By Julia Duin on June 25, 2009 into Belief Blog
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When it comes to blow-out church services, the Anglicans can sure put on the dog. I've been filing stories for the past three days on the constitutional convention for the Anglican Church of North America, the emerging 39th province of the 77-million-strong Anglican Communion. The big party to end it all was Wednesday night (it's 1:14 a.m. as I type this on Thursday) and it was a splasher.
The site was a Texas megachurch called Christ Church in Plano, a north Dallas suburb. Although I got lost getting there from Fort Worth (first ended up in Garland somehow), I knew when I finally drove up that this was the place. Talk about huge. Buildings everywhere and the sanctuary was cathedral-like in its vastness. All that was missing were side chapels and votive candles. The decor is a bit stark - no Christ on the main cross above the altar which goes along with low-church evangelicalism Texas-style.
Fortunately they got fancy with the music. Some 60 bishops and 323 clergy had to process in, so they needed something sprightly to move these folks in - long robes, mitres and academic hoods and all - rather quickly. What they came up with, composed by trombonist John Wasson was a variation on the hymn "Praise My Soul the King of Heaven" combined with African march-style music in a 4/4 beat. Sounds awful but it was stunning - and beautiful.
Now before that, there was a ton of intro choral and organ music - the brass quintet and organ were the best in a list of very presentable offerings. I don't think this is ordinarily a church that probably doesn't do the smells and bells of a more Anglo-Catholic service but they learned fast because of the huge variation of visitors there - people from around the globe coming to celebrate Archbishop Duncan's installation. The haunting "Veni Creator Spiritus" is very rarely done - usually for the consecration of bishops - and often it's played in a deadly fashion. At this church, the organ pounded it out in grand style. And fortunately the music director - Mark Snow - had the sense to choose the lovely "Missa de Sancta Maria Magdelena" for the Communion chants.
I've been doing this religion writer thing for more than 30 years and in the course of my travels, I've done Rome and Canterbury and Jerusalem; ordinations, installations and consecrations of everyone from Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl to New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson. I've done papal Masses all over the country with two popes. But I've rarely been in a service where every single piece of music was beautifully done at top level during a 2 hour+ service involving 1,500 people. During Communion, a pianist whipped out a movement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #2. Even hymns I can't stand, like "Fairest Lord Jesus" got gorgeous arrangements.
I am running out of adjectives here so must go to bed. OK, I do play piano, guitar and harp, but I am no music critic. I was told most of the musicians are home-grown although for big occasions, the music director borrows folks from Dallas symphony and opera orchestras plus a few college music professors. There were other parts to the service that were memorable: the new archbishop joking about his bushy eyebrows; the colliding lines of all the visitors wandering to and from the Communion rail not to mention the party afterward outside in a hot and soupy Texas evening.
Good night.
- Julia Duin, religion editor
June 25, 2009
Investiture of the Most Reverend Robert Duncan
Two archbishops, more than sixty bishops, over three hundred clergy and somewhere near a thousand lay people from around the world came together Wednesday evening for the investiture of the Most Reverend Robert Duncan-the first archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America. The service was held at Christ Church, Plano, TX one of the largest Anglican churches in the world and it was a magnificent time of praise and worship to our Lord and Savior and the marvelous grace that he has showered upon his people.
The Church has always marked the major spiritual events of her common life together by liturgy--common worship. This Investiture service celebrated a new day, a renewed opportunity for Anglican Christian in North America. On the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist, we celebrated our rebirth as the "ones who will go before the Lord announcing his coming." Indeed we have been set free to proclaim the good news of Christ's salvation and to reach out to people everywhere with a message of hope, with a reassurance of God's love for all humanity, a message that our God is powerful and can act to heal and restore the broken and downtrodden.
Bishop preached beautifully as he always does. The church was alive and vibrant and there was no mistaking the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst. This liturgy has marked a new day and a new initiative to be known by our Lord and to make him known in the world. The new archbishop has charged this new Province to 1) committing Scripture to memory, 2) to reach out to the poor and forgotten 3) to plant 1000 new churches in the next ive years. These challenges would be impossible for us to meet apart from the work of God in our midst but with God's help we can do it.
The Church has always marked the major spiritual events of her common life together by liturgy--common worship. This Investiture service celebrated a new day, a renewed opportunity for Anglican Christian in North America. On the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist, we celebrated our rebirth as the "ones who will go before the Lord announcing his coming." Indeed we have been set free to proclaim the good news of Christ's salvation and to reach out to people everywhere with a message of hope, with a reassurance of God's love for all humanity, a message that our God is powerful and can act to heal and restore the broken and downtrodden.
Bishop preached beautifully as he always does. The church was alive and vibrant and there was no mistaking the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst. This liturgy has marked a new day and a new initiative to be known by our Lord and to make him known in the world. The new archbishop has charged this new Province to 1) committing Scripture to memory, 2) to reach out to the poor and forgotten 3) to plant 1000 new churches in the next ive years. These challenges would be impossible for us to meet apart from the work of God in our midst but with God's help we can do it.
June 24, 2009
Fr Scott in Texas for Investiture of Bob Duncan
I am sitting in a hotel room near the Dallas Ft Worth airport. I am preparing to attend the Investiture of our bishop, Robert Duncan, as the Archbishop and Primate of the Province of the Anglican Church of North America. That event will occur in a few hours at Christ Church, Plano. TX and it will mark the final great step into a new era for Anglicans in North America. We are no longer bound to an institution that sees social justice issues as being more important than faith issues. We have been set free to proclaim the Gospel boldly. We are now reunited with faithful Anglicans around the world who have broken relations with TEC over the last several years.
I have come as your representative, to be a witness to this great event and to share in the birth of this new Province. We are witnessing history here. It will be recorded in the books and taught to future generations. Today, the liberal, post-christian church has been replaced by a vital, effective body of believers who are committed to advancing the cause of Christ in the world.
I am listing pertinent articles about what is happening here on my blog. Please visit it periodically to keep track of the events here. God Bless you. I hope to see you soon. Fr. Scott+
I have come as your representative, to be a witness to this great event and to share in the birth of this new Province. We are witnessing history here. It will be recorded in the books and taught to future generations. Today, the liberal, post-christian church has been replaced by a vital, effective body of believers who are committed to advancing the cause of Christ in the world.
I am listing pertinent articles about what is happening here on my blog. Please visit it periodically to keep track of the events here. God Bless you. I hope to see you soon. Fr. Scott+
Rick Warren calls break a "historic event"
Episcopal break called a 'historic event'
Rev. Warren shows support
By Julia Duin Wednesday, June 24, 2009
BEDFORD, Texas The Rev. Rick Warren brought hundreds of former Episcopalians to their feet in applause Tuesday when he called their exodus from the denomination "a historic event" and said God was "calling you out" of the Episcopal Church.
"I jumped at the chance to come here," Mr. Warren, evangelical pastor of the 24,000-member Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., told delegates to the constitutional convention of the newly created Anglican Church of North America (ACNA). "We will stand with you in solidarity as God does something new in your midst."
The assembly, in its second-day meeting at a school just west of Dallas, is calling itself a new 39th province of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Although not recognized by the archbishop of Canterbury, who heads up the 77 million-member body, the new province has about 100,000 people drawn from the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada.
"My heart is so full for you today," said Mr. Warren, who has offered the use of his extensive Orange County, Calif., campus as a meeting place for dissident Episcopal groups.
"God has not called the Anglican Church of North America to be a reactionary group," he added. "In the first place, you didn't leave them."
That statement, which got sustained applause, mirrors what ACNA members have said for years: They have continued in the traditions of Anglicanism, which the Episcopal Church left by ordaining practicing gay priests and bishops and taking unorthodox positions on biblical authority.
Organizers for the conference said the ACNA gathering is one of three venues Mr. Warren will attend as a speaker this year. The other two include an Assemblies of God assembly in the fall and the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) on July 4 in the District.
According to the Indianapolis Star and ISNA Web site, Mr. Warren will speak at the main session alongside ISNA President Ingrid Mattson and Islamic scholar Hamza Yusuf. In December, ISNA leader Sayyid Syeed came to Saddleback's Civil Forum on Public Health.
Mr. Warren said he speaks to groups that differ with him "to build a bridge of love between my heart and theirs so Jesus can walk across."
Mr. Warren refused multiple requests for interviews Tuesday but did meet privately with ACNA leaders after his speech. He has avoided the press since he disavowed support for California's Proposition 8 ballot initiative, saying he never endorsed the marriage amendment even though a video on his church Web site showed him doing so.
"I have no interest in politics - zero," he told the Anglicans on Tuesday. "Why? Jesus didn't die to save America. He died to save Americans. You don't change hearts through politics."
In other business Tuesday afternoon, ACNA approved, with little debate, a 33-page set of canon laws for the new province. They differ from Episcopal Church law in that people who have remarried after a divorce are not allowed into the ranks of clergy unless they get an exception from their bishop. The Episcopal Church repealed a similar law in 1973.
The new province also calls on all members and clergy to oppose abortion and respect the "sanctity of every human life from conception to natural death."
The Episcopal Church had a similar position until 1994 when it passed a resolution opposing anything that would "abridge the right of a woman to reach an informed decision about the termination of her pregnancy or that would limit the access of a woman to a safe means of acting upon her decision." In 1997, it did not condemn partial-birth abortions but expressed concern about the procedure "except in extreme situations."
Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC
Rev. Warren shows support
By Julia Duin Wednesday, June 24, 2009
BEDFORD, Texas The Rev. Rick Warren brought hundreds of former Episcopalians to their feet in applause Tuesday when he called their exodus from the denomination "a historic event" and said God was "calling you out" of the Episcopal Church.
"I jumped at the chance to come here," Mr. Warren, evangelical pastor of the 24,000-member Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., told delegates to the constitutional convention of the newly created Anglican Church of North America (ACNA). "We will stand with you in solidarity as God does something new in your midst."
The assembly, in its second-day meeting at a school just west of Dallas, is calling itself a new 39th province of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Although not recognized by the archbishop of Canterbury, who heads up the 77 million-member body, the new province has about 100,000 people drawn from the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada.
"My heart is so full for you today," said Mr. Warren, who has offered the use of his extensive Orange County, Calif., campus as a meeting place for dissident Episcopal groups.
"God has not called the Anglican Church of North America to be a reactionary group," he added. "In the first place, you didn't leave them."
That statement, which got sustained applause, mirrors what ACNA members have said for years: They have continued in the traditions of Anglicanism, which the Episcopal Church left by ordaining practicing gay priests and bishops and taking unorthodox positions on biblical authority.
Organizers for the conference said the ACNA gathering is one of three venues Mr. Warren will attend as a speaker this year. The other two include an Assemblies of God assembly in the fall and the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) on July 4 in the District.
According to the Indianapolis Star and ISNA Web site, Mr. Warren will speak at the main session alongside ISNA President Ingrid Mattson and Islamic scholar Hamza Yusuf. In December, ISNA leader Sayyid Syeed came to Saddleback's Civil Forum on Public Health.
Mr. Warren said he speaks to groups that differ with him "to build a bridge of love between my heart and theirs so Jesus can walk across."
Mr. Warren refused multiple requests for interviews Tuesday but did meet privately with ACNA leaders after his speech. He has avoided the press since he disavowed support for California's Proposition 8 ballot initiative, saying he never endorsed the marriage amendment even though a video on his church Web site showed him doing so.
"I have no interest in politics - zero," he told the Anglicans on Tuesday. "Why? Jesus didn't die to save America. He died to save Americans. You don't change hearts through politics."
In other business Tuesday afternoon, ACNA approved, with little debate, a 33-page set of canon laws for the new province. They differ from Episcopal Church law in that people who have remarried after a divorce are not allowed into the ranks of clergy unless they get an exception from their bishop. The Episcopal Church repealed a similar law in 1973.
The new province also calls on all members and clergy to oppose abortion and respect the "sanctity of every human life from conception to natural death."
The Episcopal Church had a similar position until 1994 when it passed a resolution opposing anything that would "abridge the right of a woman to reach an informed decision about the termination of her pregnancy or that would limit the access of a woman to a safe means of acting upon her decision." In 1997, it did not condemn partial-birth abortions but expressed concern about the procedure "except in extreme situations."
Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC
OCA To End Relations with TEC, Forge Ties to ACNA
Posted on: June 24, 2009 at The Living Church
His Beatitude, the Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) announced recently that his church has ended its ecumenical relations with The Episcopal Church, and will establish instead formal ecumenical relations with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).
Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA made the announcement June 24 at a plenary session of the ACNA’s founding convocation at St Vincent’s Cathedral, Bedford, Texas.
An autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, the OCA was established by eight Russian monks in 1794 on Kodiak Island, Alaska. Known as the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America, it was granted autocephaly, or autonomy, by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1970. The OCA has 700 congregations, monasteries and communities spread across the United States and Canada.
Metropolitan Jonah, 49, was reared in The Episcopal Church, but joined the OCA while a student at the University of California, San Diego, in 1978. He was elected metropolitan last year as a reform candidate, 11 days after he was consecrated Bishop of Fort Worth.
Asked what the OCA’s stance toward ecumenism might be under his tenure, Metropolitan Jonah said, “If the matter concerns The Episcopal Church USA, then this dialogue has stopped.
“We engage in dialogue with Episcopalian traditionalists, many of whom embrace the Orthodox faith,” Jonah told a Moscow-based weblog. “And I personally, and our entire synod, give great attention to bringing these people into the fold of the Orthodox Church in America.”
His Beatitude, the Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) announced recently that his church has ended its ecumenical relations with The Episcopal Church, and will establish instead formal ecumenical relations with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).
Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA made the announcement June 24 at a plenary session of the ACNA’s founding convocation at St Vincent’s Cathedral, Bedford, Texas.
An autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, the OCA was established by eight Russian monks in 1794 on Kodiak Island, Alaska. Known as the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America, it was granted autocephaly, or autonomy, by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1970. The OCA has 700 congregations, monasteries and communities spread across the United States and Canada.
Metropolitan Jonah, 49, was reared in The Episcopal Church, but joined the OCA while a student at the University of California, San Diego, in 1978. He was elected metropolitan last year as a reform candidate, 11 days after he was consecrated Bishop of Fort Worth.
Asked what the OCA’s stance toward ecumenism might be under his tenure, Metropolitan Jonah said, “If the matter concerns The Episcopal Church USA, then this dialogue has stopped.
“We engage in dialogue with Episcopalian traditionalists, many of whom embrace the Orthodox faith,” Jonah told a Moscow-based weblog. “And I personally, and our entire synod, give great attention to bringing these people into the fold of the Orthodox Church in America.”
June 23, 2009
Bishop Diuncan's Opening Address at the ACNA Provincial Assembly
Archbishop-elect Duncan’s Opening Address to Provincial Assembly
OPENING ADDRESS
Given by the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Archbishop-designate, at the Inaugural Provincial Assembly of the Anglican Church in North America during the Holy Eucharist on 22 June, A.D. 2009, the Feast of St. Alban, Anglican Proto-Martyr (First English Martyr).
God’s Time
The Lord has a way of timing things. How remarkable that we should begin our Inaugural Provincial Assembly on St. Alban’s Day (June 22nd), and that the Assembly’s great Eucharist should fall on the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (June 24th)! We chose these dates because they fit into schedules. God chose these days because He had a message to deliver. It’s about the mission. It’s about our part in that mission. It’s about being witnesses (the Greek word is martyrs) to Jesus and about being fore-runners of Jesus.
St. Alban was a layman who heard the gospel and gave his life to it and for it. He was a pagan householder in the Roman settlement at Verulamium, which today is the English city called St. Albans. Alban took in a fugitive Christian priest who was fleeing the Diocletian persecution. The year was 304 A.D. While in hiding, the priest shared his faith in Jesus Christ with his host, Alban, and Alban was converted. Then the most extraordinary thing happened: as word came that the authorities were searching house to house, Alban asked to put on the priest’s clothes. So it was Alban that was arrested and Alban that was executed. Like Maxmillian Kolbe at Auschwitz centuries later, Alban sacrificed himself to save someone else, someone he had only just met. He lay down his life because he himself had been transformed by the love of Jesus. Some sources say Alban was a soldier, likely enough in a Roman garrison town. Certainly he was a soldier of Christ, the first recorded “anglican” [from the Latin meaning English] martyr.
Many of us have sacrificed a great deal to follow Jesus to this place. Many of us have lost properties and sacred treasures and incomes and pensions and standing and friends Yet, remembering the challenge of the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, few of us have suffered [Heb.12.4] to the point of shedding blood (though some here, especially among our global émigrés, actually have.) Alban, a new convert, shows us the way. Jesus isn’t finished with his asking and we aren’t finished with our giving. Are we? Alban was the consummate Christian convert, willing to follow his Savior even into a death for others. Are we ready, if more still is asked? Are we ready? Are we willing?
As we begin – as we gather to re-constitute a faithful Anglican Church here in North America – this drawing together of so many fragments from so many places – the Lord just wanted to remind us about conversion and witness and sacrifice, and about our part in each, for the transformation of others. The work is not over yet, in fact, for us, only just beginning. The giving is not complete yet. The Kingdom has not fully come yet. Like Alban (and the unnamed priest who dared to tell Alban about Jesus) we actually stand at the beginning of something, something that will come to be called Anglican. And, like Alban, we will prove agents of the loving transformation of the world around us, if we will daily choose Jesus and his cross. Our God is reminding us what life in Christ is all about, and of the pure joy that comes from costly faithfulness to Him, both for us and for others. Some here will remember the dictims (dare I call them “battle-cries”?) of that muscular Christianity that once reigned in these lands – in Canada and in the US: “No cross, no crown!” “No pain, no gain.” The fugitive priest was ready. The layman Alban was ready. Are we ready? Are we willing?
On Wednesday night – when the lessons tell us about God’s incredible love for us in sending his Son, and tell us about that extraordinary detail of the Incarnation that is the birth of the fore-runner cousin, John the Baptist – I will focus on our Good Father’s plan for us that we, too, run before his Son our Savior, in the power of His Holy Spirit, in every place where (to turn the phrase as St. Luke does [Lk 10.1] He, Jesus, is about to come. But I will save that till Wednesday… These feast days are our Father’s timing and our Father’s messages. Are we ready? Are we willing?
The New Day
There is no one here who would go back. I hear it over and over. “There has been suffering and loss, some of it very wounding indeed, but we are so much better off than we were before!” I hear it over and over. “God has been so good. God has been so faithful. So many miracles of provision! So many kindnesses and graces!” The stories abound: from the smallest remnants to the great congregations. “God has brought His Israel into joy from sadness.” We have also come out of bondage to all kinds of idols and lesser gods. Though the journey took its toll, we know that we have been delivered, and have found that deliverance very sweet, indeed.
St. Paul’s exhortation is intended for this moment precisely: “For freedom, Christ has set you free. Stand fast then, and do not return again to a yoke of slavery.” [Gal.5.1] This Assembly will be a test for us, as will our Church life in the months and years ahead. Escaping Egypt is sometimes easier than escaping Egypt’s patterns. Let us live in this new day. Let us remember our dependence on the One who got us here and who has provisioned us in the wilderness, whose new day this is. Would any here go back? Are we ready? Are we willing?
How We Got Here
How is it that a once great tradition somehow got cut from its moorings? Most of us were part of the fraying of the lines that had held us to the shore, and to its Rock. We compromised. We were silent. We looked away. No longer.
We fractured into many pieces. Like St. Luke’s telling of the shipwreck in Acts 27, we swam on our own, or floated on pieces of the wreckage. Now we are re-assembling on the shore, and there is the wonder of reflecting on surviving the storm and of making it to shore and of our leaders not succumbing to the serpent’s venom, but we actually know that it is what is ahead of us that really counts. Because the will of our Father is to save not just us, but as the Letter to Titus [2.11] tells us to save all, it is the present witness to the islanders among whom we have suddenly found ourselves and our future witness to everyone with whom we will come into contact that really counts for us now. Are we ready? Are we willing?
The Present Reformation of the Christian Church
There is a great Reformation of the Christian Church underway. We North American Anglicans are very much in the midst of it. While much of mainline Protestantism is finding itself adrift from its moorings (submission to the Word of God), just like Western Anglicanism, there is an ever-growing stream of North American Protestantism that has re-embraced Scripture’s authority (just as we have). At the same time, these Protestant and Pentecostal brothers and sisters are also being drawn to come to terms with something we classic Anglicans know very well, what the late Robert Webber of Wheaton College described so aptly as “the Great Tradition.”. What this means is that Our God is up to something very big, both with us and with others. The Father truly is drawing His children together again in a surprising and sovereign move of the Holy Spirit. He is again Re-Forming His Church. This also explains why there is such keen interest in what is happening here in these days among our Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters. The whole of the Christian Church senses re-alignment in the air. Many even wonder: Is it that our God is bringing about some confluence of the three great streams that are the Evangelical, the Catholic and the Pentecostal? Daring to recover what Anglicanism at its best has always been about, is it any wonder that the whole world is looking here to Bedford at this moment? Are we ready? Are we willing?
The Enemy
Our Adversary, the devil, Satan, the deceiver, that old serpent, is also very interested in what is happening here. Count on that! As St. Peter reminds us, this Adversary is a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. We are to resist him, firm in our Faith. [I Pet.5.8,9] I believe that the re-gathering of a faithful Anglican Church in North America is among the enemy’s greatest concerns. So we should not be surprised if he tries to break in here. He will attempt to lure us back to old ways and old hurts and old fights. It is essential that we rally around the Fundamental Declarations of the Province in Article One of our Constitution. It is essential that we stand together as confessional Anglicans. The Theological Statement of the Common Cause Partnership which is embedded verbatim in the Constitution is the miracle that God used to bring us all back together. It is evangelical and catholic and charismatic. It allows for those who believe the ordination of women to be a grave error, and for those who believe it scripturally justifiable – reflecting Global Anglicanism – to be in mission together until God sorts us out. It is not perfect, but it is enough. In the flow of things in this Provincial Assembly, it will principally be in our afternoon ratification sessions that temptations to return again to the yoke of slavery will come, but watch out for them everywhere, for “we fight here not just against flesh and blood.” [Eph.6.12] Anyway, fore-warned is fore-armed. And there are companies of intercessors – both here and around the globe – upholding this meeting and its work. So we need not fear, only be watchful. Are we ready? Are we willing?
What We Are Here To Do
We are here – in the words of that eminent authority on life Casey Stengel – to live the simple truth that “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” Jesus is the main thing. The sharing of his gospel is the main thing. Being agents of his transforming love is the main thing. The Faith once for all delivered to the saints is the main thing. The authority of the Word of God for living our lives and structuring our witness is the main thing.
So we begin in worship and end in worship, and there is much doxology in every part of these days together. And we are here to learn and to be stretched and to be re-committed. That’s what our plenaries are all about.
We are here to grow in fellowship and trust, to deepen in love and respect for one another, and to receive healing and forgiveness, all the while acknowledging our differences in Christ.
We are also here to prove that a Christian Assembly – at least one that wants to reach the cultures and the peoples of its increasingly lapsed and unconverted continent – does not have to focus on resolutions and legislation, nor does it have to be overwhelmingly gray-headed. [More than 20% of the voting delegates of the Provincial Assembly are 25 years of age or younger!] Even in organizing this emerging Anglican Province – a Province in the mainstream of both global Anglicanism and biblical Christianity – we are here to illustrate that a system of ratifying or sending-back is an alternative to spending disproportionate amounts of time on things that are, in fact, not the “main thing.”
We are also here to show what God’s people have always known: just how much Godly business can be done in a tent (especially a tent) or a gym or a school or in simple accommodations.
We are here, above all, to proclaim to the world what our God has done among us, among us sinners… Remembering those early efforts in the late ‘90s at Anglican Congresses among the Anglican Diaspora… Remembering those heady days in the American Anglican Council and the First Promise Movement within the Episcopal Church… Remembering Plano 2003 and Hope and A Future 2005… Remembering the giving of the vision of “a biblical, missionary and united Anglicanism in North America” to the Anglican Communion Network, and then to the whole movement… Remembering the first coming together of lead bishops of Common Cause in the spring of 2004… Remembering the coming together of the US and Canada… Remembering the missionary interventions of Rwanda and Uganda and Kenya and Nigeria and Southern Cone and the call of the Primates of the Global South to form a “recognizably Anglican” Province here… Considering the miracle which is the constituting of the Anglican Church in North America in these days here and now at Bedford and at Plano… Turning us back toward one another and toward the global mainstream has been God’s great and sovereign work. Our part has been cooperation in what only God could have brought about… Gratitude and thanksgiving must be hallmarks of our time here. Are we ready? Are we willing?
The End of the Beginning
So we begin. We begin this Inaugural Provincial Assembly, which is the end of the beginning, the end of the process of coming apart and coming together that puts us in such a good place to commence what God always intended for North American Anglicanism.
We also begin at the end, the end that is the Holy Eucharist, the future present, the foretaste of where everything is headed in Jesus Christ. All that is ahead is to be seen through this lens of Christ’s atoning death and his glorious resurrection and ascension, and of the imparting of the Holy Spirit. All that is here in these days at Bedford and Plano, and all that follows in all the days God will give us until His Son comes again, all of it is wrapped up in these Holy Mysteries by which we too live and die and live again. We begin with this vision of our ending.
The work is before us. The main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing. And the main thing is the mission of Jesus Christ, carried forward by the likes of us, who are loved by our Father, and empowered by the Holy Spirit – all for those who do not yet know Him, have not yet been saved by Him, who are helpless and harassed, like sheep without a shepherd. Are you ready? Are you willing? Shall we, with God’s grace, begin?
God bless you all: in this Cathedral, in the tent outside, and on line across this continent and around the globe. You are welcome and well come, everyone of you. .
OPENING ADDRESS
Given by the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Archbishop-designate, at the Inaugural Provincial Assembly of the Anglican Church in North America during the Holy Eucharist on 22 June, A.D. 2009, the Feast of St. Alban, Anglican Proto-Martyr (First English Martyr).
God’s Time
The Lord has a way of timing things. How remarkable that we should begin our Inaugural Provincial Assembly on St. Alban’s Day (June 22nd), and that the Assembly’s great Eucharist should fall on the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (June 24th)! We chose these dates because they fit into schedules. God chose these days because He had a message to deliver. It’s about the mission. It’s about our part in that mission. It’s about being witnesses (the Greek word is martyrs) to Jesus and about being fore-runners of Jesus.
St. Alban was a layman who heard the gospel and gave his life to it and for it. He was a pagan householder in the Roman settlement at Verulamium, which today is the English city called St. Albans. Alban took in a fugitive Christian priest who was fleeing the Diocletian persecution. The year was 304 A.D. While in hiding, the priest shared his faith in Jesus Christ with his host, Alban, and Alban was converted. Then the most extraordinary thing happened: as word came that the authorities were searching house to house, Alban asked to put on the priest’s clothes. So it was Alban that was arrested and Alban that was executed. Like Maxmillian Kolbe at Auschwitz centuries later, Alban sacrificed himself to save someone else, someone he had only just met. He lay down his life because he himself had been transformed by the love of Jesus. Some sources say Alban was a soldier, likely enough in a Roman garrison town. Certainly he was a soldier of Christ, the first recorded “anglican” [from the Latin meaning English] martyr.
