is not as powerful as God. Evil isn’t as powerful as good but it does not just lie down when we confront it. And appearances make it seem far more powerful than it is. When the chips are down, when the threats are real and when we doubt our ability to withstand the assault, honesty does not feel like the best policy, and we will be tempted to take matters into our own hands, and twist the facts and distort the truth. The problem is, as Iain Duguid says in our Bible study, when we play the game according to the world’s rules we are likely to find that we are outplayed. When we see corruption winning the day or we see bullying behavior being rewarded with them getting what they want, we are likely to want to back away from the conflict, to resign ourselves from the situation and to allow the evil to triumph. “Who are we,” we ask. “What difference can we make,” we wonder. Or we decide, “it is simply not worth it.” We all do it all the time. I’m not pointing the finger at one person here. In the midst of the battle it is easy for us to find ourselves with our backs to the battle and miles away from where we turned and ran. The Red Badge of Courage comes to mind.
Now, of course, when Jesus returns he will cast the demon out and the boy will be restored but he and his family will have gone through unnecessary pain and suffering. They will have lived on doubt about the power of God to keep his promises. He will not know the power that comes from a Body of believers surrounding him in love, praying without ceasing for his salvation, buoying him up and carrying through his hard times. This is work that only we can do. And it is the work we have been given to do. We can not assure the outcome. It is Jesus who rebukes evil and the Holy Spirit that drives evil away. God is in the results business but we are in the efforts business and maintaining effort despite the apparent odds is what Christians do. It is our witness to the world.
Trinity Beaver is showing remarkable faith in the midst of remarkably great challenges. We have engaged in a fight to defend the place of Holy Scripture in the universal church and this parish has been willing to give freely of its resources to support the cause. There has been no retreat and no relenting by your leadership. Their courage witnesses to a God who continues to be good to his promises, a God we can depend upon despite how desperate our circumstances appear to be. Does the world need that witness? More now than ever. This parish is investing itself in the lives of others, through programs like Financial Peace University, The Mustard Seed Café, and Flowers in the Desert. And of course, when we begin to invest our lives in other people’s problems we begin to see the truth. The truth is that the problems are legion. There is way more to do than we have resources for. And when we begin to see the actual need we may be repelled. We may, like the disciples, decide to cut our losses and pull back, and wait for the boss to get back. But as I think we have seen, Jesus is not pleased with that sort of contingency planning.
Two lessons this morning: The first is that Jesus is indeed, the Holy One, the Mighty One, the only One in whom we should trust. He is indeed stronger than any of the forces that seek to destroy us. His word is greater than Moses. His power is greater than Elijah. He is god’s beloved Son and the source of all healing. He is the only one who can restore us even in those cases that seem beyond hope. Jesus is Lord of all. The second lesson is a point of application.
We have been called to fight the good fight without flinching and without retreat. We are called to lean into the promises God has made to us, and to insist on claiming the power and the authority he has bestowed upon his Church. We are the source of hope in a hopeless world. We are the only ones able to successfully confront the evils of our day. When we surrender the field to the enemy we become the faithless and the perverse. So together lets take courage and never, never give in. We have nothing to loose. Nothing of value can be taken from us. Our lives are secure in Christ. So we can listen to the words of Teddy Roosevelt and we can claim them as our own:
“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” Amen.
February 10, 2010
What is being argued in court?
by the Reverend Scott Homer
February 10, 2010
With all the posturing go on between Bishop Price and his TEC Diocese versus Archbishop Duncan and his ACNA Diocese of Pittsburgh I thought it was time to explain, in its most fundamental sense what is actually being disputed and why their public statements often seem a bit obtuse. I have my opinions about how the disputes ought to be resolved but that is not the purpose of this statement. Rather, I simply want to get the real issues on the table so that everybody knows what is actually being argued in court. Because the truth is that the dispute has nothing to do with what most of us have been told. The court actions are not going to settle any of the issues about blessing gay marriages or ordaining gay clergy. It will not answer any of our differences over theology. The court actions will only answer two questions and at the end of the day, an enormous amount of money will have been spent for little good purpose.
