The 13th Sunday after Pentecost - Choosing Jesus

Making a choice becomes difficult when there are very attractive alternatives.  The most potent example I can offer to picture this sort of choice: if you find yourself driving to the UDairy Creamery—right next to the Ag Building—you'll need to prepare yourself for a challenge of making a choice. Let's see, there's Pistachio, Peach, Raspberry Cheesecake, Holy Fluffernutter, Delaware River Mud Pie—about 25 flavors in all—how will I be able to determine which to eat?

In the first century early Christians lived in a Roman-dominated society where multiple gods were worshipped.  One would choose a favorite deity, much as one might choose a favorite ice cream.  Eventually even  the Roman emperor himself was called divine.  The Jewish worship of the one God who had given the Law and inspired the prophets was lawful—as long as there was no rebellion against Rome.  But when the followers of Jesus were expelled from the Jewish congregations, they lost the protection of their religious practice that the Jews enjoyed.

The choice early Christians had to make was different than choosing among attractive alternatives.  It became an either-or choice, much like the choice of going to the Creamery in the first place or remaining at home and eating the kind of ice cream you have in your freezer. Either you choose to follow the path of having the opportunity to worship from the pantheon of many gods or the path of worshipping one God.

This rather silly example of choosing ice cream may be helpful in understanding one reason Christians were looked down on in the Greco-Roman world—why would you limit your choices of whom to worship?  In the 17^th chapter of Acts we hear a report of St. Paul's evangelism efforts in Athens.  He was debating with some Greek philosophers who had questioned him in a public forum.  Paul said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an Unknown God.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” Paul continued then to explain his belief in God who is “Lord of Heaven and Earth” and to proclaim Jesus' resurrection from the dead.

This latter part of Paul's preaching—resurrection—caused some of these sophisticated Athenians to scoff at Paul.  But some decided to join with him and became believers. The nature of their choice looks much like that of Peter and some of the disciples of Jesus we learn about at the end of the reading today from the Gospel of John.  The context was clearly different than that of Athens.

In the 6^th chapter of John we see Jesus teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum among his fellow Jews.  They are believers in one God, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, but for some of them—perhaps most of them—Jesus' teaching steps over the line. He used that very uncomfortable image of his body being food and his blood being drink for anyone who wishes to live forever.  He also claimed a special relationship with God the Father—what we would call Incarnation. And finally he stated that what he offered was better than the manna Moses had provided for the Israelites in the wilderness.

As Paul's proclamation in Athens about Jesus' resurrection offended and forced his listeners to make choices, so did Jesus' teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.  The gospel reading reports that some disciples were complaining about the difficulty of accepting or believing what Jesus said.  From what Jesus said to then we can tell he expected to create controversy and force his followers to make a choice—whether to accept him as the long-awaited Messiah or not.  He said, “Does this offend you?  Then what if you were to see the Song of Man ascending to where he was before?”

The disciples who turned away from Jesus that day were making the choice to stick with what they felt certain about.  They were not about to leave the comfort zone of the religious beliefs of their ancestors—or even to consider that God could be continuing to reveal God's self.  Jesus chided them about their inability to understand the truth of his message:  “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.  But among you there are some who do not believe . . . For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by my Father.”

With that Jesus seems to re-frame the whole concept of choice.  One reading of this statement says that we are predestined by God to believe in Jesus and be saved or not.  Rather I think that Jesus meant that God will give us an opportunity deeply to know God's self through Jesus.  This may be one of various opportunities God gives to humanity to know God, but that was not the gospel writer's concern.

John's concern was this: if you come to know God deeply through Jesus, you no longer have a choice but to believe and to follow.  John reports that Peter responded to Jesus' asking if he really wants to leave as well by asserting, “Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Despite Peter's faith and eloquence in that moment, we know that he did come to question whether Jesus really was who he said he was.  Peter denied being a follower on the night of Jesus' arrest.  Peter's fear that he also might be arrested and executed led to his denial.  His denial makes us realize how our Christian faith requires continuing struggle to keep it strong.  In his letter to the Ephesians St. Paul describes that success in that struggle as coming from arming one's self as a soldier might—yet not with metal, but with truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, the assurance of salvation and the word of God.