Many of us have sacrificed a great deal to follow Jesus to this place. Many of us have lost properties and sacred treasures and incomes and pensions and standing and friends Yet, remembering the challenge of the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, few of us have suffered [Heb.12.4] to the point of shedding blood (though some here, especially among our global émigrés, actually have.) Alban, a new convert, shows us the way. Jesus isn’t finished with his asking and we aren’t finished with our giving. Are we? Alban was the consummate Christian convert, willing to follow his Savior even into a death for others. Are we ready, if more still is asked? Are we ready? Are we willing?
As we begin – as we gather to re-constitute a faithful Anglican Church here in North America – this drawing together of so many fragments from so many places – the Lord just wanted to remind us about conversion and witness and sacrifice, and about our part in each, for the transformation of others. The work is not over yet, in fact, for us, only just beginning. The giving is not complete yet. The Kingdom has not fully come yet. Like Alban (and the unnamed priest who dared to tell Alban about Jesus) we actually stand at the beginning of something, something that will come to be called Anglican. And, like Alban, we will prove agents of the loving transformation of the world around us, if we will daily choose Jesus and his cross. Our God is reminding us what life in Christ is all about, and of the pure joy that comes from costly faithfulness to Him, both for us and for others. Some here will remember the dictims (dare I call them “battle-cries”?) of that muscular Christianity that once reigned in these lands – in Canada and in the US: “No cross, no crown!” “No pain, no gain.” The fugitive priest was ready. The layman Alban was ready. Are we ready? Are we willing?
On Wednesday night – when the lessons tell us about God’s incredible love for us in sending his Son, and tell us about that extraordinary detail of the Incarnation that is the birth of the fore-runner cousin, John the Baptist – I will focus on our Good Father’s plan for us that we, too, run before his Son our Savior, in the power of His Holy Spirit, in every place where (to turn the phrase as St. Luke does [Lk 10.1] He, Jesus, is about to come. But I will save that till Wednesday… These feast days are our Father’s timing and our Father’s messages. Are we ready? Are we willing?
The New Day
There is no one here who would go back. I hear it over and over. “There has been suffering and loss, some of it very wounding indeed, but we are so much better off than we were before!” I hear it over and over. “God has been so good. God has been so faithful. So many miracles of provision! So many kindnesses and graces!” The stories abound: from the smallest remnants to the great congregations. “God has brought His Israel into joy from sadness.” We have also come out of bondage to all kinds of idols and lesser gods. Though the journey took its toll, we know that we have been delivered, and have found that deliverance very sweet, indeed.
St. Paul’s exhortation is intended for this moment precisely: “For freedom, Christ has set you free. Stand fast then, and do not return again to a yoke of slavery.” [Gal.5.1] This Assembly will be a test for us, as will our Church life in the months and years ahead. Escaping Egypt is sometimes easier than escaping Egypt’s patterns. Let us live in this new day. Let us remember our dependence on the One who got us here and who has provisioned us in the wilderness, whose new day this is. Would any here go back? Are we ready? Are we willing?
How We Got Here
How is it that a once great tradition somehow got cut from its moorings? Most of us were part of the fraying of the lines that had held us to the shore, and to its Rock. We compromised. We were silent. We looked away. No longer.
We fractured into many pieces. Like St. Luke’s telling of the shipwreck in Acts 27, we swam on our own, or floated on pieces of the wreckage. Now we are re-assembling on the shore, and there is the wonder of reflecting on surviving the storm and of making it to shore and of our leaders not succumbing to the serpent’s venom, but we actually know that it is what is ahead of us that really counts. Because the will of our Father is to save not just us, but as the Letter to Titus [2.11] tells us to save all, it is the present witness to the islanders among whom we have suddenly found ourselves and our future witness to everyone with whom we will come into contact that really counts for us now. Are we ready? Are we willing?
The Present Reformation of the Christian Church
There is a great Reformation of the Christian Church underway. We North American Anglicans are very much in the midst of it. While much of mainline Protestantism is finding itself adrift from its moorings (submission to the Word of God), just like Western Anglicanism, there is an ever-growing stream of North American Protestantism that has re-embraced Scripture’s authority (just as we have). At the same time, these Protestant and Pentecostal brothers and sisters are also being drawn to come to terms with something we classic Anglicans know very well, what the late Robert Webber of Wheaton College described so aptly as “the Great Tradition.”. What this means is that Our God is up to something very big, both with us and with others. The Father truly is drawing His children together again in a surprising and sovereign move of the Holy Spirit. He is again Re-Forming His Church. This also explains why there is such keen interest in what is happening here in these days among our Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters. The whole of the Christian Church senses re-alignment in the air. Many even wonder: Is it that our God is bringing about some confluence of the three great streams that are the Evangelical, the Catholic and the Pentecostal? Daring to recover what Anglicanism at its best has always been about, is it any wonder that the whole world is looking here to Bedford at this moment? Are we ready? Are we willing?
The Enemy
Our Adversary, the devil, Satan, the deceiver, that old serpent, is also very interested in what is happening here. Count on that! As St. Peter reminds us, this Adversary is a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. We are to resist him, firm in our Faith. [I Pet.5.8,9] I believe that the re-gathering of a faithful Anglican Church in North America is among the enemy’s greatest concerns. So we should not be surprised if he tries to break in here. He will attempt to lure us back to old ways and old hurts and old fights. It is essential that we rally around the Fundamental Declarations of the Province in Article One of our Constitution. It is essential that we stand together as confessional Anglicans. The Theological Statement of the Common Cause Partnership which is embedded verbatim in the Constitution is the miracle that God used to bring us all back together. It is evangelical and catholic and charismatic. It allows for those who believe the ordination of women to be a grave error, and for those who believe it scripturally justifiable – reflecting Global Anglicanism – to be in mission together until God sorts us out. It is not perfect, but it is enough. In the flow of things in this Provincial Assembly, it will principally be in our afternoon ratification sessions that temptations to return again to the yoke of slavery will come, but watch out for them everywhere, for “we fight here not just against flesh and blood.” [Eph.6.12] Anyway, fore-warned is fore-armed. And there are companies of intercessors – both here and around the globe – upholding this meeting and its work. So we need not fear, only be watchful. Are we ready? Are we willing?
What We Are Here To Do
We are here – in the words of that eminent authority on life Casey Stengel – to live the simple truth that “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” Jesus is the main thing. The sharing of his gospel is the main thing. Being agents of his transforming love is the main thing. The Faith once for all delivered to the saints is the main thing. The authority of the Word of God for living our lives and structuring our witness is the main thing.
So we begin in worship and end in worship, and there is much doxology in every part of these days together. And we are here to learn and to be stretched and to be re-committed. That’s what our plenaries are all about.
We are here to grow in fellowship and trust, to deepen in love and respect for one another, and to receive healing and forgiveness, all the while acknowledging our differences in Christ.
We are also here to prove that a Christian Assembly – at least one that wants to reach the cultures and the peoples of its increasingly lapsed and unconverted continent – does not have to focus on resolutions and legislation, nor does it have to be overwhelmingly gray-headed. [More than 20% of the voting delegates of the Provincial Assembly are 25 years of age or younger!] Even in organizing this emerging Anglican Province – a Province in the mainstream of both global Anglicanism and biblical Christianity – we are here to illustrate that a system of ratifying or sending-back is an alternative to spending disproportionate amounts of time on things that are, in fact, not the “main thing.”
We are also here to show what God’s people have always known: just how much Godly business can be done in a tent (especially a tent) or a gym or a school or in simple accommodations.
We are here, above all, to proclaim to the world what our God has done among us, among us sinners… Remembering those early efforts in the late ‘90s at Anglican Congresses among the Anglican Diaspora… Remembering those heady days in the American Anglican Council and the First Promise Movement within the Episcopal Church… Remembering Plano 2003 and Hope and A Future 2005… Remembering the giving of the vision of “a biblical, missionary and united Anglicanism in North America” to the Anglican Communion Network, and then to the whole movement… Remembering the first coming together of lead bishops of Common Cause in the spring of 2004… Remembering the coming together of the US and Canada… Remembering the missionary interventions of Rwanda and Uganda and Kenya and Nigeria and Southern Cone and the call of the Primates of the Global South to form a “recognizably Anglican” Province here… Considering the miracle which is the constituting of the Anglican Church in North America in these days here and now at Bedford and at Plano… Turning us back toward one another and toward the global mainstream has been God’s great and sovereign work. Our part has been cooperation in what only God could have brought about… Gratitude and thanksgiving must be hallmarks of our time here. Are we ready? Are we willing?
The End of the Beginning
So we begin. We begin this Inaugural Provincial Assembly, which is the end of the beginning, the end of the process of coming apart and coming together that puts us in such a good place to commence what God always intended for North American Anglicanism.
We also begin at the end, the end that is the Holy Eucharist, the future present, the foretaste of where everything is headed in Jesus Christ. All that is ahead is to be seen through this lens of Christ’s atoning death and his glorious resurrection and ascension, and of the imparting of the Holy Spirit. All that is here in these days at Bedford and Plano, and all that follows in all the days God will give us until His Son comes again, all of it is wrapped up in these Holy Mysteries by which we too live and die and live again. We begin with this vision of our ending.
The work is before us. The main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing. And the main thing is the mission of Jesus Christ, carried forward by the likes of us, who are loved by our Father, and empowered by the Holy Spirit – all for those who do not yet know Him, have not yet been saved by Him, who are helpless and harassed, like sheep without a shepherd. Are you ready? Are you willing? Shall we, with God’s grace, begin?
God bless you all: in this Cathedral, in the tent outside, and on line across this continent and around the globe. You are welcome and well come, everyone of you. .
June 9, 2009
Wild At Heart Dinner Dance
Twenty-one people attended the first annual Wild At Heart Dinner Dance where the Parish Hall was transformed into a ballroom and guests enjoyed Prime Rib, Chicken Picata, and Shrimp Alfredo. As if that were not fabulous enough, desert was a fabulous array of cakes.
Husbands and wives danced-some for the first time in a very long time-Cha, Cha, Slow Dance, and Swing. Couples enjoyed conversation and fellowship and all left insisting that we would have to plan another dance soon.
Stop by and view some of the photos. I will be posting them here soon.
Husbands and wives danced-some for the first time in a very long time-Cha, Cha, Slow Dance, and Swing. Couples enjoyed conversation and fellowship and all left insisting that we would have to plan another dance soon.
Stop by and view some of the photos. I will be posting them here soon.
May 14, 2009
Welcome to Hollywood Kid
I just read a news report that the home of one of the child stars from the Oscar winning film Slum Dog Millionaire was just demolished by the City of Mumbai, India. Seems he and his family had erected a tent on government land and were deemed squatters. The city tore the tent down and the child star and his family were left more homeless than they had been before. Meantime, Slum Dog Millionaire has grossed over $200 million dollars at the box office, making the fortune of several people who had already been pretty well to do.
Now my question is a simple one. I don’t expect the film maker to solve India’s poverty problem. That is a problem that is way beyond his ability but do you mean to tell me he can’t take care of his own? Do you mean to tell me that he cares so little about this kid that after filming the kid goes back to squalor and abject poverty? What would it cost to get this kid’s family off skid row? A thousand bucks a year? Five hundred? He can’t afford that? Welcome to Hollywood kid! Amazing!
Now my question is a simple one. I don’t expect the film maker to solve India’s poverty problem. That is a problem that is way beyond his ability but do you mean to tell me he can’t take care of his own? Do you mean to tell me that he cares so little about this kid that after filming the kid goes back to squalor and abject poverty? What would it cost to get this kid’s family off skid row? A thousand bucks a year? Five hundred? He can’t afford that? Welcome to Hollywood kid! Amazing!
May 10, 2009
Discipleship
by The Reverend Scott Homer
In the name of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Jesus says to his disciples, “If you love me you will keep my commandments.” That’s pretty cut and dried isn’t it? Nothing vague, nothing ephemeral in that: the person who loves Jesus is the person who does what Jesus tells him to do. And yet, all over the country this morning priests and preachers will be discounting his words and qualifying what he says. They will spend an obscene amount of time and energy arguing that we can’t do what Jesus tells us to do and that Jesus never really intended us to. Not me. I think Jesus meant exactly what he said and like so much of what Jesus said, the words present an immense challenge to anybody who takes his words seriously.
The famous English author and journalist G. K. Chesterton once quipped, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” He is saying that the question we need to be addressing is not, did Jesus mean what he said or is it possible to carry out Jesus’ teachings. If we do the things that Jesus tells us to do we find our lives enriched. A life lived in righteousness is a better life. It is a desirable alternative to the ways of the world. It is a life full of blessing and peace and serenity. And it is the life that God intends for us to live. In fact, he insists upon it. And when we fail to live righteous lives, when we sin, we fall hard. We experience pain and suffering. We know separation from God. And this is not God’s will for our lives. Anybody who has lived on both sides of this equation will tell you that righteous living is better than sinful living. Ask a recovered alcoholic or heroin addict. Ask somebody who has experienced radical conversion in their lives. Seek out those who have experienced the shame of prison. They will confirm what Chesterton says. The Christian ideal is not wanting. It is not a blind alley. It really does lead to new life—better life.