The first and arguably the most important question being heard is this: Is a diocese sovereign or is it merely a subdivision of the national church? Put another way, is a diocese’s affiliation with the national church optional or is the diocese an inseparable part of national church? The Diocese of Pittsburgh assembled in October of 2008 and voted to separate from the Episcopal Church. Did that assembly have the right to separate? Were they still a diocese at the conclusion of the vote or had they become simply a bunch of dissident church leaders without authority and without legitimate claim to the assets of the diocese?
The second question being heard is this: who owns the stuff? Is it owned by the parish, by the diocese or by the national church? Does the parish leadership of Trinity Church hold legitimate claim to its property and monetary assets or are we simply custodians who care for the property on behalf of some other entity? Does the parish own the property or is it held in trust for the diocese or the national church?
TEC is arguing that a diocese can not vote to leave the national church and that what actually happened in Pittsburgh was that a lot of individuals voted to no longer be members of their church, nothing more. They did not vote as churches or as a diocese and they did not act with any authority. If the courts decide that TEC is right, then TEC will, in all likelihood, be awarded all of our properties.
The Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh is arguing that it had the right and the authority to vote to separate from the National Church and that it legitimately took its property with it. When representatives of all the diocesan churches lawfully assembled and voted in accordance with its own constitution and canons to separate from TEC, they did in fact leave as an intact diocesan entity. If the courts agree with the Anglican Diocese, there is a good chance our properties will be awarded to us.
This emotional, spiritual and economic drain is wasting precious resources on a battle that will ultimately resolve nothing of substance. Pray that Bishop Price and the TEC diocese actually agrees to negotiate a reasonable settlement with Bishop Duncan and the Anglican diocese. There is still an opportunity for the defenders of the faith to demonstrate the sort of grace and forgiveness that our Lord calls all of us to model to the world. A good place to start would be for the two sides agree that bringing suit in court is not a Christian option.
February 10, 2010
With all the posturing go on between Bishop Price and his TEC Diocese versus Archbishop Duncan and his ACNA Diocese of Pittsburgh I thought it was time to explain, in its most fundamental sense what is actually being disputed and why their public statements often seem a bit obtuse. I have my opinions about how the disputes ought to be resolved but that is not the purpose of this statement. Rather, I simply want to get the real issues on the table so that everybody knows what is actually being argued in court. Because the truth is that the dispute has nothing to do with what most of us have been told. The court actions are not going to settle any of the issues about blessing gay marriages or ordaining gay clergy. It will not answer any of our differences over theology. The court actions will only answer two questions and at the end of the day, an enormous amount of money will have been spent for little good purpose.
The first and arguably the most important question being heard is this: Is a diocese sovereign or is it merely a subdivision of the national church? Put another way, is a diocese’s affiliation with the national church optional or is the diocese an inseparable part of national church? The Diocese of Pittsburgh assembled in October of 2008 and voted to separate from the Episcopal Church. Did that assembly have the right to separate? Were they still a diocese at the conclusion of the vote or had they become simply a bunch of dissident church leaders without authority and without legitimate claim to the assets of the diocese?
The second question being heard is this: who owns the stuff? Is it owned by the parish, by the diocese or by the national church? Does the parish leadership of Trinity Church hold legitimate claim to its property and monetary assets or are we simply custodians who care for the property on behalf of some other entity? Does the parish own the property or is it held in trust for the diocese or the national church?
TEC is arguing that a diocese can not vote to leave the national church and that what actually happened in Pittsburgh was that a lot of individuals voted to no longer be members of their church, nothing more. They did not vote as churches or as a diocese and they did not act with any authority. If the courts decide that TEC is right, then TEC will, in all likelihood, be awarded all of our properties.
The Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh is arguing that it had the right and the authority to vote to separate from the National Church and that it legitimately took its property with it. When representatives of all the diocesan churches lawfully assembled and voted in accordance with its own constitution and canons to separate from TEC, they did in fact leave as an intact diocesan entity. If the courts agree with the Anglican Diocese, there is a good chance our properties will be awarded to us.
This emotional, spiritual and economic drain is wasting precious resources on a battle that will ultimately resolve nothing of substance. Pray that Bishop Price and the TEC diocese actually agrees to negotiate a reasonable settlement with Bishop Duncan and the Anglican diocese. There is still an opportunity for the defenders of the faith to demonstrate the sort of grace and forgiveness that our Lord calls all of us to model to the world. A good place to start would be for the two sides agree that bringing suit in court is not a Christian option.