How do we acquire this spiritual armor, according to Paul?   “”Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication,” he advises.  Pray in the Spirit, trusting God to give you what you need for the struggle.  Pray in the Spirit, believing God will strengthen you and embolden you to face—and defeat—any power—even something from within yourself—that threatens to separate you from God's love and God's grace.

Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life!

The 11th Sunday after Pentecost - Why Community?

You have to wonder what was happening in the church at Ephesus so that St. Paul had to write to them about avoiding falsehood, properly dealing with anger, not stealing, and sharing with those in need. And why did he need to tell them to “put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice?”  Would you join that church?

Perhaps Paul wanted to contrast the sort of behavior that one would expect to find in the Greco-Roman world of the first century with the behavior he hoped would characterize a Christian community.  Of course, the members of a Christian community should avoid behavior that would hurt the community, and they should engage in behavior that strengthened the community.  Paul describes the desired behavior this way: “. . . be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”  Paul expected Christians to be “imitators of God.”  Now that's a high standard!

If we look back to the type of community the Hebrew Scriptures call for among those folks with whom God has a covenant relationship, we see a community called to behave justly in their dealings with others. Six of the Ten Commandments address how to treat others who are part of one's community.  The prophet Amos declares that in the covenant community justice “should roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Paul wanted the Christians to practice those behaviors as well.

But the many of the early Christians—especially those to whom Paul wrote—were not Jews.  Using the model of a righteous life taught by his tradition, Paul now needed to teach these new Christians how a community who claims to follow Jesus should behave.

But what did this idea of community mean for them and what does it means for us?

In Paul's time a Christian community began as individuals felt God's Spirit move within them, calling them to follow the example of Jesus.  In baptism they received what Paul described as “a seal for the day of redemption.” But the nature of that community reflected the idea from the Hebrew scriptures of God's covenant-making with a group of people: God expected that group of people to worship God alone and to live harmoniously with each other, because they showed both justice and mercy in their dealings with one another—you might say, acting as God would act.

In Jesus God offered not a covenant, but God's very self.  With Jesus at the center of the community his followers (both then and now) there could be no doubt about God's intent to draw people into an everlasting relationship.  Paul called it the “body of Christ.”

When Jesus calls himself “living bread” in the gospel reading today, he characterized that everlasting relationship as one of feeding and being fed.  For the writer of the Gospel of John there is no greater image of God's love for humanity. The theologian, Gail O'Day, claims that the Christian community “. . . derives first from the mutual indwelling of Jesus and the believer. . . [Then] community is formed from those who share Jesus' presence.”[1]

So for us, very much like it was for the Christians to whom Paul wrote, we cannot be fully Christian all by ourselves.  The emphasis often placed on an individual's salvation by accepting “Jesus as my Lord and Savior” cannot be where we stop in our journey with Christ.  Finding God in nature as in “all I need to worship is to be alone with God when I walk in the woods or on the beach” cannot be where we stop our journey in with Christ.  Believing that we can practice our faith in God completely alone—as in “I'll just read my Bible and pray at home”—can never complete the journey of faith we began when we first felt the Holy Spirit draw us.

Why, you may be asking, am I preaching about community when everyone here today has shown his or her commitment to community by showing up?  I preach about community, because we should never take its importance for granted or look at is as an unpleasant necessity.  Life together [in a Christian community], according to the German theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book by that name, affords us the only way we can confront our tendency to look to our own righteousness and perfection as the means of our salvation.  When we place Jesus Christ at the center of our lives together in a Christian community, we have a better chance to understand who God is calling us to be and to accept and love the others whom God has called as well—despite their rough edges and ours!

John reported that Jesus said that he was giving himself “for the life of the world.”  The earliest Christians may have had difficulty with that inclusiveness of Jesus, because they felt the need to separate themselves from the dominant Greco-Roman culture and from a religious establishment that rejected Jesus and them.  21^st century Christians, especially in the United States, struggle with a slightly different problem.  Often we want to tell our culture that it's getting it all wrong, and it needs to get back to certain values that we hold.  Perhaps what we should offer the world is not a critique, but an example—an example of how a community of mutual respect and kindness works, even when composed of people who hold very different views on a variety of issues.  In creating this sort of community can we serve as leaven for our whole society?  Can that be the reason for our parish to exist?  For the Episcopal Church to exist?  May each of us give thanks for the struggles and joys of sharing our lives together, centered our Savior, Jesus Christ!