And so the question churches all over the world need to be asking and trying to answer is, how can we do what Jesus is asking us to do? If Jesus has placed an immensely difficult task before us (and nobody is denying that, it is difficult.) Jesus must have provided us with the means to accomplish it. The God of our salvation would not create a no win situation. So, the question is not how can I twist Jesus’ words around in order to avoid doing what my Lord and Savior has asked me to do but rather what are the tools and resources that the Lord has given me, that I may pick up and use in order to accomplish his will? And then, how do I best use these tools? How do I become expert in my craft?
And I want to caution you that immediately upon hearing about the tools Gopd provides, the temptation will be to discount their worth. We will be attacked by the enemy because the enemy has invested a great deal of time and energy into persuading us that the tools the Lord has provided are too small, too insignificant, and too simple to work. He tells us that surely they will not equip us to live up to the demands. But it’s a lie. The truth of the matter is that God’s tools are more than adequate. They are completely sufficient to the task. And we need to banish the false thinking. We need to recommit to the goodness of the Lord and to learning how to use the tools he has provided us.
A hippy was sitting on a park bench in Central Park and a tourist approached and asked him, “Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall. And the hippy replied, “Practice man.” Both the question about what are the tools god provides and the question about how do we use them are learning, experiencing and growing questions. They are questions we live into not questions that have a quick answer. Keeping Jesus’ commands is not a matter of information. It is a matter of formation. It is not about learning facts. It is rather like training to be a doctor by doing what doctors do under the supervision of doctors; or like learning to play a musical instrument by playing in the presence of a master musician and playing in a band under the guidance of a master director. Discipleship is a lifelong task. Luminaries from around the world attended the ninetieth birthday party for the world renowned cellist Pablo Cassals. And in the middle of dinner Pablo excused himself and he was gone for about a half an hour. When he returned someone asked him where he had gone. He replied, “I was practicing.” (Maybe he had talked to the hippy) One of the dinner guests said, “Pablo you are perhaps the greatest cellist in the world. Why do you have to leave your ninetieth birthday party to practice?” And Pablo said, “I think I’m getting better.”
When Jesus says if you love me you will keep my commands he is saying that love will be demonstrated by a devotion to God and a commitment to God’s purposes. The one who loves Jesus is the one who determines to be his apprentice, who devotes herself to being an intern of our Lord because the one who loves Jesus desires to know the way, desperately seeks to experience the truth, and strives to walk in the life that Jesus teaches us. We are saved by grace through faith but God’s saving grace looks very much like a call to serve as his apprentice and to do the things that Jesus does.
If you don’t get anything else out of this sermon this morning I hope that you will get out of your comfortable pew and commit to following Jesus wherever it is that Jesus is calling you to go. Find a Bible study and commit to it for a year. Join a prayer team and commit to praying everyday. Stop worrying about not being able to give the right answer and come seeking the right answer by showing up for Sunday School regularly. Find a Christian mentor to open up to. If you don’t get anything else out of this sermon this morning I pray that you will get motivated to become a learner, an apprentice and an intern of our Lord.
I ran across this quote from Dallas Willard. He says,
“Non-discipleship is the elephant in the church. It is not the much discussed moral failures, financial abuses, or the amazing general similarity between Christians and non-Christians. These are only effects of the underlying problem. The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to live their lives in The Kingdom Among Us. And it is an accepted reality. The division of Christians into those from whom it is a matter of whole-life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer, or client, relationship to the church has now been an accepted reality for over fifteen hundred years.“And in our day,” he says, “this long-accepted division has worked its way into the very heart of the gospel message. It is now understood to be a part of the "good news" that one does not have to be a life student of Jesus in order to be a Christian and receive forgiveness of sins. This gives a precise meaning to the phrase "cheap grace," though it would be better described as "costly faithlessness."
(Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: Harper, 1998), p.301)
Jesus means what he says. The question for us this morning is, how can we make a start at reversing the trend? What tools can I grab hold of that will help me to do what Jesus tells me to do and to become the disciple Jesus wants me to be?
Doctors need to learn anatomy and physiology, diagnostics, surgical techinque and pharmacology among other things. Musicians need to learn rhythm, tone, and timber and the dexterity to play their instrument. Christians need to acquire expertise in four primary areas: Honesty—honesty—Purity—Love. Each of these is an absolute which is why learning them is a lifelong task and why no one has the right to boast. We all fall short of the glory of God and it is by his grace alone that we know life.
Honesty is a willingness to look at the truth about us, about God, and about the world. Honesty is having eyes opened to the truth and a spirit that is willing to hear the truth even when the truth is painful or difficult. Honesty allows us to behold our needs and the true sources by which those needs can be met. Jesus is wholly devoted to the truth. Time and time again we hear Jesus, Truly I say to you. And we also hear Jesus say, “I am the truth.”
Humility teaches us that there is no life within us apart from the life God breathes into us. Humility is the understanding that our past, present and future rest with God. We realize our true nature, see all the warts and blemishes, understand our propensity to prejudice, ignorance, and the seven deadly sins. Humility will inevitably lead us to the foot of the cross because only at the foot of the cross will we find hope.
Purity is about doing the right thing, about refusing the temptation, denying the urge, and fleeing from the seduction. Purity keeps us out of harms way, free from the sins that separate us from God’s grace. Purity sounds old fashioned. Too prim and proper for our time and yet Purity is virtue at its highest level. A life devoted to purity is a life lived close to the Lord.
And love—love is such an abused term in our culture. The term only vaguely resembles the term Jesus and the Apostles use. Love in its pure form is not selfish or proud. It does not seek its own way. Love is patient and kind. Love gives rather than takes. Jesus models love at its most extreme when he picks up his cross and sacrifices his life on the cross for us. This is a total self-giving for the sake of the beloved. He dies in order that we may live.
An apprentice must learn her craft by studying. The musician needs to be able to read music, needs to know the theory, needs to understand the music the hope to play. An medical intern has to study. And the reason they say that doctors practice rather than saying the perform is because doctors are always learning. The Christian must study. God has given us a holy book that contains all things necessary for our life and salvation but you can’t ever understand it fully and you can’t ever understand it even basically without studying it. The Lord has given us the Bible in order that we might study and become competent in our faith.
An apprentice doesn’t train herself. An intern does not perform a medical procedure without supervision. Christians can not learn their craft without submitting to the tutelage of another Christian. In every case, where there is a student there must be a teacher. The Lord has provided teachers and preachers to act as mentor, instructor, and helper.
An Christian apprentice is faced with a unique problem. They don’t have the ability to use the tools that they have been provided without divine help. We are stuck if God does not intervene and come along side and lift us up and carry us. And so the Lord has provided access through prayer. We pray and we receive the essentials we need to practice our way of life.
The tools we have been given are Bible study, Christian teachers, and prayer. And if we will learn to use these tools, and to practice our faith until we become expert at it we will discover that Jesus’ command, while difficult, is attainable.
And so being a disciple is about living out these absolutes to the best of our ability. We practice these principles in all our affairs and we discover that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. O forgot to mention the best part. Jesus says, “If you love me you will keep my commandments AND I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever.” Our love for Jesus isn’t a pining love. It isn’t a distant and detached love. Our love for Jesus and his love for us is intimate, immediate, right here and right now because Jesus prays and the Father sends and the Holy Spirit is with us, in us, around us, through us. As long as our faith is an abstraction and we continue to live our lives according to the ways of the world, Jesus tells us that we will not see him or know him because the world doesn’t see him or know him. But when our faith ceases to be an abstraction and we begin to live our faith out in our daily life and work Jesus prays, the Father sends, and the Holy Spirit comes and we know him because he dwells with us and is in us.
This is all possible because of Jesus’ resurrection. He says, because I live, you will live also. Amen.
In the name of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Jesus says to his disciples, “If you love me you will keep my commandments.” That’s pretty cut and dried isn’t it? Nothing vague, nothing ephemeral in that: the person who loves Jesus is the person who does what Jesus tells him to do. And yet, all over the country this morning priests and preachers will be discounting his words and qualifying what he says. They will spend an obscene amount of time and energy arguing that we can’t do what Jesus tells us to do and that Jesus never really intended us to. Not me. I think Jesus meant exactly what he said and like so much of what Jesus said, the words present an immense challenge to anybody who takes his words seriously.
The famous English author and journalist G. K. Chesterton once quipped, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” He is saying that the question we need to be addressing is not, did Jesus mean what he said or is it possible to carry out Jesus’ teachings. If we do the things that Jesus tells us to do we find our lives enriched. A life lived in righteousness is a better life. It is a desirable alternative to the ways of the world. It is a life full of blessing and peace and serenity. And it is the life that God intends for us to live. In fact, he insists upon it. And when we fail to live righteous lives, when we sin, we fall hard. We experience pain and suffering. We know separation from God. And this is not God’s will for our lives. Anybody who has lived on both sides of this equation will tell you that righteous living is better than sinful living. Ask a recovered alcoholic or heroin addict. Ask somebody who has experienced radical conversion in their lives. Seek out those who have experienced the shame of prison. They will confirm what Chesterton says. The Christian ideal is not wanting. It is not a blind alley. It really does lead to new life—better life.
And so the question churches all over the world need to be asking and trying to answer is, how can we do what Jesus is asking us to do? If Jesus has placed an immensely difficult task before us (and nobody is denying that, it is difficult.) Jesus must have provided us with the means to accomplish it. The God of our salvation would not create a no win situation. So, the question is not how can I twist Jesus’ words around in order to avoid doing what my Lord and Savior has asked me to do but rather what are the tools and resources that the Lord has given me, that I may pick up and use in order to accomplish his will? And then, how do I best use these tools? How do I become expert in my craft?
And I want to caution you that immediately upon hearing about the tools Gopd provides, the temptation will be to discount their worth. We will be attacked by the enemy because the enemy has invested a great deal of time and energy into persuading us that the tools the Lord has provided are too small, too insignificant, and too simple to work. He tells us that surely they will not equip us to live up to the demands. But it’s a lie. The truth of the matter is that God’s tools are more than adequate. They are completely sufficient to the task. And we need to banish the false thinking. We need to recommit to the goodness of the Lord and to learning how to use the tools he has provided us.
A hippy was sitting on a park bench in Central Park and a tourist approached and asked him, “Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall. And the hippy replied, “Practice man.” Both the question about what are the tools god provides and the question about how do we use them are learning, experiencing and growing questions. They are questions we live into not questions that have a quick answer. Keeping Jesus’ commands is not a matter of information. It is a matter of formation. It is not about learning facts. It is rather like training to be a doctor by doing what doctors do under the supervision of doctors; or like learning to play a musical instrument by playing in the presence of a master musician and playing in a band under the guidance of a master director. Discipleship is a lifelong task. Luminaries from around the world attended the ninetieth birthday party for the world renowned cellist Pablo Cassals. And in the middle of dinner Pablo excused himself and he was gone for about a half an hour. When he returned someone asked him where he had gone. He replied, “I was practicing.” (Maybe he had talked to the hippy) One of the dinner guests said, “Pablo you are perhaps the greatest cellist in the world. Why do you have to leave your ninetieth birthday party to practice?” And Pablo said, “I think I’m getting better.”
When Jesus says if you love me you will keep my commands he is saying that love will be demonstrated by a devotion to God and a commitment to God’s purposes. The one who loves Jesus is the one who determines to be his apprentice, who devotes herself to being an intern of our Lord because the one who loves Jesus desires to know the way, desperately seeks to experience the truth, and strives to walk in the life that Jesus teaches us. We are saved by grace through faith but God’s saving grace looks very much like a call to serve as his apprentice and to do the things that Jesus does.
If you don’t get anything else out of this sermon this morning I hope that you will get out of your comfortable pew and commit to following Jesus wherever it is that Jesus is calling you to go. Find a Bible study and commit to it for a year. Join a prayer team and commit to praying everyday. Stop worrying about not being able to give the right answer and come seeking the right answer by showing up for Sunday School regularly. Find a Christian mentor to open up to. If you don’t get anything else out of this sermon this morning I pray that you will get motivated to become a learner, an apprentice and an intern of our Lord.
I ran across this quote from Dallas Willard. He says,
“Non-discipleship is the elephant in the church. It is not the much discussed moral failures, financial abuses, or the amazing general similarity between Christians and non-Christians. These are only effects of the underlying problem. The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to live their lives in The Kingdom Among Us. And it is an accepted reality. The division of Christians into those from whom it is a matter of whole-life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer, or client, relationship to the church has now been an accepted reality for over fifteen hundred years.“And in our day,” he says, “this long-accepted division has worked its way into the very heart of the gospel message. It is now understood to be a part of the "good news" that one does not have to be a life student of Jesus in order to be a Christian and receive forgiveness of sins. This gives a precise meaning to the phrase "cheap grace," though it would be better described as "costly faithlessness."
(Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: Harper, 1998), p.301)
Jesus means what he says. The question for us this morning is, how can we make a start at reversing the trend? What tools can I grab hold of that will help me to do what Jesus tells me to do and to become the disciple Jesus wants me to be?
Doctors need to learn anatomy and physiology, diagnostics, surgical techinque and pharmacology among other things. Musicians need to learn rhythm, tone, and timber and the dexterity to play their instrument. Christians need to acquire expertise in four primary areas: Honesty—honesty—Purity—Love. Each of these is an absolute which is why learning them is a lifelong task and why no one has the right to boast. We all fall short of the glory of God and it is by his grace alone that we know life.
Honesty is a willingness to look at the truth about us, about God, and about the world. Honesty is having eyes opened to the truth and a spirit that is willing to hear the truth even when the truth is painful or difficult. Honesty allows us to behold our needs and the true sources by which those needs can be met. Jesus is wholly devoted to the truth. Time and time again we hear Jesus, Truly I say to you. And we also hear Jesus say, “I am the truth.”