Ash Weds Services at Trinity Church
Imposition of Ashes and Holy Eucharist
Wednesday, February 17th at
7:00AM
9:30AM
7:00PM
Wednesday, February 17th at
7:00AM
9:30AM
7:00PM
CHURCH OF ENGLAND SYNOD AFFIRMS ANGLICAN CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA
February 10, 2010
Today, the General Synod, the national assembly of the Church of England, meeting in London February 8-12, affirmed the Anglican Church in North America's desire "to remain within the Anglican family."
The Most Rev. Robert Duncan, archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America, thanked Mrs. Lorna Ashworth of Chichester for bringing the church to the attention of the General Synod. "We are very grateful to Mrs. Ashworth and the scores of other friends in the Synod of the Church of England for all they did to give us this opportunity to tell our story to the mother church of the Anglican Communion. It is very encouraging that the synod recognizes and affirms our desire to remain within the Anglican family." said Archbishop Duncan.
A private member's motion, put forward by Mrs. Ashworth, and subsequently amended by the Synod, states that "this synod recognize and affirm the desire of those who have formed the Anglican Church in North America to remain within the Anglican family." The motion passed by a resounding 309 - 69 margin (with seven abstentions).
The motion was amended by the Right Reverend Michael Hill, the Bishop of Bristol. His purpose, in his own words, was "(1) to encourage those who are part of the Anglican Church in North America; (2) to commend the process of recognition afforded by the Instruments of the Anglican Communion; and (3) to ask the Archbishop of Canterbury to report progress back to Synod in a year's time."
The discussion at Synod presented an important opportunity for members of the Anglican Church in North America, joined by many friends in the United Kingdom, to share the vision and mission of the church with fellow Anglicans. "We are deeply thankful that we were given the opportunity to tell the Synod about our church, and our vision for reaching North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ. This chance to speak directly to our Anglican family was very rewarding. We look forward to working with the friends we made and reaching out to others in the years ahead," said Bishop Donald Harvey, who, with Mrs. Cynthia Brust, Dr. Michael Howell, and the Rev. Dr. Tory Baucum, represented the Anglican Church in North America in preparation for the Synod vote.
The Anglican Church in North America, founded in June of 2009 with 703 congregations, today unites 800 Anglican congregations across North America. The church's mission is to reach North America with the Transforming Love of Jesus Christ.
Today, the General Synod, the national assembly of the Church of England, meeting in London February 8-12, affirmed the Anglican Church in North America's desire "to remain within the Anglican family."
The Most Rev. Robert Duncan, archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America, thanked Mrs. Lorna Ashworth of Chichester for bringing the church to the attention of the General Synod. "We are very grateful to Mrs. Ashworth and the scores of other friends in the Synod of the Church of England for all they did to give us this opportunity to tell our story to the mother church of the Anglican Communion. It is very encouraging that the synod recognizes and affirms our desire to remain within the Anglican family." said Archbishop Duncan.
A private member's motion, put forward by Mrs. Ashworth, and subsequently amended by the Synod, states that "this synod recognize and affirm the desire of those who have formed the Anglican Church in North America to remain within the Anglican family." The motion passed by a resounding 309 - 69 margin (with seven abstentions).
The motion was amended by the Right Reverend Michael Hill, the Bishop of Bristol. His purpose, in his own words, was "(1) to encourage those who are part of the Anglican Church in North America; (2) to commend the process of recognition afforded by the Instruments of the Anglican Communion; and (3) to ask the Archbishop of Canterbury to report progress back to Synod in a year's time."
The discussion at Synod presented an important opportunity for members of the Anglican Church in North America, joined by many friends in the United Kingdom, to share the vision and mission of the church with fellow Anglicans. "We are deeply thankful that we were given the opportunity to tell the Synod about our church, and our vision for reaching North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ. This chance to speak directly to our Anglican family was very rewarding. We look forward to working with the friends we made and reaching out to others in the years ahead," said Bishop Donald Harvey, who, with Mrs. Cynthia Brust, Dr. Michael Howell, and the Rev. Dr. Tory Baucum, represented the Anglican Church in North America in preparation for the Synod vote.