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[1] From The New Interpreters Bible, Vol.IX, Nashville: Abingdon Press, p 613

The 10th Sunday after Pentecost - But first you have to admit you have a problem

It's been quite a while since I began a sermon with a joke.  It's not my preaching style, but I came across one this week that I have to share.  It's a beach scene with a lifeguard standing up on a tall life guard chair.  There's a man far out in the ocean up to his neck in the water, hands raised in a gesture that cries for help, looking as if he's about to go under.  The lifeguard, a Ph.D. student in psychology, looks directly at the man and yells, “I can help, but first you must admit you have a problem.”

In our gospel reading from John today, Jesus said almost the same thing to that crowd.  According the verses just before those we heard, John told us the disciples had gotten in a boat to go to Capernaum, and Jesus had withdrawn to a mountain by himself.  Jesus had fed a great multitude the day before.  Now a new day had begun, and these folks were determined to find Jesus.  John did not say the crowd knew the disciples had set out for Capernaum, but they must have known.  What John does say is this, “Then some boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks; so when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.”

This crowd seems eager, desperate, determined.  Like the drowning man in my joke, they were driven to cry out for what they expected and hoped Jesus would give them.  Their action of jumping in the boats and taking off to find Jesus—just like the drowning man's gestures—embodied their cry for what they believed they needed.

Let's try imagine how they were feeling. Imagine a child expecting a certain gift.  Perhaps he has been told he would get something he wanted very badly, but he has not seen it come in the house. Or perhaps her parents (or whomever is giving the gift), usually gives her what she says she wants the most, but none of the wrapped presents looks the right size or shape.  In either case the child is desperate to be given the hidden gift or to tear into the presents to find the desired one—desperate!

Jesus had fed the crowd  in a most amazing way.  Now they must find him, so they can witness more of what he does and, perhaps, receive more as well. They were doing all that they could to find him!!  The boats they took set out from Tiberias and headed to Capernaum.  Hugging the coast of the Sea of Gallilee, they had to travel north about 12 to 15 miles.  And when they arrived, they couldn't believe Jesus had gotten there ahead of them.

I don't think their first question to Jesus was asking for information, but rather expressing astonishment—to paraphrase: you weren't with the disciples, how could you have gotten here ahead of us? Jesus didn't respond to their question; he responded to the intent that brought them to Capernaum.  Their intent in following him was to let him know they wanted his help in providing what they believed they needed.

As the lifeguard said to the swimmer, Jesus told them they must acknowledge their problem in order to gain what they needed. What was their problem according to Jesus?  They just wanted more bread, but what they really needed was God:  “Do not work [“work” in this case means taking desperate measures] for the food that perishes, but the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”  Since the “Son of Man” is a messianic title, Jesus offered them hope.

After hearing this promise of a Messiah who will provide what they hope for, they have two questions.  First they ask, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answers that the work of God one must do is to believe in the one God sent.  And then  they ask, “What sign are you going to give us, so that we may see it and believe in you?”  They go on further to say that Moses gave their ancestors manna to eat. They want proof that Jesus is as good as or better than Moses.

Have these not been humanity's eternal questions?  What must I do (or what must we do) to get exactly what we want from God?  And, by the way, prove to us that you, who want us to follow you, are favored by God by giving us—or getting us—what we believe we want.  Our faith finds its basis in receiving what we want!

Jesus re-frames their concern about getting what they want.  Since they have been talking about receiving bread, he turns bread into a symbol of what God offers humanity: “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world . . . I am the bread of life.”

So by receiving Jesus, we will receive life in God.  By accepting Jesus as the Messiah of God we can be transformed now and forever.  Our lives in this world can be filled with God, so what we desire will coincide what makes us fully human—fully the people God has created each of us to be, who love God with our whole heart and mind and strength and our neighbors as ourselves.

This may sound wonderful, but it doesn't sound too easy or comfortable, does it? Our instincts often drive us to be self-centered, careful to look out for our own interests.  Only when we are able to admit we need help—as the drowning man in the joke was being asked too do—only then can we be open to the transforming presence of God in our lives.