Humility teaches us that there is no life within us apart from the life God breathes into us. Humility is the understanding that our past, present and future rest with God. We realize our true nature, see all the warts and blemishes, understand our propensity to prejudice, ignorance, and the seven deadly sins. Humility will inevitably lead us to the foot of the cross because only at the foot of the cross will we find hope.
Purity is about doing the right thing, about refusing the temptation, denying the urge, and fleeing from the seduction. Purity keeps us out of harms way, free from the sins that separate us from God’s grace. Purity sounds old fashioned. Too prim and proper for our time and yet Purity is virtue at its highest level. A life devoted to purity is a life lived close to the Lord.
And love—love is such an abused term in our culture. The term only vaguely resembles the term Jesus and the Apostles use. Love in its pure form is not selfish or proud. It does not seek its own way. Love is patient and kind. Love gives rather than takes. Jesus models love at its most extreme when he picks up his cross and sacrifices his life on the cross for us. This is a total self-giving for the sake of the beloved. He dies in order that we may live.
An apprentice must learn her craft by studying. The musician needs to be able to read music, needs to know the theory, needs to understand the music the hope to play. An medical intern has to study. And the reason they say that doctors practice rather than saying the perform is because doctors are always learning. The Christian must study. God has given us a holy book that contains all things necessary for our life and salvation but you can’t ever understand it fully and you can’t ever understand it even basically without studying it. The Lord has given us the Bible in order that we might study and become competent in our faith.
An apprentice doesn’t train herself. An intern does not perform a medical procedure without supervision. Christians can not learn their craft without submitting to the tutelage of another Christian. In every case, where there is a student there must be a teacher. The Lord has provided teachers and preachers to act as mentor, instructor, and helper.
An Christian apprentice is faced with a unique problem. They don’t have the ability to use the tools that they have been provided without divine help. We are stuck if God does not intervene and come along side and lift us up and carry us. And so the Lord has provided access through prayer. We pray and we receive the essentials we need to practice our way of life.
The tools we have been given are Bible study, Christian teachers, and prayer. And if we will learn to use these tools, and to practice our faith until we become expert at it we will discover that Jesus’ command, while difficult, is attainable.
And so being a disciple is about living out these absolutes to the best of our ability. We practice these principles in all our affairs and we discover that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. O forgot to mention the best part. Jesus says, “If you love me you will keep my commandments AND I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever.” Our love for Jesus isn’t a pining love. It isn’t a distant and detached love. Our love for Jesus and his love for us is intimate, immediate, right here and right now because Jesus prays and the Father sends and the Holy Spirit is with us, in us, around us, through us. As long as our faith is an abstraction and we continue to live our lives according to the ways of the world, Jesus tells us that we will not see him or know him because the world doesn’t see him or know him. But when our faith ceases to be an abstraction and we begin to live our faith out in our daily life and work Jesus prays, the Father sends, and the Holy Spirit comes and we know him because he dwells with us and is in us.
This is all possible because of Jesus’ resurrection. He says, because I live, you will live also. Amen.
May 7, 2009
Living in the Light
Sermon on 1 John 1.1-12
In the name of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.
What a beautiful weekend! From frigid winter to hot summer almost overnight. As we enjoy the beauty of God’s Creation on this bright and glorious sunny weekend we may be tempted to give credit to the sun. We may conclude that the sun is the source of all this light and warmth and new life that we are witnessing. And it is true that the flowers and the green grass, and the warm air, the return of the migrant birds with all their songs, all of it relates to the return of the sun to its higher position in the sky. As the sun comes more directly overhead and we begin to come under its affect we can’t help but notice that life improves rather dramatically, but it is not the sun that is responsible for all this new life.
In ancient times, the pagans recognized the power of the sun and to a lesser extent, the moon. They thought that the sun was so spectacular that it must be a god traversing the sky. Zeus was riding his chariot across the heavens and the light and warmth we felt was simply the radiance of his glorious presence filtering down to earth. The Emperor Constantine was a sun worshipper—not a frequent sunbather, he actually worshipped the sun as deity before his conversion to Christianity. And it isn’t too hard to understand considering that when the sun is shining and is high in the sky the earth is warm, life takes on a renewed vitality but when the sun is hidden the world grows dark and dreary. Plants that live in the shade usually don’t thrive. Without the sun the landscape is gray and brown, the atmosphere is cold and all that has an emotional impact on us as well. Seasonal Affective Disorder seems to be a real medical diagnosis. A lack of sunlight during the winter months may cause depression and illness in some. Without the sun for extended periods of time we may experience vitamin deficiencies because sunlight is both a source of some vitamins and a means to help process others. So, it is natural enough to look at the beautiful light of day reflecting off of flowers and shrubs, to feel the warmth of the light on our heads and shoulders, and to attribute it all to the sun but the sun is not the source of light—God is.
The sun and moon are products of God’s very first creative action. In Genesis chapter 1, verses 2, 3, and 4 we are told, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” What is the source of the glorious light we enjoy this morning? God—God is the source of the light. It is through him that the sun came to be. And, of course, God is not only the source of light in the natural world. God is, also and in a similar way, the source of light in the Spiritual world. He reveals his glory to us and through that self-revelation we know goodness, righteousness, truth, beauty, life and love. When we choose to live in God’s revealed glory we know all of those graces affecting our lives. That revealed glory has a name. God’s revealed glory is named is Jesus.
Jesus was with God before the earth and the sky. He was with him before God said, “Let there be light. And from the very beginning, even before there was a created world, God the Father, and God the son had designed you. They knew exactly what you would look like and what you would be like and when they saw you they said, “It is good.” You have been created because God wants to know you. You exist because God’s desire was to make you. And having made you he desires to have a relationship with you. He wants you to be one of his children. He wants you to be a member of his kingdom. And so, God has given you all the tools you need to live as a faithful child of God.
Let’s look at the last few verses of the reading from John’s letter. Let me paraphrase and amplify his words because he explains the “so what” of his words to us. He tells us why he is writing and he explains what he hopes to tell us that may help us in our day to day life. He seems to be saying, “I don’t want you to ever sin. Once a person begins sinning he starts walking down the dark road, the road opposed to God, away from God and apart from God. That road is the road to destruction for you and for your family, for your friends, and for your culture. Worst of all it means an end to your relationship with God. John says, ‘I don’t want you to ever sin because there are always negative consequences to doing the wrong thing. It is always a bad choice. It always puts up a barrier between you and God. Even in the smallest case. And I am writing these words to you in order to provide you with the means for avoiding sinning.
There is a way to know freedom from the bondage of sin and death. The road to destruction is not a road we are doomed to walk. The Lord has provided the means by which we can know holiness and righteousness, by which we can know freedom from addiction and have hope in the future, a means by which we can find fruitful and fulfilling lives even in the midst of great trials. And that means of hope and a future is not a self-help book. It is not a system for living. It isn’t a secret or membership in a mystical society. It is not a medicine or a mantra or a wise mentor.
The means of hope and a future has a name, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Jesus is the glory of God revealed. He is the fullness of God’s revelation. In Jesus we know the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is the light of the world—God with us—and he has provided us with a path to walk upon. On the road that he has provided we are able to walk into the great and glorious life God has ordained for us.’ That path is called faith—faith in Jesus Christ.
‘Please,’ John says, ‘do not sin, but if you do, if you are brought low during a moment of despair, if your courage fails you, if you forget your true source of strength, or ignore the witness of God’s power and authority, if anger overcomes you, or greed, or pride or laziness overpower you, if you fail and if you sin, never forget that there is someone who will step in to defend you. Although you will be alienated from God at that moment, there is one who will represent you before Almighty God. When God’s judgment falls upon you, when God calls you to account for your sin, when eternal life or eternal damnation are in the balance, Jesus Christ intervenes in your defense. He cannot fail, and he does not fail because He is perfect in righteousness. He has the Father’s ear because he is the Father’s beloved son. The Father will give him what he asks for because the Son has given everything the Father has asked of him. Jesus’ defense of you is not a legal argument or an emotional appeal. He does not whine or wheedle or cajole the Father into doing something apart from his will. Jesus’ successful defense of you is twofold: His own righteous act and you belonging to him. Jesus’ righteous act was to take your sins upon himself and to die for them. Your belonging to him is you having faith in him. Jesus agreed to pay the penalty for your failings. And he has already done it. He climbed up upon the cross and allowed himself to be killed in order that your sins may be acquitted by God. Jesus suffered in our place—and not just yours and mine but for everybody in the whole world.
So, John wants us to know that our wellbeing, both in the here and now and in the life to come, depends upon a friendly relationship. He calls it “walking in the light” but he means walking with God, under God’s grace, in the presence of God’s revealed glory. And Jesus is God’s revealed glory. Remember what Jesus said to St. Philip? Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, `Show us the Father'? (John 14.9)
We are presented with an option—an either/or. Sometimes life is about both/and but that is not the case here. Here we can either walk in the light or we can walk in darkness. “There is no gray twilight between good and evil.” Actions speak louder than words in terms of what we believe—not what we pretend to believe but what we actually believe. If we choose to walk in the darkness, that is, if we choose to deny to power and authority of Jesus Christ in our lives, if we insist upon saying that he has left us defenseless against sin, then the truth is not in us and we get all that comes along with walking down the road to destruction. But if we choose to walk in the light, as Jesus is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.” It is the difference between a bleak, cold and bleary winter day, when nothing thrives and everything lays dormant on the one hand and bright, warm sunshine, flowers blooming and plants growing and birds singing, on the other. We choose, and it is not just a one time decision. It is a million decisions. In fact every situation we face in life is another decision to walk in the light or the darkness. We can elect to trust Jesus and do the next right thing. We can choose to feed our pride, ambition, fears and anxieties. The choices we make determine the quality and character of our lives. The life of faith is not just about the big salvation issue it is also about the little, day to day, hour by hour, minute to minute issues. We decide to live by faith in Jesus Christ time after time after time.
John says, “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live in the truth.” This is a real issue for all Christians at least occasionally. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All of us have moments of darkness. Some of us are suffering grave doubts and fears. We know that our faith should lift us up but sometimes our faith seems to fail us. Some of us have been dogged by addiction for years. Some of us are overcome by fits of anger or despair. For some of us darkness dogs us and yet we tend to deny it. We want to pretend that we are just fine, that our lives are lives of constant virtue. We put up a good front for the world. But John says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us and if we say we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar and his word is not in us.” But John tells us, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Confession is the key. We think we can make it all better later on if we can just keep the facts hidden right now but God wants us to admit the facts right now so that he can make it better right now. If we confess our sins God forgives.
Doesn’t it look like we need to be attending to the issue of admitting our sins, acknowledging our brokenness and seeking restoration through the power of Jesus Christ? Sandy Millar, the Assisting Bishop of London says that when his parish started to admit their faults and to confess their brokenness that they started to grow up as a Christian Community. Christian maturity looks like being open about our failings. As long as we pretend that everything is just fine thank you, as long as we insist upon maintaining good Public Relations and making sure that we are marketing ourselves well to others we are destined to walk the road of destruction…because all those lies live and grow in the darkness. But when we begin to reveal the truth, when we start showing our wrinkles and our defects, admitting our faults and failures, then we begin to walk down the path of light and into the arms of a loving and forgiving God.
Jesus has paid the price. As long as we trust in him we do not need to fear God. In fact, honesty, openness, confessing the real circumstances of our lives to one another, this is the road of freedom and peace. Jesus has paid the price and through him we are able to live in the sunshine of God’s glorious grace. Amen.
In the name of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.
What a beautiful weekend! From frigid winter to hot summer almost overnight. As we enjoy the beauty of God’s Creation on this bright and glorious sunny weekend we may be tempted to give credit to the sun. We may conclude that the sun is the source of all this light and warmth and new life that we are witnessing. And it is true that the flowers and the green grass, and the warm air, the return of the migrant birds with all their songs, all of it relates to the return of the sun to its higher position in the sky. As the sun comes more directly overhead and we begin to come under its affect we can’t help but notice that life improves rather dramatically, but it is not the sun that is responsible for all this new life.
In ancient times, the pagans recognized the power of the sun and to a lesser extent, the moon. They thought that the sun was so spectacular that it must be a god traversing the sky. Zeus was riding his chariot across the heavens and the light and warmth we felt was simply the radiance of his glorious presence filtering down to earth. The Emperor Constantine was a sun worshipper—not a frequent sunbather, he actually worshipped the sun as deity before his conversion to Christianity. And it isn’t too hard to understand considering that when the sun is shining and is high in the sky the earth is warm, life takes on a renewed vitality but when the sun is hidden the world grows dark and dreary. Plants that live in the shade usually don’t thrive. Without the sun the landscape is gray and brown, the atmosphere is cold and all that has an emotional impact on us as well. Seasonal Affective Disorder seems to be a real medical diagnosis. A lack of sunlight during the winter months may cause depression and illness in some. Without the sun for extended periods of time we may experience vitamin deficiencies because sunlight is both a source of some vitamins and a means to help process others. So, it is natural enough to look at the beautiful light of day reflecting off of flowers and shrubs, to feel the warmth of the light on our heads and shoulders, and to attribute it all to the sun but the sun is not the source of light—God is.
The sun and moon are products of God’s very first creative action. In Genesis chapter 1, verses 2, 3, and 4 we are told, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” What is the source of the glorious light we enjoy this morning? God—God is the source of the light. It is through him that the sun came to be. And, of course, God is not only the source of light in the natural world. God is, also and in a similar way, the source of light in the Spiritual world. He reveals his glory to us and through that self-revelation we know goodness, righteousness, truth, beauty, life and love. When we choose to live in God’s revealed glory we know all of those graces affecting our lives. That revealed glory has a name. God’s revealed glory is named is Jesus.