The Anglican Church in North America, founded in June of 2009 with 703 congregations, today unites 800 Anglican congregations across North America. The church's mission is to reach North America with the Transforming Love of Jesus Christ.
February 4, 2010
Judge issues order detailing assets of Episcopal, Anglican dioceses
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Joseph James has issued an order detailing which assets are among the centrally held properties that he earlier awarded to the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh rather than to the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, which broke from the Episcopal Church in 2008.
The order, issued Friday, doesn't apply to parish property, which is to be negotiated later. Leaders of the Anglican diocese had earlier said that they would appeal the October decision. The Rev. Mary Hays, canon to the ordinary of the Anglican diocese, said the appeal can be filed now that this order has been issued.
The original diocese split when a majority of clergy and laity at its 2008 convention voted to leave the Episcopal Church over theological differences. Prior to the split, some parishes now in the 28-parish Episcopal diocese sued for the property of the 57-parish Anglican diocese. The funds have been frozen by financial institutions until the litigation is resolved.
Friday's order said that as of September, the Episcopal diocese had $22 million in cash and investments, of which $2.5 million was held for parishes.
A footnote in the special master's report that formed the basis of the decision said, "it is believed that the individual parishes have the right to withdraw the value of their investment accounts" from the diocese.
A brief statement from the Episcopal diocese said that its leadership "plans to quickly make arrangements so that all parishes may again have access to their investment funds."
Asked if that applied to Anglican parishes, Rich Creehan, a spokesman for the Episcopal diocese, said, "any parish that had been participating in that fund from whatever time, we are making arrangements so they can access those funds."
The report documents another $717,000 in trust funds and at least $2.4 million in real estate belonging to the diocese. The latter includes a residence in Donegal, near Ligonier, that in 2007 was sold to Bishop Robert Duncan, then of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh and now of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. Friday's order stated that there are legal documents for the sale, and that the Duncans will owe the Episcopal diocese $135,507 on the mortgage.
Other loans to clergy and parishes totaling more than $1 million are to be repaid according to instructions from the Episcopal diocese. The report included a long list of religious objects, mostly from closed churches, awarded to the Episcopal diocese. But the order said that no real property can be sold or removed from its current site without a further court order.
The order lists 45 properties, most of them parishes, deeded to the Episcopal diocese. But the Rev. Hays said some of those may be incorrect. One is for a church that was sold over a decade ago and subsequently torn down. Another is for a playground, not a church building, she said.
"We're not looking to be argumentative, we just want to make sure the information is correct," she said.
Judge James gave the Anglican diocese 20 days to provide the Episcopal diocese with the records and information "reasonably needed by the Episcopal diocese to hold and administer the real and personal property that is subject to this order."
The Rev. Hays said she believed the appeal would put a hold on that process.
"We have always wanted to find a way where both sides could have the resources appropriate to their share," she said.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10034/1032951-455.stm?cmpid=news.xml#ixzz0ea9ieOrS
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Joseph James has issued an order detailing which assets are among the centrally held properties that he earlier awarded to the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh rather than to the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, which broke from the Episcopal Church in 2008.
The order, issued Friday, doesn't apply to parish property, which is to be negotiated later. Leaders of the Anglican diocese had earlier said that they would appeal the October decision. The Rev. Mary Hays, canon to the ordinary of the Anglican diocese, said the appeal can be filed now that this order has been issued.
The original diocese split when a majority of clergy and laity at its 2008 convention voted to leave the Episcopal Church over theological differences. Prior to the split, some parishes now in the 28-parish Episcopal diocese sued for the property of the 57-parish Anglican diocese. The funds have been frozen by financial institutions until the litigation is resolved.
Friday's order said that as of September, the Episcopal diocese had $22 million in cash and investments, of which $2.5 million was held for parishes.
A footnote in the special master's report that formed the basis of the decision said, "it is believed that the individual parishes have the right to withdraw the value of their investment accounts" from the diocese.
A brief statement from the Episcopal diocese said that its leadership "plans to quickly make arrangements so that all parishes may again have access to their investment funds."
Asked if that applied to Anglican parishes, Rich Creehan, a spokesman for the Episcopal diocese, said, "any parish that had been participating in that fund from whatever time, we are making arrangements so they can access those funds."