The shape of our worship is no coincidence.  Confession, absolution from God, reconciliation through the exchange of God's peace and finally receiving the Real Presence of God through the bread and wine at Holy Communion—through our worship we express our need for help with the problem of being self-centered, and only then we can become open to God, ready to receive the bread of life.

To open with a joke and close with some lyrics from the Rolling Stones—no, this isn't your grandparents' sermon.  As the Rolling Stones wisely sang: “No, you can't always get what you want /No, you can't always get what you want/No, you can't always get what you want/But if you try sometime, you just might find/You get what you need.”  For Christians, our “trying sometime” means admitting, as the drowning man had to—admitting that we have a problem by confessing to God when we have missed the mark of loving God and our neighbor—and then being ready to receive God's help—who is Jesus, the bread of life.

The 9th Sunday after Pentecost - It is I; do not be afraid.

There's a form of the Prayers of the People that ends this way:  “When our eyes open, may it not be to end our devotions, but to expect your kingdom.”  Perhaps that should be broadened to this:  “When we gather to worship on Sunday, may it not be just to find solace and experience fellowship, but to expect your reign.”  What we say we hope for in the Lord's Prayer is God's kingdom to come—which we also describe as the reign of God or God's dominion.

Scripture describes the contrast between how things are now and what things will be like when God reigns.  That's what the miraculous signs and wonders in the stories in the Gospels mean!  We can also get glimpses of character of the reign of God in the legends of the saints.

In our gospel reading today we have the disciples in a boat experiencing difficult conditions.  Then they see Jesus.  The anxiety or fear they have felt because of the wind and rough seas becomes focused on Jesus.  Is this a vision, a ghost or really Jesus?  In fact, we know Jesus' presence—in whatever form—is the true Presence, because of the words the disciples hear, “Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.”

Jesus uses the name of God that Moses and the ancient Hebrews discerned as they sought to know God—“I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be.”  Four simple letters is Hebrew—YHWH—becomes in Greek ego emmi, or as is translated in English in our reading this morning “ . . . it is I.  So God, present in Jesus, offers a glimpse of God's reign, in the words that follow—“do not be afraid.”

What does this glimpse of God's reign mean for us?  Until its full manifestation at the end of time, we can see it breaking through in some small—and not so small—ways.  In our prayers we may find that our eyes do become opened to see God's goodness in new ways.

Our human nature may cling to fear when we feel a situation spirals out of our control—weather, disease, violence.   An appropriate amount of fear can protect us sometimes, leading us to more careful and safer choices.  But when fear overwhelms us, we may find ourselves angry or critical or bitter or vengeful—with these negative emotions often directed toward someone innocent who just happens to be nearby.

God's reign will banish fear!! And since we believe that God's reign began with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus—although right now we can only see glimpses of it—let us reflect for a moment on how it could appear in our own lives and the in life of this Christian community. . .


Especially today we pray for healing, as people come forward to receive the laying on of hands and anointing.  We need to ask for God's help in overcoming our fear--sometimes experienced as worry--when we confront illness or serious difficulties.  An illness can be cured miraculously--with no discoverable reason for the cure--but healing is so much more than this.  Healing means finding the peace and love of God in all the circumstances of our lives.  Healing means knowing that Jesus' presence in our lives can free us from fear.  Healing is indeed a glimpse of God's reign!

The 8th Sunday after Pentecost - Compassion and Reconciliation

It's always good when someone who knows a lot more than you do agrees with you—or at least close enough to count as agreement.  My default point-of-view in sermon writing is to ask the two essential questions in interpreting scripture:  First, what does this passage tell us about God? And then, what should we do (or how should we live) in the light of our answer to the first question?  Of course neither question stands outside the context of culture and history, but they require us to distill the essence of what we have read.

Douglas John Hall, a retired professor of Christian theology at McGill University, thinks that understanding our gospel reading this morning requires answering two questions very similar to mine.  These two questions also arise from what he calls “the welter of global religious striving”—a way of describing the conflicts in the world that appear, at least on the surface, to involve opposing religious systems. His first question is this:  “How does your God view the world?”  His second is, “How does your God ask you to view the world?”  Professor Hall claims that how we view the world—which motivates our actions in the world—will flow from our ideas about God.  Theology informs ethics, and our ethics arise from our theology.