Jesus was with God before the earth and the sky. He was with him before God said, “Let there be light. And from the very beginning, even before there was a created world, God the Father, and God the son had designed you. They knew exactly what you would look like and what you would be like and when they saw you they said, “It is good.” You have been created because God wants to know you. You exist because God’s desire was to make you. And having made you he desires to have a relationship with you. He wants you to be one of his children. He wants you to be a member of his kingdom. And so, God has given you all the tools you need to live as a faithful child of God.
Let’s look at the last few verses of the reading from John’s letter. Let me paraphrase and amplify his words because he explains the “so what” of his words to us. He tells us why he is writing and he explains what he hopes to tell us that may help us in our day to day life. He seems to be saying, “I don’t want you to ever sin. Once a person begins sinning he starts walking down the dark road, the road opposed to God, away from God and apart from God. That road is the road to destruction for you and for your family, for your friends, and for your culture. Worst of all it means an end to your relationship with God. John says, ‘I don’t want you to ever sin because there are always negative consequences to doing the wrong thing. It is always a bad choice. It always puts up a barrier between you and God. Even in the smallest case. And I am writing these words to you in order to provide you with the means for avoiding sinning.
There is a way to know freedom from the bondage of sin and death. The road to destruction is not a road we are doomed to walk. The Lord has provided the means by which we can know holiness and righteousness, by which we can know freedom from addiction and have hope in the future, a means by which we can find fruitful and fulfilling lives even in the midst of great trials. And that means of hope and a future is not a self-help book. It is not a system for living. It isn’t a secret or membership in a mystical society. It is not a medicine or a mantra or a wise mentor.
The means of hope and a future has a name, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Jesus is the glory of God revealed. He is the fullness of God’s revelation. In Jesus we know the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is the light of the world—God with us—and he has provided us with a path to walk upon. On the road that he has provided we are able to walk into the great and glorious life God has ordained for us.’ That path is called faith—faith in Jesus Christ.
‘Please,’ John says, ‘do not sin, but if you do, if you are brought low during a moment of despair, if your courage fails you, if you forget your true source of strength, or ignore the witness of God’s power and authority, if anger overcomes you, or greed, or pride or laziness overpower you, if you fail and if you sin, never forget that there is someone who will step in to defend you. Although you will be alienated from God at that moment, there is one who will represent you before Almighty God. When God’s judgment falls upon you, when God calls you to account for your sin, when eternal life or eternal damnation are in the balance, Jesus Christ intervenes in your defense. He cannot fail, and he does not fail because He is perfect in righteousness. He has the Father’s ear because he is the Father’s beloved son. The Father will give him what he asks for because the Son has given everything the Father has asked of him. Jesus’ defense of you is not a legal argument or an emotional appeal. He does not whine or wheedle or cajole the Father into doing something apart from his will. Jesus’ successful defense of you is twofold: His own righteous act and you belonging to him. Jesus’ righteous act was to take your sins upon himself and to die for them. Your belonging to him is you having faith in him. Jesus agreed to pay the penalty for your failings. And he has already done it. He climbed up upon the cross and allowed himself to be killed in order that your sins may be acquitted by God. Jesus suffered in our place—and not just yours and mine but for everybody in the whole world.
So, John wants us to know that our wellbeing, both in the here and now and in the life to come, depends upon a friendly relationship. He calls it “walking in the light” but he means walking with God, under God’s grace, in the presence of God’s revealed glory. And Jesus is God’s revealed glory. Remember what Jesus said to St. Philip? Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, `Show us the Father'? (John 14.9)
We are presented with an option—an either/or. Sometimes life is about both/and but that is not the case here. Here we can either walk in the light or we can walk in darkness. “There is no gray twilight between good and evil.” Actions speak louder than words in terms of what we believe—not what we pretend to believe but what we actually believe. If we choose to walk in the darkness, that is, if we choose to deny to power and authority of Jesus Christ in our lives, if we insist upon saying that he has left us defenseless against sin, then the truth is not in us and we get all that comes along with walking down the road to destruction. But if we choose to walk in the light, as Jesus is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.” It is the difference between a bleak, cold and bleary winter day, when nothing thrives and everything lays dormant on the one hand and bright, warm sunshine, flowers blooming and plants growing and birds singing, on the other. We choose, and it is not just a one time decision. It is a million decisions. In fact every situation we face in life is another decision to walk in the light or the darkness. We can elect to trust Jesus and do the next right thing. We can choose to feed our pride, ambition, fears and anxieties. The choices we make determine the quality and character of our lives. The life of faith is not just about the big salvation issue it is also about the little, day to day, hour by hour, minute to minute issues. We decide to live by faith in Jesus Christ time after time after time.
John says, “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live in the truth.” This is a real issue for all Christians at least occasionally. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All of us have moments of darkness. Some of us are suffering grave doubts and fears. We know that our faith should lift us up but sometimes our faith seems to fail us. Some of us have been dogged by addiction for years. Some of us are overcome by fits of anger or despair. For some of us darkness dogs us and yet we tend to deny it. We want to pretend that we are just fine, that our lives are lives of constant virtue. We put up a good front for the world. But John says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us and if we say we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar and his word is not in us.” But John tells us, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Confession is the key. We think we can make it all better later on if we can just keep the facts hidden right now but God wants us to admit the facts right now so that he can make it better right now. If we confess our sins God forgives.
Doesn’t it look like we need to be attending to the issue of admitting our sins, acknowledging our brokenness and seeking restoration through the power of Jesus Christ? Sandy Millar, the Assisting Bishop of London says that when his parish started to admit their faults and to confess their brokenness that they started to grow up as a Christian Community. Christian maturity looks like being open about our failings. As long as we pretend that everything is just fine thank you, as long as we insist upon maintaining good Public Relations and making sure that we are marketing ourselves well to others we are destined to walk the road of destruction…because all those lies live and grow in the darkness. But when we begin to reveal the truth, when we start showing our wrinkles and our defects, admitting our faults and failures, then we begin to walk down the path of light and into the arms of a loving and forgiving God.
Jesus has paid the price. As long as we trust in him we do not need to fear God. In fact, honesty, openness, confessing the real circumstances of our lives to one another, this is the road of freedom and peace. Jesus has paid the price and through him we are able to live in the sunshine of God’s glorious grace. Amen.
What Fuels Our Church?
Sermon on Acts 4.32-34 The Reverend Scott Homer
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Our furnaces are fired by coal or natural gas. Our cars are fueled by gasoline. Dragsters are fueled by nitro-enriched fuel and submarines and aircraft carriers are fueled by nuclear energy. The Church is fired by the Holy Spirit. And that is really important for us to remember because when you use the wrong type of fuel to operate your car you are likely to sputter and spit and quit—and getting it going again may be expensive and difficult. Engines are designed to be run by a specific fuel source. Only gasoline is able to fuel the typical car. Only nuclear fuel rods are able to power nuclear subs and only the Holy Spirit is able to power the Church. A Church that attempts to operate in human strength is destined to sputter, spit and eventually quit. With the proper fuel and with appropriate care and maintenance an engine can take us to all the places we could ever want to go. The Church needs to quit relying on human strength and start relying on the Holy Spirit.
In lifesaving courses, the rescuer is trained to swim behind the victim and to grab them in a choke hold. That is the safest way for them to save the victim and to preserve their own lives because people who are drowning don’t make wise choices, they panic, they become frantic and in their futile efforts to stay afloat they will just wildly grab onto anything and pull it down with them. If a rescuer is not careful about their approach they may end up drowning along with the victim. Logically you would think that a person who can’t swim would see a strong swimmer approaching and they would surrender control to them, but emotionally the drowning man refuses to give up control. He insists upon doing things his way to the bitter end. If he succeeds in getting his way, it will cost everybody their lives.
Now this is a very good illustration of our spiritual problem. Lives lived independent of God, seeking our own way, are lives lived in waters way over our heads. We may not be able to recognize the danger all the time. Swimmers often get caught in rip tides because they can’t sense it. But whether we can sense it or not, whether we know it or not, we are going to drown if we rely on our own devices. Sin and death are like a powerful undertow that is dragging us out into the deep and dragging us down below the surface. Struggle as we may we will eventually grow tired and weak and we will succumb.
Fortunately, we do not have to live independent of God. We may choose to. Many of us do but we don’t have to. We have been sent a rescuer. It is, in fact, one of the neglected teachings of the Easter season. In John 16.7 Jesus tells his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper [the Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” So, one of the central benefits of Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension is that when Jesus departs the Holy Spirit arrives. God sends the Holy Spirit to us and in the Holy Spirit’s presence we receive power.
One of the greatest gifts of Christ’s sacrifice is the gift of God the Helper coming and living with us and through us. And how will we know this helper? What will he look like? In the Gospel of John chapter 4, verse 26 Jesus describes him as the Holy Spirit, the [One the] Father sends in [Jesus’] name. He teaches us all things. He reminds us about all of Jesus’ teachings, and in 15.26 Jesus says, "He is the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father and He testifies about Jesus. And finally, he comes with great power and authority and he gives that power and authority to us. Submitted to this powerful presence the disciples perform miracles; they heal the sick, they speak the truth with such force that listeners are immediately convicted and surrender their lives to Christ; they forgive sins, a thing only God can do; and perhaps most stunningly, believers become generous and hospitable—Barnabas sells his land and lays the proceeds at the Apostles feet. Surely this sort of hospitality is only inspired by God’s powerful presence.
Now, returning to our analogy of the drowning man, the challenge for us individually and for the Church together is threefold:
1. To gather together and confess our sins to God and to one another
2. To exercise patience and discipline and to wait upon the Lord
3. To exercise courage by actually surrendering our life and will to God and allowing the Holy Spirit to move us and to act through us
That’s the great challenge. The great benefit, of course, is salvation—and that does not just mean going to heaven someday. Salvation means healing our broken hearts. Salvation means healing our broken relationships. Salvation means healing our broken world. Salvation means living in peace—knowing that we are being watched over and protected and cared for by the Master of the Universe and the Creator of all things, the God whose character is love. Salvation means being relieved of the burden of having to fix the immense problems facing us and our loved ones—and yet knowing that we can bring change into the midst of the most difficult situations. Salvation means joy independent of our circumstances. Salvation means feeling loved, not for what you do or who you know or how you act but loved just the way you are. When the Holy Spirit comes, when we are led into all truth, when the power of God dwells in our midst, we know salvation in all its manifestations. And we know the source of our salvation. And along with giving us the knowledge of the truth the Holy Spirit inspires us to shout out and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to the whole world—and because our words are powered by God’s Spirit they do not return to Him empty.
Gathering together—confessing our sins to one another—waiting upon the Lord—surrendering our life and will to God; this is the model of life that God repeatedly places before us in the Scriptures. Most especially we see it wrapped around the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus that we celebrate this Easter season.
In Acts chapter 1, verse 4, as Jesus prepares to ascend to heaven he:
4 Gathers [the disciples] together, and He [Jesus] commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, "Which," He said, "you heard of from Me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." 6 So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?"7 He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; 8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." 9 And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.
Acts chapter 2, verse 1:
“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.
Acts chapter 4, verse 31:
“And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.”
First, we have to gather together. God does not deal with us as individuals. He works with us as a community. And as we saw from John last week, a community is only a community when it is admitting its faults to one another. We have to acknowledge our ignorance of the truth, our willful refusal to do what is right and our intentional distance from Jesus.
Secondly, we must learn to wait for the Holy Spirit to arrive. We are always insisting on going off half-cocked. We are always jumping into things and exercising force and manipulation and subtle forms of violence in order to accomplish what we have concluded is right for everybody. We so want to be the source of salvation. And then we wonder why our efforts lack any real power, why we don’t see God honoring our efforts, why we seem to be beating our heads against the wall.
Thirdly, we must respond to the power of the Spirit by exercising the gifts the Spirit gives us. The Spirit brings preaching and teaching gifts. The Spirit empowers people to perform miracles, to heal the sick, to dream dreams and see the future God intends for us. The Spirit blesses us with real love for one another and a desire to welcome and support one another. The Spirit has given each of us gifts but we must recognize his working in our lives, acknowledge his blessing through us and use those gifts for God’s glory.
A church that is attempting to operate in its own strength is like a drowning man trying to swim to shore. If he knew how to swim he wouldn’t be in the mess he is in and rather than try and control the situation he needs to let go and allow his rescuer to grab hold of him, buoy him up and move him to safety.
The Church relies upon the power of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit the Church withers and dies. A Church without the Holy Spirit is a Church without life—an empty shell—a whitewashed sepulcre—with no real ministry and no real purpose. America is full of churches that long ago abandoned the Holy Spirit and who are struggling to find a cause to fight for, searching for a reason to unlock their doors, and striving to tolerate one another. But a Church upon which the Holy Spirit has come and in which the Holy Spirit finds a welcome dwelling is a Church characterized by boldness, by tangible signs of transformation, and by genuine togetherness—real community—real bonds of affection. When the Holy Spirit falls upon us we are changed and we reflect that change in what we say, in what we do, and in the ways that we live with one another. We can’t help it because when the Holy Spirit comes we lose control. We are no longer in charge. The Church ceases to be our Church and it becomes God’s Church. Mission isn’t something people are searching for—it is an assigned project. We don’t come wondering how we can bend God’s will to our purposes—we find our will being conformed to God’s purposes. We don’t give lip service to love while we selfishly seek our own success. The Holy Spirit inspires us to sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of God and his people. Barnabas sells his land and places the proceeds at the feet of the apostles—not because he has to but because he recognizes the deep honor in it. When the Church is fueled by the Holy Spirit we cease to begrudge the few dollars we throw in the collection plate and we seek ways to give more because we are able to see the great honor in giving.