The report documents another $717,000 in trust funds and at least $2.4 million in real estate belonging to the diocese. The latter includes a residence in Donegal, near Ligonier, that in 2007 was sold to Bishop Robert Duncan, then of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh and now of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. Friday's order stated that there are legal documents for the sale, and that the Duncans will owe the Episcopal diocese $135,507 on the mortgage.
Other loans to clergy and parishes totaling more than $1 million are to be repaid according to instructions from the Episcopal diocese. The report included a long list of religious objects, mostly from closed churches, awarded to the Episcopal diocese. But the order said that no real property can be sold or removed from its current site without a further court order.
The order lists 45 properties, most of them parishes, deeded to the Episcopal diocese. But the Rev. Hays said some of those may be incorrect. One is for a church that was sold over a decade ago and subsequently torn down. Another is for a playground, not a church building, she said.
"We're not looking to be argumentative, we just want to make sure the information is correct," she said.
Judge James gave the Anglican diocese 20 days to provide the Episcopal diocese with the records and information "reasonably needed by the Episcopal diocese to hold and administer the real and personal property that is subject to this order."
The Rev. Hays said she believed the appeal would put a hold on that process.
"We have always wanted to find a way where both sides could have the resources appropriate to their share," she said.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10034/1032951-455.stm?cmpid=news.xml#ixzz0ea9ieOrS
AAC Tracks Episcopal Church’s Canonical Abuse - Plight of Orthodox Anglicans
Atlanta, GA - The American Anglican Council today made public an accounting of how The Episcopal Church (TEC) has spent millions of dollars in over 50 lawsuits, deposed or inhibited 12 bishops and more than 400 other clergy, and violated its own canons numerous times. The paper, titled "The Episcopal Church: Overbearing and Unjust Episcopal Acts," chronicles each of these subjects and a number of other abuses or injustices committed against faithful Anglicans in the U.S.
"The Episcopal Church is systematically targeting, intimidating, suing, and ultimately persecuting orthodox Anglicans throughout the U.S." said the Rt. Rev. David C. Anderson, President and CEO of the American Anglican Council. "This paper illustrates the lengths to which TEC leaders will go to silence the voices of orthodox Christians in the Anglican Communion - Anglicans whose only offense was to stand for the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and Anglican Communion teaching."
The Rev. Philip Ashey, AAC Chief Operating Officer and a practicing attorney, originally authored the 29 page paper at the request of several members of the Church of England's General Synod. Fr. Ashey was also instrumental in helping draft the constitution and canons of the new Anglican Church in North America (AC-NA). The Synod is expected to vote on the nature of its communion with the AC-NA next week. The AC-NA, of which the American Anglican Council is a member group, formed in 2009 and is made up of many former Episcopalians who left that church over deep theological differences.
While many groups outside and inside TEC have called into question the church's canonical and legal practices, Fr. Ashey believes few realize the extent of the abuse. "I don't think there has ever been a period of time in the Anglican Communion where one church has deposed such a huge number of clergy. It is my hope that Anglicans around the world will read this paper and do something to halt these unjust and un-Christian actions."
"The Episcopal Church is systematically targeting, intimidating, suing, and ultimately persecuting orthodox Anglicans throughout the U.S." said the Rt. Rev. David C. Anderson, President and CEO of the American Anglican Council. "This paper illustrates the lengths to which TEC leaders will go to silence the voices of orthodox Christians in the Anglican Communion - Anglicans whose only offense was to stand for the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and Anglican Communion teaching."
The Rev. Philip Ashey, AAC Chief Operating Officer and a practicing attorney, originally authored the 29 page paper at the request of several members of the Church of England's General Synod. Fr. Ashey was also instrumental in helping draft the constitution and canons of the new Anglican Church in North America (AC-NA). The Synod is expected to vote on the nature of its communion with the AC-NA next week. The AC-NA, of which the American Anglican Council is a member group, formed in 2009 and is made up of many former Episcopalians who left that church over deep theological differences.
While many groups outside and inside TEC have called into question the church's canonical and legal practices, Fr. Ashey believes few realize the extent of the abuse. "I don't think there has ever been a period of time in the Anglican Communion where one church has deposed such a huge number of clergy. It is my hope that Anglicans around the world will read this paper and do something to halt these unjust and un-Christian actions."
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