If you read Hebrew and Christian scriptural texts closely, you will find more than one depiction of the God.  Jesus Christ may be the same yesterday and today and forever, as the writer of Letter to the Hebrews asserts in the 13^th chapter.  But our human understanding of God's view of the world and how God asks us to view the world has changed and—if you accept that there is continuing revelation—our understanding about how to answer these questions will change again—and again.

This change is captured succinctly in the story from the 8^th chapter of the Gospel of John.  Jesus and the religious authorities were debating about the fate of a woman caught in adultery.  Trying to trap Jesus into speaking against the Law the authorities asked, “Now in the law Moses [which the ancient Hebrews believed was given to Moses directly from God]  commanded us to stone such women.  Now what do you say?”  Jesus answered by asking them to view the world—and this woman—with a compassion growing from their awareness of their own sinfulness.  As you know, he said, “You who are without sin . . .[cast the first stone]”

We have two words to consider from our readings today in the light of Professor Hall's questions.  The first comes from the letter to the Ephesians.  It is “reconcile.”  The second comes from today's reading from Mark's gospel.  It is “compassion.”  Both of them refer to a way of looking at the world—and humanity—that promotes a positive connection and a life-giving relationship with God and among people.

In the letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul describes God as viewing differences concerning the purity of one's life—and the religious practices that maintain that purity—as a wall that must be broken down. Paul does not critique the purity code itself, but he criticizes the use of a purity code to exclude the people for whom it would be a barrier—to exclude those people that now believe in the message of Jesus, but who are not Jews.

This is how Paul describes God-in-Jesus's point of view:  “He [Jesus] has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.”  Are we now called to view the world as a place where we need to follows Jesus' pattern and act as reconcilers across the differences that divide people of faith?  Exactly how we might follow that call to act as reconcilers must come as the result of prayerful discernment.

Now we turn to the word “compassion” we find in the reading from Mark's gospel.  This word may hold an important place in our discernment of how act as a reconciler.  Jesus and his disciples found themselves at odds with the crowd of people who would not let them get away and rest.  The crowd appeared to be desperate for Jesus' presence.  They scrambled to locate Jesus—almost mobbed him.  Did they need what Jesus and his disciples have been offering in their ministry:  healing and preaching repentance to prepare for the coming reign of God?

Jesus could have told the disciples to disperse the crowd, for he and they were quite weary.  The disciples even suggested that course of action to Jesus later.  But Jesus knew his mission—and that of his disciples—was to bring the people into a closer relationship with God—to be reconcilers.  So Mark reports that Jesus felt compassion for this disorderly group.  Yes, compassion as the route to acting as a reconciler—this Jesus taught through what he did, as well as what he said.  First, he taught the people in the crowd “many things,” according to Mark. I imagine this included God's desire to be in relationship with them—to be reconciled.  And then he fed them—a very, very large number of them.

To come back to the questions with which we began:  How does our God—the God we believe in and trust—how does our God view the world?  As a place where compassion should be practiced, so that all people may be reconciled to God and to each other? Yes.  And how does our God ask us to view the world?  Can there be any doubt about the answer?

So where do we begin?  I suggest we begin by praying for our hearts to be led to compassion.  Then we must look for occasions where we can reach out across the divide of conflict and show the same compassion to another person that our Lord has showed to us.  And right now. this morning. let us approach the altar to receive the feeding Christ offers us: the bread broken, the wine poured out for us.  Through receiving Christ's body and blood may we experience the reconciling grace of God.   And finally, since we have been filled with Christ's presence, may we offer Christ's compassion and reconciling presence to the world through our words and our deeds.

The 7th Sunday of Pentecost - Blessing!

How blessed are you?  How blessed are we?  How do you bless?  How do we bless?  One of the charisms of ordained ministry is to convey God's blessing to God's people at the end of the Eucharistic celebration and in other sacramental rites.  In the Episcopal Church priests pronounce God blessing on the assembled worshippers while making the sign of the cross.  Some people respond to that blessing by making the sign of the cross themselves: a blessing given and received.

But that does not mean that God's blessing is not be conveyed in other ways.  Sometimes we speak about how we blessed by the love and friendship of another person.  We pronounce God's blessing over the meal we are about to eat.  We might call an unexpected, positive happening a blessing. Sometimes we look back on a situation and find we received a blessing in a situation that seemed quite dire.