The Holy Spirit is showing up in our midst with power. We are seeing individual lives changed, God working to set people free, ministry being born out of sincere love of God, people experiencing the pleasure of serving their Lord through sacrificing for the community. Look at the Daughters of the King. They are not serving out of fear or ambition or obligation. They love what they are doing. Look at the Wild at Heart group. They have been inspired and they are boldly reclaiming ground for the Lord. Nobody really loves showing up to a Bible Study at 6:30am during the week unless the Holy Spirit is feeding them and blessing them in that study and he is. Financial Peace University, the new Community Meal initiative, our volunteers at Uncommon Grounds. We are witnessing the Holy Spirit moving in our midst, leading us into real, sincere, loving community and into bolder proclamation of the Gospel message.
We have no control over what God does. He is sovereign and he moves as he sees fit. But the Lord has promised that if we will gather together, if we will confess our sins to one another and to him, if we will wait patiently upon him and surrender to Him when he comes to us, he will come and we will know His power and his blessing in our lives. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Our furnaces are fired by coal or natural gas. Our cars are fueled by gasoline. Dragsters are fueled by nitro-enriched fuel and submarines and aircraft carriers are fueled by nuclear energy. The Church is fired by the Holy Spirit. And that is really important for us to remember because when you use the wrong type of fuel to operate your car you are likely to sputter and spit and quit—and getting it going again may be expensive and difficult. Engines are designed to be run by a specific fuel source. Only gasoline is able to fuel the typical car. Only nuclear fuel rods are able to power nuclear subs and only the Holy Spirit is able to power the Church. A Church that attempts to operate in human strength is destined to sputter, spit and eventually quit. With the proper fuel and with appropriate care and maintenance an engine can take us to all the places we could ever want to go. The Church needs to quit relying on human strength and start relying on the Holy Spirit.
In lifesaving courses, the rescuer is trained to swim behind the victim and to grab them in a choke hold. That is the safest way for them to save the victim and to preserve their own lives because people who are drowning don’t make wise choices, they panic, they become frantic and in their futile efforts to stay afloat they will just wildly grab onto anything and pull it down with them. If a rescuer is not careful about their approach they may end up drowning along with the victim. Logically you would think that a person who can’t swim would see a strong swimmer approaching and they would surrender control to them, but emotionally the drowning man refuses to give up control. He insists upon doing things his way to the bitter end. If he succeeds in getting his way, it will cost everybody their lives.
Now this is a very good illustration of our spiritual problem. Lives lived independent of God, seeking our own way, are lives lived in waters way over our heads. We may not be able to recognize the danger all the time. Swimmers often get caught in rip tides because they can’t sense it. But whether we can sense it or not, whether we know it or not, we are going to drown if we rely on our own devices. Sin and death are like a powerful undertow that is dragging us out into the deep and dragging us down below the surface. Struggle as we may we will eventually grow tired and weak and we will succumb.
Fortunately, we do not have to live independent of God. We may choose to. Many of us do but we don’t have to. We have been sent a rescuer. It is, in fact, one of the neglected teachings of the Easter season. In John 16.7 Jesus tells his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper [the Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” So, one of the central benefits of Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension is that when Jesus departs the Holy Spirit arrives. God sends the Holy Spirit to us and in the Holy Spirit’s presence we receive power.
One of the greatest gifts of Christ’s sacrifice is the gift of God the Helper coming and living with us and through us. And how will we know this helper? What will he look like? In the Gospel of John chapter 4, verse 26 Jesus describes him as the Holy Spirit, the [One the] Father sends in [Jesus’] name. He teaches us all things. He reminds us about all of Jesus’ teachings, and in 15.26 Jesus says, "He is the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father and He testifies about Jesus. And finally, he comes with great power and authority and he gives that power and authority to us. Submitted to this powerful presence the disciples perform miracles; they heal the sick, they speak the truth with such force that listeners are immediately convicted and surrender their lives to Christ; they forgive sins, a thing only God can do; and perhaps most stunningly, believers become generous and hospitable—Barnabas sells his land and lays the proceeds at the Apostles feet. Surely this sort of hospitality is only inspired by God’s powerful presence.
Now, returning to our analogy of the drowning man, the challenge for us individually and for the Church together is threefold:
1. To gather together and confess our sins to God and to one another
2. To exercise patience and discipline and to wait upon the Lord
3. To exercise courage by actually surrendering our life and will to God and allowing the Holy Spirit to move us and to act through us
That’s the great challenge. The great benefit, of course, is salvation—and that does not just mean going to heaven someday. Salvation means healing our broken hearts. Salvation means healing our broken relationships. Salvation means healing our broken world. Salvation means living in peace—knowing that we are being watched over and protected and cared for by the Master of the Universe and the Creator of all things, the God whose character is love. Salvation means being relieved of the burden of having to fix the immense problems facing us and our loved ones—and yet knowing that we can bring change into the midst of the most difficult situations. Salvation means joy independent of our circumstances. Salvation means feeling loved, not for what you do or who you know or how you act but loved just the way you are. When the Holy Spirit comes, when we are led into all truth, when the power of God dwells in our midst, we know salvation in all its manifestations. And we know the source of our salvation. And along with giving us the knowledge of the truth the Holy Spirit inspires us to shout out and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to the whole world—and because our words are powered by God’s Spirit they do not return to Him empty.
Gathering together—confessing our sins to one another—waiting upon the Lord—surrendering our life and will to God; this is the model of life that God repeatedly places before us in the Scriptures. Most especially we see it wrapped around the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus that we celebrate this Easter season.
In Acts chapter 1, verse 4, as Jesus prepares to ascend to heaven he:
4 Gathers [the disciples] together, and He [Jesus] commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, "Which," He said, "you heard of from Me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." 6 So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?"7 He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; 8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." 9 And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.
Acts chapter 2, verse 1:
“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.
Acts chapter 4, verse 31:
“And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.”
First, we have to gather together. God does not deal with us as individuals. He works with us as a community. And as we saw from John last week, a community is only a community when it is admitting its faults to one another. We have to acknowledge our ignorance of the truth, our willful refusal to do what is right and our intentional distance from Jesus.
Secondly, we must learn to wait for the Holy Spirit to arrive. We are always insisting on going off half-cocked. We are always jumping into things and exercising force and manipulation and subtle forms of violence in order to accomplish what we have concluded is right for everybody. We so want to be the source of salvation. And then we wonder why our efforts lack any real power, why we don’t see God honoring our efforts, why we seem to be beating our heads against the wall.
Thirdly, we must respond to the power of the Spirit by exercising the gifts the Spirit gives us. The Spirit brings preaching and teaching gifts. The Spirit empowers people to perform miracles, to heal the sick, to dream dreams and see the future God intends for us. The Spirit blesses us with real love for one another and a desire to welcome and support one another. The Spirit has given each of us gifts but we must recognize his working in our lives, acknowledge his blessing through us and use those gifts for God’s glory.
A church that is attempting to operate in its own strength is like a drowning man trying to swim to shore. If he knew how to swim he wouldn’t be in the mess he is in and rather than try and control the situation he needs to let go and allow his rescuer to grab hold of him, buoy him up and move him to safety.
The Church relies upon the power of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit the Church withers and dies. A Church without the Holy Spirit is a Church without life—an empty shell—a whitewashed sepulcre—with no real ministry and no real purpose. America is full of churches that long ago abandoned the Holy Spirit and who are struggling to find a cause to fight for, searching for a reason to unlock their doors, and striving to tolerate one another. But a Church upon which the Holy Spirit has come and in which the Holy Spirit finds a welcome dwelling is a Church characterized by boldness, by tangible signs of transformation, and by genuine togetherness—real community—real bonds of affection. When the Holy Spirit falls upon us we are changed and we reflect that change in what we say, in what we do, and in the ways that we live with one another. We can’t help it because when the Holy Spirit comes we lose control. We are no longer in charge. The Church ceases to be our Church and it becomes God’s Church. Mission isn’t something people are searching for—it is an assigned project. We don’t come wondering how we can bend God’s will to our purposes—we find our will being conformed to God’s purposes. We don’t give lip service to love while we selfishly seek our own success. The Holy Spirit inspires us to sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of God and his people. Barnabas sells his land and places the proceeds at the feet of the apostles—not because he has to but because he recognizes the deep honor in it. When the Church is fueled by the Holy Spirit we cease to begrudge the few dollars we throw in the collection plate and we seek ways to give more because we are able to see the great honor in giving.
The Holy Spirit is showing up in our midst with power. We are seeing individual lives changed, God working to set people free, ministry being born out of sincere love of God, people experiencing the pleasure of serving their Lord through sacrificing for the community. Look at the Daughters of the King. They are not serving out of fear or ambition or obligation. They love what they are doing. Look at the Wild at Heart group. They have been inspired and they are boldly reclaiming ground for the Lord. Nobody really loves showing up to a Bible Study at 6:30am during the week unless the Holy Spirit is feeding them and blessing them in that study and he is. Financial Peace University, the new Community Meal initiative, our volunteers at Uncommon Grounds. We are witnessing the Holy Spirit moving in our midst, leading us into real, sincere, loving community and into bolder proclamation of the Gospel message.
We have no control over what God does. He is sovereign and he moves as he sees fit. But the Lord has promised that if we will gather together, if we will confess our sins to one another and to him, if we will wait patiently upon him and surrender to Him when he comes to us, he will come and we will know His power and his blessing in our lives. Amen.
Nondiscipleship is the Elephant in the Church!
Nondiscipleship is the elephant in the church. It is not the much discussed moral failures, financial abuses, or the amazing general similarity between Christians and non-Christians. These are only effects of the underlying problem. The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to live their lives in The Kingdom Among Us. And it is an accepted reality. The division of Christians into those from whom it is a matter of whole-life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer, or client, relationship to the church has now been an accepted reality for over fifteen hundred years.
And at present--in the distant outworkings of the Protestant Reformation, with its truly great and good message of salvation by faith alone--that long-accepted division has worked its way into the very heart of the gospel message. It is now understood to be a part of the "good news" that one does not have to be a life student of Jesus in order to be a Christian and receive forgiveness of sins. This gives a precise meaning to the phrase "cheap grace," though it would bebetter described as "costly faithlessness."
--Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: Harper, 1998), p.301; emphasis his
And at present--in the distant outworkings of the Protestant Reformation, with its truly great and good message of salvation by faith alone--that long-accepted division has worked its way into the very heart of the gospel message. It is now understood to be a part of the "good news" that one does not have to be a life student of Jesus in order to be a Christian and receive forgiveness of sins. This gives a precise meaning to the phrase "cheap grace," though it would bebetter described as "costly faithlessness."
--Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: Harper, 1998), p.301; emphasis his
April 11, 2009
April 9, 2009
The Meaning of Holy Communion
Sermon, Maundy Thursday 2009—The Rev. Scott Homer
In the Name of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
It is, of course, Holy Week. And this is, of course, Maundy Thursday. It came to be known as Maundy Thursday during the late Middle Ages. “Maundy” is a Middle English word derived from the Latin word “mandate” which means “command.” It is where we get our word “mandate.” The thing that makes tonight Maundy Thursday is that the night before he died for us our Lord Jesus Christ held a dinner with his disciples and at that dinner he said to them, “I give you a new commandment (a new maundy), that you love one another.” So Maundy Thursday is the day when Jesus gave the commandment to love one another. Remember he said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” But Maundy Thursday has become rather complex over the years. There are many traditions that have grown up around it. Last year on Maundy Thursday we held a footwashing ceremony that reminded us that Jesus taught, by his own example, that we are to humbly serve one another. Sometimes churches hold Seder meals. I know that you have done that here in years past. And the Seder meal reminds us of God’s great act of salvation in the Old Testament—the Passover—when God set his people free from slavery in Egypt and started them on their journey to the Promised Land. We Christians hold Seder meals because they help inform us about the what Jesus was doing at the Last Supper with his disciples.
But, in my experience at least, we don’t talk about this meal that has come down to us, this meal that we call Holy Communion or Eucharist. What about this act of worship that has become such a central part of our community life? What does Scripture teach us about this meal that Jesus inaugurated so many centuries ago and that we will soon celebrate again, here in our day and age?
It is a big part of Christian life—and it doesn’t matter what denomination you look at. This Holy Communion is celebrated by most, if not all, churches in the world. There are a whole variety of theologies that attempt to explain what we are doing and why we are doing it. Some churches have Holy Communion infrequently. Others everyday. Some places celebrate Communion with real bread, in some a pressed wafer, Some places use wine and drink from a common cup. Others use grape juice or drink from individual cups. But in most churches Holy Communion is a consistent feature of worship. Why? And what do we Anglicans teach about its meaning and practice?
As we look at this simple meal called Holy Communion it might be helpful to provide a context—a foundational text that informs our discussion. And I think St. John has provided just the right text in his first letter. In 1 John chapter 4, verse 9, he says, “This is how the love of God was manifested in us—God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.” The first thing we need to notice about what John says is the verb tense he uses, and in order to get it you will have to look at the Greek or at a literal translation. More popular translations miss it. (It’s too bad that we don’t teach grammar anymore because grammar is really important to the writers of Scripture and they are giving us very important messages through the way that they say things.) Did you notice that St. John said, “God “has sent” his Son into the world. It isn’t just something that happened long ago. The Son was not only sent. He is still present—that’s what John claims. Secondly, John makes another surprising statement through his use of the conjunction “in.” He makes the audacious claim that the love of God is not manifested “towards us” but that God’s love is actually “in us.” God’s love is not something we experience in the universe around us. God’s love dwells inside us, somehow.
St John wrote this letter many years after Jesus lived, after he died, rose and ascended to heaven. All of those events were long past and so the people to whom John writes are people who have never met Jesus in the flesh, and who never witnessed his resurrection but he writes to them to tell them that the Son of God has come into their world, and is giving them the opportunity to live a redeemed life through his Presence. John is not talking about an abstract God, a conceptual God. John is pointing to a God who is real and present in the life of his people, present in tangible ways.
So, John tells people far removed from the events described in the Scriptures that even for us, God’s love is in us—not directed towards us. And he says, Jesus is in our midst, not someone who visited and vanished in ancient times. But how? How are you and I, living in twenty-first century America, able to experience God’s love within us or come to rest in Christ’s presence in our midst? In what way is Christ really present to us, in the here and now?
Sometimes things are not what they appear to be. For example, on the negative side, an “attractive nuisance” is something which compels people to come towards it and then, instead of being a good thing it turns out to be a bad thing. An unattended swimming pool may appeal to a child as a fun place to play but it may very well become a drowning pool for that child. A dog with a wagging tail may draw us towards it with the promise of friendship but then snarl and snap and injure us instead. On the positive side, I am sure that you have known people who look like a snarling dog from a distance and yet when you get to know them they are amongst the kindest and gentlest souls you have ever met. Perhaps you have tentatively opened the door to a dark and empty house only to have the lights thrown on and a crowd of people yell, “surprise.” You have not come home to be alone, you have come home to a party. Things are not always what they appear to be. And when that happens with God, when God presents us with something that is much more than it outwardly appears to be, we call that a sacrament. A sacrament is something that appears one way, but its effect on us, the impact that it has on our lives is quite a different thing.
This meal that we will be sharing in a few minutes is a sacrament. It is more than it appears to be. It appears to be little pressed wafers and a goblet full of Port wine but Jesus tells us that it is his body and his blood given for us.
Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
Some may argue that this meal is just a remembrance of his precious death and glorious resurrection—just a memorial to the events that happen long, long ago and far, far away. Indeed Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22.19 and 1 Cor. 11.24) No Eucharist would be complete with remembering His death, proclaiming his resurrection and awaiting his coming again in glory but this, in itself, is an insufficient explanation. Holy Communion is a memorial but it is much more than that.
Jesus told his disciples, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
In the Gospel of John, chapter 6 the people are demanding an outward sign from Jesus. They want Jesus to prove he is the Son of God. They say, “in the old days God sent bread from heaven.” And Jesus responds by saying "…the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world. Jesus says to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” And he does not want to leave them the option of thinking that he speaks metaphorically, (“O he is just saying he is like the bread that comes down from heaven.”) Just to make sure they understand that he literally means what he is saying, he says to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” Now, please don’t get wrapped around this old worn argument, “O that’s transubstantiation! Those nasty Catholics believe in that!” That is not the point. None of us have anyway of knowing how this works—and we don’t need to understand. (That’s the problem with Transubstantiation. It creates a doctrine to explain what cannot be explained and then requires it as a point of faith.) What is important is that Jesus makes it crystal clear that he is really present to us, somehow or another he really does come down from heaven, just like the manna fell in the wilderness, and God really does come to dwell in us and work through us when we receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. Jesus is alive! He comes into our midst—God’s love dwells within us—every time we receive Holy Communion in faith. We are not alone. We don’t have to despair. We are not living in a world far removed from the source of grace. Christ is with us, literally, in the breaking of the bread.
Jesus said, “A new command I give you, love one another.”
There is a final important piece to this great mystery we call Holy Communion. We need to touch on it as well. Holy Communion is a memorial meal in which we rehearse the saving acts of God in the lives of his people. It really is a memorial. Holy Communion is the means by which Jesus conveys himself, in the here and now, into the lives of his people. We truly eat his flesh and blood. And Jesus really did give a new commandment as he was inaugurating this meal. He really did say, “A new command I give you, love one another.” And then he passed out the bread and the wine and he said, “Share this amongst you.” Share my body and blood as a perpetual way of bringing love into the center of your community. Holy Communion is not just a remembering in the sense of memory. It is remembering in the sense of bringing back together a disjointed and divided body. When we come to the Altar of God scattered Christians are reunited and we become one body—the Body of Christ. Did you know that if a priest doesn’t hear at least two people say amen at the end of the Eucharistic prayer that the priest is not supposed to administer the sacrament to you—this is not about “I believe.” This is about “We believe.” This is not about “I receive Jesus Christ.” This is about “We receive Jesus Christ,” and together we come before the throne of grace, together we demonstrate our love for God as we demonstrate our love for one another. And together we have the capacity to truly love one another because Christ first loved us and gave himself as a sacrifice for us. We receive him in order that we may receive one another.
Friends, we have come this Maundy Thursday evening to remember the events of Christ’s final days. As Martha prays the Eucharist tonight you will hear the story told once more. Once more we will look upon Jesus’ extreme humility by which the unblemished Lamb of God gave himself sacrificed himself to death in order to restore us to life. Tonight we will, again, receive the enormous gift of God’s gracious love dwelling within us as He makes himself present to us in the body and blood of his Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Tonight, through Christ’s loving presence we will be knit back together into one body, the body of Christ, and together we will give witness to the world that, truly, this Jesus is the Son of God.
Come let us adore him. Amen.
In the Name of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
It is, of course, Holy Week. And this is, of course, Maundy Thursday. It came to be known as Maundy Thursday during the late Middle Ages. “Maundy” is a Middle English word derived from the Latin word “mandate” which means “command.” It is where we get our word “mandate.” The thing that makes tonight Maundy Thursday is that the night before he died for us our Lord Jesus Christ held a dinner with his disciples and at that dinner he said to them, “I give you a new commandment (a new maundy), that you love one another.” So Maundy Thursday is the day when Jesus gave the commandment to love one another. Remember he said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” But Maundy Thursday has become rather complex over the years. There are many traditions that have grown up around it. Last year on Maundy Thursday we held a footwashing ceremony that reminded us that Jesus taught, by his own example, that we are to humbly serve one another. Sometimes churches hold Seder meals. I know that you have done that here in years past. And the Seder meal reminds us of God’s great act of salvation in the Old Testament—the Passover—when God set his people free from slavery in Egypt and started them on their journey to the Promised Land. We Christians hold Seder meals because they help inform us about the what Jesus was doing at the Last Supper with his disciples.
But, in my experience at least, we don’t talk about this meal that has come down to us, this meal that we call Holy Communion or Eucharist. What about this act of worship that has become such a central part of our community life? What does Scripture teach us about this meal that Jesus inaugurated so many centuries ago and that we will soon celebrate again, here in our day and age?
It is a big part of Christian life—and it doesn’t matter what denomination you look at. This Holy Communion is celebrated by most, if not all, churches in the world. There are a whole variety of theologies that attempt to explain what we are doing and why we are doing it. Some churches have Holy Communion infrequently. Others everyday. Some places celebrate Communion with real bread, in some a pressed wafer, Some places use wine and drink from a common cup. Others use grape juice or drink from individual cups. But in most churches Holy Communion is a consistent feature of worship. Why? And what do we Anglicans teach about its meaning and practice?
As we look at this simple meal called Holy Communion it might be helpful to provide a context—a foundational text that informs our discussion. And I think St. John has provided just the right text in his first letter. In 1 John chapter 4, verse 9, he says, “This is how the love of God was manifested in us—God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.” The first thing we need to notice about what John says is the verb tense he uses, and in order to get it you will have to look at the Greek or at a literal translation. More popular translations miss it. (It’s too bad that we don’t teach grammar anymore because grammar is really important to the writers of Scripture and they are giving us very important messages through the way that they say things.) Did you notice that St. John said, “God “has sent” his Son into the world. It isn’t just something that happened long ago. The Son was not only sent. He is still present—that’s what John claims. Secondly, John makes another surprising statement through his use of the conjunction “in.” He makes the audacious claim that the love of God is not manifested “towards us” but that God’s love is actually “in us.” God’s love is not something we experience in the universe around us. God’s love dwells inside us, somehow.
St John wrote this letter many years after Jesus lived, after he died, rose and ascended to heaven. All of those events were long past and so the people to whom John writes are people who have never met Jesus in the flesh, and who never witnessed his resurrection but he writes to them to tell them that the Son of God has come into their world, and is giving them the opportunity to live a redeemed life through his Presence. John is not talking about an abstract God, a conceptual God. John is pointing to a God who is real and present in the life of his people, present in tangible ways.
So, John tells people far removed from the events described in the Scriptures that even for us, God’s love is in us—not directed towards us. And he says, Jesus is in our midst, not someone who visited and vanished in ancient times. But how? How are you and I, living in twenty-first century America, able to experience God’s love within us or come to rest in Christ’s presence in our midst? In what way is Christ really present to us, in the here and now?
Sometimes things are not what they appear to be. For example, on the negative side, an “attractive nuisance” is something which compels people to come towards it and then, instead of being a good thing it turns out to be a bad thing. An unattended swimming pool may appeal to a child as a fun place to play but it may very well become a drowning pool for that child. A dog with a wagging tail may draw us towards it with the promise of friendship but then snarl and snap and injure us instead. On the positive side, I am sure that you have known people who look like a snarling dog from a distance and yet when you get to know them they are amongst the kindest and gentlest souls you have ever met. Perhaps you have tentatively opened the door to a dark and empty house only to have the lights thrown on and a crowd of people yell, “surprise.” You have not come home to be alone, you have come home to a party. Things are not always what they appear to be. And when that happens with God, when God presents us with something that is much more than it outwardly appears to be, we call that a sacrament. A sacrament is something that appears one way, but its effect on us, the impact that it has on our lives is quite a different thing.
This meal that we will be sharing in a few minutes is a sacrament. It is more than it appears to be. It appears to be little pressed wafers and a goblet full of Port wine but Jesus tells us that it is his body and his blood given for us.
Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
Some may argue that this meal is just a remembrance of his precious death and glorious resurrection—just a memorial to the events that happen long, long ago and far, far away. Indeed Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22.19 and 1 Cor. 11.24) No Eucharist would be complete with remembering His death, proclaiming his resurrection and awaiting his coming again in glory but this, in itself, is an insufficient explanation. Holy Communion is a memorial but it is much more than that.
Jesus told his disciples, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
In the Gospel of John, chapter 6 the people are demanding an outward sign from Jesus. They want Jesus to prove he is the Son of God. They say, “in the old days God sent bread from heaven.” And Jesus responds by saying "…the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world. Jesus says to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” And he does not want to leave them the option of thinking that he speaks metaphorically, (“O he is just saying he is like the bread that comes down from heaven.”) Just to make sure they understand that he literally means what he is saying, he says to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” Now, please don’t get wrapped around this old worn argument, “O that’s transubstantiation! Those nasty Catholics believe in that!” That is not the point. None of us have anyway of knowing how this works—and we don’t need to understand. (That’s the problem with Transubstantiation. It creates a doctrine to explain what cannot be explained and then requires it as a point of faith.) What is important is that Jesus makes it crystal clear that he is really present to us, somehow or another he really does come down from heaven, just like the manna fell in the wilderness, and God really does come to dwell in us and work through us when we receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. Jesus is alive! He comes into our midst—God’s love dwells within us—every time we receive Holy Communion in faith. We are not alone. We don’t have to despair. We are not living in a world far removed from the source of grace. Christ is with us, literally, in the breaking of the bread.
Jesus said, “A new command I give you, love one another.”
There is a final important piece to this great mystery we call Holy Communion. We need to touch on it as well. Holy Communion is a memorial meal in which we rehearse the saving acts of God in the lives of his people. It really is a memorial. Holy Communion is the means by which Jesus conveys himself, in the here and now, into the lives of his people. We truly eat his flesh and blood. And Jesus really did give a new commandment as he was inaugurating this meal. He really did say, “A new command I give you, love one another.” And then he passed out the bread and the wine and he said, “Share this amongst you.” Share my body and blood as a perpetual way of bringing love into the center of your community. Holy Communion is not just a remembering in the sense of memory. It is remembering in the sense of bringing back together a disjointed and divided body. When we come to the Altar of God scattered Christians are reunited and we become one body—the Body of Christ. Did you know that if a priest doesn’t hear at least two people say amen at the end of the Eucharistic prayer that the priest is not supposed to administer the sacrament to you—this is not about “I believe.” This is about “We believe.” This is not about “I receive Jesus Christ.” This is about “We receive Jesus Christ,” and together we come before the throne of grace, together we demonstrate our love for God as we demonstrate our love for one another. And together we have the capacity to truly love one another because Christ first loved us and gave himself as a sacrifice for us. We receive him in order that we may receive one another.
Friends, we have come this Maundy Thursday evening to remember the events of Christ’s final days. As Martha prays the Eucharist tonight you will hear the story told once more. Once more we will look upon Jesus’ extreme humility by which the unblemished Lamb of God gave himself sacrificed himself to death in order to restore us to life. Tonight we will, again, receive the enormous gift of God’s gracious love dwelling within us as He makes himself present to us in the body and blood of his Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Tonight, through Christ’s loving presence we will be knit back together into one body, the body of Christ, and together we will give witness to the world that, truly, this Jesus is the Son of God.
Come let us adore him. Amen.
April 8, 2009
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