The church where I served as a seminarian experienced a devastating fire caused by carelessness on the part of some workmen making repairs.  Although the congregation of the Church of the Holy Apostles had to meet somewhere else for a couple of years, they were able to rebuild their worship space also to be the dining room during the week for a larger and larger soup kitchen ministry—about 1,200 served daily. The rector at the time of the fire was still there when I came.  He said it was very tough to deal with the situation, but so much good came out of their difficulty.  And the other part of the blessing was that not one day was missed by the soup kitchen ministry.

Our epistle reading from St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians seeks to give a theology of blessing.  The opening sentence addresses the reciprocal nature of blessing: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.”  Paul declared that God loved humanity, blessing it in its pre-Creation state.  In the same way the writer of Genesis has God declaring each part of the created order good, Paul appears to be explaining some sort of “original goodness” for humanity in Christ. Our created purpose, from Paul's perspective, is to dwell in a holy and blameless state within God's love through Christ, as the second person of the Trinity.  Our response to this love should be to praise “God's glorious grace [another way to speak of God's love] that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved [Jesus].”

For Paul, as he expresses himself in this passage, blessing primarily is spiritual, not material. But like St. Thomas who demanded to touch the wounds of Jesus in order to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead, most of us want or need a material manifestation of God's blessing to bolster our faith.  We can hear this expressed by psalmists. We hear this in Psalm 24: 4-5, “Those who have clean hands and a pure heart . . . shall receive a blessing from the Lord and a just reward from the God of our salvation.”

So we are not unbiblical, by any means, in longing for tangible evidence of God's blessing.  But if this is all we understand God's blessing to be, our view is too narrow.  Remember Jesus' explaining that rain falls on both the just and the unjust?  God's blessing is about relationship.  The real world is a fallen and dangerous place.  The only certain ground on which we may stand is God. Our relationship with God is through Jesus Christ. To switch the metaphor a bit, could God's blessing be like the rain, falling on us all, but not all of us at any particular moment are absorbent soil?  For us, coming to know Jesus perhaps may lead us to be more receptive to seeing God's blessing, to being in relationship with the divine.

In the reading from Mark's gospel there appears to be no blessing and no good news either.  One of my seminary classmates posted a picture on Facebook a couple days ago about this passage showing an open Bible and a pen resting on an empty legal pad. His caption said “Looking for the good news in this week's gospel.”

No good could be said about King Herod or the dreadful situation he created by his boasting about how generous he would be to his seductive, dancing daughter, Herodias.  And yet, there is one part of this vignette that caught my attention.  Keep in mind the image of the rain falling on both the just and the unjust. These words brought me up short: “ . . . Herod feared John knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him.  When he heard him he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.”  John's testimony about repenting [again, changing one's mind] and turning to God was a blessing to Herod.  As we know from scripture and historical sources, Herod was not capable of responding to this blessing to become a blessing to others or to bless God.  But nevertheless God offered blessing to Herod through John's testimony.

Within the Christian community at Ephesus and within our own Christian community, God's blessing comes within the context of our faith.  Paul wrote:  “In him [Christ] you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit . . .”  Through our baptism and later adult acceptance of the baptismal promises, if we were baptized as infants, God has made us absorbent and fertile soil for receiving divine blessing that, as Paul noted, “ . . . we who . . . set our hope on Christ might live for the praise of his [God's] glory.”

So there it is.  God has reached out to us with blessing and we return the blessing by praising God's glory.  But there is more.  As John the Baptizer did, we must take what we have received and offer it to others.   Although our testimony about how our faith in Jesus Christ has blessed us may help others respond to God's blessing, we must also offer our deeds to those in need.  When we pack or cook food for the hungry, when we offer physical or pastoral care to others—these material forms of blessing flow from our being spiritually fed and cared for by God.  Paul understood all this in a spiritual way, not to earn salvation through our own righteousness—which would never be enough—but as a response to God's blessing that praises God's glory.

May God's blessing be ours; may Christ's peace be ours; may the Spirit's outpouring be ours—so we can be Christ's heart and Christ's hands each day for those we know and love—and for those to whom God sends us—even if they do not readily receive us!

The 6th Sunday of Pentecost - Cynicism or Hope?

Cynicism—no matter what you listen to on the radio today—no matter what you watch on television—no matter what you read in magazines and newspaper—you can't escape it!  Yes, I suspect it's worse because of the election campaigns right now, but it pervades most of the information we receive much of the time.

I don't use the word “hell” very often in my sermons, but today I want to offer a phrase that I first heard from someone who rarely swore.  This phrase was “going to hell in a handbasket.”  It provides a fascinating image, so I wondered where it came from.  Although its origins are murky, it appears to arise from an 18^th century problem.  Handbaskets were the woven baskets for passengers to ride in, suspended below a hot air balloon.  When the first untethered hot air balloon flight took place in 1783 in France, some people worried that the balloon might disappear, floating away to heaven or hell.  Cynicism about modern inventions is nothing new!

What attitudes lead to cynicism that people or situations are going “to hell in a handbasket?” Our scriptures this morning offer some glimpses into this issue. But they also offer hope for a different outcome.  Let's look at them more closely.

Our first concern should be that God looks at human sinfulness with a cynical eye. When Ezekiel hears God's voice, he understood God as describing the people of Israel as: “. . . a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me, they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day.”  Then God speculates that Israel may well refuse to listen to Ezekiel's speaking God's prophetic word.  Were God to examine our lives today, would God hold that same cynical attitude?

Our second concern should be that communities of faith can be troubled by leadership issues.  The rather confusing passage from St. Paul's second letter to the Corinthians we heard this morning contains Paul's cynical take on how the Christian community in Corinth understood leadership.  Paul appears to be arguing that their leaders' boasting about their ideas and their qualifications will lead the community astray.  At this time when our General Convention is meeting in Indianapolis, do we feel cynical or hopeful about the outcome of its deliberations?  Perhaps we are beyond cynicism.  More locally, here at St. Nicholas', do we trust our leadership—particularly the Vestry—or do we feel cynical about the way they do their work?

Finally, we need to be concerned about whether our own cynicism about how the world works prevents us from seeing and experiencing the Holy One in our lives.  Cynicism certainly clouded the minds of the people who attended the synagogue in Nazareth that sabbath when Jesus came to teach:  “How could this hometown boy we knew be a great teacher or healer or prophet?  We knew him when he . . .”  You can fill in the blank.

Mark also reports a rather cynical response on Jesus' part: “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”  Rejection tends to bring out cynicism, doesn't it?

Since most likely we will not encounter Jesus in person, we should ask ourselves whether our cynicism about a certain situation or a certain person will prevent us from experiencing Christ in that situation or in that person?  Especially when that situation may make us uncomfortable or that person may confront us or disagree with us.  Do we believe so strongly that they are “going to hell in handbasket” that we cannot see beyond our own feelings to what God may be trying to teach us through them?

So where do we find ourselves now?  Concerned about how our sinfulness looks to God?  Mistrustful of our leaders in the church?  Experiencing barriers in relating to others who disagree with us or make us uncomfortable?  Yes, indeed, our human nature tends toward cynicism.  It can even lead us to reject God!

But I said at the beginning we could find hope in the scripture we heard this morning. Of course, hope can be an antidote to our cynicism; it can help us encounter the Holy One in our daily lives.  I believe hope will arise in our hearts when we allow ourselves to believe that St. Paul heard Christ correctly.  Paul wrote:  “Three times I appealed to the Lord about this [thorn in his flesh] that it would leave me, but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.' ”

Our cynicism can be seen as a thorn in our flesh that prevents us from seeing the goodness in the world around us.  It can also prevent us from taking action to correct things in our lives and in our world that need to change.  But God's grace, freely given to us, can empower us, despite whatever weakness or helplessness we feel.  It can keep us from turning to cynicism, or it can help us turn away from cynicism. And we can affirm with Paul that through God's grace “whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

The character, Sonny Kapoor, in the film “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” put it beautifully, “Every will be o.k. in the end—and if it's not o.k., it's not the end.”  As Christians we can have confidence that God has begun to redeem creation and, in the end, all human beings will experience reconciliation to God and to each other.  The end will not only be o.k., it will be all that we could ever hope for!